How to approach commercial landlords

mcgovern · Dec 24, 2009

I continue to come across the problem of offering our services to commercial landlords but they do not seem to be bothered with a good business proposition.

For example: We manage private land, and in this instance a major company had gone into administration which means they no longer where able to trade from a number of premises, the landlord obviously now has no tenant and still has to pay rates.

On one of their site they have a large car park, which the previous tenant had a pay and display in operation.

This car park has over 100 cars there all day every day, if you do the maths this equates to over £50,000 a year at least

We suggested to offer our services ( free of charge ) our services being

1. organise collection of monies from parking
2. banking
3. security

We earn our money from people trespassing

What do you think is their lack of enthusiasm.

In this current climate it would make sense, the landlord who owns the land are developers, so surely the must be feeling the pinch

Would love people opinions especialy people in the commercial property business

Regards

Simon

eventdomain · Dec 24, 2009

Sounds like they are refusing based on the following:

1. Car Parks employ their own staff

2. Banking can be done easily by 1 employee, so why pay for extra staff they won't need

3. Security staff aren't cheap eg: at least 4 guards per car park (including Supervisor/Head Guard) @ £17 per guard, per hour - contract guards can be unreliable eg: fall asleep at post, not patrol properly etc.

Much cheaper to pay someone £6 ph than a contract security firm at £17 for extra guards the car park have no need for.

saxondale · Dec 24, 2009

possibly the bad publicity wheel clamping firms get might put some off?

mcgovern · Dec 24, 2009

eventdomain said:
Sounds like they are refusing based on the following:

1. Car Parks employ their own staff

2. Banking can be done easily by 1 employee, so why pay for extra staff they won't need

3. Security staff aren't cheap eg: at least 4 guards per car park (including Supervisor/Head Guard) @ £17 per guard, per hour - contract guards can be unreliable eg: fall asleep at post, not patrol properly etc.

Much cheaper to pay someone £6 ph than a contract security firm at £17 for extra guards the car park have no need for.

1. Its not run as a car park by them, its currently doing nothing apart from being a missed opportunity and we offer free services as stated so our car park attendent cost £0

2. as stated,all the above services are free, please read post carefully

mcgovern · Dec 24, 2009

saxondale said:
possibly the bad publicity wheel clamping firms get might put some off?

I would agree, if it was a small business,

but as we deal with other landowners , who basically are not bothered so long as their clients who need to park, can park or their land is kept free of trespassers i.e. travellers

We do not neccesarily just clamp we issue parking charge notices.

saxondale · Dec 24, 2009

mcgovern said:
We do not neccesarily just clamp we issue parking charge notices.

yes, I would just leave it there.

mcgovern · Dec 24, 2009

saxondale said:
yes, I would just leave it there.

sorry a little confused by your post, can you please elaborate on it, honestly!

eventdomain · Dec 25, 2009

But you said:

We suggested to offer our services ( free of charge ) our services being

1. organise collection of monies from parking
2. banking
3. security

ok, in that case these people probably think that these Free services don't exist - that's the problem.

I did telesales selling 'Free staff', honestly, it was free (we got paid by the Government), so all we had to do was provide the free labour - guess what, 90% of the firms we contacted, didn't trust us.

So there you have it..... People mostly don't believe in the freebie. They think its some con or your not telling the truth.

mcgovern · Dec 25, 2009

eventdomain said:
But you said:

ok, in that case these people probably think that these Free services don't exist - that's the problem.

I did telesales selling 'Free staff', honestly, it was free (we got paid by the Government), so all we had to do was provide the free labour - guess what, 90% of the firms we contacted, didn't trust us.

So there you have it..... People mostly don't believe in the freebie. They think its some con or your not telling the truth.

We have also offered a split of the revenue/ management fee for other landowners, same sort of response, but sometimes we have to deal with the agents, who I suppose are only interested in what they can get out of it , I maybe wrong?

I.E. old ford garage unable to trade in town centre, raised to the ground now just a fenced off piece of land , who they have put in the hands of Rapleys to deal with. They will still be paying rates, which where £250,000 a year, obviously lower now, but they will still be paying rates.

I proposed to take over the rates on a month rolling contract until they find a new buyer, not interested!

8 months later they have no new buyer and have paid rates for all them months,

No doubt , Well I know for a fact they have laid people off, the money which could have been generated from my preposal could have kept people in work. FRUSTRATING!

Sacha · Dec 26, 2009

It must be your 'pitch'. You need to develop insinuation tactics, where they approach you rather than you approaching them.

Invariably if they're the ones who ring or contact you due to newspaper advertisement, third party suggestion, radio, etc. they will be more willing to enter an agreement.

Somehow you need to think of a way for someone to drop into conversation about your company, rather than actively sell it. Sort of an off hand comment to get them interested, then for example he could say: "Yeah... I'm sure [so and so] use them as well, hang on I think they have an advert in the local paper...."

People are prone to be suspicious of things like this. I can just imagine your targets thinking 'if it's too good to be true, it probably is'.

Sacha

saxondale · Dec 26, 2009

Sacha said:
It must be your 'pitch'. ...........

as in "I`m going to make you an offer you can`t refuse" said in a fake Italian accent.

mcgovern · Dec 26, 2009

The same pitch works on smaller commercial landlords/ landowners as my pitch method/ approach whatever you want to call it has worked countless times, it just seems to be lost on the bigger commercial landlords.

I know one of the middle management of the pendragon group who approached one of the senior management and made him aware of our company, plugged us and the result was in him passing us over to an agent from rapleys.

Its not a case of being "to good to be true" as we have over a 150 similar contracts with medium to small landowners/ tenants

Its a case of trying to work out why it is that the big commercial owners/ agents seem to aknoledge a problem but do not seem to be bothered about it.

Is it a case that £50,000 to them is nothing, whillst to me it may seem alot?

If I offer to rent some land from you, how is that a offer to good to be true?

Sacha · Dec 26, 2009

Sorry to misunderstand you mcgovern,

Upon reading the further details you have provided in your latest post I would conclude homogeneously to your reasonable deduction: that these large landlords don't see a loss of 50,000 as a great deal to worry about.

This isn't so surprising to me because I know from experience that there exist rich business owners who are very concerned over small fry (like an hour or so wages given to an employee, in their opinion, unnecessarily), whilst crippling overheads are continuously written off and simple solutions ignored.

Another explanation could be that they recognise your concept as workable however conclude that there is profit in providing your service themselves but never get around to it.

This happens quite often with large landlords I take it?

mcgovern · Dec 27, 2009

Thanks for your input Sacha, I am coming to the conclusion that they just do not care unless it concerns serious money.

Like I have said before ,the offer is taken up by smaller developers, landowners, whom I suppose the extra money is more of a concern.

In the original post, the landowner could have made £70,000 a year from the property which is now a drain on their finances, and ironicaly their company aim is

"The companys aim is to acquire income generating properties with asset management angles, vacant/part vacant property and development sites across the retail, office, industrial and leisure sectors. "

Also what ends up happening to alot of empty properties/ land, is trespassers move in ( travellers) so we end up sub contracting work from bigger companies to move them on, which they end up paying thousands for.

We would have done as part of the site management.

Again FRUSTRATIIIINNNG!

So if any commercial landlords/landowners are reading this thread, please pm

for a deal that is to good to be true

patientlady · Dec 27, 2009

Slightly off thread but linked. My other half wanted to know why all 'The lazy pub landlords' had not cleared there car parks from the snow? Well apparently if someones slips in the car park and you have attempted to clear the snow you are liable! if you have left it you are not!
If as a landlord of commercial premises your tenant goes bust you can at the beginning of tenancy take out an insurance to cover loss of rent etc! I reckon they don't care?

Sacha · Dec 27, 2009

Bingo, patientlady.

mcgovern · Dec 27, 2009

patientlady said:
Slightly off thread but linked. My other half wanted to know why all 'The lazy pub landlords' had not cleared there car parks from the snow? Well apparently if someones slips in the car park and you have attempted to clear the snow you are liable! if you have left it you are not!
If as a landlord of commercial premises your tenant goes bust you can at the beginning of tenancy take out an insurance to cover loss of rent etc! I reckon they don't care?

Im hoping its not a case of they dont care, as so many people could have kept there jobs if the landowners considered deals like these

lockyer · Dec 28, 2009

McGovern - I know exactly how you feel. Sometimes it is so hard getting your message across to Land/Property Owners. They are hung up on percieved value, I have had many cases where we have putched (blind most of the time) and ended up offering them deals reducing their insurance from £100k PA to £60k PA, while increasing cover, yet they feel there is something wrong with the product.

Where in relaity it is becuase their BIG NAME insurance broker is on 40-50% commission as opposed our earnings being less than half that.

Luckily we have a few major propertyowners who trust us implicility and recommend our services all over the place.

You're only up the road from us, do you fancy calling over for a brew to see how we can help each other?

Jon Newall
www.lockyers.co.uk

mcgovern · Dec 28, 2009

Or what is even more frustrating is, they dont get back to you, then pay someone to do what you would have done for free or at a significantly lower price.

mcgovern · Dec 30, 2009

I generaly go and canvas smaller busineses in person and find this works well, does anyone think its a good idea, or bad idea to do this with much larger companies.

Lee Jones Jnr · Dec 31, 2009

mcgovern said:
We do not neccesarily just clamp we issue parking charge notices.

In which case you are probably better off that they have said no as these are pretty much impossible to enforce and these days most people realize that they can just say no.

mcgovern · Jan 2, 2010

The Trading Post said:
In which case you are probably better off that they have said no as these are pretty much impossible to enforce and these days most people realize that they can just say no.

A combination of the two works best, we give the client the option, and more often than not they opt for vehicle Immobilisation.

Ironically you have forums telling people not to pay parking charges, the outcome will result in more clamping:| twisted logic.

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