article maximizing your sales funnel by Karen Condi, Alliance Office Strategies

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Maximizing Your Sales Funnel
By Karen Condi, Principal & Executive Director, Alliance Office Strategies

Understanding your sales funnel and its key components is critical before you can begin to evaluate and improve results starting from leads all the way through to closing sales opportunities. If we start at the top of the funnel and explore leads for the business center industry, you must understand the main sources of leads. For over a decade, there have been 3 primary sources of leads for the industry that have remained constant: signage, web, and referral. Certainly, there are many other lead sources but we’ll just address these three for this article.

While there are often limitations on what a center can do with regards to signage, the leads that result are often extremely high value and well qualified. These prospects generally walk in or call in, therefore, you must to be ready to tour and have the ability to create instant rapport while executing a flawless tour. Statistics tell us that in real estate, 90% of the deals are closed because of the presentation of the product. What this means is centers must be “rent ready” with extra care given to ensure the center delivers on the professional value proposition we provide.

The web sends numerous leads to our centers through various channels including the centers’ own website, Craig’s List, LoopNet, Google Adwords, web broker listings, various real estate postings and others. We are often surprised at the number of centers that have outdated websites or those that do not pay attention to this important source of business in today’s digital world.

Referrals from traditional commercial real estate brokers provide another easy source of leads to help fill the funnel. With brokers, staying top of mind and assisting them when they have a need they are unable to fill. We are told over and over these brokers toss the “small,” less than 2000 sq. ft., deals aside because they make little money and many times require as much work as large deals. Most centers pay the standard 10% referral fee. Brokers aren’t going to do cartwheels for the small fee but moving these clients off their plate is just as important so they can focus on bigger deals. Overall, referral sources normally send very qualified leads that are already engaged; centers must move the process along and get them closed.

Once we have dealt with building the top of our funnel with leads, it’s time to focus on moving them down to closed business. Through our research we’ve found that approximately 40% of leads are not followed up on appropriately. With the clients we consult with, the goal is for the center manager to convert 60% of all leads to the tour stage. A common issue we see is the handling of telephone leads, the goal for any phone call should be to “sell the tour” not “sell the office.” As referenced above, 90% of deals are won because of the presentation of the product and if you are trying to “sell the office” over the phone you may never get a chance to win the deal.

The sales process that works most effectively in the office business center industry is a 5-stage sales process. The first stage is establishing interest and creating rapport to ultimately sell the tour. Stage two is conducting a thorough needs assessment and further qualifying the prospect. In the third stage you must match the prospects needs and wants to the center tour while taking a consultative selling approach and presenting the best solution for them. Overcoming objections is the fourth stage and you must consider these as a positive rather than negative as the prospect has enough interest to share objections. Finally, if you have done a good job with the previous four stages, “the close” or final stage should be a piece of cake. We are often asked to conduct training on closing skills but what we find most often is that staff members need to be trained on steps 1-4 rather than on the actual closing portion of the sale.

A key negotiating stance when closing businesses, and a major weakness we see among centers, is selling from a position of strength and understanding “price value.” Price value is defined as: price is what you pay, while value is what you get. We provide substantial value with our product. We’ve endured tough financial times over the past few years and discounting has become the ‘norm’ for many. This process has caused many to lose sight of the value of our spaces and fall into the death spiral of selling on price, not value.

In closing, pay attention to all the important details of your funnel and you will drive more revenues for the business.