Tracey Lott Heitzman's Blog

Learn how to use descriptive language to spice up your marketing!

I’m all about saying something in a unique way when marketing apartments, but sometimes I find myself  with a brain cramp and it takes me a while to get those creative juices flowing.  How many times have you found yourself in the same situation while in a time crunch to get your copy out a.s.a.p. and all you can come up with to describe your community pool is “Sparkling”? 

I am always on the lookout for examples of outstanding service because it defines you as a company and sets you apart from your competitors. Great service can come from anywhere – from businesses where you expect to be treated special, like Nordstrom's, to businesses where you are thrilled to just to be treated like a human being, like most fast food establishments.        

Recently I had the pleasure of having a Chick-fil-A employee deliver food to my table and offer to grind fresh pepper on my salad.  Wow!  It made me compare what they are doing to the multi-family industry and what we could be doing differently. 

In this down market, Chick-fil-A is leading the fast food industry in profits of over $3.5 billion and the company has so little debt that they plan to be debt free in less than three years.  I was curious as to what their “recipe” for success is and how we can implement some of those same ideas to make us a standout at customer service.  Here’s what I learned: 

With its 600 million users and average daily session time of 25 minutes, Facebook provides an exceptional opportunity for visibility, Google indexing, live search ability, and fan engagement.

But, if you build it, will they come? And if they come, will they stay and engage?

Be Interesting

Keep your audience engaged and offer something of value. When fans “like” a certain brand’s page they need to be provided with content or activities to keep them active on the page. In order to keep your page “alive” it is important to launch something interactive daily.

Here are some interesting and creative ways to engage and interact with your residents:

Historically apartment communities have had a policy to ignore reviews in regards to online reputation management (ORM).   However, it is important to take the opportunity to listen— and even respond— to what residents are saying online because the conversation is happening whether you choose to participate or not.

What is ORM?

“When your confidence goes up, your competence goes up.”  Zig Zigler

Selling, like anything else, is about confidence.

“A fool is someone who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.” -Oscar Wilde

We live in a world that seems to focus on price— not value. Price is only one factor in a buying decision. What we often don’t realize is that we make value-based buying decisions every day. We buy our clothes, cars and food based on the perceived value that we get from what we purchase.

It takes more than a smile and product knowledge to succeed in leasing and too many sales are being missed simply because of ineffective follow-up.

Did you know that 95% of sales happen after the 5^th attempt?

How do you follow-up with your prospects after your first conversation or after your first appointment?  Do you get so tired of chasing people down that you lose focus and take the lazy approach of calling to "touch base,” or to "check-in,” both of which bring little value?

Prospect’s don't rent apartments, they rent a lifestyle.  So, why is your apartment community a revolving door?

National studies have shown that the average tenure for a resident is nine months or less and it’s estimated that it costs 5 times as much to re-rent an apartment home as it does to keep an existing resident.

Multiply the cost to turn an apartment by the number of apartments in your community and multiply that result by the national average for resident turnover of 60 percent (NAA). This will give a ballpark figure of what vacancies could be costing your community annually.

For training to be effective, employees have to apply what is learned on the job. Otherwise, all of the time, money, and effort spent on training is wasted.

That means training doesn't end when trainees leave the session.

In Part I of the blog, "On-Again, Off-Again: Are Your Employees Engaged?", we discussed how engaged employees can affect resident retention.  To check out Part I, click here:

http://www.multifamilyinsiders.com/home/multifamily-blogs/myblog-admin/on-again-off-again-are-your-employees-engaged-at-work-part-1-.html