Retail Liaison Managers: Vital for Shopping Centre Success

The need for having a quality Retail Liaison Manager is growing in importance.

Many of our clients – especially in the shopping centre management sector – are creating new roles for Retail Liaison Managers to improve and maintain effective relationships with tenants.

Retail Liaison Managers play a key role in driving footfall, increasing sales and improving the guest experience. They engage and collaborate closely with retail partners at all levels including; tenants, marketing, stakeholders and the wider shopping centre team to create new initiatives, improve relationships, build trust and provide detailed reports on store and centre performance.

These professionals are fundamental in understanding activity within individual units as well as the wider scheme, to ensure efficient workflows, satisfied tenants and targeted strategies.

Marketing

Having a Retail Liaison Manager within a shopping centre ensures that if a particular tenant is suffering from low footfall or a decrease in sales, a campaign can be implemented to support before the problem escalates. Having this member of the team ensures that marketing efforts are distributed in the most efficient way possible, tenants feel supported from the landlord and long-lasting relationships and partnerships are built.

Leasing

The information gathered from Retail Liaison Managers can be shared with the leasing team to ensure they can manage internal expectations and those of future tenants.

Leasing managers can gain an accurate understanding of positive and downward trends allowing them to create strategies with real data. The negative issues allows exit strategies to be created ahead of a contract termination and the positive movements can be utilised when trying to attract new tenants; sharing the success of current retailers and the support they have had from the shopping centre team.

The information gathered is ultimately reducing vacancy rates because leasing managers have a solid understanding and awareness of the centre’s performance. They can make accurate assessments and predictions of upcoming vacant units and can strategise what type of tenant they should be targeting for future leases.

Facilities and Operations

Due to the up-to-date communication and knowledge, operations and facilities management teams can resolve any issues or faults immediately.

It also allows teams to be proactive with any complaints which allow procedures to be adapted – improving tenant satisfaction and strengthening relationships.

Reporting

Often weekly reports are encompassed within the Retail Liaison Manager’s role. This means that accurate, detailed information is collated and shared weekly with the entire shopping centre team to ensure work is prioritised, any red flags are highlighted and successes celebrated.

The communication, administration, consultation and support are adding massive value to shopping centres and significantly impacting overall asset value. With the increasing competition from e-commerce along with the growing number of challenges physical stores are faced with, these professionals can be invaluable for business growth and future performance.