What is direct-to-occupier leasing and how do you do it?
Direct-to-occupier leasing means identifying the businesses a property suits and contacting the person who decides at each, rather than waiting for enquiries from listings, signboards and circulated requirements. Scayled's Campaign is built for it: for one property, it finds the businesses most likely to lease it, around the building and across the market, names who decides, flags the ones showing signs of needing space and writes the emails. It beats waiting because most businesses that would take a unit are not searching yet. It works alongside agents and portals rather than replacing them, and owners, in-house teams and agents can all run it.
- What does direct-to-occupier leasing mean?
- Why does waiting for enquiry leave units empty longer?
- Which businesses should you contact?
- How do you run direct-to-occupier leasing step by step?
- What does direct-to-occupier leasing cost?
- Does direct-to-occupier leasing replace agents and portals?
What does direct-to-occupier leasing mean?
Direct-to-occupier leasing is outbound leasing. Instead of publishing a property and waiting for businesses to enquire, you start from the property, work out which businesses it suits, find the person at each who decides on premises, and contact them with a specific reason why this building fits them. The occupier hears about the property before it has started a search.
It is not the same as leasing without an agent. An owner can run it, an in-house leasing team can run it, and many agents run it on their listings. What defines it is the direction of the first contact: you go to the occupier, rather than the occupier coming to you.
In industrial property it is especially effective, because occupiers tend to stay in the area they already operate in, the features that make a unit suitable are concrete and easy to match, and the person who decides is usually reachable: an owner, an operations director or a head of property, not a procurement committee.
Why does waiting for enquiry leave units empty longer?
Enquiry only captures businesses that are actively searching right now and happen to see your listing or your board. That is a small share of the businesses that could lease the property. A distributor whose yard is full, a manufacturer that has just won a contract, or a neighbour whose lease ends next year may all need space, but none of them has opened a portal yet.
The requirements that are already circulating are also the most contested. Every owner and agent with a suitable unit pitches the same requirement, so you compete on price and incentives from the first conversation. A business that hears from you before it starts searching compares your building with its current one, not with ten others.
Passive channels are still worth having. Portals and boards catch active searchers cheaply, and an agent's requirement list is valuable. The problem is relying on them alone, which leaves the timing of your letting in the hands of whoever happens to look.
Which businesses should you contact?
Build the list from two directions. Around the property, look for businesses nearby that could expand into it, relocate from tired premises or consolidate several sites into one. Across the market, look for businesses whose size, use and type fit the building wherever they are now. Fit beats proximity: a business across town that suits the asset is a better prospect than one next door that never could.
In multi-tenanted estates, work down to the occupier in each unit rather than the entity that owns the building, because the owner of the estate is not your tenant. And for each business, find a named decision-maker with a verified email. Switchboards and info@ addresses waste the effort.
Next, sort the list by reasons to move. Volume hiring, contract wins, new sites, funding, acquisitions and lease events are public signs that a business may soon need space, and each one can be dated and sourced. Put the businesses with such a reason in the first batch and open each email with it, so the first wave of a leasing campaign reads as relevant rather than random.
How do you run direct-to-occupier leasing step by step?
First, write the brief: size, specification, use, lease or sale, terms, available date and who it should suit. Second, build the list around the property and across the market. Third, find the person who decides at each business and verify the address. Fourth, read for reasons to move and order the list so the businesses that need space now come first.
Fifth, write a short personal email to each business: what the property is, why it suits them in particular, and one clear next step, signed by a real person with a phone number. Sixth, send in batches of around 50, best first, from your own inbox rather than a bulk platform, with a clear opt-out so the outreach meets B2B email rules. Seventh, follow up once about a week later, then move to the next batch.
Finally, track it. Record who was contacted, who replied, who viewed and who made an offer. Replies that say not now but maybe next year are worth keeping, because the next vacancy in the same building or the same estate will suit some of them.
What does direct-to-occupier leasing cost?
Done by hand it costs time. Building and checking a list of a few hundred businesses, finding a named decision-maker at each and writing personal emails is days or weeks of work for one property. Contact data tools can help with the names, but they do not tell you which businesses suit the building or why they might move.
For comparison, the passive channels cost money every month whether or not they produce a tenant. Premium portal listings, signboards and print advertising each run to hundreds of dollars or more per property, and all of them wait for the right business to notice.
The Campaign from Scayled is one payment per property. Focused covers the strongest 100 to 150 businesses from US$449 and is delivered in about three working days. Full covers 250 to 350 businesses for US$749 in about five. Each includes the person who decides at every business, the movement signals behind the first batch, and an email written for each one. You send them from your own inbox, or add We Send It For You for US$299, which sends from a mailbox on your company email with replies going to you.
Does direct-to-occupier leasing replace agents and portals?
No, and it works best when it does not try to. Agents remain a good option for negotiation, for access to tenant rep brokers and live requirements, and for large or specialist assets. Portals and boards remain a cheap way to catch businesses that are already searching. Direct-to-occupier leasing covers everything else: the businesses that would suit the property but have not started looking.
Many agents now run direct campaigns on their own listings, and many owners run one alongside their agent. If you do the latter, agree in the agency agreement how leads you generate are treated, so a tenant you found does not create a dispute over fees.
The test is simple. If the only businesses who know about your property are the ones who went looking, you are leasing to a small slice of the market. Going direct puts the property in front of the rest, and it is the most reliable way to shorten a commercial vacancy.
Find Who Will Lease Or Buy Your Property.
Send the address. Scayled finds the 100 to 350 businesses most likely to take the space, the person who decides at each, the ones already showing signs of needing space, and writes every email. One property, one payment, from US$449.