5. EDSR 09-11-2006 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Target Markets: Secondary -Industrial Brokers The secondary target market of industrial brokers and owner's representatives/site selectors is an important and influential group. The broker community shares leads and other information, and referrals can be very important Yet bxokexs tend to be difficult reach and even tougher to persuade, according to the brokers themselves. Their hectic schedules make it difficult to capture their attention and to build relationships. They also have little incentive to help to promote a city unless they have listings in the community. Likewise, owner's reps/site selectors tend to be interested only if a city's industrial offerings match their search criteria. During the focus group with industrial bxokexs, owner's reps and site selectors, the participants made it clear that brokers target sites, not cities. They said they had little incentive to bring prospective users to city-owned sites because they won't be compensated adequately. The opinion was strongly communicated that cities would benefit from hiring brokers to market city-owned land. Although that comment is obviously self serving, it does contain an element of logic. The brokers contended that this strategy would eliminate their concerns about compensation, would result in faster sales of the land and would give cities a direct link to the bxokex community, which extensive knowledge of site and requirements. It should be noted that small to mid-sized manufacturing firms tend not to use brokers, whereas larger businesses are more likely to do so. Thus, if the City continues to concentrate on small to medium-sized firms, building relationships with the broker community would be of less importance. But if the City seeks to devote more of its marketing to include larger firms, it would be more important to effectively reach out to bxokexs. The idea of hiring brokers was discussed by the EDA Marketing Committee and City Staff. Although there was little or no support for hiring brokers, it was agreed that it is important to tap into the knowledge of the bxokex community. For City-owned properties, it was suggested that the City continue to compensate brokers for a portion of the buyers' brokerage fees. Fox pxivately- owned properties, it was suggested that the City consider a finder's fee or some type of other compensation fox brokers, as was sometimes done in the past when the City had a joint marketing agreement with the landowner. Specific eligibility requirements should also be determined fox both broker compensation programs. To maximize the effectiveness of these incentive programs, the existence of the programs, if approved, should then be clearly communicated to the bxokex community. (Please see Appendix B for a summary of the industrial bxokex focus group.) (Please see Appendices C and D for the EDA Marketing Committee meeting minutes.)