Wise Time Management Techniques in Shopping Centre Management

In shopping centre management and leasing, you have perhaps the most intense type of job with plenty of things going on every day.  Time management and focus is important. Here are some methods of control to keep your business day organised in retail shopping centre management.

What is the issue here? There are plenty of shopping centre people to contact, leases to negotiate, tenants to connect with or review, meetings to hold, and customers to help.  They are stakeholders in shopping centre performance. Through all of that, you must be optimizing your focus on retail property performance for the client. 

Learn More About Retail Shopping Centres here…..

Relieve the Retail Property Pressure

So how do you manage your way through that pressure and still get a good result for your landlord client with their property?  Here are some ideas.

Consistency in action is the key strategy to stay on track in retail property management and shopping centre leasing.  Add to that a work plan for yourself, and you have a solution that works most of the time.  So, the question can be, ‘What are the important parts of your working day in retail centre management?’

Think about these shopping centre management things and put some priorities on them.

• Vacancy challenges in the property, both current and upcoming
• Lease negotiations with sitting tenants
• Lease negotiations with new tenants
• Reporting to the landlord on current issues
• Budgeting and managing the finances of the property
• Providing some strategic direction to the landlord on property matters
• Inspecting the property and the leased shops
• Risk management across the asset
• Maintenance controls and systems
• Marketing of the property for the retailers
• Tenant meetings on current and routine issues
• Health and safety matters in the property

In more significant retail properties and shopping centres, it is not unusual to have a few people in the property management team help with all the activities and events.  If that is the case, you can split up the circumstances and the tasks. 

List of Time and Task Strategies in Shopping Centres

If you are a single person in control of just about everything that happens in the property, then it is time to prioritize all the challenges so you can put some power into your property manager working day.  Here are some ideas for that.

1. Control half of your day with 100% consistency so you can do the essential real estate property management things every day without distraction or diversion.  The best way to do that is to devote the first half of the day to important and active items.  Make a list the night before the next day, so you are ready to act as soon as you get to the office.
2. On a Friday, check out all the upcoming critical dates from leases, tenants, and landlord records and do that for the coming six months forward.   You can understand what will happen in that way, and you will have time to consider actions and strategies.  Advanced asset planning is a valuable strategy in commercial and retail property management.
3. Check the arrears for all tenants at the start of the day.  Any arrears should be chased quickly as soon as they are seen and known about.  Take notes of any conversations relating to arrears and lease matters.  Arrears will happen in shopping centres, so diligence and focus will help you stay ahead of the problem.
4. Do not allow the overnight emails and incoming calls at the beginning of the day to distract you in any way.  You will need a person or system in the real estate team to filter that material away from you unless there is an emergency.
5. Plan your real estate working week well ahead so that meetings are generally shuffled to the afternoons, and the paperwork and pressures of each day can be handled in the morning.  Control is an integral part of retail and commercial property management.  Start your day early before others get to the office.
6. Create a system of notes for all property and tenancy matters and then segment the messages into subsets such as tenant names, leasing, negotiations, maintenance, risk, expenditure, and rents.  When you keep those notes in ‘real-time’, it is easy to get them back at month-end and create a fuller report for your landlord client.  Your month-end report will be a valuable way of recording the facts and trends of the property.
7. Have an emergency response process ready to enact at any time.  Things do go wrong in retail property management and with shopping centres.  There are plenty of people moving around a building or premises and tenants to connect with.  The more people and tenants you have in a managed property, the greater the chance of things going wrong.  When anything becomes a critical real estate event or emergency, ensure that your response plan is enacted with the correct people and responders’ teams.
8. Watch all your important dates from your leases and property performance matters.  Have an ongoing property management follow-up system that is always active.  Many lease, property or tenancy matters can take weeks or months to get a resolve.

Given these strategies, you can add to the list yourself based on your managed properties, location, and clients.  Put some control into your shopping centre management processes and systems.  Strive to control at least 50% of your working day regularly.  In that way, you will get more results and better control over the properties that you manage.

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