Find the Perfect Solution for Your Commercial Real Estate Crm Software for Export Needs

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welcome everyone to this week's edition of the commercial real estate 101 meetup group for those of you guys who are tuning in for the first time uh we started this back in 2020 uh somewhat in response to the copa 19 pandemic but we i just felt there wasn't as much resources out there pertaining to just learning about the commercial real estate industry and so we just started doing these bi-monthly meetings where we started to reach out to people from all across the country uh to learn about a variety of different commercial real estate topics and today we have a good buddy of mine logan hartl uh who's a commercial agent in north carolina uh to stop by to talk about a very important topic in particular now that you know we're starting to go and we're starting to see uh you know recessionary concerns coming into play i think it's gonna be ever more uh crucial for us to you know refine our prospecting efforts so i think it's going to be great to learn more about uh how you approach the the process slogan so welcome absolutely thank you i appreciate you guys having me this is uh this is cool i'm excited to be here awesome man yeah i know we're excited to have you and for those of you guys who don't know actually i connected with logan just through this stuff you know we do a lot of you know virtual stuff and we just just so happen to connect words because we're all contract creators on commercial in the commercial real estate realm and so we've just been in touch ever since and we've done you know things together here and there and just excited again like i said to host you today to talk a little bit about uh prospecting so one of the things that we typically like to do when we first get started is we like to learn a little bit more about the person who's you know across the table from us so if you don't mind kind of sharing your backstory i think it'll be awesome absolutely absolutely so yeah so i am uh by by training much like you i'm i'm i'm by education i'm an industrial engineering uh major out of college uh left that and spent about 10 years in manufacturing uh i was i went to west virginia university for that and spent most of my manufacturing tenure in west virginia the last five years of that tenure i actually owned my own manufacturing company so i bought a a hand tool manufacturing company with two partners of mine we ended up selling that company back in 2020 and kept the real estate um i've always been fascinated with real estate i've always loved real estate read the book rich dad poor dad when i was 18 and just just immediately was hooked to it i have family that's in the the residential real estate side of things so it just kind of grew up with it and was always around it and i knew when i sold that business that real estate was what i wanted to do with my life um both on the investment side and day-to-day as a broker so you know for me the the options were out there do i start a new business do i you know do i go work for somebody um and you know i had been doing uh some residential and some commercial brokerage for myself uh for a couple of months three or four months by the time we had sold that business and just decided to go full time and just just head first into that and it's been a great decision i i i've loved it ever since and currently live in the charlotte market i'm in the charlotte area just i live about 20 minutes north of the city but work all over the north and south carolina trying to help investors find uh commercial real estate investments so that's uh that's primarily me and where i came from and where i'm at now awesome yeah like you mentioned i actually studied this we talk about this all the time but i studied industrial engineering too um and and minor in economics and then got into the software space so you know talk a little bit about that transition because that's another thing is the question that i get all the time is like why make that that jump because it seems somewhat you know kind of foreign to a lot of people it is i mean i i think there's you got to have the right mentality as an engineer i think industrial engineers in general tend to be a little bit more business minded and business focused you know they go into it and this is just my thought process a lot of industrial engineers that i know aren't necessarily the type of engineers that are interested in in you know designing products or design you know in the in the intricacies of of you know hardcore design but they they love the business world they love to to look at processes and re-engineering processes and making things more efficient more effective and i think that lends itself really well to the business world but what it doesn't teach you and what you don't learn in that space is sales and that's something that i've had to fall on my face over and over and over again to learn um you know spend a lot of time listening to seminars reading books things like that and trying to to tweak that and just become a better sales person so that's probably the biggest transition and probably the biggest uh you know i don't want to say hiccup but the biggest roadblock i would say from transitioning from an engineering role or maybe any role really that's not sales related into the brokerage world or into any sort of business realm really is is you have to have that sales uh ability if you have a startup business or if you're trying to get into the brokerage world you have to be able to sell so that was that was probably the biggest hurdle for me yeah i know i that's similar to me i mean the same with you i mean i i had no sales experience prior to that i mean like you said in in college there's there's really not a lot of focus on that obviously because you know that your discipline is more so related to process engineering which again that that does help immensely in a variety of different ways and we'll touch on a little bit later as you built out your systems how you've been able to you know manage that process but you know from the sales side of things you're right i mean it's it's definitely a and and sales you can't learn by reading it in a book i mean you can learn certain techniques but a lot of it is just getting out there and falling on your face like you've like you've mentioned uh in the in the past so one thing i wanted to ask you was related to you know the process of getting into the the prospecting mode essentially because you know when a lot of people first start out you know it's one of those things that's kind of somewhat daunting first off you don't even know where to go as far as sourcing some of that information and so you know if you could touch on you know where you were able to access some of the information to be able to begin the process i think that'd be helpful yeah so it is a very daunting very very daunting task to get started in the world of prospecting not only not only the thought process of just cold outreach there's there's a mental aspect to get over with that that we can touch on as well but there's a very big organizational component to that where you know you can't just look up somebody make a phone call you know not take any notes not keep track of anything and then move on to the next or you won't be very effective so um for me we had some processes or nuts and processes but we had some some tools at our firm uh primarily rheonomy and costar that were that were vital for me for gathering that data and getting information and and for me i i look i'm an industrial investment sales broker so i focus on the industrial space so i i was able to utilize those tools to compile lists of owners in the area around specific types of criteria that i was looking for um and that was really the tool but there's there's you know it's pretty accessible to find access to those lists whether you're utilizing one of those services or you're hiring someone i most more recently hired someone on uh on fiverr to go compile a list for me that's kind of a specific uh niche area around one of my listings so i can start to hit uh people around my listings and try to a sell that but other and b pick up more listings but that information is is relatively available you got to pay for it but it's relatively available out there but it's what you do with that that's really going to make you effective or not so um you know it took me a while to really build a system out around that and keeping track of that initially it was spreadsheets and i was keeping track of everything in spreadsheets and more recently you know over the last year i've developed that system into more of a crm-based management system so i i'm putting everything into my crm i'm setting follow-up reminders for for leads that either are warm leads or or leads that i've touched base with uh and then i use a a dialer i do a lot of cold calling we've talked about this in the past i do a lot of cold calling and cold email outreach um and so i have one software that i utilize that helps me organize uh different email campaigns and i have another the crm i have a dialer that i have attached to that that helps me with with keeping track of all the dials that i make it'll automatically pull all those leads and dials out into that software and and import back into the software you know call times and any notes that i make so on and so forth so i don't have to do that double entry um and so i've started to implement some of those tools into my business and it's been very helpful i can only imagine yeah we'll dive into some of the systems just so people can kind of get an idea of how you structure that but going going going next stop is you know you mentioned the the starting point so you know similar to you when i first got started i utilized costar primarily and then you know i was i didn't know what the heck i was doing i would just literally you know took a big list of properties you know our brokers did a lot on the retail side so i do a bunch of retail buildings and i just started calling people and said hey you know i'm so and so with this group and you know we're commercial brokers in the area and just wanted to introduce myself to see if you ever had any you know commercial real estate service needs in the future and that's all i did down the list and you know it was very long and cumbersome as far as the process was concerned but you know that i gained a little bit of traction doing that but i'm sure there's other ways you can approach or structure an a call to see if you can maximize you know the the the value you receive from it so if you could share with us you know what is your approach when before you reach out to someone and then during the call how do you structure it so that you try to you know extract as much valuable information as possible sure so in the investment space as you can probably all imagine um you know investors typically some of them are handed properties when someone you know passes but a lot of the folks who are there bought it and understand the investment world right so they've they may have 10 different properties 20 different properties they're going to buy and sell throughout the year throughout the you know as a property is ready to sell they're going to sell it so long story short you know i started contacting investors and asking them what they wanted so from the brokerage world i started reaching out to private equity groups i started reaching out to reits i started reaching out to to these larger groups that had cash and were buying up a lot of assets and said what is it that you're looking for and let me find that for you and a majority of those are not going to hire you as an exclusive buyer's rep which is okay which is fine with me they they you know if you bring them the deal you're going to get paid um and that's kind of how i started to build an idea and i probably talked to 50 60 100 different groups and started started to build this sense of the market of what are people looking to buy and that's what i tailored my list to so i like that approach because now when i call a an owner of a property um i have folks who are ready to buy that property if it makes sense and so it makes that conversation a little bit easier but as i said these are these are oftentimes investors so we'll jump into a few different groups that i call them but in the investment group that i call on a majority of the time they're looking for more assets as well so i typically start that conversation the same way i did with the private equity groups uh i started with you know hey my name's logan hartl just reaching out to touch base i see you own one two three main street and they say yep you know they they're you're usually very standoff is your first yeah what do you want you know they're thinking i'm going to try to sell them something and i usually say well you know a lot of folks like you own a lot of those properties and are looking for more are you still acquiring those assets and then their ears kind of perk up because most people in that investment space are looking for more assets and they'll say yeah you know we are we're we're continuing to buy every once in a while you get someone that just doesn't want to talk to you and they'll say no but you know from a broker's perspective you know investors want good relationships with brokers because brokers bring them good deals so when you when you phrase it like that and you start with that they tend to open up a little bit more because now you're bringing value you know hey if i were to find you the right deal what would that look like for you and they'll say they'll typically give me that criteria as well just like the the reits and just like the big private equity groups do um and i'll say okay great and you know if you needed to sell that or do you need to sell any of your properties in order to buy this new asset that you want to buy and they'll say you know sometimes they'll say yes sometimes they'll say no if they say nope we hold everything we don't sell anything okay great great well i have your criteria but just just to double check there's nothing in your portfolio that's you know kind of a pain in the butt property nothing that you're having trouble getting leased up nothing like that and and that just just continuing to ask those a couple few follow-up questions and keeping it just that conversational tends to open doors and and open people to having a conversation that's not just a sales pitch right um and and sometimes they will sometimes they'll say yep you know actually i do have that one over in you know salisbury that hasn't run in for a while you know if somebody wants to buy that i might sell that one and then now the conversation's open and i can start to do what i need to do and then in me in the meanwhile i've now picked up another buyer because i can keep their criteria for later investments that do come up so that's typically how i approach the scenario from an investor standpoint absolutely and you mentioned you know a few systems you have there pertaining to capturing that information so is it is it something like where you know you say it's an industrial property say you know we're really looking for properties in the 25 000 square foot to 50 thousand square foot range you know that have these types of tenants maybe they're in this price point are those like tags that you you put on these individuals so that you know when you do get an opportunity you can just do a search real quick and say okay in my crm how many people fall within this line and you individually reach out to them to offer them the the opportunity is that correct or no absolutely absolutely you can make you can make a ton of different tags so you have some people that want to buy retail and industrial in this so you know when i get a deal if it's if it's an industrial deal i can sort through that industrial now i've got a tag that is you know their budget's under a million dollars now and then maybe a million to five and then some that only buy north of ten and so i have all those tags built in there so whenever i get that property i can quickly sort through and say okay i've had these conversations with these 13 people that said they want this type of asset now i can reach out to them with the asset so that's uh that's typically how i go about it yeah yeah for sure and and and pertaining to the uh the conversation because another thing is when you do cold outreach and you don't necessarily have an agreement with someone because they don't want to sign a exclusive agreement or you know with the landlord too sometimes they're hesitant about you know signing any type of listing agreement how do you approach that conversation when you do ultimately provide them with an opportunity to sell yeah so typically what i do is we we utilize a couple different things we have we have some non-exclusive agreements uh that that we have that are limited representation agreements um and in a scenario in which if it's a difficult sale and i know it's going to be a difficult sale i always push for an exclusive agreement because if we're going to take time we're going to have to build a marketing package around this we're going to have to do that if it's a property that i know that are there are buyers for it's a good deal and it's a good asset you know oftentimes i won't mind having that that limited representation agreement which basically says the seller can still sell it themselves if somebody else comes along they can they can still sell the property without paying me but if i find the buyer i've already pre-agreed my commission you're on you know we've already done all of our disclosures for you know you know the real estate agency disclosures that pretty much every state has um and we've gotten all that stuff out of the way but i've secured a commission and i can now go to those you know like i said 13 people and say hey i've got a deal for you are you interested um and sometimes they won't pay and sometimes they won't pay and you know that conversation shifts back to those investors that is you know look i've got a an asset i'd love to put it in front of you but the seller's not paying commission are you willing to and if they are then you know we can go that way as well um and as long as there's disclosure there most most states have some sort of disclosure that you have to disclose to both parties to say who you're representing who you're working for so as long as you know the number one rule and brokers disclose disclose disclose then you know we can we can try to find out who we're going to work for at that point and if you know again unfortunately sometimes you know no one's willing to pay and you know you end up end up trying to find someone who will so um you know just like any other business we we don't work for free so we uh you know you know that's why a lot of investors are willing to do it i have a lot of conversations with private equity groups that very much up front are very open about it look you know i'll pay you x percent if you bring me a good deal and i'll you know i'll sign on that before you give me the deal if you say hey i got a good one for you and you know as long as i haven't seen the deal already i'm happy to sign with you you know so i like having those conversations and obviously just like in any business you know if you have somebody that's willing to pay you you're gonna tend to lean towards those people right absolutely and i think it's just important to note that that's the case because you know just because you reach out to someone and someone may be interested in selling a property if both if either party's not willing to pay then you know obviously that puts you as a broker in a unique situation that you know is tough sometimes so you know that's why i think your your efforts to talk to so many different people to have that conversation upfront about you know their their ability to you know if i bring you this opportunity would you be willing to cover the commission if in fact the seller for some reason is unwilling to do so again the disclosure piece is really important um to to kind of disclose it can be an uncomfortable such conversation at times but you know when you're talking about sophisticated investors you know those individuals understand like they they they most of people understand that they're not going to work for free and hopefully if you bring them a really good enough deal i mean the the commission is not not a big deal for them so absolutely absolutely oh yeah go ahead and go logan go ahead logan no no absolutely and i've had scenarios where you know i've had those conversations with those folks in advance um and then i found an exclusive opportunity and i have to tell that that buyer said hey look i'm still bringing this to you but just so you know i represent the seller in this scenario and they don't care they're they're sophisticated they're used to that they're like okay great we just want the deal you know we just want to see the deal so absolutely no great great advice so so as far as the cadence of follow-up because obviously you know that's what what they say like 80 or 90 of phone calls go to voicemail a lot of times especially if it's a number they don't recognize so i guess what is your cadence of follow-up and i guess when you do reach out uh are you switching it up periodically or is it one of those things where you know sometimes there's two schools of thought they think you know one leave a voicemail the other just don't leave a voicemail uh but what do you think as far as that's concerned and then i guess what's the case of follow-up yeah so so i'll categorize those in two different categories so people who i've already spoken with who who may have given me some sort of hint that they might want to sell in the future um i'll typically kind of feel that by by the conversation if i get the vibe that they say you know especially if they say hey look you know call me back in two weeks you know i'll be ready then then i'm gonna set up an every two week follow up i'll probably send every week and a half follow up because i've had enough deals where someone says call me in a month and i call them in three weeks and they sold the property so i typically shorten that time a little bit and just say hey look i know you told me to call you in a couple weeks from now just want to touch base make sure everything's okay see if there's anything i can do for you and usually they're just fine with that if that that's more of a scenario where i've been given an a stay and you know a definitive follow-up time in scenarios when which i haven't and i've gotten just kind of a warm lead with somebody it may be every every other week and maybe every month and i'll put those in my crm and so kind of my daily routine is to go in and check those tasks before i go to cold call and cold outreach i'll check all the follow-up tasks that i have set for myself for the day so there may be three today there may be 20 tomorrow but those are the first people i call when i do that follow-up with them and then for the folks who are uh on those lists you know i may have lists that have two three thousand people on them so as i'm working through there it's gonna take me a while to get back around at the top so often times i'll just straight call through and just keep going and keep track of based on the last time i called and start with the fresh ones who i haven't spoken to um and i do i do leave voicemail so i i've had significant uh luck with folks calling back uh after after leaving a voicemail sometimes it's the next day sometimes it's three weeks later so i do like to leave voicemails some people don't for me since i am calling through such a large list of folks i like to leave that voicemail because i may not get back to them for a month and so i like to leave that voicemail just in case they they do want to follow up i do have them pre-programmed so in the the ring the dialer that i use it'll start dialing somebody and if they pick up great we can have a conversation if it goes to voicemail i can click a button and it drops that voicemail and immediately starts styling the next one so i can pre-record those voicemails and then drop them so it speeds up that process quite a bit but i do like to leave voicemails that's awesome i didn't know that that actually yeah that's that's great because that's one of the things that i was when i first started it was it was you know you took so much time to leave voicemails and everything else and you know like you said i mean if you're trying to hit through a list it's important to kind of you know make sure that that actually works but that's interesting and then as far as go ahead go ahead logan no no like you said especially if 80 to 90 percent of them go to voicemail so i've had times where i've sat down and i've blocked out a time of you know an hour to make to make 50 calls and because the dialer is so fast and because almost all of them went to voicemail i finished all those 50 dials and dropped you know 40 voicemails in 25 minutes and so like that's a it's a huge time savings there i mean even if you did that once a day i mean and for everyone listening if you took once a day and spent a half hour to drop 40 voicemails how much would your business grow yeah that means you're gonna get leave yeah yeah i mean if you think about it you do that five days a week if you talk about regular work week maybe you could add a sixth day in there if you want to but let's just say five days a week 40 voicemails that's 200 a week i mean 800 a month even if you even if you get a five percent call back i mean that's pretty still pretty solid that's a lot of calls 40 40 calls 40 conversations so i mean no doubt i mean that's that's amazing uh insights that you shared regarding that so as far as the um systems that you implemented we kind of alluded to that can you kind of share maybe what what crm you use and then maybe some of the like the dialer that you you mentioned and any other systems that you think would be pertinent for us as far as you know listeners sure sure yeah so i i currently use uh zoho crm and i'm i i think i'm going to be transitioning to pipe drives um i i've messed i've messed around with pipe drive a little bit and i really like the simplicity of it uh and so i think i'm going to be utilizing that we've talked a little bit uh raphael offline about monday.com i use monday.com to kind of manage my listings and anyone who i'm you know kind of starting that process of underwriting the property and moving them through the listing procedure and and pipe drive integrates really well with monday.com so i'm looking at making that switch so i really like that and i've uh my my dialer is ring.io is the one i use and it's a it's a google uh plugin it's a chrome plug-in and so it's actually kind of nice because you can you can utilize it to attach to your crm and you'll export a list and you'll start dialing through that and like i said it will take all of your notes and take all of your call logs and re-import them back into your software so you don't have to make any double entry but it also attaches right to your chrome browser so as you're walking looking through anything a spreadsheet a document a you know anything online you can click right on that and it'll immediately start dialing through your phone so as you're on your your desktop it'll immediately start dying so i kind of like that i like to plug in um i used i i have used one called phone burner before which i liked as well but it was a pricing thing the the ring.i o i found to be about half the cost so um with both of them being you know servicing me as as i need i chose to go with someone that was a little less expensive that makes sense yeah and i guess as pricing is concerned is it like a monthly fee or your annual fee or i guess you can probably use i think i think ring was a monthly fee i think it was a monthly so yeah yeah i think both of them actually were monthly fees awesome and i think ring was was around 60 or 70 dollars a month and and sunburner when i was using it was around 150 so you know for 60 bucks a month if you can burn through uh you know 50 calls in 30 or 40 minutes and drop a lot of voicemails it seems well worth it definitely no i couldn't agree more so i guess another thing that that's kind of curious is you alluded to other efforts along with the calling side of things are there any other methods that you think that you employ that that are also effective in generating potential leads absolutely so i like to follow up with people in a lot of different ways if something is uh you know if i'm just calling through blanketly i'm calling through as i said if i've got voicemail so if i have 2000 phone numbers or excuse me emails if i have 2000 phone numbers i may have you know six seven 800 really good emails out of that and i'll take those and put them into an email campaign as well and i use a service called mailshake and you're able to it's just m-a-i-l-s-h-a-e-k-e excuse me mail shake and i'll upload those i can create different uh different campaigns i can turn them off and turn them on and i can i can add sequencing to those campaigns to sequence through once the campaigns run its course i can i can add more messages on the end of it and immediately start sending back to those it keeps track of who unsubscribed so i don't have to do any of that it keeps track of all those things it's got a lead capture function on there as well so if anybody does respond it'll capture all those in the lead function so it keeps track of statistics as well really well on a dashboard of of how well your campaigns are doing um there's some a b testing you can do with it i haven't gotten into that too much but i i really like mailshake for email follow-up um and then if i if again if there's somebody you know out of that 2000 if i've got 700 that i've got you got voicemail or emails for and let's say i've got two or 300 that i really really think are great opportunities um or really match well i'll try to find them on linkedin as well if i can and inbox them and try to connect on linkedin just to try to touch as many points as i can um and then i also keep a stack of envelopes and uh and stamps beside my desk for anybody that i can't reach if i know i've found the owner of a property and there's no contact info out there and i know it's potentially a good deal you know i don't mind writing a handwritten letter dropping it in the mail with somebody um you know that that i usually reserve that for if i'm not able to get a hold of somebody but those tend to be pretty effective actually they're very yeah i've done i've done campaigns like that as well where i've hand written like like a quarterly template where i send to certain targeted individuals and and buildings and it's it works it can't work for sure um and one thing i wanted to kind of touch on as well was related to you know the text piece because that's another thing that's you know people there's there's two different schools of thought on it like whether or not texting is is is is worth implementing or not have you had any experience with that or would you have any comments on that i have and you know for me i don't use it a lot simply because of tcpa compliance there's so much gray area around that subject and you know i just the kind of the three schools of thought just the three baseline uh areas that we talked about calling emailing and texting when you're calling you should check the do not call list if they're on the do not call list just don't call them it's not worth it if you're emailing you have to have an unsubscribe link on there and if you're texting technically as far as i understand please talk with your attorneys and and talk with a tcpa compliance attorney but from my understanding technically they have to have opted in to receive text math text messages now there are certain services out there that discuss you know they send them but they send them one off at a time to get around that and for me it's always just been a a more of a a gray area that you know the effectiveness of what i've been doing has been relatively effective so until i get some more information until i'm i'm comfortable i've i've decided not to pursue that avenue yeah and i haven't really had a lot of you know effort on that front either so i couldn't really comment it either but i've gotten you know i'm on some some you know local wholesalers for example they they utilize that a lot here and you know i'm assuming they've subscribed you know to some sort of mass campaign on their front and like you said there is a lot of gray area because i've definitely gotten mass techs before that you know i don't know how the heck they got you know my number and they're doing the best text but you know it's one of those things that yeah just thought i'd ask because it is it is something that people do utilize so uh yeah i think it's a great thing if yeah go ahead logan i think it's highly effect no it's okay it's highly effective i mean from for those who i know who have used it i i know it's highly effective um and if you do have a list of you know folks who have opted in and have agreed to to accept you know that type of messaging then i mean we're all moving towards text i mean i mean if you just imagine your everyday life more and more people are texting and not picking up the phone to make a call so it is it is it can be very effective but you know for me it's just a matter of uh wanting to be sure i'm compliant yeah no and then i mean with the volume that you're doing as far as prospecting is concerned it all it takes is one or two people to just be you know difficult about it and then you know could cause issues so i definitely don't blame you for not not wanting to go down that track but as far as the uh the the other piece regarding resources so as far as people out there so if if they're looking to you know implement this into their into their business and they want to be as effective as possible what type of resources would you recommend that they utilize and maybe you know just through your efforts of reading or you know maybe some webinars or meetups or anything that you've done that that you think really added some value that that could be of value to our audience yeah i i i fanatical prospecting is a book by jeb blunt i love that book and it kind of it's kind of the kick in the pants of like you know if you want to be successful you got to get over your fears type of book i love that book all of the systems and softwares that we talked about have almost everyone has a 100 100 200 300 youtube videos out there either from the company themselves or from users who are are doing reviews and doing demos so you know if you if you want to learn about any of those softwares um check that out you know you can also just do a simple google search or a youtube search best crms for commercial real estate and you'll you'll get a thousand videos that pop up and you can go through and kind of see which one you like the best you know different people have different ways they they like to interact and and so i think you can you can kind of get a good idea of the flow of the website and the the software to see which one you like best so i spend a lot of time on youtube i do i do listen to some podcasts uh there's a few that i i really like again the the uh the jeb blunt podcast jeb blonde has a podcast um and it is called in one second his podcast is a sales gravy podcast um and i listened to that one uh quite a bit uh there's another one called blissful prospecting that i listen to as well and both of those i really like because they're they're basically about sales outreach or prospecting outreach so um if anybody's looking to learn more about prospecting i highly recommend uh those two podcasts to listen to yeah definitely and another thing i was curious about asking as well is related to you know the time you set aside to you know number one prospect and then also work on your business you know we talked about uh this is one of the things that you know we are independent contractors but we do run our own independent business so you know how i guess how much time do you typically allocate towards out prospecting and also building the systems that support whatever your business development efforts are yeah so when you're just getting started there's going to be this this large chunk of time up front to get this stuff situated and and and you're just going to have that you'll have less time to do the actual prospecting but i i'm at the point now where i typically spend i'll try to time block about two hours a day for prospecting if i can if it's a busy day i'll try to time block one hour but i try to set that 10 o'clock to 11 o'clock hour as kind of a you know an hour that cannot be messed with it has to be for prospecting if i can if and if that gets moved because the client wants to meet or what or or so on so forth or anything in the in the course of business changes that you know that i have to be at then i'll my number one priority is to re re-re-allocate that hour somewhere else and like i said you know as i'm using the dialer i can i can call relatively quickly through these uh through the so an hour i can get a lot done it changes a little bit when i'm dealing with if i'm calling on businesses because usually there's a secretary that answers every time or there's a receptionist and there's it takes a little bit more time than just pounding through the list but i try to set at least that hour aside every day and then i'll try to set at least maybe an hour or two every day for progressing my business forward working on my business and not just in it not just handling you know listings or handling uh you know marketing content so on so forth so it doesn't always work out that way from the system side of it so for me i try i try to think about what's going to move the needle in my business more than anything and i know for me the more conversations i can have with the owners of properties the more business i can do and so i prioritize that over everything and i know that if i don't let if i don't keep that pipeline full it's eventually going to dry up so that for me is is priority number one you know priority number two are my clients and making sure that they're taken care of and then priority number three is is making sure that i can actually get done what i need to get done in terms of creating new systems and making my systems more efficient phenomenal phenomenal insight really um great well i i wanted to kind of give us some flexibility near the end of the meeting to to allow for our audience to ask questions if they have any questions in particular or maybe a little bit more granular that you'd like to ask i'll be checking the chat box here on zoom and then i also we are live on on linkedin as well so i'm going to go ahead and ask uh you all who are watching if you have any insights we'll go ahead and ask logan all right i'm checking linkedin in the meantime logan did you uh did you have anything that you think would be of value to the audience that maybe i just didn't didn't ask you that's a good question that's a good question you know i i do i think that especially if you've never done any sort of cold calling before i always relate it to going to the gym right and if you've if you've not gone to the gym you're just starting a new gym membership and you go day one and work out for three hours you're not going back for a week because you're sore you're tired you're not the next day you're gonna wake up you are motivated day one you're gonna wake up day two and you're gonna be like man i really don't wanna do that again that's three hours of my time so much like that you know i recommend starting small so if you go to the gym for 15 minutes the first time and just hop on the treadmill and walk and leave it's really easy to get up and do that the next day or if you're working out from home and you get up and you walk around your neighborhood it's really easy to continue that that level of activity and it's the same thing with cold calling so if you're just starting i wouldn't recommend blasting through 100 200 calls in a day because you're gonna get burned out very quickly i would build that muscle so i would say you know today i'm gonna make five calls maybe tomorrow i'll make six or maybe five is enough maybe maybe five for the whole week because you're just terrified of it so this week i'm gonna make five calls next week i'm gonna make six calls before long if you build that way you'll be to the point where you've had enough conversations and you're confident and you can just sit down there and blast through and that also gives you time to build your systems like i said at the fir at the outset you're gonna spend a lot of time setting those systems up so you may not have as much time to call but but just so you know you're making some progress start small make sure that you get you know you get those reps in and then you can build as you go uh if you if you've worked for a you know telecommunications company or telemarketing and you're used to being on the phone all day maybe you can just jump right in but if you haven't and that scares you a lot that's how i would recommend getting over that definitely great advice so he hey so he asks where do you get the cre leads from uh like contact information for property owners i think you alluded to it at the beginning but i'd like to yeah there's a lot of different ways to do it so there's several different services um rhiannony is great i really like rhiannomy there's another one that i haven't used that's called prospect now that is another uh commercial real estate database co-star is another one that you can utilize where you can pull properties and ownership data and then you can use uh like i said you can hire somebody from fiverr i just hired a gentleman to pull a list of uh various different uh industry companies that operate various different industries around one of my listings in florence south carolina said i want these types of people because i think they may be interested in this property so you can do that they'll pull business owners business names email addresses you know phone numbers all that fun stuff so there's a lot of different ways to go about it you could either you could either subscribe to those systems or you can hire someone who who has access to that data to build your list absolutely yeah and if you and if you're trying to do some of the research yourself a lot of times like the local assessor's office is going to have a lot of information that you can garner regarding who the ownership group is and you know the people who own real estate a lot of times they'll own it with a corporation so you can go to the secretary of state website and look through the principles to see who the owners of the of the corporation are that own the real estate and then you can do back searches on those individuals to you know pull contact information so i mean that's that's kind of how i started out when i first started because i didn't have access to any of those sites so i just went it was very cumbersome and long but again it's just that's the process you take and you know fast people search uh is a free site the the phone numbers there are okay but you know 50 hit rate maybe but you know if you don't have the resources to do it right right off the bat it's a good uh it's a good starting point so absolutely absolutely and there's there's a lot of different uh opportunities out there to shift through those so like i mentioned the do not call list um i think it's just dnc.com there's a service that i've used that will allow you to uh sort through those so if you have a thousand numbers it'll say okay these 300 on the dnc list and out of the 700 that are left they'll send a ping to make sure it's a good number and then there may be 400 after that that are left so it saves you some time from calling through all those numbers that are no good um but ravel that's great advice you know you know so many of these businesses or so many of these owners are through our businesses their llcs their corporations so what have you so looking through the secretary of state site if you can't get that information you know that's where linkedin can can be super helpful if they've got a you know a a consumer an outward-facing brand that you can get a hold of through linkedin then that's that's a great way to get a hold of that contact information you may just have to contact them through there yeah no great advice really all right so blake hey blake yes what are what other resources would you recommend for vetting potential clients and properties i lease lease expiration cmbs data et cetera yeah so potentials like i for me personally i go out i like to look for a couple different options one tentative properties because that's where a lot of the folks who uh who i work with are looking for but sale lease backs i work with a lot of sale lease back so i look for properties that are owned and operated by a business uh that you know the business is operating in that that area um so you know for me i i can i can sort through those different filters regarding me and co-star and find those people to specifically go after it um but you know if you're just starting out find out what the buyers want and then go find that that's that's the simplest way i could put it to sort for those things so if buyers say hey i look look i want something with you know i want at least three years left on the lease or i want at least seven years left on the lease you know there may be a little bit more manual uh work to find that stuff out because that that may not be something that's public record so you may have to do a little bit more digging the uh you know maybe calling the the most recent uh broker maybe they'll give you the information maybe they won't or if the owner will give you that information i've had i've had owners that'll you know the second i get them on the phone they want to tell me everything about their property but you know trying to find that that information in advance is sometimes difficult so i just try to set myself up for success as best i can by understanding first what my clients want and then trying to sort for those things yeah great advice and you even mentioned like the the barrier when you first talk to someone if you come at the the conversation saying what can i do for you how can i find something for you then you know that obviously most of the time at least brings the guard down a little bit so that's a very very smart way to approach the process yeah and from the from the business owner that owns and operates out of the business you know it's it's very similar but i'll just offer you know hey i'm sure you're aware the market has gone up and industrial is is wild right now you know if you ever want any information on the market and you know what you know places are going for in a dollar per square foot rate or what what what places are leasing for if you ever have any spare space i'd be happy to give you that information for free and sometimes you know a lot of them want to know you know yeah i want to know what my place is worth you know that's a that's a pretty common thing for for any business owner or property owner to want to know what their property's worth so that's a very quick end to provide value right up front and potentially get a meeting hey i pulled that information can i bring it into you next tuesday and that's a that's that's a great way to to kind of break down this barrier absolutely great advice man really all right so i'll check linkedin real quick just to make sure we don't have any questions but i think i mean you haven't you had you probably had a lot of insight today so i think that you know a lot of people gain some value from it um all right it looks like we are all uh done as far as the questions are concerned so logan thanks thanks so much for stopping by i really do appreciate your time and you know i'm glad we were able to get this uh this meeting and you know hopefully the people who are listening today got some value from it as far as you know if people wanted to learn more about you uh obviously you're you're you're you're an up-and-coming influencer in the commercial real estate space so i would highly encourage you guys to follow him on all the different social platforms on linkedin youtube etc but if people want to get in contact you free with you to learn a little bit more about what you're doing or you know if any business owners are listening and they're in their area and they want to you know potentially talk to you about any type of you know opportunities that they may have what how would they get in contact with you absolutely absolutely they can uh you know you can again you said reach out to me on all the channels i'm on linkedin if they're on linkedin they can message me there uh feel free to reach out to me if you're uh if it's not a business thing and maybe you have a question you can reach me on my personal email which is my first and last name and the number one gmail.com if it is business related my my email is logan at costello rei that's c-o-s-t-e-l-o-r-e-i dot com um i do uh have the true commercial real estate podcast it's a it's a group that gets together twice a month and uh it's primarily a mastermind and networking group but we ultimately end up hosting someone to talk once a month so you can follow us on youtube there check out some of the folks uh we've had on there and say it's a great time so yeah feel free to reach out to me in any any of those mediums oh for sure man no and we'll include all those that information in the show notes below so if you guys are listening this in a podcast format apple podcast or spotify it'll be in the description if you guys are watching this on youtube uh or linkedin or wherever else it'll be in the description as well so you guys can access that so again logan thank you much so much for your time thank you all for tuning in this this for this uh edition of the commercial real estate 101 podcast and we'll see y'all next time see you guys