Closing Ratio

I've had clients asking me  this very question for years. Are shops really valuable to a company? Is there a better way? Let me give you some reasons why  mystery shops just might not be the answer you're looking for at your company. For the sake of this discussion, we're limiting this to phone and in-person shops.

1. Shoppers have bad days. Just like Leasing Professionals, shoppers have 'off' days, too. And this is reflected in the shopping report  that describes the Leasing Professionals' behavior. I once worked for a company who so strongly believed in this that they made sure their employees were shopped TWICE on the same day. That way, if one shop was horrible and one was good, they could throw the bad shop out (chalking it up to a bad day for the shopper). 

2. Shoppers have to remember how you behaved on the tour. Having been shopped numerous times in my career, I can tell you that sometimes shoppers get their facts confused. I have had shopping reports that accused me of failing to show all of the amenities on the property to the shopper - and they listed the ones I left out. The  problem? The property didn't HAVE the amenities I supposedly overlooked. 

Earlier this week a new employee, who we’ll call Jack, started in the office. I was under the assumption that Jack was familiar with the sales process as he started at a sister community several months ago so I asked him to follow up on a few guest cards.  The calls were more than horrific.  He began raising objections after I offered some advice on follow up techniques. His objections indicated to me that he definitely needed additional training. I began a conversation to essentially overcome his objections. He cut me off in mid sentence with “why are you trying to sell me?”. Through the shock and awe on my face, I managed to get out “In order to sell your community, YOU must be sold!”

When I was first hired on, I was asked to create a feature benefit analysis. During this process, I sold MYSELF on our community. Kudos to my manager, she knows who she is :)  Do you have your employees do a feature benefit analysis on the first day? If not, I suggest you implement this before any of them are allowed back on the phone. Something so simple may be the difference between a dead guest card and a new lease. Now this particular situation was based on follow up, but any person involved in the initial prospect interaction MUST be sold on your community to effectively sell your community.

Have you ever asked a simple question and been told “you will need to speak with so and so about that”? One community I call for a market survey each month has several employees to answer the phone, but they are not allowed to answer questions! They take your name and number EVERY TIME to have someone call you back. At a recent housing fair one even told a prospect to stop by tomorrow because no one in the office could help them that day. WTH?! This seems quite counter productive to me. Everyone in your office should be on the same page. Questions should always have the same answer and anyone who is interacting with the public should be able to help!

Recently, I developed a Virtual Leasing Webinar that was all about the ever so neglected email leads that we receive on-site, daily.

After secretly shopping several communities (both within my company and external companies) I found that the response "rule" is to send a generic template email that tells me essentially everything I just found on the website I was just on. Can we say, redundant?

So here I am, shopping for a new apartment home... I found a few I like and now, I need to find out more information (you know, stuff the website doesn't tell me... most of them anyway; there are a couple really great ones out there which are totally virtual... I'm talking to YOU Archstone, high-five!). But let's say I'm on a "normal" website that doesn't tell me which apartment home I'm renting and doesn't have an interactive map showing me my location. These are things I want to know. I'm picky and I need to find out if you have a 2 bedroom on the top floor with a view of the trees or something and NOT staring right into another apartment home. So how do I find this information out? I don't like to call... so instead I'll click the "want more information" button and start crafting my email. It would look something like this:

By Ben Holubecki, STML Realty Group, Glen Ellyn, IL

As the weather warms up and the rental leasing season gets into full swing it is easy to get caught up in the rush of showing requests, rental applications, lease signings, and new tenant walk through appointments that usually fill these months for leasing agents and management companies. From what we are seeing in our area and what I have heard from managers and agents in other markets this is one of the more active springs in recent history for tenant moves and new leasing activity. We have seen our average vacancy time decrease from 30 days to less than 20 days over the last few months and some properties are renting as soon as they hit the open market. This is a far cry from just a few months ago when we were in the middle of one of the least active leasing winters that we can remember in the Midwest.

While this is all great news for those of us who earn a living filling and managing these vacant units, we have noticed one area where things have not picked up all that much. The “tough to rent” properties are still hard to move. The nice unit in the dirty building, the overpriced 1 BR apartment, the house with the crazy wallpaper, the home next to the hoarding neighbor, and other general nightmare rentals still continue to be issues. While the market seems to be increasingly active, I see the activity picking up for well maintained, clean, and competitively priced units. Unless the property is in a top-notch area, the properties with problems continue to be a tough sell but through some aggressive marketing and incentive offers we have seen even those properties move in a reasonable period of time. It takes a bit of creativity to get someone to look past things that they believe they can’t live with but sometimes it’s just a little bit of money or the structure of a deal that keeps things from coming together. Some of the more common and effective offers we see in our market lately have been:

By Peter Lamandre, Better By Design Real Estate, Scranton, PA

“It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.” - Benjamin Franklin

We all work hard to build our reputations. I was speaking with a potential property management client yesterday, when I asked him if he had any questions about my firm. His reply was simple; “Yes, are you honest?” I chuckled and reminded him that he was a referral from one of our oldest clients. The fact of the matter is that people like to do business with those they know, like, and TRUST. In property management the TRUST part is a big piece — after all the owner of the property is basically saying here is my single biggest asset, you’re in charge; please make me lots of money.

By Geoff Roberts, Buildium, Boston, MA

When determining rental rates, you want to strike just the right balance between maximizing your profit and remaining competitive in your local rental market. Following are some tips for finding that magic number.