A Q&A with Tim Whitebread: How Carr Properties Scaled Their Marketing and Leasing Process
This Q&A series is your glimpse into how successful CRE firms are using the leading leasing, marketing, asset management, and tenant experience platform to level up their business.
Meet Tim Whitebread, Director of Leasing at Carr Properties. We had a chat with Tim to learn how the firm has evolved their digital content and the technology at the core of that transformation.
1. What type of assets do you own and in which markets?
We own centrally located, class A office buildings in dynamic office markets like Washington DC, and Boston, Massachusetts — we also recently expanded into Austin, Texas with the purchase of 100 Congress Avenue.
2. What would you say your company’s approach to technology is?
We’re pretty advanced from a technology perspective. We actually have a full technology team that handles everything in-house. We’re definitely not falling behind the curve, but even still, implementing VTS Market has certainly taken us to the next level.
3. What made you all initially start looking for a CRE marketing platform? What were the pain points that existed in your day-to-day work, for you and your team?
We were really looking for an all-encompassing database for our media and content that we could access and distribute easily.
There were a few other challenges that spurred us to look for a solution like VTS Market. For me, sharing content with brokers and end-users came with so many limitations. I wasn’t able to find the right information or documents, and also struggled with sending things out — emails with large files attached would bounce, which made things really tedious.
Before using VTS Market, we had our content stored in numerous folders and on different drives. It was really difficult to locate the information needed, and having to sort through so many files in different locations took a lot of time.
We also had a really hard time bringing spaces to market efficiently. Between brainstorming and producing all the content, to the back and forth between teams, it took ages to get everything actually ready to go to market.
4. What made you ultimately decide to move forward with VTS Market as the chosen solution?
A combination of reasons made us decide to move forward with VTS Market. The VTS platform is truly all-encompassing. The addition of VTS Market really has brought our leasing process full circle on the platform. We had already been using VTS Lease to track prospects, proposals, and touring activities. From there, we wanted that insight to better understand the effectiveness of our marketing tactics, and VTS Market is able to deliver on that.
5. How has the addition of VTS Market solved these issues?
Before we had VTS Market, we were operating on standard marketing procedures — we were just doing what we’d always been doing. We didn’t really have a way to measure it, which is a real problem when you’re trying to reach lots of tenant brokers and tenants. The addition of VTS Market has really helped us from an analytical perspective, allowing us to measure the success of our marketing tactics so we can double down on what’s working and change what isn’t.
With our content in one space with VTS Market, I can share our listings with three clicks of a button — with tenant brokers or end-users. It makes life really seamless, not only for us but for them as well. Plus, with the pandemic, many prospects won’t tour buildings without first looking at virtual content and other digital materials, so having that with VTS Market has resulted in a lot more in-person tours.
VTS has really solved our struggle of bringing spaces to market quickly too. When we want to deliver a building, VTS is out there shooting content in no time. It makes the process faster than with any group we used previously.
6. How are you personally using the VTS Platform in your day-to-day role?
I use the VTS every day. When I’m sharing a space, VTS Market is my go-to source. It’s easy for me because all the information is there and it’s easy for the end-user, again, because all the information they want, and need is right there.
7. How is VTS Market driving value for your business?
VTS Market is driving value for us in so many different ways. It’s saving us time, it’s saving us money, and it just makes our job way easier.
The data that we can extract from the VTS platform really helps guide our decision-making here at Carr Properties. We’ve made adjustments to our marketing strategies and our leasing strategies using the data that we’ve pulled.
The team at VTS Market has been truly phenomenal to work with. We’ve worked with a bunch of different folks, who have all been so responsive and made things easy for us.
Learn more about how Carr Properties executes deals 59% faster here.
