How do you build a CRE prospect database that stays current?
Build a CRE prospect database around three linked records, the property, the business that occupies or could occupy it, and the person who decides, then add dated events to each and refresh on a schedule. Seed it from your own deals, every listing you work and every area you prospect, rather than a one-off purchased list. Scayled does much of this automatically: each scan adds the businesses around a property and across the market with their decision makers to your own Occupier Database, and every business is tracked for signs it will need space.
- What should a CRE prospect database contain?
- Where does the data come from?
- How do you keep a prospect database from going stale?
- How do you grow the database property by property?
- What privacy rules apply to a prospect database?
- How does Scayled build the database for you?
What should a CRE prospect database contain?
Three record types, linked. Properties: address, type, size, owner, and lease or sale history where known. Businesses: name, locations, what kind and size of space they use, industry, and which properties they occupy. People: the person who decides on space at each business, with role, email, phone and the date the details were last confirmed.
Then add events and history. Events are dated changes such as hiring, a new site, a contract win, funding or a lease expiry, each with its source. History is every email, call and meeting. A database without events tells you who exists; one with events tells you who to call this week. Occupier intelligence explains why the business record matters as much as the property.
Where does the data come from?
Your own deals and conversations first: every closed deal, tour and listing contains businesses that may move again. Then the area around each property you work: business signs, maps, company websites and registries. Then commercial sources: CoStar or local equivalents for tenants and leases, ownership tools for owners, and contact databases such as ZoomInfo or Apollo for people, which are compared in the ZoomInfo alternative for CRE brokers.
Purchased lists are the weakest seed. They are shared with every other buyer, they decay quickly, and they carry no reason to call. Use them to fill gaps, not as the foundation.
How do you keep a prospect database from going stale?
Refresh people on a schedule and businesses on events. Contact details decay as people change roles, so re-check decision makers before each campaign and mark records with the date last confirmed. Remove or flag bounces immediately.
Watch businesses for movement: hiring, new sites, funding, contract wins, layoffs and lease events. That is what turns a static list into a pipeline, and it is the hardest part to do by hand. Tenant movement tracking covers the sources and how often to check them.
How do you grow the database property by property?
Treat every property you touch as a seed. When you take a listing, record every business around it and the decision maker at each. When you close a deal, record the businesses that toured, the ones that lost out and the neighbours. When a business moves, record where it went and what it left behind.
Over a year, this builds a map of your market organised by place, which a purchased list never has. Listing-anchored prospecting sets out the method for turning each listing into new records.
What privacy rules apply to a prospect database?
Business contact data about named people is personal data in many countries. In the UK and EU, GDPR requires a lawful basis (usually legitimate interests for B2B prospecting), telling people how you use their data, and honouring objections and deletion requests. Australia's Privacy Act and New Zealand's Privacy Act 2020 set similar principles, and Canada has PIPEDA. Email outreach from the database is also covered by anti-spam laws such as CAN-SPAM, the Spam Act and CASL.
Practical rules: record where each contact came from, keep a suppression list of people who opted out, and delete records you no longer need. This is general information, not legal advice.
How does Scayled build the database for you?
Every Scayled scan adds to your own Occupier Database. Around a property, it records every business nearby with the person who decides on space. Across the market, a Target Scan adds businesses anywhere in the country whose size, use and property type fit. Revealed contacts and every email sent stay in the same database, so nothing is lost between listings.
Every business is then tracked for hiring, contract wins, new sites, funding and lease events on a map and a feed, which keeps the events layer current without manual checking. Outreach is drafted per person and sent from your own inbox. The 3-day free trial at /start includes 4 scans, enough to seed a database from your current listings.
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