Rofo sits down with Colliers Walnut Creek office & industrial broker Eric Erickson. He explains why he enjoys using Rofo and how it helped his brokerage business.

Eric does a good job tracking where his leads come from and is observing a decline in sign calls while leads coming from online sources like Rofo and craigslist continue to increase. He’s also seen newspaper advertising decline in importance as online listings services continue to proliferate. Obviously, a fundamental shift is occurring in how people search for commercial space. More and more people are using an online resource to find their space and even in a down market leads from the internet are increasing while sign calls are decreasing.

Eric thinks Rofo is a great commercial space listing service and highly recommends it to other brokers with small listings. “Rofo’s been worth the money, and I think if a broker is not using it they’re losing money, and they’re losing leads.”, explains Eric.

Interview
My Name is Eric Erickson. I’m and office industrial broker out of Walnut Creek Colliers.

How long have you used Rofo?
I’ve Been using Rofo about a year and a half, two years now and I market a lot of small spaces for my clients and it’s been a good vehicle to market small spaces.

Has Rofo generated tenant leads?

Yes, Rofo has provided us a way to expose our properties like we haven’t before. Over the last couple of years, I’ve been tracking sign calls and the different ways that the tenant leads come in. Rofo has been on the growth, sign calls are down, but Rofo’s up.

Is Rofo’s craigslist posting feature useful?

Absolutely, before we used to, obviously, advertise in the newspaper, but as craigslist became the classified ads online, newspapers became less important. But craigslist, ads fall off craigslist, and Rofo has an excellent feature to keep your ads on craigslist until you change it. So its an excellent listing service to use if you want to attract tenants through craigslist.

Is the Rofo site easy to use?

Yeah the site’s pretty easy to navigate and load up your information. It works really well going the other way from the tenants perspective, they go through and they either can find us through craigslist or the Rofo site.

Would you recommend Rofo?

Absolutely, Rofo has been worth the money and if a broker’s not using it, they’re losing money, they’re losing leads.