Brent Williams' Blog

Be honest and raise your hand if you are still using clip-art grade pictures in your marketing.  Don’t worry, we’ve all been there.  It just seems so simple and available, doesn’t it?  But when you have clip art representing your $20 million dollar asset, something doesn’t add up, does it?  We have recently started trying to upgrade our visuals, and although it’s not free, I believe it does make a huge difference – what do you think?

If you have a tight budget, and let’s face it, who doesn’t, I highly recommend trying out Crowdspring.  The basic concept of that website is that you submit what work you want done, such as a flyer or logo, as well as the budget you have for the job.  Graphic designers will then submit actual mock-ups of the work, allowing you to choose which one you like!  Obviously, the higher the budget you have, the more submissions you get, but you can also reach out to specific designers and ask them to submit something. 

That is actually how we had our original logo done and found our current graphic designer.  (Now our graphic designer also works for us to provide graphic work for our clients.  So if you have a specific needs, just send me a message and we’ll get a quote for you.)

(These are excerpts from an NAAEI press release, with the exception of the last line.)

As the nation’s unemployment rates slowly recover, the apartment industry continues to see strong demand for new employees in order to keep up with a growth rate that is expected to increase as people opt to rent apartments.

Approximately 35 percent of U.S. households are renter households, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. That number is up 4 percent from 2004. It is likely to climb even higher as the number of renter households increases anywhere from 360,000 to 470,000 annually over the next decade. Ultimately, that increase will translate into the creation of more well-paying jobs in the apartment management industry, which has come through the recent recession relatively unscathed by the layoffs and downsizing that have plagued other businesses.

I recently came across a great marketing picture shared by an apartment community, and I immediately thought it would be something fun to share on MFI.  So I called up the community to ask if that would be ok.  The conversation went something like this:

On-Site Employee:  You saw that picture?  How?

Me:  Well, it’s on your Facebook page…

I wonder if they’ll let me leave early today?
If I stay a little longer for lunch, nobody will notice
If they don’t see my computer screen, they can’t see that I’m really shopping for new shoes

I once worked with a person who was always leaving early, would always slough off her work onto her assistant manager, and really never seemed to care about growing the business unless her boss called.  But when the potential for a promotion came up and she didn’t get it, that’s so not fair!  I have seniority!

I have worked with another person who always did the bare minimum, except for when bonuses were around the corner, where he would suddenly turn into a superstar.  Needless to say, he was always disappointed and felt cheated.

Our industry is very unique in that most of our offices are literally within walking distance of our customers.  If a resident has a problem, it is not a difficult task to walk to the office and let the property manager know what they really think!  On top of that, we deal with one of their most emotionally important aspects of their lives – their home.  These two factors make confrontations from our customers quite common, so we need to understand how that might affect our employees and what to do about it.

A while back, I posted a question asking if Insiders felt burned out at their work, and I was shocked at how low the number was!  I kept thinking to myself, this can’t be right – I’ve walked into so many apartment communities and seen firsthand the look of contempt that I surely hadn’t gotten representative responses.  And then I realized – of course I hadn’t!  You see, Insiders by their very nature are not going to be burned out.  If you were burned out, tired of work every day, are you really going to visit an industry-focused website?  Of course not!

So if you are reading this directly on MFI, there’s a good chance this issue does not affect you, but it very may well affect your team members or staff.  So I’m going to throw out a couple of questions:  If your staff is burned out, would you know how to recognize it?  And if they are, what is your plan to address it?

Some communities struggle with great maintenance and customer service – this blog is not for them.  Instead, I’m speaking to those communities who already do a fantastic job at customer service, have low response times for their apartment maintenance, and overall have the “fundamentals” down pat.

Let’s say you live at a community with horrible service, and that is why you are leaving.  Well, that is going to be at the top of your “must have” list because it is a struggle you are having at that moment.  But if you are living at a community with solid service, then you aren’t as focused on that aspect because it’s not a concern.  And if you tour a community that talks about their great service, there is a chance you will take their word on it.  In other words, you don’t understand the importance of what you have until it’s gone.  (I’m pretty sure there is a love song in there, somewhere)

So in a strange sense, your strong customer service and maintenance program may not be appreciated until they have already moved out and learn first-hand what they are missing.  It might feel nice they they are missing you now, but that doesn’t change the fact that they have already left your community. 

I hear the “Jack of all Trades” job description a lot regarding our on-site teams, that everybody chips in and works to get the job done.  For many, it is almost a badge of honor to be a Jack of all Trades, as it implies that you can handle anything they throw at you.  And in that respect, I totally agree!  But I also believe it is the model of inefficiency.

First of all, I want to be clear that this isn’t a discussion on whether people should step up when the job needs to be done.  For example, if all the leasing consultants are out of the office or otherwise busy, I firmly believe that the community manager has to be ready to take that next prospect on a property tour.  Every person needs to be able to rise to the occasion in order to get the job done.  However, there is a difference between every person doing every job, and every person having a specific job but able to lend a hand when it is needed.

Let’s look at leasing consultants specifically.  A leasing consultant has a wide variety of job functions, from leasing, to customer service, to administrative duties, such as preparing a lease.  Sales, customer service, and administrative work are all very different, and often one personality type is rarely fantastic at all three.  Years ago when I called the community office home, I can say that I was great at customer service and administrative work, but only average at leasing apartments.  But even though I was only average at sales, and my co-leasing consultant was much better than I was, we traded off handling prospects.  This clearly was not the best use of our resources!

I have been having a discussion more and more with employers about how they fill their job openings, and each time, they give me a “wow, I haven’t thought of it like that before” moment!  So here is the revelation on how social media is affecting the recruiting process for apartment jobs.

I was talking with Patrick Morin the other day, and he mentioned that one of his top hiring questions is what self education has the job seeker done over the past year.  In other words, he’s not asking what education the person’s prior company required them to do, but rather what education they went out on their own and completed.  That speaks volumes, right?  If someone is willing to spend their own time, or even their own money on education, what type of employee will that person be?

When you see people interact on Multifamily Insiders blogs or discussions, or on an industry LinkedIn group, for example, you are not seeing a random sampling of the industry.  Instead, you are seeing the most dedicated and career oriented people our industry has to offer.  The Insider community is the most driven and self-motivated group in the multifamily space, and they prove it every day by participating on this site, attending industry webinars, and showing they are more than just the average worker.  On the other hand, do you think someone who sees their job as "just a job" is going to take the time to read a blog post about Fair Housing on their own time?

Browsing through Google+ today, I ran across several posts by Mike Tempel of Nexus Real Estate Services showing off some great virtual transformations of a model apartment using a "virtual staging" solution.  I thought others might find them interesting, so I'm sharing them here.  (The provider of the virtual staging solution was VirtualStagingSolutions.com.)

The growth of online learning has been staggering within the multifamily industry, and more and more companies seem to be realizing the potential.  However, I hear too many stories of companies sabotaging their own employees’ training.

One of the great benefits of online training is that it is self paced and convenient.  I don’t think it can replace in person training, but I think it provides a convenient and time efficient way to learn critical skills and ideas.  However, this convenience allows for it to be abused in many ways, as supposedly “urgent” issues often interrupt this critical training. 

When we send our employees to off-site training, it is understood that they are unavailable and the rest of the staff is expected to hold down the fort.  Only in extreme cases are employees pulled away from off-site training to handle a crisis.  And you know what?  Somehow they seem to get by!  But it often doesn’t work like that with on-site training.  I hear stories all the time about how the employee was pulled away from the training to handle some issue, simply because the employee was present in the community.  Why does the community’s ability to cope without that employee change when they are doing on-site online training versus off-site training?