Each day, RetailSphere’s on-demand research team speaks to hundreds of site selectors about their expansion plans and demographics. Here are five of the many retailers we talked to this week about their specific plans:

1. Runnings –  The Runnings story begins on December 5th, 1947, when founder Norman “Red” Running opened the first store in downtown Marshall, Minnesota. Runnings started as an automotive supply store and was deeply rooted in selling farm and fleet supplies until the late 80’s when additional product lines were added.  They are currently expanding into several additional states.
2. Voodoo Doughnut - Voodoo Doughnut started in Portland Oregon, and now is in Eugene Oregon, Denver Colorado, Austin Texas, and now L.A. California, was the brain child of Kenneth “Cat Daddy” Pogson and Tres Shannon who had been friends for a while. They always wanted to start a business together. Something that would fit into an extraordinary Portland Oregon business climate. They are expanding nationwide.
3. Fifth Third Bank - At Fifth Third Bank, we are always listening to new ideas so that we can strengthen our commitment to you and the communities we serve. They are currently expanding in Florida and South Carolina.
4. Pretzelmaker – they are expanding into several states, and are offering the opportunity to become a franchisee to develop and operate Stores which specialize in selling hand-rolled soft pretzels of various flavors, frozen pretzels, pretzel dogs, pretzel bites, and other pretzel-related products and toppings, and related food items and beverages. We offer 2 types of Stores: (a) Traditional Stores; and (b) Non-Traditional Stores. In addition, if you own and operate a Store, in certain circumstances we will offer you the right to offer and sell products at a separate location that we approve (“Satellites”).
5. Tidal Wave Auto Spa - Tidal Wave Auto Spa’s roots stem all the way back to the year 1999 when Scott and Hope Blackstock decided to add a car wash to their Thomaston, Georgia-based auto service center. We started with a simple, 5 bay self-service wand wash. Soon, we expanded the wash with a newly-designed, specialty mud bay, which proved to be a big hit with ATV and ORV enthusiasts.

Reach out to RetailSphere™ to see everything the platform can do.

About Retailsphere

Founded in 2019, RetailSphere™ is an all-in-one platform that includes the world’s largest contact database of retail commercial real estate decision makers, a robust email and leasing enablement marketing platform and a simple, intuitive and included Pipeline CRM™ tool. RetailSphere™ is modernizing the way the retail industry connects within a single pane of glass.

Increase your deal flow. Improve your network. Empower your career.

The post Retailsphere’s latest Expanding Retailers appeared first on Retailsphere.

Each day, RetailSphere’s on-demand research team speaks to hundreds of site selectors about their expansion plans and demographics. Here are five of the many retailers we talked to this week about their specific plans:

1. Ample Hills Creamery - Every day, we wake up hoping that today will be the day we make the best ice cream ever. We aren’t afraid to think outside of the box, get creative or make a few mistakes along the way. It’s this mindset that has empowered us to imagine the whimsical flavors that we’re known for! We make all of our ice cream from start to finish. They have 10 locations and fast expanding.
2. LaVida Massage - Each LaVida Massage location brings this mission to life as a comfortable Wellness Center offering highly customizable massage services and beneficial products. Likewise, our licensed Massage Therapists and Estheticians can help you better understand what may be appropriate for your healthcare routine. By maintaining a clean, relaxing space, each Center caters to the busy, active lifestyles of our guests. LaVida is expanding in Florida, Georgia and Alabama.
3. T.J.Maxx - T.J. Maxx was founded in 1976, and together with Marshalls, forms The Marmaxx Group, the largest off-price retailer of apparel and home fashions in the U.S. With stores across the U.S., including Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, T.J. Maxx also operates an e-commerce site, tjmaxx.com, launched in 2013. T.J. Maxx is expanding in several states nationwide.
4. Daylight Donut - The Daylight Donut Flour Company, LLC, is a privately held enterprise with nearly a thousand retail outlets in 28 states and close to a dozen international markets. Daylight Donut is expanding in Oklahoma, Missouri and Texas.
5. Insomnia Cookies - Insomnia Cookies was born out of the dislike of heavy meals late at night, love of food delivery, and the realization that by the time you get hungry at night, nothing is open. The concept was founded by Seth Berkowitz in 2003 from his dorm room while attending the University of Pennsylvania. Berkowitz started baking and delivering warm cookies to students late-night on campus... and Insomnia Cookies was born. Insomnia Cookies is expanding nationwide with a massive growth strategy.

Reach out to RetailSphere™ to see everything the platform can do.

About Retailsphere

Founded in 2019, RetailSphere™ is an all-in-one platform that includes the world’s largest contact database of retail commercial real estate decision makers, a robust email and leasing enablement marketing platform and a simple, intuitive and included Pipeline CRM™ tool. RetailSphere™ is modernizing the way the retail industry connects within a single pane of glass.

Increase your deal flow. Improve your network. Empower your career.

The post Retailsphere’s Latest Expanding Retailers appeared first on Retailsphere.

You’ve found the perfect tenant for your shopping center and are eager to start a conversation with their team. Now begins the tough part of the process - researching their brand and hunting down a contact that can actually make the decision to open a new location.Unless you are a Retailsphere member. If you are, the slowest part of your job is now as simple as submitting a research request within our platform. 

Retailsphere’s research requests will be your new secret weapon for having all the necessary data to close more deals with new tenants. We not only give you up-to-date, and confirmed, contact information, we also provide crucial information that helps you reach out to a brand with confidence. 

Let’s look at a recent research request completed by our team for Lidl. 

When this research request was completed, our team was able to provide answers about a specific site for our client, getting confirmation that Lidl would be interested in this exact type of vacant space. Plus, they were expanding in that area already and are interested in expanding in Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and Washington D.C.

Their minimum square footage requirement is 25,000 sqft, with a preferred 2.25 acre site with traffic of at least 80,000 cars that drive by each day. Luckily for our client, Lidl’s new concept is flexible and can deviate from these minimums if the site is ideal.

They also now know they prefer locations in neighborhoods or community centers to cater to households. These customers spend an average of $150 per visit and spend around 1.5 hours each time they come. 

And yes, in addition to this valuable information, our team was also able to provide phone and email contact information for the site selector in our client’s region. When they call about their space, they know they are talking with the right person the first time. And they know their space fits all of the brand’s requirements even before having their first conversation.

Retailsphere’s research requests are a game changer. They can 10x your team’s performance and outreach capacity overnight. Plus, they’ll have confidence each time they pick up the phone because they already have all of the information needed to close the deal. 

Reach out today to schedule a no-obligation demo and talk to one of our customer success team members. 

The post Get the Deal Done with a Retailsphere Research Request appeared first on Retailsphere.

Each day, RetailSphere’s on-demand research team speaks to hundreds of site selectors about their expansion plans and demographics. Here are five we talked to this week about their specific plans.

1. Brow Studio 7 - Brow Studio 7 started in 2005 with our first location in Stratford Square Mall in Bloomingdale, IL and since then we have grown to over 26 locations nationwide with expansion plans for New York.
2. Primanti Bros - Our Almost Famous sandwich is the time-tested blend of top-quality grilled meat, melted provolone cheese, sweet-and-sour coleslaw, fresh-cut fries, ripe tomatoes and our house recipe Italian bread.
3. Chapter Aestetic Studio - Chapter Aesthetic Studio is a leading aesthetics brand offering state-of-the-art, non-surgical skin care and body rejuvenation treatments. We believe that beauty belongs to everybody, which is why we’re here: to empower people to write their own beauty story.
4. Miller’s Ale House - We're all about you just being you. Jack & Claire Miller opened the first Miller's Ale House in 1988, in Jupiter, Florida, as a local place to be enjoyed by all walks of life. We are a casual sports restaurant and bar with freshly-made food at an incredible value. A place where making friends is as easy as ordering your next beer. 
5. Everbrook Academy - Our schools offer an engaging, nurturing environment for every child, during the most critical early years, starting in infancy. By adhering to extremely high standards, we help mold inquisitive, confident children, who are socially, physically, and academically prepared for school.

Reach out to RetailSphere™ to see everything the platform can do.

About Retailsphere

Founded in 2019, RetailSphere™ is an all-in-one platform that includes the world’s largest contact database of retail commercial real estate decision makers, a robust email and leasing enablement marketing platform and a simple, intuitive and included Pipeline CRM™ tool. RetailSphere™ is modernizing the way the retail industry connects within a single pane of glass.

Increase your deal flow. Improve your network. Empower your career.

The post Retailsphere’s Latest Expanding Retailers appeared first on Retailsphere.

Tenants are playing rent hardball with retail center owners like never before, asking for reductions, deferrals, abatements and other concessions. Many requests are legitimate, given COVID-19 hardships, but some seem to be out-and-out shakedowns, particularly those emanating from national tenants owned by private-equity (PE) funds.Consider this hypothetical case:

"U.S. Oil Change," a fictional category leader with locations in 40 states, was bought out by a P.E. fund two years ago.

Notorious for relentlessly cutting operational expenses, the fund put out letters and phone calls to all of U.S. Oil Change's landlords, claiming that the auto-service business could no longer support the rents it was paying, and demanding relief.

As is prudent, one landlord asked to see the oil change firm's financial statements to justify the request. The P.E. owners refused, saying they couldn't disclose that information due to confidentiality agreements surrounding the fund's private operational policies.

As lease-renewal time neared, the P.E. informed the landlord that if the center didn't grant concessions, U.S. Oil Change would be forced to close its location there and move to a more obliging center. Not keen on losing a long-term tenant, the landlord turned to Retailsphere to discover all the similar operations doing business in the area, including franchises, and retrieve their contact information. The landlord began lease negotiations with a few of U.S. Oil Change's best-positioned competitors to reach tentative deals that would be contingent on the oil-change operation not renewing its lease.

This strategy, facilitated by Retailsphere data, not only allowed the landlord to call the tenant's bluff, it completely changed the dynamics of the lease-renewal conversation. The P.E. owners, not wanting to lose U.S. Oil Change's prime position on an outparcel of a well-located shopping center, lost it questionable bargaining chip and remained in the center at original terms.

P.E. companies, also known as financial sponsors or leveraged-buyout (LBO) firms, have saddled dozens of U.S. retailers with the type of hard-to-service debt cited as a huge factor in a long string of industry bankruptcies, particularly over the last decade. Among retailers going bankrupt under P.E. ownership include Aéropostale, Barneys New York, Eastern Outfitters, Fairway groceries, Gymboree, Gordmans, The Limited, Pathmark, Payless ShoeSource, Rue21, Sports Authority, Toys R Us, True Religion, Waldbaum’s and Wet Seal. Neiman Marcus and J.Crew, also owned by private equity, are reorganizing and closing numerous locations.

Today, large P.E.-owned retail chains have hired third-party businesses that, in blanket fashion, are pressuring landlords to grant rent and other lease concessions, said Fred Meno, president and CEO of asset services for the full-service Fort Worth-based retail real estate firm, Woodmont Co. "Everybody has jumped on the bandwagon and everyone has their hands out."

Woodmont considers such rent concession requests "on a case-by-case basis," said Meno, noting that about 70 percent of national retail tenants are backed by private equity now. Before granting any relief, Woodmont will study the tenant's balance sheet, its projected short- and long-term health, its plans to recover its tenant base post COVID-19 and the general health of its parent company, among other factors, Meno said. "We will never abate, we will just extend -- we're not giving away anything."

If rents do get extended, the landlord will generally do so for only three to six months -- maybe a year at tops -- but will try to correct any lease shortcomings from the landlord's perspectivein the process, such as lengthening a too-short lease term, Menosaid.

Landlords dealing with national retailers that are struggling with onerous debt loads should be apprehensive about extending rent arrearage too far into the future, said Meno. "In the event of bankruptcy, (Woodmont) would just be one more unsecured claim getting in line with all the other unsecured creditors."

Jackson Hsieh, president and CEO of retail property group Spirit Realty, told Rueters this spring that his company has received multiple requests "from people who really didn’t deserve a deferral; three investment-grade companies asked for a deferral," he said. "I said if you don’t pay, we’ll default you, and they paid." Spirit owns about 1,800 properties in 48 states.

Some of the biggest restaurant chains in the U. S. have told landlords they "require" rent reductions during COVID 19, including such highly capitalized chains as Chipotle, Shake Shack and Starbucks. Starbucks told landlords in May that beginning June 1, it would need its base rent and lease terms reduced for at least a full year. Such rent breaks can be devastating for investor/landlords, particularly those with loans on triple-net lease properties, who have to make up the difference from their own pockets to pay their mortgages.  

Since COVID-19 hit, the most resilient physical retailers in landlord portfolios include grocers, pharmacies, dollar stores, convenience stores, warehouse stores, office-supply stores, pet-supply and home-improvement businesses. The most challenged include apparel sellers, theaters, entertainment businesses and casual restaurants.

Since the Great Recession, the problem so many struggling retailers have dealt with is not a lack of sales, but the debt that's been loaded onto their balance sheets by P.E. owners, Menosaid. "A lot of people think that competing online sales are the only problem, but that debt is a huge factor."

P.E. funds, which are typically owned by small groups of investors, typically acquire retail chains by contributing small amounts of cash toward the purchase price and then borrowing the balance, using the real estate of the retail firms they're buying as collateral. The retail companies then assume responsibility for that debt, which effectively weighs down their balance sheets.

The P.E. groups make money regardless of the success of their ownership and turnaround strategies. Their standard "2-20" fee structures means the funds get both a 2 percent management fee from investors and a 20 percent performance carryover for meeting a specified return threshold -- a similar structure used by the hedge-fund industry.

Of the chain retailers tracked by Retail Dive that went into bankruptcy in 2019, 80% were -- or had been -- owned by private equity.  P.E. companies employ about 8.8 million nationwide, according to a joint report by EY (formerly Ernst & Young) and the American Investment Council (A.M.C.).

Further, 27 out of the 38 retailers with the weakest credit profiles—more than 70%— are owned by P.E. firms, the Wall Street Journal reported this spring.

Don’t get caught in a lease negotiation, especially with a P.E. Firm without having the right information at your fingertips. Retailsphere can help you prepare by reaching out to potential new tenants, as well as, gaining a better insight of brands and your local retail landscape. Sign up for a no-obligation demo today.

The post Using Retailsphere for leverage in lease negotiations appeared first on Retailsphere.

Each day, RetailSphere’s on-demand research team speaks to hundreds of site selectors about their expansion plans and demographics. Here are five we talked to this week about their specific plans.

1. 1.NextGen Fitness Tulsa - Every NexGen Fitness location features the same NexGen personalized fitness experience: private workout suites, state-of-the-art cardio and weight-training equipment, and one-on-one sessions with an expert personal trainer. NextGen is currently expanding in New York.
2. Furniture Row - Furniture Row Companies® is a group of specialty home furnishings, mattress stores, carrying a variety of brand names, all available at one convenient location. We focus on providing a shopping experience that is tailored to your needs. This is just one of the many reasons we're among America's fastest-growing furniture retailers. 
3. Patel. Brothers - At Patel Brothers, our mission is to bring the best ingredients from around the world, right to your doorstep. With a wide variety of authentic regional grocery and spice products, we strive to reconnect people with the familiar flavors of India.
4. Brident Dental and Orthodontics -  We're here to make sure everyone has access to complete dental care of the highest quality. Not just check-ups and fillings: complete dental care including braces, implants and oral surgery. We have everything a healthy smile requires in one place.
5. Storagelocal Co-Op - StoreLocal is a cooperative created by independent self storage operators to lead our industry into an increasingly competitive landscape.

Reach out to RetailSphere™ to see everything the platform can do.

About Retailsphere

Founded in 2019, RetailSphere™ is an all-in-one platform that includes the world’s largest contact database of retail commercial real estate decision makers, a robust email and leasing enablement marketing platform and a simple, intuitive and included Pipeline CRM™ tool. RetailSphere™ is modernizing the way the retail industry connects within a single pane of glass.

Increase your deal flow. Improve your network. Empower your career.

The post Retailsphere’s Latest Expanding Retailers appeared first on Retailsphere.

You and your commercial real estate team can only move as fast as your slowest and most outdated part - so it’s time to say goodbye to Excel and hello to modern pipeline management. Here are a few reasons why you should ditch Excel and graduate to a better way to manage your deals:

1. You can manage more leads, more effectively

Excel is great for holding a lot of data but it’s not great for maintaining complex relationships. As a commercial real estate professional, you know how important it is to work with your team to nurture new leads and build lasting relationships. While Excel might be able to keep track of the number of times or the ways that you’ve reached out to a lead, an integrated pipeline management solution can  notify you when to make a call, tell you when a prospect lapses, or remind you of important site meetings -  all ensuring opportunities aren't falling through the cracks and providing a greater chance of closing more deals. 

2. Digital pipeline management automatically updates information across your organization. 

When vetting leads and managing your deals, you should be confident that the information you’re looking at is accurate and up-to-date. An Excel spreadsheet is only as good as the person who may, or may not be, updating it. Face it, commercial real estate can be hectic and fast paced and making sure your Excel spreadsheet has the latest information in it is not always top of mind - and that’s okay! Let a digital platform maintain the most up-to-date information on deals, leads, and contacts, plus if you’re using Retailsphere, our database is automatically integrated, allowing new information from our research team to update in your pipeline without anyone ever thinking about it. 

3. It’s like having a digital assistant to ensure you don't miss anything

To close most deals, it usually takes on average up to 18 touchpoints, and that's a lot to keep track of on your own. An up-to-date, modern deal flow solution, lets you add notes to interactions, attach important documents, and set up future reminders so you don’t miss anything in. your day. And some tasks can be easily automated like reaching out on your behalf, pulling in the latest data, or sending you reminders to call, text, or message a contact; and the best part is that it’s incredibly easy to set up. Yes, it’s possible to automate an Excel spreadsheet, but have you ever tried to set that up yourself? Getting the most out of Excel is almost like having to learn a new language. Instead, let a pipeline management system help you make more money for you and your clients.

4. You need actual (and automated) reporting to better manage deals

Excel is often used as a reporting tool, but if you’re managing information and trying to analyze it all in one spreadsheet, things can get messy. Pipeline management tools let you keep track of your deals in a more effective way and create automatic reports for you so you can see what is happening at a glance and take action quickly. This means you can access and track the data you need when it matters, and have the system generate reports for you (without extra effort) so you can improve your interactions and close more deals. Leveraging a CRE specific tool like Retailsphere also means having access to lease information, space requirements, and retailer profiles to enrich your reports and add a layer of analysis an Excel spreadsheet can never deliver. 

5. Excel spreadsheets just aren’t the best tool for CRE pipeline management

Microsoft Excel has been around for nearly four decades - it’s had a good run, but you don’t want you or your team missing important opportunities or client connections. To ensure that you are staying up to date with your clients and giving yourself or your team the best information, it’s important to make sure that you’re using the right tool for the job. A modern pipeline management solution provides your staff with an easy-to-use management platform that keeps them up-to-date, on task, and in touch with the right people. 

Looking for a solution? Look no further. Retailsphere has been developed from the ground up for the commercial real estate businesses. Retailsphere integrates all the information and tools you need into one space, including a pipeline management tool that caters to the specific needs of CRE professionals.

With Retailsphere, you have built-in prospecting and lead nurturing tools, a complete contact database and management system - all-in-one. Just think about how many Excel spreadsheets you’d need to accomplish that!

Learn how Retailsphere can upgrade your CRE business.

The post Its time to ditch excel for modern pipeline management appeared first on Retailsphere.

But the process of lead nurturing can be a long and winding road in this business. It’s easy to become overwhelmed with all of the tasks you need to get completed - and sometimes that means a hot lead could accidentally slips through the cracks. That’s why as your business grows, it’s important to look for tools to help simplify your prospecting and lead nurturing.

That’s where Retailsphere can help. While there are many reasons we believe Retailsphere should be on your list of platforms, one feature that specifically helps with prospecting, nurturing, and closing more deals is our new Kanban View for your deal pipeline. For those asking, what is Kanban view, its a card-based view of your deals that allows you to quickly and easily see where your deals are within your prospecting and lead nurturing pipeline.

Lead nurturing requires many different steps, and commercial real estate has specific steps that other industries may not understand. Luckily, Retailsphere has been build for CRE and is flexible enough to accommodate all sorts of lead nurturing processes with the addition of custom phases.

In Kanban View, you can use our steps or add your own custom steps for the lead nurturing process. These steps live along the top of your newly created board. Once this step is complete, it’s time to start adding leads to the board and placing them within the proper step of your pipeline. And just like that you have a visual representation of where various leads are in your pipeline. 

As a prospect keeps moving through your pipeline, all you have to do is drag the card to the next step. Want to add notes? Just click into the card and jot down important interactions or add documents. In the end, you can mark your prospect as won or lost so you can keep track of past opportunities. 

This all makes it possible to quickly assess which leads need a little more attention and which leads are close to coming to a close. Plus, you can easily assign team members directly within the Kanban view to ensure that leads keep moving along your pipeline.

Kanban view allows you and your team to stay on the same page and stay motivated when it comes to closing deals. Being able to see the various leads you’ve generated in their different steps along the deal-making process at a glance is a great way to keep everyone moving forward. 

Retailsphere offers numerous ways to improve your CRE process with tools built from the ground up to help commercial real estate professionals get the most out of their business. Kanban view is just one way Retailsphere can help your team streamline processes and close more deals. 

The post Close more deals with a Kanban view appeared first on Retailsphere.

Common bottlenecks include inefficient communication, complex processes, and information gaps. Luckily, there are solutions that allow you to address these pain points head-on and speed up your deal process.

Ditch Spreadsheets for a Shared Database

If you’re a broker or landlord striving to lease a retail property, you likely have several active prospects at any given moment—and many more if you are working to fill several spaces across a portfolio of properties at the same time. How do you keep track of all the interactions you and the rest of your team have with each valuable individual prospect? 

Many commercial real estate teams rely on spreadsheets to track information about the leasing pipeline. However, this approach frequently leaves teams viewing outdated information, since spreadsheets must be updated manually and often have version control issues. And, you may find yourself constantly searching your inbox or shared drive to find the latest version, or worse, you might spend time updating the wrong sheet and have to start over.

You’ll gain efficiencies and improve communication by using a pipeline management system—a tool used by leading commercial real estate teams to manage deals. It can serve as your single source of the truth, showing you where every deal is in the pipeline, at any moment of the day. That way you don’t have to wait until a cumbersome spreadsheet is circulated to get an update, since it is all updated in real-time. 

When integrated with your contact database, a pipeline management tool allows you to capture more details about each prospect. You can see the retailer’s space requirements, contact information, and your communications log, including any shared drawings or docs—all in one place. 

Additionally, shared systems keep everyone on the same page, in real-time. For asset managers or leasing department leaders, this can be especially useful if you have a multi-site portfolio with several individuals leasing space at multiple shopping centers. 

For example, your asset manager in one city can see that a counterpart in another location recently showed space to an expanding home furnishings retailer. They can then share information about the prospect and help boost each other’s leasing goals, as well as create the desirable attraction of a multiple location deal for the retailer.

Conduct Pipeline Reviews to Identify Obstacles and Opportunities

Conducting regular pipeline reviews can help you identify possible obstacles to leasing your space, and also reveal your most promising prospects. This is another area where the right technology tools can be helpful. 

With a pipeline management system, you can run data-driven reports that will uncover trends and potential issues in your pipeline, early in the process. Running those reports requires minimal input—you can automate the process of creating custom reports. That frees up your time to focus on analyzing the findings to create actionable insights, making your leasing meeting less focused on fact-finding and more focused on breaking down obstacles.

Your pipeline review may uncover some obstacles that are standing in the way of a signed lease. After all, no matter how modern and well-located your retail center is, it simply won’t meet the requirements of every retailer. 

While some prospects will inevitably pass on the space, it is best to vet those tenants out early since those interactions provide a learning opportunity and can free your focus toward deals more likely to close. By getting to the root of the problem early in your pipeline review process, you’ll make the first step toward resolving any issues, as well as increase your ability to close more makeable deals.

With a curated, highly focussed list of tenant prospects, you can also zero in on the most qualified leads by reviewing your pipeline reports at the earliest point of contact. Then, you can focus your energy and time on the prospects that are most likely to be a good match for your space and the tenant’s expansion plans. 

Eliminate Information Gaps 

You undoubtedly have retailers in mind who would be the perfect tenants for your shopping center. However, tracking down the contact details for their real estate team may be tricky.

Don’t let information gaps stand in the way between you and your ideal tenant. You can overcome this hurdle by subscribing to a research service that provides contact information for national retailers, franchisees, and mom-and-pop shops. 

A research platform specialized in retail real estate will allow you to see what retailers are expanding, view their site requirements, and find contact details, eliminating the time-wasting associated with searching for a tenant contact, only to find that your property is in a market where the tenant has no desire to expand.

For example, Retailsphere’s service includes a concierge research team that will track down contacts for you if they’re not already in our database. You’ll receive a report that provides information on specific retailers’ expansion plans, co-tenant needs, site requirements, and verified contact information. The information will be added to your deal pipeline, making it easy for you to start outreach and begin leveraging your dealmaking skills.

Leverage Automation to Ensure Activities Don’t Fall Through the Cracks 

The path to a signed lease involves many steps, and one missed email can stall the whole process. An integrated pipeline management solution can serve as your virtual personal assistant to ensure your follow-up activities stay on track.

For example, an automated system can help you stay on top of all action items with your prospects, such as the following:

• Notify you when you are due to make a call to a potential tenant 
• Tell you when a prospect has not replied to your latest communications
• Remind you of important site meetings 
• Check whether other members of your team are following through on their assigned tasks

These seemingly simple tasks are crucial to staying on top of evolving deals. The right technology platform can streamline your activity so you can focus on your relationships.

Simplify Your Pipeline Management

Don’t let common bottlenecks clog up your leasing pipeline. 

Schedule a demo to discover how Retailsphere can help you streamline your pipeline management to find the perfect tenant for your retail space.

The post Top Tips: How to Overcome Leasing Pipeline Bottlenecks appeared first on Retailsphere.

Our goal at Retailsphere has always been to do everything we possibly can to help our clients succeed. The ultimate goal of the RetailSphere™ platform is to empower our clients to close more deals quickly. In general, we strive to see our clients close more than ten times what they pay in subscription fees on the platform.  It’s quite simple. If our clients succeed, they will be excited and word will spread. And, of course, word of mouth is the best way to grow a business.

So how do we do that? Well, to Mark’s point, it has required building functionality that most of our clients weren’t using. We’ve been working on it for a while and will continue to improve on the product, but it’s much closer to being completed today than in 2020.

And what is the final goal of Retailsphere™ platform? Right now it can be described in three main parts:

1. A tool that makes reaching out to prospective clients/partners as easy as possible.

2. A tool that quickly allows you to find thousands of potential clients and partners.

3. A tool that allows you to easily track your activities, automate the scheduling of tasks and appointments, and quickly report on your activities.

These are 1. Our marketing automation suite, 2. The world’s largest contact database of retail CRE decision-makers and 3. A super painless, included (read FREE) Pipeline CRM™ tool.

So let’s quickly review each of these three parts. It starts with having the best marketing platform in the industry. Not only can you simply send bulk emails, and view when recipients are opening, clicking, and replying to your emails, but you can set up (w/ only a few mouse clicks) ongoing email cadences. These multi-step “fire & forget” marketing campaigns are incredibly powerful in building new relationships. But it’s a lot more than just providing the platform that allows for this. There is a great deal of training that goes into creating powerful multi-step cadences. There is an art and a science to it. And our team is there to help our clients quickly scale the learning curve of this powerful technology.

The second part is the database. You need to quickly be able to find dozens, hundreds, or even thousands, of potential clients or partners. RetailSphere™ is the largest contact database in the industry. By a huge margin. Not just contacts for massive national brands (which we have) but tens of thousands of others as well. Landlords, franchisees, locally famous concepts, architects, lawyers, and other service providers. These contacts can be quickly assembled into shareable collections that can be dropped into pre-build campaigns.

Finally, we have our Pipeline CRM™.  Easy and intuitive software that makes taking notes, remembering follow-ups, tracking deals, and reporting to your clients and senior team members effortless.

This Three-legged stool approach to retail commercial real estate deal-making is incredibly powerful. That’s why clients are so excited about the RetailSphere™ platform. Users really do expand their networks, close more deals and empower their careers!

Contact us today for a free online product demonstration so we can show you all of these powerful features!

The post Peterson Company's Mark Kufka is amazed at the RetailSphere platform's evolution in such a short amount of time appeared first on Retailsphere.