Paul Waters, SIOR, CCIM,
CRE, FRICS
lot of business people and often mistakes are made,”
he adds. “Saving a client some money, no matter how
little, goes a long way.”
“Obviously good communication is imperative
these days,” says Greg Schenk, SIOR, CNE, of The
Schenk Company in Columbus, OH. “You let them
know you care.”
Schenk says he subscribes to the “drip theory” by
planning to be in front of someone four to seven times
a year.
Expand Your Services
Many SIORs have found it necessary to expand
their services in order to keep clients coming back.
“Traditional transactional brokerage is no longer
enough to ensure retention,” says David Klein,
SIOR, LEED AP, senior vice president of UGL
Services in San Francisco. “Brokers must expand
their services into allied fields including property
management, construction management, auditing,
document preparation and review.” Offering multiple
services, he explains, “broadens the professional
relationship and makes the broker more important to
the client's organization.”
Specific services employed by UGL, he adds,
include auditing operating expenses of the client's
space, benchmarking their space use to the industry
standard, managing the construction project of a cli-
ent's facilities, and administering their leases–includ-
ing bill payment.
Christopher Sheehan, SIOR, senior vice presi-
dent with Colliers International in Torrance, CA, says
one key to his client retention rate is offering some-
thing no one else offers. “It’s really not rocket science;
we’ve created a specific report I do not think anyone
else in the market is doing on a monthly basis,” he
shares. “It’s very specific on a certain product seg-
ment, in addition to the quarterly reports the company
puts out.”
The report, he adds, is more detailed, “a layer
deeper” than the analysts who do the quarterly reports
go. “We really track buildings, what’s happening,
what deals go down, in more real time,” he notes.
The reports are sent out to “a very limited group of
people,” Sheehan continues. “It goes to 15 companies,
30-40 people, and major landlords; we make sure we
get them to sign off on the fact they will not pass it on
to anyone–we’re pretty proud of it.”
Still, he says, his “most important asset” is being
in front of the clients. “We have a lot of lunches, and
Dodger and Lakers games,” he shares. “We also try
to give them more pertinent market information–tell
them when deals are going down, when properties are
coming up–basically being in front of them and on top
of the market.”
Greenberg says he plans ahead to help ensure
repeat business. “I have a number of tenants in fast-
growth law firms and other areas, so I always kind of
set up the next deal as part of the existing deal,” he
explains. “I always make sure they have rights of first
offer on adjacent spaces or spaces they are interested
in.” Greenberg says he has one tenant with whom he’s
done four different expansions in the same building.
