4 Essential Stats for CRE Growth

Commercial real estate is a relationship, information and trust business across many personalities. Retaining and acquiring the right people can make a huge difference in your business and helping those real estate pros close more deals creates a win-win scenario for all parties.

For that reason, we've surveyed over 500 of our commercial real estate customers and come up with 4 of the top stats that may help you retain talent and help your business.

#1: 70% want technology that helps them organize their contacts, calendar, properties and documents.

Nothing is more frustrating for a client than poor organization and no plan. Handling complex transactions across multiple people and their needs is what makes commercial real estate professionals valuable. Their need for structured information and workflows to help them manage the complexities of a deal is becoming more competitive. Commercial real estate companies are now spending thousands and in some cases millions (CBRE and JLL) to implement and arm their brokers with the CRM technology they need to help manage their pipeline and fulfill their clients needs.

If you are thumbing through your notepad in front of a client to find information, then stop and move into 2016. Find a system that helps you organize yourself and pipeline. This will help you work through complex deals with multiple people, many documents, tight timelines and look great with your client.

CRITICAL for adaption...Make sure that the solution supports multiple integrated CRE specific transaction workflows with access to contacts, calendars, properties and documents from any device AND IS INTEGRATED WITH OUTLOOK.

#2: 84% say they do most of their business from their mobile device.

Successful people are always having meaningful conversations with people to understand if there is a need or pain point they can solve. Most of the brokers we work with say having the ability to share information, create reminders, and view history gives them a huge edge with their clients and makes their life easier.

Just make sure the system integrates everything they need, if they have to use multiple system, then they will NOT adapt.

#3: 80% want their company to help fill their opportunity pipeline with more leads.

Branded email marketing

Email campaign engagement is an extremely effective way of driving engagement with investors, tenants and brokers in the market. Make sure your email lists are properly categorized and avoid "Spamming'. Categorize your contacts based on following to ensure you are in front of the right person:

  • Property Type
  • Market
  • Tenant Type
  • Investment $ Range
  • SF Requirement

Also, you'll see 3x the open and engagement rate if you do this in YOUR OWN BRAND. Relying on Xceligent, CoStar and other 3rd party email campaign solutions is what everyone else is doing and your audience knows it. We often hear that brokers create email rules for email sent from Xceligent and CoStar and don't get any attention.

Lead capture alerts that are integrated into your CRM

Make sure every inquiry from your website is captured, categorized and auto-alert the people that can help and close the business. To many times, great leads are not properly handled and business is lost.

Tenants are always looking for properties. With 72% of buying decision influenced online, you need to have presence on Google search. This is more than just people searching for properties, this is people searching for solutions to their challenges and ways to achieve their goals. There is no better way to engage someone, than helping them and Google is where most look to start their problem solving process.

#4: 75% miss opportunities because their companies support team takes too long to react to their needs.

We all know the challenges associated with property flyer/brochure and other document creation and updates. Make sure you have a process that allows for these documents to stay consistently branded and updated where ever your clients access them.

Also, make sure this process is transferable. Staffing challenges create a ton of work and exposure for your business and can have a huge impact on client relationships.

The more process automation you have, the more efficiently you can operate.