Aaron Zucker Talks Candidly About Tenant Site Selection

“Plug & play” days are over

You’re  no longer entitled to a Five Below deal because you have TJ Maxx, Ross & Ulta. Just because you have Publix or Sprouts, doesn’t necessarily guarantee you will strike a deal with Great Clips & Palm Beach Tan – nor does that mean they are the highest & best use to meet consumer demand for that specific community. We must maximize time, our most critical commodity, to take a different approach with retailers.  

The retailers that are active & have a healthy balance sheet are smart. Really smart. One piece of consistent feedback I get from them is that the cookie-cutter demographic information we supply is virtually unusable. It passes a very brief sniff test before it’s fed into their vigilant, proprietary (or very expensive) software that runs circles around what the schmucks like us are sending to them.

For those of you who just made a note to Google “best software to pitch retailers with” after reading this, save your time and money –  they will still use their own systems. So how do we get our sites to stand out?

News flash: they want what we are getting paid to do…provide market intel – focused, exceptional information that distinguishes your site from the hundreds of the others they are being sent every day.  This sentiment was echoed loudly from the regional QSR franchisee all the way to the SVP’s of real estate I spoke with at the ICSC Open Air Conference recently.  

Let’s not forget that we are in the business of providing value – meaning something they don’t already have. We have been successful in generating real interest when able to rattle off sales volumes for nearby tenants (something they don’t already have) or verifying the rumor that a residential development of 300 homes is set to break ground in the next six months – real local intel.

If we can shift focus to providing value to retailers, we will have multiple options for the same space, even in this challenging environment.