5 Steps You Can Take Today To Automate CRE Sales

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The hungriest CRE agents eat, sleep, and breathe deals. Just like the greatest athletes eat, sleep, and breathe their sport.

Take Kobe and basketball for example. Hoops was on his mind for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There are countless stories from former Laker and USA Basketball teammates recounting his work ethic. He was in the gym most days at 4:30AM.

The result: 5 rings. A legacy unmatched by many others.

Similarly, a good agent embraces the "Mamba Mentality."

They get into the office early to call the VP of Real Estate at 7:30A before the individual launches into their morning agenda.

They hand write a letter to the chairman of the one REIT whose office portfolio they want to list.

They congratulate the newly hired head of real estate from the flashy European retail brand with a bottle of wine.

But BrokerPros, in between meetings and client-facing activities, your business needs to be working for YOU, and not YOU working for your business.

Hard work pays off. But smart work produces greater results.

The #1 ingredient for smart work you might ask?

AUTOMATION... IT'S THE SECRET TO SCALING YOUR PIPELINE.

Cutting down on manual tasks and installing automated processes is the #1 way to supercharge deal flow.

So, let's review five ways you can automate sales today to close more deals in fewer hours actually worked.

That's our objective here at creBrokerPro: to provide you with the tools to drive more CRE sales with less effort.

THE POWER 5

1. HIRE A VIRTUAL ASSISTANT (VA)

Perhaps you're a brokerage executive who has an administrative assistant or dedicated support staff. Lucky you!

However, for most commercial agents, you're responsible for the daily grind.

Well… it's time to onboard help.

If you have one takeaway from this article, make it this:

Hire a virtual assistant to take some of the load off your back!

Period. Post-COVID, they are mainstream, readily available, and affordable.

Agents wear many hats: salesman, marketer, negotiator, contractor, zoning expert, mediator, or friend. I speak from experience when I say all these roles can be tiring. It no doubt helps to reduce the workload in the admin and operational department.

A major component to automating commercial real estate sales is building a team around you, both human and machine.

Picture this: a week in your brokerage career when you aren't focused on:

• Organizing site tour books for buyers or tenants

• Updating sellers via activity reports (this information can easily be synced automatically from your CRM)

• Formatting LOIs (I personally have spent way too much of my life frustratingly redlining and formatting on Microsoft Word).

• Scheduling showings and meetings on the calendar, back and forth "Does this time work for you?"

• Responding to listing inquiry emails regarding asking prices or rents

BrokerPros, these are just a few of the ways a real estate VA can step in and make your life SO much easier (check out our advice on how to hire and manage a VA here).

Part admin, part marketing associate, part inside sales agent. Hiring a virtual assistant is the fast lane to closing more deals.

A VA allows you to focus your workday on human-to-human interaction: building relationships, pitches, site tours, strategic conference calls, showings and….closings!

Freeing up your time can cost as little as $10-25/hour for an assistant with expertise in virtual real estate support services (that's 15 hours less per week of manual work on your end for around 300 bucks/month).

My bet is you could use those 15 hours/weekly to close a few extra deals over the course of a year to justify the monthly expense.

The experience you gain managing another person is also valuable if you haven't done so up to this point in your career.

You know what's great about a virtual assistant, too? They can help maintain and grow your pipeline, which brings us to automation component #2.

Looking to hire a VA? Check out Mastering CRE Lead Generation for tips on hiring and managing virtual assistants.

2. EMBRACE THE CRM LIFESTYLE

What sort of technology do you use on a day-to-day basis? Your smartphone? LinkedIn? Excel?

We’ve seen software increasingly impact residential real estate over the last few years if you consider brokerages like Compass or Triplemint. But residential's more sophisticated big brother, CRE, is known for slower adoption of technology.

Therefore, the best agents differentiate themselves by building a fully integrated technology stack.

SO, WHAT EXACTLY IS A TECH STACK?

It's the collection of software tools or platforms you have in place to optimize selling.

Tech stacks allow you to easily connect with your customer, improve communication, automate manual tasks, track your pipeline etc.

The heart and soul of your tech stack? The CRM. Customer. Relationship. Management. It's the blueprint for building a clean pipeline.

After all, real estate sales professionals can perhaps be best defined as customer relationship managers. Am I right?

As an agent, you are constantly managing landlords, attorneys, sellers, tenants…. and their corresponding egos, likes, dislikes, opinions etc.

It's best to stay on top of all the information in a CRM. And sorry, people… it's time to say goodbye to spreadsheets!

Relying on a CRM makes monitoring a busy pipeline easy, allows you to focus on the most sales-ready opportunities, and avoids wasted effort on bad fit leads.

Your CRM should be tracking buyers, sellers, brokers, vendor partners, contractors, expediters, attorneys etc.… you name the relationship, and then include it neatly in the CRM. Just a few of the MANY benefits:

• Opportunity tracking each deal in stages ex. contact made, follow up, negotiating etc. (you will no longer lay awake in bed at night mentally computing the information)

• Tagging each deal with an expected commission value so you can focus on what makes sense

• Differentiating pipelines amongst buyers/tenants, listings, or asset classes (I understand many of you sell & lease assets so it's simple to stay on top of it all)

• Notes input from a discovery call can sync directly to an activity report or listing presentation for an owner

Perhaps you're part of a larger organization like JLL, C&W, Colliers etc. where all agents are tapped into a master CRM (my experience here is that even larger CRE firms are disjointed and inefficient in this regard). Or you might be a lone shark in a small market. In either scenario, it's imperative that you leverage the CRM platform.

I encourage you to make the CRM the heartbeat of your operation. Leverage its capabilities daily, grow your contacts within it, and enrich that data.

THE MONEY WILL FOLLOW.

Check out Mastering CRE Lead Generation for CRM recommendations and step-by-step installation advice.

3. EXPAND YOUR TECH STACK WITH SALES ENGAGEMENT & MARKETING AUTOMATION SOFTWARE

Forward-thinking CRE agents invest in data-driven methods to continuously and automatically generate new deal opportunities.

And for my 90s NBA fans, if Michael Jordan is the CRM directing your squad. Scottie Pippen is your sales & marketing automation fueling the offense.

These platforms are essential for functions like:

• Mass marketing drip campaigns sent at different intervals

• Multi-channel prospecting automated over email, phone, and social

• Analytics like open rate, conversion rate, or A/B testing (you should try A/B testing your cold emails for listings)

• Quickly personalized email templates and responses

• Improved calls and outreach through power/progressive dialers

I introduced this multi-faceted system to a Fifth Avenue listing in New York City that had been vacant and stale for many years. The result was a handful of Fortune 500 meetings with C-level prospects in just a few weeks. The vice chairman leading our agency called it a "multi-channel, guerrilla marketing attack that got the job done.”

Need a rec for a sales engagement platform? Check out Mastering CRE Lead Generation for our favorite tools for email marketing and sales automation.

P.S. when it comes to outreach and prospecting, I very much believe in cold calling. It unearths more information than any digital touch point by comparison.

CALLS ALLOW YOUR PERSONALITY TO SHINE THROUGH IN LEAD GENERATION.

But as you understand by now, in between calls and client-facing activities, technology should be working for you around the clock.

And remember your overall objective: develop a system where software and virtual assistant outsourcing complement one another and you WILL make more cash.

Got it?

4. ONBOARD A B2B DATABASE TO MINE CONTACTS AND IDENTIFY DECISION-MAKERS

Do you spend hours, days, or weeks trying to reach decision makers?

How quickly can you place a listing on the desk of a C-level executive?

If you had to reach a VP of Real Estate today, could you dial once and connect to them directly?

News flash: agents who struggle in the industry often lack an effective lead generation program.

Perhaps you work on a team or you service business that has already been procured. Regardless, sourcing new opportunities is the key to securing your future and rising within the company.

Site selection and agency marketing require a significant time investment, but the process is doable once you've got a bit of experience.

Therefore, the magic is in the lead generation department, which is where you can differentiate yourself.

The first component of a strong lead generation program?

A reliable B2B database allowing you to quickly connect to decision makers. Please stop:

• Calling general company lines and waiting to be transferred to a prospect

• Building email addresses by guessing company domains (ex. john.doe@company.com)

• Fishing through company websites for contact info

A reliable B2B database should offer verified email addresses, direct dial phone numbers, and detailed background info for companies and professionals.

Component number two of a strong lead generation program? A relentless approach to prospecting. ABP, friends . Always be prospecting.

Grow your lists of qualified prospects and segment them for outreach through drip email campaigns.

Your goal should be to collect as many contacts/inputs as possible and funnel them through your marketing automation and sales engagement platforms.

Quick tip: always make sure and clearly identify yourself to prospects when reaching out. Allow them the option to unsubscribe. It's necessary in today's regulatory environment.

5. FILL UP YOUR BROKER TOOLBOX WITH AI and PRODUCTIVITY WIDGETS

Artificial Intelligence is here to stay, that's no longer speculation.

The question is, how will you learn to adopt this revolutionary technology as a commercial real estate professional? Or might you get left behind?

OpenAI's Chat GPT (Generative Pre-Trained Transformer) released in late 2022 employs the use of Generative AI which broadly scrapes open data across the internet. Supporting evidence shows the platform will MASSIVELY enhance productivity…it’s a necessary tool to add to your CRE dealmaking kit.

Here are a few ways brokerage professionals can leverage AI in their day-to-day:

• Business Development – Drafting language for email outreach and social media content strategy... as well as researching prospects and creating sales scripts

• Marketing Materials – Adapting templates for listing flyers to reduce time

• Task Reminders - Serving as a virtual assistant, GPT can help you set reminders, manage tasks, and nurture leads in CRM

• Admin Automation – Reducing your load here could take the form of data entry, scheduling, or document management

And it doesn't stop there! Below are some super helpful widgets to augment your AI game:

• Calendar automation to simplify showings and appointments

• Auto-text snippets for inbox management and client communication

• Screen recording & video messaging for virtual tours (very important with VA training as well)

• Project management tools to organize notes, call information, site details, etc

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MOVING FORWARD

Even if you have the most silky smooth and sophisticated tech stack, successful careers in brokerage are built by HUMAN to HUMAN interaction.

The relationships you need to succeed are not formed by automation or raw data.

However, I would guess that you can EASILY win back an extra work day per week if you act now on just one or two of the ideas above.

What would freeing up an extra day per week do for your business and bank account?

What could it do for your personal life?

How about "Summer Fridays" in January off for my NYC friends?

THE BOTTOM LINE

TECH UP YOUR PROGRAM.

OUTSOURCE REPETITIVE TASKS.

EMBRACE THE AUTOMATION LIFE.

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Interested in applying these concepts to your business? Sign up today for the exclusive course: Mastering CRE Lead Generation

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