Ultimate Lead Guide - Finding Office Buildings

Office Buildings are our 5th installment in our Ultimate Lead Guide series. Aside from our Winning With Marketing series, be sure to also check out:

The Introduction
Schools
Places of Worship
Medical Offices
Government
Car Dealerships
Banks
Gyms (coming 8/14/24)

Have you ever driven around your service area and gazed at the shimmering skyline, like I do? Ever look at a 5-story building and wondered who cleans that and how long it takes? Do your palms get sweaty thinking of all the opportunities before you in larger office buildings? Hopefully I'm not the only one. 

Well, if you're hunting for bigger game, this blog post is for you. I'm going to cover some common definitions you need to know about these buildings, figuring out decision-makers, potential vacancy challenges, and then I'll dive into the ways we find the right leads for these properties. 

 "Office buildings" for this post are defined as any leasable property with common areas. It could be owned by a single owner who serves as the sole occupant, or single or multiple owners who lease out space within that building, or even a building that is leased or managed by a property management company. In terms of needs, that building may (or may not) need their leased spaces cleaned (depends on the lease). At a minimum, common areas like restrooms, hallways, lobbies, atriums, and more need to be maintained on the daily. In our experience, we've provided nighttime janitorial, daytime porter services, and also had requests for touch point disinfecting and floor care (e.g. buffing, strip and wax, carpets). These services truly depend on the building and your client. Many of the office buildings we had bid on over the years did require us to provide consumables like toilet paper, paper towels, hand soap, liners, toilet seat covers, etc.

There are different classifications of office buildings. I'll circle back in my sources below to describe where you can find these classifications within a property.

Class A Buildings are buildings that are professionally maintained and have numerous amenities for their tenants, like gym access, parking, security, lounge areas, and sometimes a concierge, with high lease rates. Quite often janitorial services are included in both the common areas and within the suites.

Class B Office Buildings are a step below. Lease rates are lower but average in the market. It'll include some amenities like parking, security, etc. But the leases don't always cover janitorial services. There's one Class B building we serve that provides a trash service for the tenants, but they stop at each tenant's trash cans; they don't do any other cleaning. At a minimum though, Class B buildings do need their common areas cleaned, including restrooms.

Finally Class C is on the low-end in terms of quality. Sometimes the building is run down. Janitorial is rarely, if ever, included for the tenants. But common areas do need to be maintained. Aside from inside the building, patrolling outside grounds may be a needed service, including snow removal for my northern market friends.

Last note...who do we contact for cleaning? It might be the property manager or it might be an owner. You might need to have a few dialogs to learn who manages and decides for what. 

Top sources for Leads for our company over the years for Office Buildings:

1) Property Management, 2) Google, 3) Building's website 4) Referrals, 5) Affiliations, 6) Building tenants, 7) Looking for Lease Signs, and 8) LoopNet/CoStar.

Property Management Companies:

It's somewhat rare to find a building managed by the owner or owners. They usually hire a property management company to manage the leases, rents, and services performed within that building like maintenance, landscaping, HVAC, janitorial, and a lot more. To find a property management company, try googling "property managers near me". Your results will be a mixed bag of local property managers, residential management companies, building managers, HOA or condo associations and more. The downside to this method is that you truly do have to do a lot of clicking and reading of management companies' websites. Often you'll find a "Portfolio" link or something similar and you can view properties and addresses they serve. Below is an example of a former client.

Once you find a property manager that offers office buildings, then it's easy to grab the building's address, property manager, contact info, building amenities, and more. Some sites even have clickable information to where you can see the floor plans for that property. Here's an example from one of the buildings above:

Another point to ponder. Some property management companies have a vendor's portal you can sign up for. Now, this isn't as advantageous as you may think. If you have easy access to sign up as a vendor, then everyone has easy access and you're competing against everyone. But certainly worth a look on their website. In cases like CBRE or JLL, you have to be invited by one of their employees to enroll.

Google:

Google knows all. As you find addresses of buildings in your searching, google the address. That reveals so much more information about the property and you'll find it helpful to do so. Also, consider using Google tools like Google Earth. You can see an overhead view of the property and if Street View is available, you can get a general sense of the size and scope of the property. You can also use Google Earth to get a rough square footage of that property (measurement tool at the lower right hand corner and then count the floors). 

Building's Website:

Some buildings have their own website. An example is in the picture above from the website found here. You can pull up leasing and other contact information, find available space for rent, and even pull up pictures of inside the property. They also have links, in this particular example, to pull up PDF copies of floor plans. Not only do you have contact info, but you also have everything you need to hone in your bid.

Referrals:

We've won new Office Building clients thanks to referrals. We've cleaned for property managers and those managers have moved or changed locations, bring us with them to their new company. We've won new buildings because the property manager acquired a new property. And we've won new business because one building called another asking for janitorial suggestions. Give all of your clients 100% because you don't know where it could lead to.

Affiliations:

Don't discount the power of affiliations, associations, and networking. Property managers love networking with other property managers, as do building owners. Go where property managers and building owners go. In the past we've been members of the International Facility Management Association, Property Management Association, Apartment and Office Building Association (DC), and Building Owners Managers Association International (BOMA). These associations also allow for building service contractors, like us, to join. It's a great way to meet and greet these office building decision-makers. 

Building Tenants:

The tenants within these buildings can be a great source of business for you. Let's say you're cleaning a small satellite office somewhere and they tell you their HQ is in such and such building. This can give you an in to these bigger buildings. Maybe it's a Class C and no janitorial is provided. This helps you get your foot in the door to the property manager for the common areas, but also your foot in the door for your client's neighbors. Even if cleaning is already provided, we've experienced situations where the tenant wanted to boot the cleaning service in favor in another. So even if cleaning is provided, there's still a chance. 

Looking for Lease Signs:

I'm always driving around in my service area. The thing I always look for is lease signs. The leasing agent won't decide who becomes the next cleaning company. They're there to sell space. And some property managers and building owners use a broker for that, and they're not even employed by that owner or PM. However, these brokers and leasing agents offer info and pitch sheets talking about the properties. That'll often point back to the property manager and that'll give you the opportunity to get your foot in the door. You'll often find these large signs street side. I always take pictures and record for later research.

LoopNet/CoStar

LoopNet and CoStar are both in the commercial real estate space and in the past decade, CoStar had acquired LoopNet. The info is generally the same, but I find LoopNet easier to navigate. Basically they list all commercial properties that are for sale or for lease. It'll list out information that you can use to help in your next office building bid. They'll highlight information similar to the screenshot below:

Just with the above info alone, you know the floor size, the total property size, and the building class, which may or may not include suite cleaning. At a minimum of 15K sqft, probably 1500 or so per floor includes common areas, or at least 6000 sqft of common area cleaning, at a minimum overall. Daily cleaning will give you a contract well into 5-digits per year if cleaning daily. Not too shabby. Also, some brokers have pitch sheets within LoopNet and you can often see if janitorial is included.

I hope this guide serves you well. If you're in the Washington, DC region, save some of these buildings for me. Don't take them all.