Prospecting Game Plan in a Changing Market

Filed Under Business and Life, Market Info, Marketing Tools · Tagged: facebook, LinkedIn, prospecting real estate, social media for real estate, twitter, using social media as a real estate agent

Social Media and Commercial Real Estate

Social Media – lets get real!

Seems like the agent water cooler gossip is about social networks and how to use the various networks successfully these days. My take: they are rapidly increasing in popularity but won’t really pay off for a couple of years, at least on the commercial side. Just like Ebay – it took a while before you felt comfortable to enter your credit card online didn’t it?

I generate approximately 50% of my new clients from my blog, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts BUT if you want business that pays the bills today you have to continue your grass roots prospecting. That means getting in early to cold call, staying in touch with former clients for repeat business and referrals, canvassing or doing mail drops for your listings and actively meeting with clients to tour office space, no matter what size the requirement is. What social media has done for me is dramatically increase my prospect and client base and helped me to easily and consistently stay top of mind and informed.

If you are an agent in the commercial real estate industry my advice is to continue to focus on relationship, relationship, relationship and not the marketing. If you rely solely on social media to generate leads to pay your bills today you will be going through very difficult times. Don’t put all your eggs in the social media basket! Consider social media a useful development tool to prospect for future business and to increase your client base but do not expect it to pay off this quarter. Just remember, don’t start too late or you’ll be left behind with the other agent dinosaurs and it could be too late; the world of social media will become mainstream one day soon… just make sure you are ready for it!

When do you think social media will become mainstream? How far are we from the day a HR manager from fortune 500 companies will feel comfortable starting their search for new office space on Twitter?

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