Join VTS Product Strategist, Mike Cochran, as he discusses how measuring and optimizing metrics across your leasing pipeline will enable you to act on opportunities faster and reduce downtime, ultimately driving more revenue. Gary Stevens, VP of Leasing at Ramco-Gershenson Properties Trust, shares his insights on how technology has transformed Ramco's retail leasing process.

1. From Tour to Tenant:
How to Convert Better Deals, Faster
MICHAEL COCHRAN
Product Strategist

2. 1. A CHANGING INDUSTRY
Two shifts in commercial real estate.
2. DON’T ASSUME. KNOW.
How to move beyond gut instinct.
3. KEY METRICS
The four metrics you need to optimize deal conversion.
4. Q&A
Gary Stevens, VP of Leasing at Ramco-Gershenson Properties Trust
Today’s Agenda
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3. A Changing
Industry
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4. CRE is shifting to a
digital first industry...

5. ...with Tenant Experience
at its center.

6. The Revenue Funnel
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7. You’ll learn how to eliminate bottlenecks in
your leasing pipeline to decrease downtime,
drive more revenue and convert better deals
with the right tenants.
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8. Don’t Assume. Know.
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9. Convert Better
Deals, Faster
You’re probably relying on gut instinct to
get a sense of whether leasing is slowing
down or picking up. Leverage these metrics
throughout the full lifecycle of a deal to
eliminate bottlenecks.
Webinar – From Tour to Tenant
Tour to proposal
conversion
Proposal to lease
conversion
Deal quality
Top dead
deal reasons

10. Tour to Proposal Conversion
You’ve attracted the right tenants with solid
marketing. Now you need to identify issues in the
early stages of your process.
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11. Analyze how well you are converting touring tenants to proposal negotiations in order to identify issues in the early stages
of your deals.
● Are tenants not making an offer because the space doesn’t show well?
● Are you not offering enough amenities to meet their needs?
● Are your teams not on the same page, slow to share information, follow up with tenants and answer questions?
● Are you treating every deal as a brand new customer and missing opportunities to leverage existing tenant
relationships within your portfolio?
Tour to Proposal Conversion
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12. By tracking how well you convert tours to proposals, you can make strategic improvements, including:
● Reconfiguring spaces and common area to meet tenant demand.
● Investing in new technology that improves the tour experience and makes it easier to educate prospects about floor
plans, neighboring tenants and other building information.
● Improving collaboration between your team and brokers with technology like VTS.
● Leveraging existing tenant relationships in your portfolio to keep the conversation moving after the tour and get deals
done faster.
Strategic Changes
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13. In practice: Rainier Realty
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By understanding these metrics, Randy discovered:
● Three of his high vacancy assets had no proposals due to the condition the
spaces were in and a lack of amenities.
● He also didn’t realize his Chicago team already had a relationship with a
tenant touring one of his other assets.
What Randy did...
● Experiment with new space conditions by converting three shell spaces to
fully furnished, prebuilt solutions.
● Allocated vacancy to networking and collaborative space.
● Rolled out VTS’ Tenant Relationship Management to leverage cross portfolio
relationships.
RANDY RAINIER
HEAD OF ASSET MANAGEMENT

14. Proposal to Lease Conversion
Identify issues later in your deal process.
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15. Proposal to Lease Conversion
Measure Proposal to Lease Conversion to identify issues later on in your process. The three potential problem areas are:
● Deal Analysis
○ Are we slow to respond to tenants when negotiating because we are bottlenecked by an analyst?
● Approvals
○ Is our deal approval process too manual?
○ Are we wasting time populating documents and chasing approvers?
● Legal
○ Is our legal team taking too long to draft and negotiate leases?
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16. Strategic Changes
Streamline your Proposal to Lease Conversion with these steps:
● Deal Analysis
○ Replace manual NER templates with an online solution.
○ Free up your analysts to uncover more strategic opportunities your portfolio.
● Approvals
○ Implement new technology that streamlines the approval process by automating collateral and approver
sequence.
● Legal
○ Consider ways to streamline your legal process by simplifying lease documents.
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17. By understanding these metrics, Randy discovered:
● Deals requiring his approval were slowing down in the summer because Randy went golfing with
brokers twice a week.
● His legal team was using a 100 page lease that took too long to get in front of tenants.
What Randy did...
● Implemented VTS deal approvals so he could be more productive and keep deals moving while
improving his short game.
● Slashed their lease template from 100 pages of legalese to 40 pages, saving time and legal fees
for him and prospective tenants.
In practice: Rainier Realty
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18. Deal Quality
Don’t sacrifice deal quality for time savings.
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19. Ensure you are converting good deals by understanding:
● Does the deal exceed our Budget Assumption?
● Does the new rent exceed the previous lease rent to ensure we’re growing revenue?
● Does the deal exceed recently signed deals to ensure we keep momentum?
● How does the deal compare to offers from other tenants?
Comparing to Benchmarks
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20. Streamline your process and leverage these benchmarks to make strategic changes across your portfolio:
● Replace static documents with a system like VTS to be the source of record for NER calculations and analysis.
● Upload your leasing assumptions for easy access rather than having to re-enter them on every deal.
● Respond to tenants faster by being more efficient and confident you are negotiating the right deal.
Strategic Changes
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21. By understanding these metrics, Randy discovered:
● Deals were slowing down because of a new analyst who was not as good at Excel as he led the team to believe.
What Randy did...
● Randy had his brokers start logging proposals directly in VTS instead of sending them to the analyst. Brokers
could instantly see how their NER compared to various benchmarks.
● Randy started responding to tenants faster and increased the probability of getting them to sign.
In practice: Rainier Realty
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22. Top Dead Deal Reasons
Losing a deal is inevitable. Treat this as a learning
experience and improve.
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23. Only by tracking all of the deals you lose can you understand the top reasons for the loss:
● Is it due to price, timing, size, location or other reasons?
● When in the process are you losing deals? Lead-to-tour, tour-to-proposal, or proposal-to-lease?
Webinar – From Tour to Tenant
Top Dead Deal Reasons

24. Spend less time surveying your team and more time having honest, strategic conversations about how to improve.
● Understand your asset’s strengths and weaknesses.
● What are competitors doing differently to convert tenants?
● At what terms are they getting deals done?
● Keep an eye on WeWork and Industrious to see how they are offering flexibility, services, and amenities.
Competitive Analysis
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25. By tracking dead deal reasons, Randy learned:
● He was losing retail deals in one of his LA assets due to low foot traffic on the desolate, mid-block location.
What Randy did...
● He set out to find a retail vendor so popular that lines would form at lunch and dinner, drawing foot traffic to
his other listings.
● Randy had his New York colleague introduce him to one of their new tenants – the rapidly growing salad
chain Sweetgreen.
● Randy brought them into the mix and planted the seed for more retailers.
In practice: Rainier Realty
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26. Putting it all together.
GARY STEVENS
VP of Leasing
Ramco-Gershenson Properties Trust

27. In Summary
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By tracking every stage of a deal rather
than just late stage or signed deals, you
can gain visibility into risk and
opportunities impacting your revenue
goals.
Tour to proposal
conversion
Proposal to lease
conversion
Deal quality
Top dead
deal reasons

28. We’re here to help.
MICHAEL COCHRAN
Email: mc@vts.com