How Financial Firms Can Grow Their CRE Clientele

Financial management firms, advisors, and accounting firms compete for a slice of commercial real estate — an industry where deals are won on access, timing, and knowing the right people. Breaking in, or growing an existing book of CRE business, means finding the right clients before a competitor does. That requires knowing who the active developers, owners, and operators are in your target markets, and having a way to reach them directly.

For financial firms that want to enter the CRE market or expand their CRE business, Biscred is the perfect place to start. Biscred is your CRE database with contact information for the right companies and markets that best align with your business.

If you're curious about how Biscred can work for your business, schedule a demo to see how financial firms use Biscred to find and prospect CRE leads.

Traditional Ways Accounting Firms and Financial Advisors Find Clients

Traditional business development methods still work, but each has its limits:

• Referral networks and networking depend on who you know.

• Cold calling can be a high-cost, low return tactic, especially with outdated lead lists.

• Paid advertising casts a wide net with no guarantee of reaching the right person.

• Property or asset owner lead lists may lack the right data, such as decision-maker information.

• Conferences, expos, and professional development events can be valuable for relationship building, but they are hard to scale. 

Biscred fills the gaps traditional methods leave behind, giving financial firms a way to identify and reach the right CRE decision-makers without relying on who you already know or how big your conference budget is. 

How Financial Firms Use Biscred to Grow Their Businesses

Biscred’s CRE-specific datasets are updated continually with nearly 600,000 companies and over 5.9 million CRE professionals. 

Step 1: Identify your ideal client profile and set filters to match

Your ideal customer profile, or ICP, may be a borrower, a property owner, or a property development partner. Your ICP will be specific to your organization and its specialty, with certain attributes or qualities that make it ideal for doing business with. One firm’s ICP will rarely be the same as another, and only you can identify what your ICP is.

For this example, this financial/accounting firm is a mid-size firm with offices predominantly in the U.S. northeast. It wants to expand south, into the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida. The firm has experience in retail CRE in particular and some mixed-use experience. 

Step 2: Filter by company type, or industry

Biscred's industry filters include roughly 30 major categories plus dozens of subcategories. Use them to filter the types of businesses you want to reach. For our accounting firm example, it is looking for architects and engineers, builders and developers, operators, and managers.

Step 3: Narrow the results with more filters

This is still yielding thousands of companies and hundreds of thousands of people. We can narrow this search even further by getting into the types of asset classes and industries that this accounting firm typically works with. Learn more about how Biscred organizes asset classes.

This search can be even further narrowed to states, cities, keywords on company types, the size of the company, and more. Remember that the smarter your prospect targeting, the more likely you are to find high-quality leads. Regardless of your specialization and expertise, Biscred helps CRE financial firms find potential clients that align with their services, asset class experience, and geography.

Smart Prospecting Vs. Traditional Lead Generation

We’ve explored how smart prospecting can narrow your audience to specific segments likely to convert to prospects that you can pursue. Here are a few reasons why smart prospecting is more effective than traditional lead generation:

1. Higher quality prospects: Financial firms often have to narrow their search down to reliable developers and borrowers. Sifting through a high volume of leads from a lead list or researching thousands of leads costs time and money. Smart prospecting reduces this research time and finds you the contacts actually worth pursuing. 

2. Quality control: Traditional lead lists or your firm’s historical data may not be updated. Biscred updates continuously, so you have the freshest contact and business data. 

3. Data limitations: A networking event, expo, or purchased lead list may only contain a sliver of the greater CRE market in your region. Purchased lead lists, in particular, don’t always disclose how they collect their data, which can lead to inaccuracies. 

4. Missing audience segments: Your current business development strategy may be missing entire segments of your audience. If a lead list vendor requires businesses to opt in, you’re missing potential opportunities. 

Our data-driven, CRE-specific prospecting tool makes business development for financial firms far more efficient and cost-effective. Our CRE data is collected through various methods, including machine-learning and AI, alongside analysts’ validation (yes, real people) using publicly available information. 

If you want to learn more about how financial firms save money using a modern platform like Biscred, see our guide on finding better CRE leads. 

FAQs About Leads for Financial Firms

Can accountants and financial advisors use Biscred, or is it only for CRE companies?

Yes, accountants and financial advisors working with commercial real estate can find opportunities through Biscred. Even if your financial firm isn’t entirely dedicated to CRE, account or investment managers, for example, may discover opportunities in new locations, asset classes, or industries. 

What types of CRE companies can financial firms find on Biscred?

Biscred categorizes CRE-related companies into around 28 major industries and even more sub-categories, such as:

• CRE developers

• Construction companies

• Commercial real estate owners

• Operators

• General contractors

• Property management firms

Use filtering options for different company types, as well as asset experience, and geographic filters. 

How do I find CRE companies in a specific region or metro area?

Biscred's geographic filters let you search by state, metro area, or city. Select the region you want to target and the results will narrow to companies and contacts operating in that area. You can combine geographic filters with industry, asset class, and company size filters to get more precise results. 

Can I filter by company size or revenue?

Yes, you can filter your search based on company size or revenue. We use publicly available data to collect this information and ensure that it’s accurate and up to date. 

How do I identify the right decision-maker at a CRE firm — the CFO, controller, or owner?

The CRE decision-maker will be specific to your financial firm’s specialization. This not only requires identifying the correct role, but also the individual who manages the decisions of that organization in a specific region or city. Learn more about how to identify B2B decision-makers in CRE and see how Biscred can narrow your search to these roles. 

How current is the contact data in Biscred?

Biscred invests heavily in proactive updating and data validation. Our datasets are updated continuously and combine AI with human validation to give you the best results for CRE prospecting. See Biscred’s approach to CRE data. 

Can I export my list and bring it into my CRM?

Yes, you can export lists and integrate into a CRM of your choice through our API. We offer spreadsheet or CSV exporting as well as more specific integrations, such as HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics, and Salesforce. 

How is Biscred different from LinkedIn or a general B2B database for finding CRE clients?

Most general B2B databases and LinkedIn give you contact data without CRE-specific context. You can find a CFO at a real estate firm, but you cannot filter by asset class experience, property type, or CRE job function. You end up with a broad list that requires manual cleanup before it's useful.

Biscred is built specifically for commercial real estate. Every company and contact is categorized using CRE-specific taxonomy — asset class, industry, geography, seniority, and functional area. A financial firm targeting retail developers in the Southeast can filter to exactly that, rather than sorting through contacts at unrelated companies.

The coverage is also deeper within CRE. Biscred includes over 596,000 companies and 6.2 million professionals across the full spectrum of the industry — owners, operators, developers, architects, contractors, property managers, and more — many of whom do not maintain an active LinkedIn presence or appear in generic B2B tools.

Can I upload my existing client list to find similar companies?

From your existing CRM (Salesforce, Hubspot, etc.), export your list as a CSV format. From your Biscred dashboard, select Lists, and then Create List.

How many CRE companies does Biscred cover in the U.S.?

At the time this post was published, Biscred included information on more than 596,000 CRE-related companies. We continuously update our database, so that number fluctuates over time.

What is a saved search and how does it help ongoing business development?

A saved search is specific to your search filters. It is dynamic in that it automatically updates as new contacts meet (or don’t meet) your criteria, so your results stay current without resetting your filters each time.

Contrast a saved search to a saved list, which isn’t dynamic. It is a static collection of saved contact information for companies and/or contacts based on a single search.  

Does Biscred work for firms that serve both CRE and non-CRE clients?

Biscred is a CRE-specific contact database. If you are looking to grow your financial clientele in, say, retail sales or ecommerce, this is not the right solution for your business. However, if you are looking to do business with companies that design, build, manage and service retail buildings or other commercial real estate, Biscred is the perfect fit.  

Is there a free trial available?

Yes. Schedule a demo to access a free trial. Our no-pressure sales team will introduce you to Biscred and explain the free-trial terms.