I recently saw an email from a guy in Knoxville, Tennessee asking about how to market an office building for lease which hadn't been built yet. He had received a lot of advice about how he should canvass all the businesses in the area, mail flyers to the businesses, and generally waste his time in other creative and wasteful ways.
Here is the advice I gave him:
"Knoxville is probably like most other cities in America where 90% of new tenants in office buildings are represented by a corporate real estate advisor (tenant rep broker). Therefore, it makes much more sense to concentrate your marketing efforts on the tenant rep brokers in your city than on the tenants themselves.
Here is my logic. There are dozens or hundreds of those tenant reps depending on the market whereas there are thousands or 100's of thousands of companies. The tenant reps are beating the pavements every day trying to find companies which need to renew or relocate. Your chances of finding a company directly that needs your space is incredibly small.
So here's what I recommend. Call the top manager of each of the tenant rep companies in your market. Ask if you can bring bagels or donuts or sandwiches to their next sales meeting and make a presentation on your project. Do this for every tenant rep firm in the market. There probably aren't more than 5-10 with more than 5 agents. But by doing this, you will have reached the equivalent of 50-75% of the true prospects in your market.
Be sure to get a list of the agents in each company and follow up with email flyers of your property which include floor plans, pretty pictures, a map, rental rates, etc. This will make it easy for them to forward the info to their prospects.
You also much keep your property info updated on all the listing services - Xceligent, LoopNet, CoStar, etc. Tenant reps will often be online during the lunch hour, at night or on weekends or may be pressed for time putting together a tour package. You don't want to be left out because you didn't take a few minutes to update your info online.
This last tip seems so simple you will think I'm crazy for even mentioning it, but it is possibly the most important. Return phone calls and emails quickly. I can't tell you how often I contact project leasing people and never get a reply. Or maybe I'll get it several days or even weeks later. If the real owners of the buildings knew about this, they would flip.
Good luck with your project."
Reata Commercial Realty, Inc. is a corporate real estate advisory company which represents commercial tenants when leasing or buying buildings for their company use. These include office, warehouse, medical and retail building. Reata is based in Plano, Texas - a suburb of Dallas.
