In this real estate market, salespeople need listings and most particularly those relating to quality property. The more quality listings you have, the better the enquiry and the stronger your real estate business.

For this very reason, it pays to understand exactly what the buyers and tenants in the market are looking for. Once these facts have been determined, a systematic prospecting process is the way to improve your business and listing opportunity.

The best way to create a prospecting system is to use something similar to the following:

1. Firstly check out the changes to the local precinct and the demographics at the local council or the local planning office. If anything is going to impact the local property market then you need to know about it early. Changes to zoning, changes to transport corridors, and new developments will impact of the property market significantly.
2. Divide your territory into areas labelled A, B, and C. Use a street directory or similar local precinct map to designate the zones and colour them appropriately. The differential between the areas will be popularity or location. Ideally, you want to identify the most popular areas where businesses and property investors wish to be.
3. Given the activity in point 2 above, survey the streets and the businesses located therein; take notes of the business names and contact telephone numbers. This will be a source of systematic telephone prospecting, as well as door to door research.
4. Survey the number of properties that are on the market at the moment with other agents. Position these properties on a map and get details of the property improvements, or sale price, rental price, and any other critical selling features.
5. Understand the properties that did not sell and rent. These properties are likely to come on the market again and are consequently one of your prospecting targets.
6. Get a list of the local businesses from the telephone book. This will be used in a telephone prospecting process to identify if those businesses need to change location or change property type.
7. Use the property ownership records of the local titles office to seek out the details of the property owners on key properties that you identify. This will be relevant to certain properties, the larger properties, and the bigger businesses.
8. Understand who are the owners of the largest businesses in the local area and where their properties are located. They may need assistance one day with that property.
9. Research the recent property sales and leasing activity so you are totally familiar with prices and rentals. These will impact your listing processes and negotiations with property owners. » Read more: Systems to Follow in Commercial Real Estate Prospecting