Beth’s Blog

I believe if you had to close 10 deals in 10 days, you’d be better off spending 9 of those days sharpening your strategy. That means knowing your own space, your competitors’ spaces, whether new entrants are raising or lowering rents, and whether your prospects’ businesses are growing or fading. It means knowing what’s shifting in your local demographics and whether new roadwork or new employers are about to change your market. You can get away without doing this once. I did, with Sir Speedy, back on my very first day. But when you don’t know why something worked, you can’t repeat it. Luck runs out fast. Market intelligence is what lets you replicate success instead of hoping for it. You don’t need weeks to gather this. Get out and walk your competitors’ centers in person. Grab coffee with neighboring leasing agents and trade real intel, social media only tells you so much. And if you get a prospect you can’t help, send them to a competitor. It builds goodwill, and higher occupancy in your market raises rents for everyone, including you. I got a piece of advice years ago from a national retailer with over 150 locations. Show up

Canvassing is my bread and butter, but it’s not the only strategy that works. Here are a few others I use, and how I use them right. For mom and pop retailers, direct message them on Facebook. I’ve been getting a 32% response rate doing this over the past eighteen months. And if you just got off the phone with a prospect, text them immediately after. That single habit has driven a 40% increase in setting showing appointments. Most mom and pops still don’t have a professional email address, but every single one of them has a cell phone. Use it. For national and regional retailers, LinkedIn works better than email. Their inboxes are flooded, but LinkedIn is still less crowded and most of them have notifications turned on. If you want to cold call a national, do it only after you’ve sent them detailed information about your center, their locations in your market, and their competitors’ locations, and confirmed they actually received it. A few more sources people overlook completely. Skim the Yelp reviews when you’re sourcing restaurants and steer clear of anything under 3 stars. Read the advertisements in your local print magazines and industry dailies. And don’t

I ask my rock stars three questions at the start of every class. How many vacant spaces do you have? How many call-ins do you get each week? How many of those are actually qualified? A qualified prospect, in my world, has more than one location and money on hand to expand. When I tally it up, only about .05% of call-ins meet that bar. If you’re depending on leasing signs and cold emails to fill your spaces, you’re going to be waiting a long time. Canvassing is what actually works. Only 2% of agents do it regularly, and I’d bet that’s the same 2% closing the most deals. It’s no longer about who you know, it’s about who knows you. Face-to-face relationships are what get you remembered when a prospect is finally ready to expand. I canvass, and so does my entire team, 10 hours a week minimum. I average 15 new business cards for every 15 stores I visit, even after 31 years in my market. I still find prospects I’d been overlooking for years. Case in point, there was a tennis shop on my route to my son’s school that I’d passed for two years without stopping

When I canvass with agents, almost every single one walks into a store and asks the person at the register, “Is the owner here?” It feels natural, but it’s actually the worst question you can ask. Think about who’s on the other side of that question. If they are the owner, you just told them they don’t look like it. If they’re not, you just told them they’re not important enough to talk to. Either way, you’ve disrespected the person standing in front of you before you’ve said anything useful. Skip the gatekeeper question entirely. Walk in, greet whoever you meet, and get straight to your purpose. “Hey, I have a shopping center a few miles away. What are your expansion plans?” That one line respects their time, treats them like they matter, and opens a real conversation, whether they’re the owner, the manager, or the person working the register today who might own the place tomorrow. Rockstar Tip: Cut “Is the owner here?” from your canvassing script completely. Lead with your purpose instead, and you’ll walk out with a name and contact info far more often.

Most of us are silently saying no to prospects before we’ve asked them a single question. “They won’t be interested.” “They’re too small.” “They can’t afford our rates.” These thoughts show up automatically, and we listen to them without even realizing it. I think this comes from how we’re raised. As kids we hear no constantly, and we’re taught to just accept it. So as adults, we do everything we can to avoid hearing it again. One way we do that is by saying no on someone’s behalf before we ever give them the chance to answer for themselves. The flip side is just as damaging. When we do hear no from a prospect, some of us swing the other way and refuse to accept it, pushing and pressuring until it feels like a hard sell. Neither reaction serves you. Both come from the same place, an old discomfort with the word no that has nothing to do with your business today. The fix is simple, even if it takes practice. Ask the question you’re avoiding. Let the prospect answer for themselves. If they say no, thank them and move on. If they say yes, you just found a deal

Early in my career, a man called about my vacant 6,000 square foot end cap in Lake Worth. He said he wanted to open a video store as a prototype before franchising it. I laughed, told him the space was built for a restaurant, and filed his info a year out. I even wrote “Video Store, Ha!” on the sheet. That man was Wayne Huizenga. One year later his video store had 40 locations. It became Blockbuster. I didn’t lose that deal because of the space. I lost it because I never asked one simple question. From now on, ask every prospect these two questions before you do anything else. What do you do now? What made you call on my center today? These two questions tell you in thirty seconds whether you’re talking to a time waster or your next anchor tenant. Don’t skip them just because a prospect sounds unusual or too small to matter. Rockstar Tip: Never assume you already know how a call is going to go. Ask, then listen.

My first day in commercial real estate, my boss left me alone in the office with a pile of onboarding papers and zero training. I didn’t know a rent roll from a hole in the ground. I just knew I was supposed to prospect. So I called the only company I could think of with more than one location, a print shop I’d passed on my drive in that morning. I asked if they were looking to expand. They said yes. We signed them for their new corporate headquarters, and I went from rookie to Leasing Agent within weeks. I got that deal because I asked the question and stayed quiet long enough to hear the answer. I didn’t decide for that prospect that they weren’t interested. Most agents lose deals before they ever pick up the phone. They see an established business and assume the owner is happy. They see a struggling business and assume it can’t afford to expand. They see a national brand and assume it already has a broker. Every time, they’ve said no for a prospect who never got asked. Your job is to ask, not predict. Every business on your route is a lead

If you bought a shopping center with a short-term loan—bridge, mezzanine, or hard money—you probably have one mission: increase NOI fast so you can refinance. When that clock is ticking, your leasing strategy needs to change. The first mistake I see owners make is misreading the market. If the market rent is $15 but you’re holding out for $20 because an online report told you that number, you’re wasting precious months. When you have a deadline, you must know the real market—by walking properties, talking to leasing agents, and confirming vacancy levels yourself. If the market is soft or vacancy is high, sometimes the smartest move is to get aggressive early. For example, you might offer a discounted first-year rate that steps up over time—$8 in year one, $12 in year two, and market rent by year three. This helps you fill space quickly and grow NOI, which is what your lender cares about. You can also create urgency with your leasing team. Instead of the standard commission, offer short-term “bounty” bonuses for specific spaces that must be leased by a certain date. Large REITs use this tactic all the time to move stubborn vacancies. Finally, remember that timing matters.