The modern broker needs to adopt tech to adapt with a changing market
Technological norms are changing in CRE, and as a broker, your business needs to adapt with the times.
CRE has proven slow to adopt new tech. Think about how long ago other industries have been shaken up by digital transformation. In the same way tech-forward companies like Carmax or Zillow have changed the way people interact with the car or home buying process, CRE is overdue for a change in the tech behind how deals get done that makes work easier and faster for brokers while creating a better experience for clients.
Low tech adoption among brokers and CRE firms is mostly a culture issue, and less of a skills issue. Here’s how to get your teammates on board with new tech and how to convince them of the obvious upsides in terms of time savings and communication efficiency.
This is the most important area where CRE needs to embrace tech transformation. Communication is easily the most inefficient part of the modern CRE deal, and collaboration is closely related. Creating static deliverables and exchanging them over email threads — with some data and commentary captured in other channels, like text messages — wastes time and creates confusion. A digital tool that centralizes all deal-related discussion and content could be a great way to convince a tech-averse broker you work with to embrace technology, since it’ll save them hours and many headaches.
Another good argument for changing up your team’s tech stack is that you need to adapt because the very nature of work has changed in recent years. As we’ve argued before, work-from-home, remote-first, and hybrid work may give a boost to brokers who leverage technology to adapt to change. A digital CRE platform is flexible and asynchronous, meaning that team members can collaborate virtually anywhere they have a signal and a device that can connect.
We’ve heard this from users over and over. An associate at Transwestern who uses LeaseUp regularly told us one major reason is that it reduces back and forth and human error. Using LeaseUp, “You cut time not just through the process, but you also cut time not having to involve another party, so you're saving them time, and yourself. I think the best part is you don't have to go through [the survey] with a fine-toothed comb because it's automatically generated, so there's not going to be an error.”
Having your data in a deal platform makes it easier and more efficient to provide a great digital client experience. It connects your market data directly to your client’s search needs and keeps everyone on the same page.
Centralizing your data on a deal platform unlocks efficiencies throughout the life of the deal. Your data should be stored on the same platform as your client deliverables, so you’re able to make adjustments and changes to those deliverables quickly, or on the fly, throughout a transaction. Since LeaseUp lets you easily generate dynamic client deliverables and set how and where they’re shared, it’s also a more secure way to store data both internally and for client-facing deliverables.
Your clients are already spending a lot of time online. That’s old news. The younger a client is, the more likely they’ll respond more positively to receiving a survey or market report as a link, but age is just a number. Many people prefer a dynamic web asset they can open wherever they want, with location and building/space data they can scan in whatever order they want, like a website, rather than in a pre-set order of a static PDF.
Tech-forward brokers give clients what they want, and polished online deliverables will become an increasingly essential part of the CRE toolkit.
The main barrier to tech adoption in CRE is culture. None of the advantages listed above are beyond the skills of the average broker. There’s no coding involved, and in many cases, LeaseUp’s CRE deal platform is actually easier to use than the spreadsheets, slide decks, and design software it’s replacing.
Our focus is helping brokerage teams get more deals done and we’re constantly refining the product and developing new features based on the feedback we are getting from our customers.
Schedule a free trial to see LeaseUp firsthand.
