Find it! Fill it! – Find Commercial Real Estate Office Space, Buildings, Condos for Lease or Sale in Orange County

Like most of you in commercial real estate, I’m extremely busy. My day usually starts around 5:30 AM. I put the kettle on, make some tea, jump in the shower, get in front my home office computer, review yesterday’s tasks, review things I have to do today, clean-up my to-do list and get crankin’!

With all this prep and organization you’d think that my day would be swift-and-easy, right? Ummm…..not at all! Like many of you, around 8:30 AM my phone starts ringing like crazy, I start getting a ton of email, the voicemail starts piling up and I even receive text messages! A lot of these calls are not time-wasters, they are important calls from brokers trying to tour or inquire on my listings and clients trying to inch-closer to closing a transaction. So, when everything is important how do you deal with all of it? It’s not easy, but over the past 12 years, I’ve gotten really darn good at it, and I’ve learned several tricks that leverage my productivity significantly. I call these tricks, “BrokerHacks”. And today, I’m going to share my favorite BrokerHacks with all of you. Let’s rock!

1) Template Everything: Truth is, most of our interactions are scripted. If you think not, why is it that we use the word, “hello” when saluting somebody? Some try to vary it, but really outside of “Hello”, “Hi”, “What’s Up”, “How’s it going”, there’s not much you can do. So, if everyday interaction is efficiently scripted, so should we be! The way we do that is through templates. There are a few things that you can template: email, voicemails, and LOIs (there are more things that we can template, but let’s stick to a list of our mostly used tools).

- Email Templates: Email is the easiest thing to Template. Most of you probably use an email program like Outlook, and if you do, the best way to create an email template is by creating different types of email “signatures”. Many people inquire for brochures, touring instructions or pricing via email. The quickest way to reply is by selecting an email signature template you’ve created for the particular listing they are contacting you about. Have this email signature include touring instructions, pricing, Etc. You can even include a link to your website where they can download the brochure. You’ll find yourself no longer wasting 3 minutes replying same things over-and-over again to someone. With an templated email signature, now it takes only seconds.

- Voicemail Templates: Most people have experience using scripts when they first learn how to cold-call, but after a while you get really good at it and you can take the training wheels off. That’s when you start realizing that the busier you get, even the dial-tone is robbing you of precious minutes you can be using to draft a Purchase And Sale Agreement, or reach out to a prospective customer. So, the best approach is to help people out as much as possible up-front without forcing them to actually get you on the phone. The voicemail greeting becomes the messiah and most pivotal productivity booster. Most people are reaching-out to you for information, such as property brochures, pricing, touring instructions, etc. Therefore, your voicemail greeting should help them get access to what the need instantly so they can move on with their lives. A great voicemail greeting goes like this: “Thanks for reaching [my name], I’m currently unavailable. For instant access to property information, brochures, touring instructions and pricing, please visit the following website [say website URL address] or email me at [say email address]. I look forward to hearing from you!” Note: Be friendly and brief in your voicemail.

-LOIs: Most brokers know this trick. It’s indispensable. I have one LOI template for each type of rent structure (Full Service Gross, Triple Net, etc.) and I also have a Listing Version or a User Rep version. Whenever possible, I try to avoid having a separate LOI template for each property I have listed, because it fragments my workflow and the friction makes it longer to get an LOI out the door. Brokers want to move-listings, not sit behind a computer processing words. If you know me,  you know I like simplicity with a loud-blast of effectiveness. It’s all about gliding productively.

2) Automate: I know a ton of fellow brokers who spend countless hours following-up at the end of the month so they can update their prospect reports and send them to their Property Owners. Over the years I have found this process to be exhaustively frustrating. You have to call around, try to get a hold of the brokers and principals that have called on the listing and get feedback from them. Many times you end up leaving voicemail with no reply. But if  you boil-it-down, all the Property Owner wants to know is: “What are you doing to get my property leased/sold Mr. Broker?” So in some cases, a prospect report kinda works against you because you may have left thousands of voicemails, but until you get a hold of the prospect and get feedback, you have nothing to put on your report. If you do business with me you can count that if I’m doing something to move this property, you’re going to know it. So, a few years ago I dumped my static Microsoft Word/Excel prospect reports and replaced them with with a system that I could automate. I switched to Salesforce.com and had it customized in a ways that I could integrate my listings with people that call on them. I can track who’s interested, who’s not interested, who’s toured, who’s going to tour and even send them the property brochure and listing information directly from salesforce. Guess what, anything I do on Salesforce is automatically tracked. I don’t need to enter an extra note, or go to an MS Word or Excel file to report it. It’s all done and tracked automatically. So, at the end of the month, all you have to do is click 1-button and viola! Prospect report is out the door. No more calling around. I know that some brokers use a program called ClientLook to achieve something similar to what I do with Salesforce, but I personally don’t have experience with it.

3) Delegate: This is something that every broker knows they should be doing, but they don’t. The biggest problem is that most people live by the motto, “If we want something done right, we have to do it ourselves”. Which by the way, I think is a completely ridiculous argument. I believe that if you want something done right, you have to have the systems in-place to predict the outcome every single time. This is no different than following a kitchen recipe. This is why recipes exist: if you want those cookies to taste the same every time, document how you make them and share the recipe with others. Sound simple? Yes, it is. Once you have followed what I’ve shared with you: you’ve created the templates, the email signatures, the voicemail greetings and automated the process, it’s not hard to say to your assistant “Hey, can you email John Doe the information on our property on Harbor Blvd?” and expect it to be done perfectly. Not only will they be responding to every question a person needs, the way you would (you kinda answered yourself, you created the email signature response), but the activity will show on your prospect report automatically. How about that for productivity?

I hope that these “hacks” I’ve shared help you as much as they’ve helped me through the years. I have plenty hacks, so feel free to reach out to me with any questions. I just hope that now that you find more-and-more free time in your life, you will spend them with your family or pursuing a hobby you’re passionate about. Have a prosperous week!