A retail tenant prospect list you can hand to another broker

Open a prospecting spreadsheet you have not touched for a month. Can you tell why each business is there, who checked it, and what should happen next? If the answer requires finding the person who built the list, the spreadsheet is missing part of the work.

A useful record lets another broker continue the assignment. It should carry the property-fit argument, the source behind it, and the next question. Names and email addresses become much more useful when those three things travel with them.

Start each record with a property and an operator

The same company can be a strong prospect for one vacancy and unsuitable for another. Keep a property identifier on the record rather than treating the business as a universally qualified lead. Add its trading name, operator name where known, official website, and relevant store format.

Preserve branch information without multiplying outreach unnecessarily. Five shops owned by one operator may give you five locations to inspect and one initial site-selection conversation. Conversely, franchisees under one banner may make separate decisions. Confirm the structure rather than relying on a shared logo or domain.

Give the fit reason a source and a limitation

• Fit reason: the specific connection between the business and this property.
• Supporting source: the page, announcement, or documented conversation behind the claim.
• Event date: when the opening, requirement, or other relevant event happened.
• Last checked: when someone on your team reviewed the record.
• Next question: the missing fact that would change your decision to approach the operator.

Keep an inferred fit separate from a confirmed requirement. An announcement that an operator opened a store in July may be accurate in October while giving you no evidence of another planned lease. This distinction is easier to preserve in separate columns than in a single enthusiasm-filled note.

Verify responsibility as well as contactability

An email address that receives mail does not establish authority over a lease. Record the role and territory separately. Some companies make this easier: ALDI publishes real estate contacts by state. Use the company’s current routing information where available, and record when you checked it.

Leave a contact as unconfirmed if the role is unclear. A store manager may help direct an inquiry, but should not become a real estate decision-maker merely because the name was easy to find. Our operator-contact guide explains how ownership changes that search.

Make status describe what happened

Use a small set of practical stages: research, ready to contact, contacted, conversation, paused, and closed out. Record the reason for a pause or closure. Wrong format, no current expansion, and already represented are different outcomes with different follow-up implications.

Assign an owner and a next action to active records. Before a new outreach round, recheck the source and confirm that another team member has not already approached the operator about the same unit. The list should reduce duplicated work as it grows.

Use the template with manual research or software-generated candidates. Atlas helps with property-specific discovery and contact research; the prospecting platform page explains that workflow. Whatever produces the initial names, keep the evidence and the human follow-up visible in the working list.

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