My most used phrase about flex space brokerage is: “It’s a very easy job to do. But it’s a very difficult job to do well.” So if you’re asking yourself “should I use an office broker”, read on to see what you need to consider before picking up the phone.

Coworking brokers offer their services free of charge, so they have to rely on the quality of their interaction and information to retain relationships because these are the only things which can retain an ongoing relationship.

The role of an office broker is really quite straightforward: they need to qualify a client’s requirements well enough to understand the offices which will match their needs, and they need to understand the market well enough to recommend the right buildings based on the strength of their qualification.

When it comes to clients figuring out if they’re doing things right, it’s a tale of two halves:

1) What to they ask during the initial qualification and how in-depth do they go?

2) What do they recommend and how relevant is it?

So when you’re engaging with a coworking broker, what should you look out for and why does it matter?

Should I use an office broker?

How long did the opening call take & how many questions were asked? 

Did you know that the average qualification call in brokerage takes somewhere between 4 and 6 minutes? When you really think about how much information is needed to understand the individual nuances of an office search, can that be long enough? Consider this article which dives deeply into what should be part of the ‘perfect’ qualification process.

To even do that some justice, we’re talking about a lengthy conversation which digs into many aspects of your business, personality, driving factors and nuances.

Pay attention to how long you spend on the phone before they say they know exactly what you need and which products will be right for you. The shorter the call, the less likely the chances of an informed research process.

Do you feel their questions were relevant for them or for you? 

This one is tricky, because a lot of the time it’s hard to tell. The easiest way to think about it is to ask yourself if they asked questions that would only matter to you as the client looking for office space. We covered much around the fact that coworking brokers need to rank enquiries as they relate to their ability to hit internal targets, which you can read about here.

It’s always good to find out about how highly you rank on their ‘excitement’ scale – take a look at this piece for more detail around this as well.

Do you feel like they know your business? 

If during the qualification call you are not being asked about your industry, challenges, company aspirations etc. then key pieces of important information will be missing when it comes to selecting the most appropriate office buildings for you. Serviced offices are multi-tenanted and hugely varied in design and client mix, so how your business is structured and how it operates day-to-day makes a big difference in which ones will be right and which ones will be wrong.

Do you feel like they know you? 

A personal connection is just as important as their professional expertise. Searching for flexible office space is a process which will take time, sometimes months. You need someone in your corner that works in a way that suits you.

If they haven’t taken the time to get to know you as a person and give you confidence that they can support you in the right way, much of the remaining process is being left to chance.

Do they tell you why they are recommending specific offices? 

The way recommendations are presented tells you much about how good the initial qualification was. Whenever you get a list of offices to take a look at, pay attention to whether they are supported by specific reasons linking back to the qualification process.

The “why” is just as important as the product itself when there are hundreds of options to choose from. If there is no information about how they were chosen for your unique needs, then how were they chosen?

How much context are you getting about the flex space market in general? 

Let’s say you’re given a list of 6 offices which are perfect. What process went into finding these for you?

Major areas like the City of London or Mayfair have more than 250 options each to choose from, so context is everything. How many did they speak to? How many didn’t have the space? How many didn’t have the right amenities? Why were some of them discounted and others selected?

You’ll never get full chapter and verse on this, but if there is little-to-no context about the process by which your recommendations arrived with you, it’s good to ask.

Also think about how long it took to get the recommended office options… if you have them within 3 hours, and there are 250 to choose from, how much research could have actually gone into gathering all the required information?

There is a large body of blog content around these topics beyond the ones we have already linked to in this article, but hopefully this piece gives you some good pointers to prepare. If you are struggling with the question of “should I use an office broker?”, head over to Flex Engine to use a combination of professional and personal traits to make sure you speak with the right agent first time, every time.