Offense vs. Defense… The Superbowl of Leasing Strategies!

This week, millions of Americans will be sitting in front of their TV watching the Superbowl. Football is an American sport which brings joy in many ways: the competition, the physical ballet-like catches, the strategies of the coaches’ calls, the excitement of the close games, rooting for the underdogs, rooting for the rookies, and of course, rooting for the veterans.

As we watch these pros perform at the top of their game, do we think about their preparation? What do we envision?

I read recently that Peyton Manning, quarterback for the Denver Broncos, spends the first segment of every practice doing basic footwork drills – the kind they teach 12 year olds. He doesn’t say “Hey, I’m one of the most talented people in the world… Shouldn’t I be doing something more challenging?” He resists the temptation of complexity and works on the task of honing and maintaining the basics because they form the foundation of everything else.

If you are a reader of my blogs, you’ve heard me say before “Our business has become a business of defense, and pros make it a business of offense!” Pros take time every day – they book it in their calendar – to be proactive, to make the calls versus just responding to calls coming in. Take some time this week to survey the amount and quality of the calls coming into you. For example, let’s say you get 15 lead calls that week; how many are qualified? I define quality by the caller already having another location (not a start-up) and having cash. If you have two of the 15 that are qualified, you are in the top 5% of the country. Your property must be phenomenal!

But if the incoming calls are not qualified leads, how will you get your vacancies leased? Let’s face it, of all the vacancies that exist in our portfolios, probably only 20% would be interesting to national retailers, right? So that leaves us with Mom & Pops!

Mom & Pops and regional retailers will be the ones who fill our vacancies – but we need to go after THEM!

So please join me in starting 2016 right. Let’s play OFFENSE versus defense! And let’s be PROS!