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.