I’m still amazed at the number of commercial real estate brokers who, after many years of being in the business, still don’t have a great number of E-mail addresses for the clients and prospects they want to do business with. For their past clients, the number of E-mail addresses will probably be better, because you were probably E-mailing the person when you were working with them on your most recent transaction together. But for prospects, a broker’s inventory of these E-mail addresses can still oftentimes be inadequate.
Keeping this in mind, probably the best time to ask for someone’s E-mail address is right as you’re getting ready to complete a prospecting call with them, and the quality of the question you ask them when asking for their E-mail address will then determine the percentage of the time they’ll actually give it to you. So with this in mind, you’ll want to ask for their E-mail address in a manner that will have them believe that giving you their E-mail address will be in their own best interest. In addition, a good approach to ask them for this can be by saying something similar to the following:
“I publish an E-newsletter keeping property owners like you informed on the important trends that are impacting the value of your property. Is this something that you’d like to begin receiving from me?”
Most owners would like to know about important trends that are impacting the value of their property, so when you ask them the question in this manner, you’re now maximizing the probability that they’ll want to give you their E-mail address.
So now, whenever you’re doing your regular prospecting during the year, and you continually ask them this question, you’ll be both building your E-mail database of the people you’ll want to be sending your E-mails to, and you’ll already now have their permission to E-mail them, too.