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How CRE Consultants Find Clients, Win Business & Grow Faster

  • 3 hours ago
  • 4 min read

Generic B2B prospecting platforms don’t match the specific needs of CRE-related businesses. Traditional lead lists can contain incomplete and outdated information, or they don’t align with relevant CRE asset classes or developer types — plus, they may not offer multiple filters so you can narrow your search to the right contacts. A CRE consultant needs a strategy for CRE prospecting, which includes:


Whether you run a CRE investment consulting firm, environmental consulting, CRE management consulting, or any other CRE-related consulting firm, this guide will help you efficiently target the right prospects. 


How Prospecting Differs for CRE Consultants 

A CRE consultant’s prospecting differs from general B2B prospecting in many ways. B2B prospecting tools may include a filter for commercial real estate, but they won’t have multiple filters for asset classes, CRE business types, job titles, building counts, and seniority. These details are important to identify key decision-makers at the right companies. Your lead nurturing pipelines also have to be prepared for the hand-off: understanding the context of the lead your marketing team has identified and what questions to answer in the follow-up. 


Prospecting in any B2B setting takes time, as it involves sorting through potentially hundreds of contacts to identify the best prospective leads. It also requires research on the companies followed by smart outreach, which speaks to the specific concerns and business goals of the prospect.


The cost? Time wasted on bad leads, goodwill lost in contacting the wrong decision-makers, and outdated data that was never going to lead to business in the first place. 


Define Your Target Profile

An ideal customer profile (ICP) is a theoretical customer that has all of the qualities that make them the perfect client. This could include:

  • Geographic location (region, state, city)

  • Asset class (industrial, mixed-use, multi-family housing, etc.)

  • Business size (number of contacts, number of employees, number of real properties, estimated revenue, etc.)

  • Organization type (corporation, partnership, REIT, etc.)

  • Other relevant filters you may use to prospect


Your consulting firm’s ICP will be heavily influenced by your own asset class specialization, but you can also lean on relevant historical data. The more specific you can get, the better the prospects will match your own profile and the more likely they’ll be viable prospects.

Learn more about constructing an ideal customer profile. 


Identify Decision Makers

A B2B decision maker is the individual at a business responsible for making purchasing decisions. The key decision-maker could be one or more people involved in identifying new business prospects, negotiating a deal, or financing potential partnerships — the larger an organization, the more layers purchase decisions tend to go through. 


Part of the complexity of CRE B2B sales is understanding which decision-maker is relevant to what business. For example, an asset manager would be a great contact for a CRE consultant, as they’re responsible for maximizing the return on their portfolio. However, a property manager may be irrelevant, as they’re usually responsible for tenant management and property improvements.


How do you identify decision-makers? Look for job titles that suggest someone who influences or makes purchasing decisions. For example:

  • An environmental consulting firm might search for development or project managers

  • Appraisal and valuation consultants might search for asset managers and portfolio managers at real estate investment firms and REITs

  • CRE management consultants might search for property owners or operators at regional or national real estate firms



Keeping Your Pipeline Fresh Without Manual Work

The market is constantly moving, and CRE contact data can quickly become stale as new sales, business decisions, and hiring and downsizing happen daily. If one thing’s for sure in CRE prospecting: It isn’t a one-time task. Rather, data has to be refreshed and enriched regularly to avoid wasted time and resources in pursuing a prospect that’s no longer relevant. 


Purchased lead lists, for example, have a diminishing return over time, as they’re rarely updated after you initially buy them. This results in more time spent verifying data, which is more manual work for your team. 


A saved search in a database that is continuously updated produces a fresh prospect list based on search criteria relevant to your business goals. On CRE-specific data platforms, saved searches are used to find all relevant prospects for you. Rather than sifting through a list, your saved search will automatically yield results for your sales team.

Data recency does matter, as current company information is vital for targeted outreach, and contact information needs to be up to date to reach key decision-makers. 


Putting It Together With the Right Tool

The right prospecting strategy depends on the right CRE-specific tool. Biscred provides filters built around the nuances of commercial real estate. Your consulting firm can target prospects by asset classes, job titles, company sizes, and dozens more filters. 

Biscred’s database is actively updated and currently includes information on nearly 6 million professionals and more than 647,000 companies. It receives continuous updates to ensure that data never becomes stale. 


We also make it easy to integrate Biscred into your sales pipeline with HubSpot, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics and API integrations. Biscred data can also be exported as CSV files to enrich your existing customer data. And the Chrome browser extension makes it even easier to discover contact information for CRE-related companies as you browse.  

 
 
 
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