No Title. Just Stuff I Like to Talk About. With You.

Please. Don't ever be afraid to ask for the sale.

So many Leasing Professionals and salespeople don't ask for the sale because they are afraid of rejection. And I truly understand that; I do. And to show you how much I understand it, I am going to share a very personal story with all of you that taught me a wonderful lesson.

Years ago, before I realized I had a bit of a 'gift' for sales (ask anyone; I'm a really good salesperson), I was dating a man whom I adored. We had been going out for about three months and ladies, I decided I was going to spring 'the L word' on him.

I don't want to call this 'the wish list'. I want to call it the "vitally important list" for properties. Yes, I know this will vary by location, but let's put together  a list of what we hear as the 'must haves' from the majority of our prospective renter clients, shall we? 

I'll start with a few things I wouldn't go without:

Please, don't get me wrong - I think shopping services are great and necessary. I would never run a property without them. They do a wonderful service and give you a 'scorecard' that tells you how your team is doing at your property. But there's one thing YOU need to do every week that sadly, only typically takes about 30 seconds per property in most cases. And you don't need a shopping service to do it. It will immediately tell you how good your leasing team is on the telephone.

Ask a friend, business associate, sister, brother, aunt, mother - ANYONE can do this (I'm sure your shopping service would do this for you as well if you ask them) to phone shop your sites. Give them a list of property phone numbers. Tell them  here is all they have to do:

1. Get a timer that can be started and stopped to show seconds elapsed. (Your computer's analog clock option is fine.)

 Have you ever heard Bruce Springsteen sing “Santa Claus is Coming to Town“? It’s one of my all time favorite holiday tunes. And you can’t help but have fun when you listen to it. So, what does this have to do with you?

A quick review of 500 properties, all in the same city, from a major ILS showed:

• An astonishing (or maybe not so astonishing) 297 properties had either their pool or their sign as their main photo.
• A few actually had blurry photos for their main identifier photo. (Blurry.)
• One property had a closeup of their parking lot. (Yes, you read that right, their parking lot.)
• Several had model photos. (Some nice, some dated and unremarkable.)
• Many had their leasing office entryway. (Yeah, that'll make 'em lease.)
• There's clearly a push to post photos of properties at night. (So much of a push that it's no longer unique.)
• Water views are popular, too. (Lots of those out there.)
• Some still had 'no photo' available placeholders. (How sad is that?)

Dear Abby:

I've been looking for an apartment over the last few weeks and I've noticed some strange behavior on the part of the salespeople who are trying to get me to lease apartments. I believe they are called "Leasing Agents" or something like that. It's sort of annoying and I want to know what you think.

I went to a lovely apartment community to see about renting a two bedroom. The Leasing Agent was very nice, but after she filled out this card about me, she started doing the strangest thing. She kept using my name, over and over and over again. I thought maybe she was just forgetful or something but then when I went to the next place, the Leasing Agent there did it too! And at the next place and the next. They were doing it on the phone all the time as well. It was really starting to bug me. So, I actually started counting how many times they used my name.