This past week we hosted Hightower Sales Executive Max Spitalnick in the studio to discuss “Prospecting Methods For Commercial Real Estate”. In the episode, we explored the entire process of prospecting, from identifying sales targets to securing customers. Max shared 3 steps to smart prospecting and many tactics and tips for each step. Here, we further discuss all of these strategies and tactics, and how they can be used to better your business.
There are 3 steps to smart prospecting that your sales team should be doing:
(1) Identifying Target Customers: Targeting the customers with the highest chance of adopting your product is a crucial preparatory step for prospecting, and can sometimes be difficult. That is why having a buyer persona can be useful. This persona represents either the key decision maker or another frequent potential user of your software. Max discussed the use of personas at Hightower, and how they are an important starting point for prospecting. For Max and Hightower, this persona is not always easily identifiable, and is simply a person or company who is using an out of date system to manage their commercial leasing operations. This persona is different for every business, but identifying who it is is an essential part of creating an efficient sales model.
(2) Outreach: The next step in this process is reaching out to these developed leads and displaying your product to them. The way you do this this may be the most important step of prospecting, and needs to be meticulously executed as to maximize the chance of success. At Hightower, cold calling and emailing is still a successful tool to get your foot in the door with potential customers. It is the easiest way to get in touch with potential customers and to tell them about your product. However, it is important to have a deep understanding of your product and how it can directly help the person you are speaking with. Max also talked about how face-to-face meetings and creating personal relationships can be very successful, especially for a network driven industry like Commercial Real Estate.
(3) Nurturing Leads and Securing Customers: This step includes keeping your leads within arms length after your first contact with them, and making sure that you are persistent but not bothersome. Face-to-face relationships are particularly important here, as they help build trust with the potential customer. At Hightower, Max and his team deal with blockers during the nurturing process by applying a consulting-type approach to the conversation. When a customer pushes a conversation weeks or months into the future, they make a point of identifying the drivers behind this request. Particularly in Commercial Real Estate, there is the possibility of nonnegotiable deadlines so it’s important to understand the rationale for the push back and react accordingly.
Max concluded the podcast with some overarching advice for successful prospecting: Having confidence in your product and believing in its success are simple but incredibly effective for selling into your potential customers. It makes a huge difference for a customer to know that you are not just checking off boxes by getting meetings and making phone calls, but that you truly think your product could help their business grow and improve.
We hope you enjoyed these 3 steps to smart prospecting! If you missed the podcast itself, make sure to check out the full episode, here. Also, check out past episodes and make sure to subscribe to our podcast to get new content every Friday. Thanks and until next time!
Special thanks to Jack Blattman for his contributions to this post!
