Building Your Business Ep. 28: CoStar, The Secret Weapon for Building a Commercial Client Base

CCPIA (00:01.888)
Hello Beth and welcome to Building Your Business.

Beth Messier (00:06.285)
Thanks for having me Rob, I’m excited.

CCPIA (00:09.644)
Yeah, I guess let’s start out with a little bit about you, Beth. So tell everybody that’s watching a little bit about you and what you do with CoStar Group.

Beth Messier (00:23.639)
Yeah, so I’m a specialist in the market essentially. I work specifically with all types of clients, but mostly with vendors and folks that service the commercial industry. And really my job is to work alongside them, partner with them, and make sure that they are using CoStar and the platform in a strategic sense, and that they’re using it to really build and grow their business.

CCPIA (00:55.032)
So I guess let’s start with the absolute basics for those that are listening and watching who might be hearing about CoStar for the very first time. What exactly is CoStar and how does it fit into the world of commercial real estate and very specifically, Beth, us commercial inspectors?

Beth Messier (01:18.425)
Yeah, I’ll tell you what, we’ll start with this. I’ve talked to a couple, a handful of inspectors so far since the partnership with CCPIA. And the feedback we’ve received is our things like, wow, this is a game changer. This is 100 % worth it. This will change my priorities, right, on how I’m going about doing business. And essentially what CoStar is, is it is access to all ownership.

groups, commercial ownership groups, and all asset classes in all markets, right? And then alongside that is that we actually give you the ability to filter and strategically go after those owners. So you’re not just going down the street saying, I’m going to knock on every single door. You’re strategically saying what building, what property, what ownership group or portfolio could utilize my specific services and where I excel, right? So it really is a game changer in that side of the house.

And I think really widely untapped on the inspector side of the house too, so.

CCPIA (02:23.822)
So what exactly, not what, who exactly is CoStar as the brand? Let’s go backwards for a second.

Beth Messier (02:35.384)
Well, CoStar is massive. So we’re a big group. own a bunch of brands underneath us. So, you know, things like LoopNet, apartments.com, homes.com, Biz Buy Now, land.com. Like we own it. We own a bunch of brands. The CoStar product, though, is widely compared to the MLS, right? On the residential side of the house. But we’re the, the,

MLS for the commercial side times about a thousand right there’s so much more that you can do with it It’s actually much more powerful than than just the residential MLS But that’s really how you can kind of think about CoStar The difference really though with us is that we do track the ownership group So it’s not just the properties and the transactions and things like that. We do have the true owners behind the LLC veil That you can typically find on the public domains

So we have that with property management groups, contacts, names, emails, you know, so it’s much more robust than the MLS.

CCPIA (03:43.02)
most of our members, myself included, I’m so used to using LoopNet as my resource for certain things, but I’ve seen my limitations of what I can and cannot gather from or garner from that’s beneficial to me. So you’re saying since you own LoopNet, you have all that back data that might only be available to certain people then.

Beth Messier (03:49.885)
Mm-hmm.

Beth Messier (04:13.088)
Yeah, that’s right. I think about it the other way. Loopnet really feeds into CoStar. So CoStar has a lot more. Typically we see about 60 % more property and data information on CoStar than we see on Loopnet. And really the way to think about it is Loopnet is a marketplace. Brokers, owners pay to put their property on Loopnet because there’s either space for lease or the property is for sale.

Now think about the millions of other properties or owners or brokers that don’t want to pay to market their site, Or their property. So all of those people that aren’t paying to put it on LoopNet or another site, right? They aren’t paying to market it. Those are still available and those are still live, right? And those are all on CoStar. So it’s free to list and view, or sorry, to list and put on CoStar, but you have to pay to see behind that.

right to be to be able to see it on the Loopnet it’s you pay to put it on it but it’s free for the public to search for it. Does that make sense?

CCPIA (05:18.03)
Okay. It does. It does. And so as a commercial property inspector, why would having a relationship with CoStar be so important for my business?

Beth Messier (05:32.907)
Yeah, compared to Loopnet or in general. Yeah, yeah, compared to nothing. Yeah, I mean, honestly, Rob, the biggest thing is that,

CCPIA (05:36.558)
Compared to anything, compared to nothing.

Beth Messier (05:44.985)
A lot of times when I talk to inspectors and honestly other different commercial vendors as well, they are spending so much time on county websites and public websites and reaching out to their network to say, owns this property? Can you get me into it? What’s their phone number? What’s their email? You you’re trying to figure out, you’re spending, I mean, gosh, it could be hours on one property for one owner information and contact.

And you may never get it, right? On CoStar, it’s all readily available to you. So it’s there, it’s searchable, it’s wildly easy to find. You get their name, you get their phone number, you get their email address. And the other thing we do is we pierce the LLC veil. So if you go on a public website and you say, owns 123 Main Street? Typically you see an LLC, right? That is not the true owner. That is the recorded owner.

It is an LLC, usually there for liability reasons. And the true owner is a totally separate entity or company, right? And we pierce that veil. So you will actually get the true owner and their contact information, not just the LLC veil as well.

CCPIA (07:02.712)
So if it’s helping me do my research and that research is an element of our ComSop. It’s that secret section five that rarely anybody ever uses because it’s so difficult to get that information. You can actually help us then. You got a building. You can tell us our ages, our people contact, probably parcels, all those things, correct?

Beth Messier (07:28.738)
Hmm. Yeah, yeah. It goes so much more deeper than the owner side of it. I mean, the owner is probably the bread and butter. The owner contact information is why people will likely buy CoStar. Outside of that, is you get all the property data. So you are going to see what year that building was built, the construction type, right? Is it brick? Is it…

CCPIA (07:31.362)
So.

Beth Messier (07:55.935)
Is it wood? You know, like what is it made out of? You’re going to see the size of that building. You’re going to see the vacancy rates, the occupancy rates, right? You’re going to see everything associated with that property as well to really allow you to go in and have strong, open conversations about why they might need your services, right? On top of that, we also see, you also see the owner portfolio. So you find an owner, you have a relationship with an owner.

That’s one building. We’re talking about spending hours without CoStar on one property to find, you know, one owner contact information. Great. You have it. Now let’s see their portfolio. How do you work smarter, not harder? And how do you expand your business without one owner and say, Hey, I actually see that you have 10 other properties. What can I do for those? Right? How can I help you on those properties?

CCPIA (08:49.422)
Well, especially if if we might be on the purchase side of an acquisition and that owner is on the selling side of the acquisition, they’re probably going to be on the purchase side very, very soon. And for us being able to…

Beth Messier (09:05.28)
Yeah, yeah, I mean you’re looking probably at a 1031 exchange, right?

CCPIA (09:09.842)
Exactly. And so us being able to go to that owner and say, Hey, the people that purchased your building trusted me. You might not ever see my report because a lot of times commercial inspections might be for knowledge and not for negotiation. You can get out ahead of this, especially when we’re in just, I hate to break the veil of, of magic podcasting, but we’re, we’re, we’re, in the fourth quarter of the year right now.

Beth Messier (09:34.488)
Okay

Beth Messier (09:38.193)
Yes.

CCPIA (09:38.702)
And this is when the 10, this is when all those exchanges are all being done just before the tick tock of the clock expires. And so, and so hedging your bets and playing that game. Yeah. So, so I guess I want to see a little bit.

Beth Messier (09:47.254)
Yeah. Yeah, can be, right? mean, it…

Beth Messier (09:53.93)
Yeah, you know, and the other thing, like I said…

CCPIA (09:58.454)
Web. Yeah.

Beth Messier (09:58.679)
Oops, sorry about that, Rob. I think I talked over there. You know, the other side of that is like, that’s really cool is that we can actually, again, CoStar is not just a list of owners and properties. It actually is a search tool, right? Like you can go in and say things like, I want to see a building that’s XYZ years old and a specific asset type. And I can show you everything that’s under contract. So these are folks that are going under contract that may need an inspection.

right, that may want someone to come out and say, should I buy this building? And so we can get you and hit you in the certain phases or stages of a transaction or a life of a building, of a property, and get you in at the right time, right, whether that’s the age of the building, whether that’s under contract, et cetera.

CCPIA (10:46.411)
So what?

I I’m doing this with my hands is I want to see it. I’d love to see some of this robustness that you’re talking about, Beth. If you want to share it with me, I’d love to move down that path right now.

Beth Messier (10:54.923)
Yeah, yeah.

Beth Messier (11:08.022)
Yeah, let’s do it. Let me go ahead and share my screen here.

Beth Messier (11:18.68)
All right, give me the okay, Rob, if we’re good to go with CoStar. Awesome, all right. That’s right, this is the CoStar homepage. We won’t get into this page too, too much. We do have an award-winning journalist team that works for CoStar, so we pump out articles after articles that are specific to local markets as well as the national markets. So that’s what you’re seeing here.

CCPIA (11:22.715)
We’re perfect. I see the CoStar homepage.

Beth Messier (11:46.861)
But really the bread and butter for all inspectors is this properties tab. All right, so let me go over. And what you’re gonna see is right away, as I’m in Denver, right? So it geotags me here. So I just get set up here, but you’re gonna see right away, right? If I zoom out, you see a ton of diamonds. Really quick, just to give people a general lay of the land, the gray diamonds are anything that are off market.

There’s nothing for sale. There’s no space available for lease. The blue diamonds mean that there’s either space for lease or there is or the property itself is up for sale. Okay. Now from here, we can really, really dive in. This is what I’m talking about, about it being a machine of like being able to filter down. So, I’m just going to go to, well, Georgia was my last one, right? So well, let’s go to the state of Georgia. I know nothing about it really. I work out of the Colorado market, but.

CCPIA (12:24.718)
Mm-hmm.

Beth Messier (12:42.904)
We can do it by state, you can do it by zip codes, you can draw your own polygon and area, whatever it might be, right? For this, we’ll just do Georgia. Let’s say we want to see office properties, right? But you can see that we have all asset types here. Let’s say we want to see anything from, I don’t know, 10 to 30,000 square feet, okay?

CCPIA (12:58.616)
Hmm?

Beth Messier (13:09.836)
And you can see over here in the top right hand corner, you’ll see that this starts going down as I start filtering it out. So we’re now at 4,500 properties. That’s a ton of properties, Rob. And I don’t know anybody that has enough time to go in and be like, cool, I’m going to hit all of these 4,500 properties. So what that really means is, is we want to get creative on how we look at, at the properties that we want to go after, right? Some of that is location. Maybe I’m in Southern Georgia. Maybe I just want to look at Atlanta, like,

whatever it might be, right? First and foremost for this, want to see under, or sorry, existing properties, right? Nothing under construction or anything like that. Or maybe that’s a whole nother search, right? Maybe we do want to see what’s under construction so we can kind of get in there. For now, we’ll sit with existing.

CCPIA (13:54.872)
Yeah.

Beth Messier (13:58.167)
Then we’ll come over and we’ll come on down, right? And let’s say I want to see anything that was built in 1995 to 2000, right? So we know it’s like 25 to 30-ish years old. Okay. We can see like whether it’s owner occupied, which is usually a really good search for folks in the inspection side, because you’re working with one person for their specific building. So that’s nice.

And let’s say we want to see, make sure that it’s leased, right? Because if it’s not leased, they’re probably not spending money on certain parts of their building and their properties. So let’s look at all buildings that are at least 90 % leased, right? So now we’ve got 454 properties. And now here’s the really cool part, right? I mean, we could sort through this all day long. We don’t want to, right? What I want to do is come over here to the list view.

And this is going to lay out every single property here for me. It’ll give me some detail here, but the bread and butter really is this owners tab. So I’m going to go ahead and click the owners tab. And now this is instead of laying out the addresses, it’s going to lay out the ownership groups that own these 454 properties. So there are 356 owners that own these, these 454 properties. We can stack rank it by show me how many of

properties this owner owns in this particular search, right? This office search in Georgia, 10 to 30 K and what else did we do? 90%, at least 90 % lease and built between 1995 and 2000, right? So right away we can see that Montecito Medical Real Estate owns six properties just in this search.

So when we talk about not just going after one building, being wildly strategic about how you’re going after this, this is how you can do it, right? And we can look down. The other thing that jumps out at you is like, we’re in Georgia, but you can see here, there’s a North Carolina company, there’s a Washington company. So you’re getting the owners that are out of state as well that likely your network doesn’t know anything about, right? They probably don’t have that information. So you’re getting access to a lot of other things.

Beth Messier (16:17.954)
But here’s the cool part, right? This is great. We know this. Where’s the contact information and how do we maybe go about this? Well, we can jump right in. So I don’t know, RG real estate, but let’s just say they’ve got two properties in this search. If I scroll over, it looks like they own 40 properties in total, right? That’s a big portfolio that we can now go after potentially. I can click into RG and I want to make sure you can see this. So share this tab. I think it went away. There we go.

CCPIA (16:36.686)
Bye

Beth Messier (16:47.512)
And now I can look at their entire everything about them, right? It tells me who they are. It tells me the properties that they own, shows me the properties that they own, etc. And it also shows me their contacts. So let me see if I can make this a little bigger for you. So we can come in here, right? And now all of a sudden we don’t just have one, we don’t just have two. Some properties we do or some ownerships we do to be fair, but like for this one, for example, we have a

of different contacts for this ownership group that you can now strategically go after and reach out to. We have their phone numbers and we have their email here for you to be able to go after. Right?

CCPIA (17:34.25)
as well as the end of their LinkedIn.

Beth Messier (17:38.044)
Yeah, certain ones we have their LinkedIn quite frankly. It’s not as prevalent as like their email and their phone numbers. But yeah, we will have their LinkedIn for some of them as well.

And that’s not it, right? The other thing we can, nope, did I just stop sharing that, Rob?

CCPIA (17:55.884)
Yeah, that’s OK.

Beth Messier (17:58.091)
Okay, I can jump back in. Let me show you one more thing. Sorry about that.

CCPIA (18:02.157)
Yeah.

CCPIA (18:06.21)
No, it’s okay.

Beth Messier (18:06.936)
All right, there we go. So now the next thing is, is right, we found an ownership group that we like, that we think is really worthwhile to go after. Well, we can just come to this ownership tab, paste them in, and let’s see what they’re about. Right? So now on this full page, we not only get what we kind of saw a little snippet of before,

It gives us a full layout. So looks like they’re in South Carolina too. So if you’re an inspection company that is expanding potentially outside of Georgia, you know, we’ve got some, some places here for you. It gives you an entire layout of their portfolio, right? Everything that they’ve done from a transaction and investment side of the house, their properties, et cetera. If I come on up here though, the contacts are here, same contacts that you just saw on the other side, right? But just another place to find them.

But the other thing we have is the relationship side of the house. So it’ll show me who they use from the broker side. Not only just the companies, this is showing me the companies, but if I come over here and hit contacts, I know exactly who they use within that company on the broker side of the house, right? I know their name, I have their phone number, we have their email address for most of them, and it’s a second layer.

right, of like your attempt and your effort to say, I’m going reach out to the ownership group and I’m going to try to network and make contact with this, with these brokers too, right, because we know that they’re working with ownership groups that support and do what I’m looking to do, right. So let me stop there. Tell me what you think, Rob.

CCPIA (19:46.904)
That is cool. I think it’s awesome. I wanna try something. Okay, let’s play a game. I’m in Chicago. no, we’re not gonna make it tough. I’m in Chicago.

Beth Messier (19:55.993)
Oh, all right. Should I save? All right. Put me on the spot. Okay. No, it’s all right. I’m here for it. I love a game. Do you want me to share my screen again? Sorry, are we doing searches?

CCPIA (20:08.269)
And, and I just invested in a new tool that does roof scanning because I want to do roof maintenance inspections. And so I’d like to find buildings in the Chicago land market that are over 45 years old and are, and are under,

Beth Messier (20:16.664)
Okay.

Beth Messier (20:21.688)
Okay.

CCPIA (20:34.99)
between 35,000 and 75,000 square foot.

Beth Messier (20:39.969)
Alright.

CCPIA (20:42.922)
And so I’d love to see your screen and let’s bring this in and let’s, cause here’s what I want. I’ll work with you. So we want to go to Chicago land.

Beth Messier (20:47.852)
Alright, now my memory is… Yep, tell me it again. Hold on, let me get there.

Beth Messier (21:03.498)
Chicago land a place or you just calling it Chicago? All right. You want the city or you want the the costar market, which essentially does like the surrounding areas of it as well. There you go.

CCPIA (21:05.838)
No, this is Chicago. Yeah, Chicago.

CCPIA (21:12.718)
Host our market. That’s the Chicago land area. It’s probably going to hit. Yeah, looks just like that. All right. And so I’m going to do I want to I want to target building owners and and tenants both. That because I’m going to start doing roof inspections. So I’d like to look at buildings and get a list of buildings that are that are over 45 years old.

Beth Messier (21:30.978)
Okay.

CCPIA (21:42.446)
because that’s a sweet spot for they either need a roof or they had a roof a little while ago.

Beth Messier (21:52.6)
Now help me out with the math. What year was it 45 years ago?

CCPIA (21:56.216)
So 45, that would be 1990.

Beth Messier (22:08.089)
Okay.

CCPIA (22:09.972)
And then property, you know, let’s see, I guess size would be between 45,000, or 35,000 and 75,000.

Beth Messier (22:10.753)
And you set a size, right?

Beth Messier (22:29.753)
All right. So we didn’t hit an asset class, Yep. So we haven’t touched that. It’s not. That’s it. right now we’re looking at 6,900, just over 6,900 properties that are in Chicago, Coast Art Market, that are 35 to 75,000 square feet and that were built before 1990.

CCPIA (22:31.522)
and they do not have to be owner occupied.

CCPIA (22:43.32)
Holy cow.

CCPIA (22:53.718)
All right, if I ask the question, has not been sold in 10 years, can I get that information?

Beth Messier (23:03.563)
Yes. So let me just move that out of the way.

CCPIA (23:05.858)
That would be exciting because that means nobody has looked at it.

Beth Messier (23:11.725)
Yeah. let’s see.

Beth Messier (23:18.251)
Now, so just so you guys know, we do have over 150 different filters. Well, I know that we can do things. Sometimes finding the right filters is always hard and that’s part of why you have an account management team that helps you with it too. So let me find it. And we might actually, you know what, Rob, we wouldn’t do that here.

CCPIA (23:24.034)
Mm-hmm.

CCPIA (23:36.78)
And that’s what led me to that question is part of this. we subscribe to your service, I can do all this search myself, correct?

Beth Messier (23:46.969)
you

Yeah.

CCPIA (23:51.626)
But on these certain searches that I really want to deep dive. So tell me a little bit about your account management. What do you offer in the account management?

Beth Messier (24:06.361)
So you get a whole team with CoStar, first of all. The first person that you would get access to is somebody like myself, right, a specialist in your local market. It would be specific to your local market. And that they would work with you essentially to learn the platform, get up and running. You can save searches and set alerts and things like that so that things just are sent to you via email and you’re not having to live in here every single day.

And we’ll really be the ones to help you from a strategic standpoint of like, what do you want to look at? Because a lot of times, Rob, people get almost two in the weeds and they get too crazy with their filters. We suggest starting big and then you can say, okay, actually I’m not getting what I need. Let’s go smaller, right? But if you go too small, it’s harder to come out, right? So, you know, that’s always something we work on. Outside of that, you get access to…

CCPIA (24:57.368)
So in my question, I was shooting too big because I got almost 7,000 properties in this huge swath.

Beth Messier (25:03.777)
Yeah? Because you’re looking at your-

You’re looking right now at all asset types. So this is multifamily, industrial, retail, office, right? So you’re, it’s a big area and you’re looking at all asset types. So yeah, this is, is too big. You want to get smaller here for sure. Probably my recommendation on how you would want to do that is either by owner, right? Looking at their portfolio, like going after certain owners to then go after their portfolios or by going into certain, you know, narrowing down your area.

Right? Chicago’s big. Where are you? Where do you already have your relationships? Is it northern, Chicago, southern? You know, whatever it might be. Where are your relationships? So, there’s a lot of different ways that you can do it on that side as well.

CCPIA (25:40.269)
Okay.

CCPIA (25:51.958)
I love that because in this, when we think of commercial property inspections, we don’t just think of acquisition. We think of all those other processes we can do, the maintenance inspections, the fire door inspections, accessibility inspections. And that’s just touch the iceberg on everything as it deep dives down. so having a resource like this that, yeah.

6907 in this search of over 45 years old 45,000 to 75,000 square foot is enormous. mean, what data but then to you could probably call that down by give me give me I mean, are you able to if I asked the question, can I get all the the the net lease buildings or you know or or

Beth Messier (26:36.066)
Yeah.

Beth Messier (26:49.293)
The TrillNet,

CCPIA (26:51.51)
Yeah, and then that would even drop that down even further where I don’t want the building owner. I want the tenant that has to maintain that class because they’re more inclined to maintain something than they ought to replace something. And I I just look at this thing with it just it just makes my that makes the wheels on my heads just absolutely explode. What different asset classes do we have the ability

Beth Messier (27:02.37)
Yeah.

CCPIA (27:21.688)
to query.

Beth Messier (27:22.169)
Every any type you want the only thing So here let me I can show you this is what we identify as as Commercial right? It’s it’s offices and industrial its retail its flex its multifamily It’s we have land which really wouldn’t benefit you guys hospitality healthcare, right? Like you can really Narrow it down. The other thing is is that we have secondary types in our Student would be like student housing

CCPIA (27:24.622)
Does that?

CCPIA (27:30.028)
Yeah.

CCPIA (27:47.521)
What is student?

CCPIA (27:53.836)
Okay, it’s not like school or anything.

Beth Messier (27:54.19)
which is really niche. No, no. But we have secondary searches, Let me look. So we have this secondary type, right? So let’s just say I choose office and then I want to come into the secondary type. I can look and I can say like, maybe I’m really good at medical.

CCPIA (27:58.499)
Okay.

CCPIA (28:14.894)
Beth Messier (28:18.297)
Right? Maybe I’m really good at certain different types. That’s really good for retail, right? Of being like, I want to see a specific retail restaurants. I want to see restaurants, right? Like, you know, a lot of times their roofs have a smaller, shorter life cycle because it’s a high, you know, strong environment there. So, you know, you can look at that. So there’s that secondary type to get you to that next level of, I don’t want to just see office. I’m really good at medical. I have a really, really good

CCPIA (28:34.552)
Yes.

Beth Messier (28:48.531)
you know, name and reputation for medical, show me all the medical facilities, right? So there’s ways to do it that way too.

CCPIA (28:55.52)
Excellent. Excellent. Could you show me hospitality?

Beth Messier (29:01.198)
Yeah.

CCPIA (29:02.062)
in that drop down and then the subcategory for hospitality, the secondaries.

CCPIA (29:11.596)
Hostel, hotel.

Beth Messier (29:16.033)
And what you’ll find is that every single one of these filters changes based on the asset type that you select. So we have the secondary type, but we also have this classification side of the house, Of like, do you want to look, are you looking at luxury hotels? Are you looking at upscale? Are you looking at economy? Like, you know, there’s the different levels and niches that you can go after as well, right? Depending on.

Again, what you’re good at or what you want to go at, what you think you fit in best, right? Or what you feel like you fit in best, or what you think is going to make you the most money, right? Where do you want to go? Yeah.

CCPIA (29:51.544)
Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, I’m all about the victory in the win. And so I would, I would want to go wherever I can get more W’s than, then, then pies in my face. So when, when I look through something like this, Beth, and I’m, and I’m doing this is how is the program structured? Is it, is it by how many times I search? Is it

Beth Messier (29:56.3)
Yeah.

Beth Messier (30:04.225)
Yeah, exactly.

CCPIA (30:19.936)
A monthly structure is an annual structure.

Beth Messier (30:24.473)
So it is a 12 month contract for CoStar. We don’t do anything underneath it, underneath that, but you do pay monthly for it. So it’s a monthly cost and then a 12 month contract.

CCPIA (30:40.266)
Excellent. But unlimited searches within that, right?

Beth Messier (30:40.953)
And honestly, there’s a lot of reasons. Oh, it’s unlimited. Yeah, unlimited access to the site and to searches and data and all of that. Unlimited trainings with your account manager. I think I forgot to mention that you also get access to a market researcher. So let’s say we’re a data company, we’re not perfect. We don’t claim to be 100 % perfect in our data, right? It’s real life data.

If somebody leaves the company and they’re no longer there, like it might take us a few days a month, whatever it might be to update that information. But the good part is with CoStar is that if that’s the case and you run into a property or an ownership group or whatever it might be, and you’re like, this is it. I need this contact information. I want to go after them. This is it, right? You have access to a market researcher who you can go and say,

this information is outdated for this particular property or this ownership group, can you go out and find me the right email address or the right phone number or whatever the data might be? And so you get all of a sudden your company now expands, right? Because you have the branch, have a researcher on CoStar that will do some of the legwork for you that you don’t have to do. And that’s a really, really powerful thing.

CCPIA (32:03.146)
I love that. mean, so many times a referral source that might, that you might be calling on or soliciting leaves and moves also around the marketplace. And they’re not going to call you up and tell you that you left because you’re really as a service provider to them. You’re not the highest on their priority. Yeah.

Beth Messier (32:22.201)
Yeah. Yeah. You’re low on the list. Yeah. Yeah.

CCPIA (32:29.678)
And so you start, you start sending your thank yous to the wrong address. And you’re like, this, this came on deaf ears. so, so yeah, that’s, I love that idea. I love having them. It’s almost like.

Beth Messier (32:37.689)
Yep.

CCPIA (32:44.622)
You’ve got another set of employees working for you behind the scenes, working either on your, I don’t want to say CRM side, but they’re certainly working for you on a daily basis, helping you as your in-house sales team.

Beth Messier (32:49.869)
That’s exactly right.

Beth Messier (33:07.639)
Yeah, and use them, right? I’ll say I think it’s one of the most underutilized resources that comes with a CoStar license in a lot of different, you know, personas and groups that we work with, but it’s their job. It’s their job to keep this data up to date and to reach out and to find this information and update it.

CCPIA (33:09.442)
I

Beth Messier (33:30.701)
And when they actually have a customer that needs the information or wants the information, it’s like, you know, they love that. It makes so much more sense. It makes it a little bit more valuable to them, I think, you know, I’m like, okay, I’m making a difference here. And so, yeah, it’s use them, you know.

CCPIA (33:48.174)
When you think about our industry on the commercial property inspection side where there’s so many other avenues that are afforded to us, you think this being another tool, there’s probably nothing more frustrating to me than somebody buys a tool and puts it in a drawer, never engages, never uses it, and then they’ll complain that it costs something for us to put it in the drawer.

Beth Messier (34:12.935)
Hmm?

Beth Messier (34:16.515)
Yeah.

CCPIA (34:16.952)
type of thing. let me think. So I signed up. I’m on board. I’m ready. What is something that this cost our relationship can help me with? Day one that’s going to impact my business.

Beth Messier (34:36.481)
Yeah, I actually really love this question. First and foremost, it’s going to sound maybe counterintuitive coming from me, but it’s not a tool that you want to sign up for. Please don’t sign up for it if you’re if you don’t have the time, capability, resources or desire to learn it and to go and to use it to its fullest extent. Because a lot of people see CoStar and they’re like, I mean, I don’t know if I can swear on this podcast, Rob, but it’s like, holy crap, right? Like,

CCPIA (34:56.366)
I love that.

Beth Messier (35:05.773)
There’s so much data. Look at all of the owners that I can go after. And while that is true, that becomes wildly overwhelming. It can take up a lot of time if you’re looking at trying to go after 7,000 owners, right? And 7,000 properties. I mean, you don’t know where to start. And all of sudden you fail before you even get into the product because it’s too much, right?

The people that really succeed are the people that can look at this tool and say, here’s exactly how I want to look at it. Here’s another way I want to look at it and let me bite this off in small pieces and put the resources towards it. You can’t email these people one time and think that like you’re going to get a million responses, right? Like,

They’re all getting email blasts. So you have to have a marketing plan for it, or you have to have a cold outreach plan for it from a calling or knocking on doors, right? Like there does have to be a plan associated with it and resources that get put behind it. Now, at the same time, to answer your question, I guess, directly.

That’s something that you’d work with your specialist in your market with of like, what are the small bite-sized pieces that we want to start with? First and foremost, like I said, we do have saved searches and alerts that you can set. So first thing I always say is let’s start with an ownership group you already know, you already work with, you already have a good relationship with. What else do they own? Right? That is the easiest way to start because you already know how to contact them. They already know your name.

And now you’re just trying to expand from one building to two, to three, to four, to five, right? And you’re going on that. That is the easiest way to start. And that is where I would recommend everybody kind of, you know, biting off their first bite.

CCPIA (36:56.952)
Yep. And I already, if I was doing this tomorrow, I’m not in the field anymore. I get the opportunity to talk to fabulous people like yourself, Beth, all the time and learn about these new things in the industry and think about where.

30, 25, 20 years ago when I was just dabbling and starting commercial to where we’re at today and these tools, I’m going, wow, I could have scaled up faster. could have done things different. Where my business was 70 % client referral and 25 % industry referral. I’m going,

Beth Messier (37:27.853)
Yeah.

CCPIA (37:44.022)
of that industry referral, can count them on a couple of hands annually. But now I would know their portfolio, their client’s portfolio, their associate’s portfolios. And instead of me going to them, hey, can I take you out to lunch, bring three friends? I can now turn that around because the information is in front of

Beth Messier (37:53.997)
Mm-hmm.

Beth Messier (37:59.01)
Yeah? Yes, yeah.

Beth Messier (38:13.709)
That’s exactly right. Your conversation becomes much more pointed and strategic. It’s not a shot in the dark of like, hey, bring a buddy to lunch and like, let’s chat and hope that that person, you know, has a property or an opportunity for you. Now you can go in and you know the buddy that’s coming and you know their portfolio. you know, whether you want to play dumb and have a…

CCPIA (38:13.9)
and I can go after them. I love this.

Beth Messier (38:42.347)
a roundabout conversation and lead them to it, or if you want to be direct and say, hey, I know you own five properties. I know one of them’s over 45 years old. When can we meet up and talk about that building and the roof on that building, right? Like there’s so much that goes into it that makes building relationships and networking so much easier and so much more impactful, right? Because you’re having real conversations.

CCPIA (39:11.374)
Well, in our time, I guess there’s a phrase that, I ain’t got time for that. Nobody’s got time. Nobody’s got time to sit there and monkey around, right? You want to be able to just jump in, tell them who you are, them that elevator pitch, either through an email, a phone call, or a cold call, and convince them real quick that your services are

Beth Messier (39:18.873)
Yeah

Beth Messier (39:26.297)
Hmm?

CCPIA (39:41.302)
of benefit to them. And we would only know that because I got that information from you.

Beth Messier (39:52.237)
Yeah, that’s right.

CCPIA (39:54.638)
How tough is that?

Beth Messier (39:55.406)
That’s right. And I think, you know, yeah, yeah, I think you’re spot on. And I think it’s all about how you utilize it. You you said something and it was in a different frame than I think that I’m gonna bring it to, right? But not having the time, right? Not having the time is really something we all struggle with in everything we do.

All right, haven’t been to the gym in three years because I don’t have the time. Well, if something’s really important to you, if you’re really wanting to grow your commercial side of the business.

you have to have a tool that is gonna help you get there and you have to put the time and effort into utilizing that tool, right? And utilizing the resources that come with it because like you said, I mean, I’m sure that you were really successful in your time, right? In the field with all of your referrals, but a lot of that is just hoping, right? A lot of that’s crossing your fingers and hoping that you get a referral and hoping that you meet the right person, you know, that has the right context.

And this takes the hope out of it a little bit, right? You you might still hope that they pick up the phone, whatever it might be, but this takes, this removes that. This allows you to be proactive and, but you gotta wanna do it.

CCPIA (41:13.358)
Well, you’re right. And you know, this is not the set it and forget it. this is this is, you know, inspections is a full contact sport and you just you just can’t jump in and go, okay, I hope I hope I get a call today. But most of us work singularly. We work alone. We’ll bring in vendors or we’ll bring in subcontractors on big projects. But at the end of the day,

Beth Messier (41:18.521)
Mm-mm.

Beth Messier (41:24.532)
Mm-hmm.

CCPIA (41:42.698)
Most of us run one inspector shops and we’re out running on that hamster wheel or the treadmill every day. But to be able to have something that I’m not saying this is easy. The program here with CoStar, but at least it’s got the intelligence that gives me the data that I can deploy.

Beth Messier (41:46.476)
Yeah.

Beth Messier (42:10.679)
Yeah. Yeah, and let me…

CCPIA (42:12.662)
and I don’t have to search.

Beth Messier (42:16.939)
Yeah, that’s right. And you don’t have to knock on doors anymore and just ask for who you should be asking for. You know who you should be asking for. But let me also say this, Rob, you know, yes. Or higher up. Yeah, exactly. But let me say this too, though, Rob. This is not a tool just to, I think, like talking about that you need to put the effort into it is really important. The other side of it, though, is this is not a tool that you have to live in every single day.

CCPIA (42:26.412)
or higher up, or higher up internally.

CCPIA (42:41.422)
Mm-hmm.

Beth Messier (42:45.377)
Right. That’s not exactly how this works. It can be. That can be how it works. But we do have the ability to export data. There is a limit to it, but you can’t export, right? So you can also live out of, if you get 400 properties in one of your searches, save it. Great. We have that. You can also export it, right? And then you have now a spreadsheet or whatever, however you want to do it.

that you can like work off of and go off of. And then in a month’s time, two months time, whatever it is, you come back and you do a different search and you look for different owners or different, you know. So there’s a lot of different ways you can do it. It’s just not as scary as it might sound, but you do have to put the effort in, right? Like anything else. We’ll get you to second base, third base, but we’re not gonna hit the home run.

CCPIA (43:28.142)
Yeah. And if you’re a growing business. Yeah, well, no, singles are just fine. You know, my thought is, if I’m a growing business, I am absolutely not utilized 100 % of my day. but there’s nothing more frustrating to have a strikeout, multiple strikeouts in a row. But and you’re going to get those. But to be able to at least.

Beth Messier (43:34.809)
Yeah.

Beth Messier (43:54.616)
Mm-hmm.

CCPIA (43:56.782)
If somebody says I’m going to get a curve ball and I can watch the curve ball come in, I’m more prepared for it. so I’m going to circle and say, because of these searches and good data, at least it’s telling me of where to go hunting or where to go after that ball being thrown at me versus a shot in the dark.

And like anything else, it’s an investment and when I make that investment, I’m going to go into it and I’m going to use it because if I don’t, then it’s just an investment wasted.

Beth Messier (44:37.017)
Yep. Yeah, that’s it. You’re spot on.

CCPIA (44:41.272)
So I’d like to, we’re gonna circle back here in a minute if you wanna stop sharing for half a second.

Beth Messier (44:49.879)
I do. Is it still showing? I hit stop sharing. No, well, there is more I can show. but there is, I did stop sharing. Is it still showing?

CCPIA (44:52.108)
You got something else you to show? I’m ready for it.

CCPIA (45:02.114)
Yeah, it’s still there.

CCPIA (45:09.646)
It’s okay.

Beth Messier (45:10.249)
Yeah, it’s not showing on my side.

CCPIA (45:13.39)
technologies it is it’s perfect perfect so I want to talk about that onboarding process because when you hear the word onboarding for some it can be scary what could I expect during my onboarding process and how long will it take me to get up and running

Beth Messier (45:16.747)
No, it’s not showing on my side.

Beth Messier (45:40.74)
So as soon as you sign the contract, get access to it within 24 hours. We say 24 hours, usually it’s within like two minutes. You get the welcome email, so it’s pretty immediate once the contract is signed. From there, really you work with your specialist, your local specialist to create and define an onboarding program specifically for you. So what that means is we have some people that are wildly technology savvy, they need very little.

And so we’ll do an onboarding session where we get in, we make sure they can log in, they make sure they know where the filters are and they know how to navigate the platform. Really simple, let them run, check in with them in a month or two months or whatever it might be. There are other people that prefer to partner more with you, right? And that want to, I wouldn’t say have their hand held, I don’t mean that at all actually. I mean more of like really go at it together, right? like, a plan.

CCPIA (46:35.544)
Somebody cook something!

Beth Messier (46:37.689)
Coached up, create a plan, right? A strategy that works. And so for folks like them, we do an onboarding meeting that is really elementary, right? Again, how to navigate the platform, what all the tabs look like, where the filters are, et cetera. Then we would meet them again in a week, two weeks, right? And say, okay, you’ve been in there. Now let’s create and save some searches and go after and create some lists, right? That you can go after together.

Do that together meet them again in a month when they’ve been able to go after that list and say how was that list? Was that the right people were they the right context were they the right properties? Okay, let’s tweak this or if it was right. Let’s keep it and now let’s build on it Let’s do the next asset class. Let’s do the next you know, whatever the next search might be right? And we really kind of build that plan. So

You’re looking at probably, most people are onboard within a month. I think it takes probably about two to three months, two to three training sessions, hour training sessions, 30 minute training sessions where people are like, I get this. I get how to like run this on my own now. Yeah.

CCPIA (47:49.902)
And then anytime I run into a snag, I just call my account manager and say, Hey, I tried doing this. I didn’t get what I wanted. Can I have some help? And I think when you and I talked before, you’re like, cool, I got a project.

Beth Messier (48:06.393)
Yes, absolutely. We love it. We love a customer that wants to partner and like really get in and use it. At the end of the day, it’s our job to make sure that the ROI is received by the customer, right? That is literally our job. We do have about a 94 % renewal rate for CoStar. That is massive when you think about it.

CCPIA (48:29.358)
Excellent.

Beth Messier (48:30.777)
And so it works, right? The tool works as long as you kind of get in and run with it. So yeah, that’s what we’re trying to do is create that ROI for the customer.

CCPIA (48:45.686)
And that’s all anybody wants, right? We want to be able to figure out what our expenses, make sure that it’s a profitable endeavor versus something that was a liability because then that’s where we’re going keep doing it over and over. Like you said, you have a high renewal rate because it works. It’s a product that can show that return. I’m excited for those listening or watching.

Beth Messier (48:48.952)
Yeah.

CCPIA (49:16.302)
We have a link on the ccpa.org website that all I got to do is go up, click on the box of the search engine right in CoStar, C-O-S-T-A-R, and follow that link. It’ll show you up to the member benefit page. Click through it, fill out the information. I had a bunch over the weekend do it because we were in a session in Arizona.

And I talked all about CoStar for a couple of three days. And I had a whole bunch of people seeing the light of the tunnel going, this is a tool. So I’m sure you guys got hit with a few inquiries. I’m going to recommend everybody go there that’s interested in learning more. Click through it. Find out where the benefits are. Find out where it fits into your business. as Beth, as Beth’s…

Beth Messier (49:47.609)
Bye.

CCPIA (50:14.134)
so perfectly said that this is not just a tool, but it is something that you can use to strategically align your business with others.

Beth Messier (50:29.527)
Yeah. And I think, you know, something to add to that, Raj, is like, you know, at the very least, people should see the tool. It’s okay if you don’t want to buy it right now. It’s okay if you can’t. It’s okay if you’re just getting your company. You got a couple more steps to get your company to a place where you can use a tool like this. Reach out anyway. Let me talk to you about your company. Let me show you the tool specifically for you and how you would utilize it.

CCPIA (50:31.33)
Beth. Yeah.

Beth Messier (50:55.731)
And that way you know what’s out there, you know what you maybe want to work towards or maybe you don’t. Maybe it’s not a tool for you and that’s okay too, right? But I would just recommend everybody see it and then make decisions off of that because it really is a difference maker on that side of the house.

CCPIA (51:14.606)
Beth, what didn’t we talk about? Is there anything we missed?

CCPIA (51:22.112)
I went down my list and I think we did a pretty good job. think think CoStar is an excellent product that for a portion of our commercial inspectors, I think it’s a good opportunity for you to go from good to great or scale your business to another direction. Maybe you weren’t even thinking about this year. Now, one more question, one more thing I’d love to make sure.

Beth Messier (51:47.512)
Yeah.

CCPIA (51:51.704)
We’re a certified commercial property inspectors association. Our breath is almost all of the northern half of North America. don’t, we don’t, how much of this do you guys cover?

Beth Messier (52:07.372)
we cover the entire United States fully. Every single commercial property across the United States. We have Canada. We do most of Europe. A lot of Australia. Like, yeah, we cover it all for the most part. But we’re strongest in the United States.

CCPIA (52:21.166)
Wow. And, and, and, and your dad is probably stronger in the larger urban areas and it probably narrows down a little bit in the more rural areas. But that being said, it pretty much encompassing. said, you know, for, for most of our members, Canada, United States, we got, you got us covered.

Beth Messier (52:46.372)
got it covered. And yeah, you’re right. mean, like any data site, yeah, the cities, the dense areas are the ones that, you know, will probably have the best data, especially when it comes to contact information. But we do, I would, we have hands down the best data for small tertiary markets compared to anybody else out there. And don’t forget, you have your researcher. So if you are in a small market and you’re like, shoot, the data is not there. You have your researcher that can go out and find it for you. So.

CCPIA (53:18.19)
So you’re never alone.

Beth Messier (53:20.068)
You’re never alone,

CCPIA (53:23.182)
Thank you Beth for taking some time. I really do appreciate it. This CoStar relationship is certainly something that I want to see escalate. I want to see it grow because I know that commercial property inspectors will benefit. Maybe not immediately in your growth of your business, but eventually you’re going to see that this is your next launch pad.

Beth Messier (53:53.187)
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more, Rob. I appreciate the space and the partnership. You know, and your support in it, it means a lot because I know you were in the field. You’re one of these guys trying to grow your business. So it means a lot. you know, really at the end of the day, I would just love to have conversations and see how we can help. If it’s not the right fit, it’s not the right fit, you know, and that’s okay. But if it is the right fit, I think it can, it can really, really impact positively.

CCPIA (53:54.382)
Thanks.

Beth Messier (54:22.446)
the growth of your your companies, even one man shops. Right. So really excited about this partnership.

CCPIA (54:30.839)
I don’t know if I can conclude any better. Thanks, Beth. Be safe. And I look forward to talking to you another time about CoStar and the successes our members have had.

Beth Messier (54:40.846)
Yeah, let’s do it. I’m excited too, Rob.

CCPIA (54:44.696)
Bye bye.

Beth Messier (54:46.169)
Bye.