I once attended a team building event when I was with Greystar, presented by Afterburner who "teach the techniques used by elite military teams to drive accountability, increase agility and accelerate performance." The group presenting to us were a group of fighter pilots who explained a variety of topics but one hit home specifically to me. They stated that every mission they fly, before it is executed, they already have a post-flight meeting scheduled to analyze the wins and lessons learned from the mission. They explained how critical this is to the successful planning of future missions by learning how they could improve.

In property management, we're in such a fast paced industry that it's difficult to slow down and assess all of the wins and opportunities at each asset, each month. However, NOT doing this is much more critical. As an RPM, I would have Property Managers present their wins and opportunities to me in front of their peers. We would discuss the ways they excelled in performance, how we could apply those wins to other communities and strategize about how to readjust our plan for the coming month to overcome any deficiencies.

As 2017 comes to a close, are you dedicating time for your teams to look at their marketing plan goals they set forth at the beginning of the year and analyzing the actual year end results in detail? Are you bringing Property Managers together to review the collective performance of your marketing and see how you can improve as a company? What marketing sources worked well and what did not, along with truly tracking those elusive "drive-by" prospects? Are you cutting the sources that didn't perform and reallocating those funds to targeted social media advertising and other advertising that IS producing a solid cost per lead/lease? Don't let your 2018 strategy be a run on of 2017. Properties change, trends change and social media is HOT. Take advantage of the opportunities it brings!