How many solicitations did you receive last year? 100 – 1,000 – 10,000? Today we are bombarded with hundreds of offers each day. From LinkedIn ads, Facebook ads, Twitter, email blasts, television and yes – proposals and telephone calls – we are always given opportunities to say yes, to click, to download.
As the president of the Massimo Group, I (not only) receive daily calls asking for my business, but I also purposefully listen to prospect calls throughout the day. Either I am working on our pitch with our sales team, or I am listening to recordings of our clients’ prospecting during role-playing with our coaches.
Furthermore, every month we hold a “Round Table with Rod”. This is a member only (meaning our coaching clients only) video conference call to role play prospecting; we role play voicemail messages, opening statements, and prospect conversations. As you can see, I hear a lot of prospect calls.
As we move into the new year, I thought I would share with you the 6 greatest prospecting errors I have heard this year. And by the way – they haven’t changed in the 10 years I have been running the Massimo Group.
As a coaching company, we must establish a benchmark on how our members are prospecting initially so that we can address and revise in order to significantly increase their conversion rates from calls to meetings. The errors listed are those we most commonly hear when we first start working with our commercial real estate clients. Note: these are universally demonstrated regardless of level of experience or success.
Here are the 6 Greatest Commercial Real Estate Prospecting Errors:
1. The Selfie – The voicemail, the opening statement, and even the ensuing conversation (if they get that far) are all about the caller, not the receiver. “I am calling about XYZ building, would you like to sell”, “The purpose of my call is to meet with you and show you how we can market/lease/list/manage your property”. Do yourself and your prospects (and us all) a favor – just STOP. Prospects don’t care about what you want, they only care about what they want.
2. The Diatribe – Opening statements should be strong and on point, but they can’t be long-winded speeches without giving your prospect any chance for input. This is a dead giveaway that you are making mass calls and not going to address a specific issue for that particular prospect.
3. The Script – No, no and no! Need I say more?
4. The Vague Voicemail – “Hi this is Joe, please give me a call”. Although I have heard of some limited success, this is no way to prospect – there is no value exchanged.
5. The No Call – Convince yourself you are making calls, even though you are not leaving voicemails. Some even track these as “calls attempted”. These are not attempts. No voice mail message, no credit.
6. The Wimpy Close – The objective of almost every prospect call is to secure a meeting. That means you must ASK for the meeting. So, ask yourself after every call– “did I intentionally and specifically ask for a meeting?”
Here’s to you not making any of these crucial errors in your future prospecting efforts!
No one ever drifted to the success they wanted – they created a plan and set goals to help them get there. Yet most of us haven’t been taught HOW to properly set goals — or even WHAT goals to set so we end up with the results we really want. GOOD NEWS – you can gain clarity, set career-changing goals, and achieve them to gain greater success next year with our 7 Days to Your Best CRE Year Yet program. It includes videos, book and workbook – it’s free and will get you off to a good start in the New Year.
