Getting enough practice time is a big challenge for self storage managers who want to improve their phone sales skills.

When I checked my call recording data for several of my stores ranging in size from 600-800 units I found that my property managers were answering, on average, fewer than 2 phone calls per day from prospective customers.

Consider that most of your stores are renting less than 50 units per month and that not all of the new tenants talked to your store manager over the phone before renting. It is easy to see that my numbers aren’t that unusual, and even if your stores are busier than mine your managers are likely fielding fewer than 3 prospective customer calls on an average day.

Can you imagine a basketball player getting better at free throws by only shooting 2 or 3 a day? 

If you want your property managers to get better, you need to give them more practice opportunities. If you invest in training your managers it is because you hope they will change their behavior and adopt the best practices, but gaining the new skills requires practice.

Of course they can role-play with coworkers, and they should. However, role playing can get tedious especially if the person playing the part of the customer isn’t very creative (ask your store manager if you don’t believe me). Also, with role playing it is difficult to get real feedback like you do when dealing with real customers. With real customers you know if they rent or reserve or if they don’t. When determining whether a role play was good or bad, you are making an educated guess at best.

So here’s a solution…

If you have multiple facilities, route the calls from multiple locations to a single store manager. Put one of your property managers on the hot seat, and act like a call center rep for a week or two. Let them focus intensely on learning how to be more effective on the phone, and use this technique to give them the opportunity to practice with the same intensity.

For many property managers the answer to getting better at phone sales isn’t “try harder”, but rather “practice more”. This is one way to help that happen.

Will it take some preparation? Sure. But sometimes you have to do things differently if you want a different result.

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On Every Transaction?

Unless your advertising says “on every unit” or “on every size” or something similar, then you can better manage your discounts when you think of your move in specials as a closing tool, rather than a default part of the transaction.

Move In Special As A Closing Tool

Here’s how this concept works in practice.

Let’s say a prospective customer calls or walks in to rent a storage space and asks for a size that is highly occupied (let’s say 90% or above).  This prospective customer is interested in renting with you, and is also aggressively looking for the best deal so they  ask for your most aggressive move-in discount that you have advertised on a sign or flier or website.  Assuming, as I mentioned above, that you haven’t promised the discount on every storage space, you simply reply that your move-in incentives are tied to occupancy and that if they would like to rent a <name size that has the most vacancy> you would be happy to give them the <most aggressive move-in special>.

You then continue explaining what you are willing to do for them on the size the originally requested.  That would sound something like this, “If you still would rather have the <size they originally requested> I can offer you <very small token discount like $10 off the first month> .

Then be quiet.

You’ll be surprised at how many will move forward with the rental/reservation right then.

Escalate or Follow Up

For those shoppers that say something like, “Well…. I’m not sure… I think I need to keep shopping,” or something similar, then the ball is in your court to stand pat or to escalate your discount or move in incentive. In this way the move-in incentive becomes a closing tool rather than a standard offer.

With this approach you are in a better position to fine-tune your offer. If demand is slow or slowing and you really do want the rental, then sweeten the deal. If demand is strong or you are renting something you know your competitors don’t have, then maybe you let them go and use your follow up skills to rope them back in.

Do you differentiate your move-in incentives based on occupancy? How do you do it?

Photo Credit: timparkinson

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An off-topic, but important post.

I may not agree with Randy Smith on everything, but I think we should all rally around the movement he is creating to abandon the online lead aggregators.

His arguments against the aggregators are sound.

Here are a few reasons I’m throwing my public support behind the movement to abandon the self storage lead aggregators.

1. They destroy property value in the long run by pushing the industry to compete more heavily on price while at the same time increasing costs.
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   The aggregators are not creating additional value for self storage owners.  Instead, they are taking the self storage owner’s share of the pie and giving some of it to consumers in the form of lower prices and taking some of it for themselves through their fees.  Since they haven’t made the pie any bigger, the more the aggregators become entrenched, the more self storage owners are left with a smaller piece.

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   Aggregators increase your cost of marketing online by giving you another (large) website to compete against. Aggregators also increase your cost of marketing by adding another sales channel that must be managed by someone in your organization.

2. Aggregators create value for themselves by standing between you and your customers and charging you for the privilege. The aggregators are marketing to the same consumers your are and by using them you are creating additional online competitors.
3. Aggregators dilute your brand and homogenize your position in your community. Your company’s message and its personality are lost on aggregator websites. You are forced to look like everyone else. You have very little ability to differentiate yourself from your competition except through the deepness of your discount or the size of your move-in special.
4. You are better off investing in your own web presence. Using an aggregator is like renting your web presence. Owning your own corner of the web is much better. (You are a real estate investor or you work for one… this should be a no-brainer.)
5. In the long run aggregators benefit the biggest self storage operators over the smaller, independent operators.
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   The REITS are more capable of maintaining their high ranking on the search engine results pages regardless of the lead aggregators. The small guy is the one at risk of being pushed off the first page as lead aggregator sites rank higher and higher in local markets. If I were the marketing director at a REIT I would negotiate lower fees than the small guys (because at a REIT I would control a large amount of inventory) and because I was secure in my own search engine ranking I would use the aggregators to push more of my local competitors off of the first page of Google/Yahoo/Bing.

Full disclosure: You can find a testimonial I wrote for Sparefoot on their website here.

I have used several of the lead aggregators and my rational for doing so was simply this:  if they were going to be there, competing with me online, then I may as well be part of the listings that storage consumers find when they go to their sites.

This logic only holds if you believe the aggregators will always be there and cannot be avoided.  I’m not ready to concede that point.

I believe that as an industry we can act to reverse their growth.    Thus, I’m throwing my support behind Randy Smith and his efforts to educate the industry about the long-term dangers they pose to self storage industry profitability.

The examples from the airline, hotel, and and other industries are clear.  Aggregators help themselves, they help consumers get lower prices, and they harm the profitability of the  industry they become entrenched in.

Now is the time walk away from the aggregators and take back our marketing and our relationships with customers.

Reminder:  The opinions expressed here are mine alone, and not necessarily those of my employer.

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Here’s a quick peek at what I’ll be up to social-media-wise in 2012.

1.  Driving massive (by storage standards) customer reviews to Google Places.
2. Getting more  of my stores and/or markets on Twitter (it’s not the biggest social network, but it’s the easiest to start with).
3. Getting smart phones into the hands of my store managers.  Smartphones = Social Media Weapons.
4. Creating at least 2  community events for each of my locations/markets that are awesome enough to get the community talking (online and offline).
5. Training my store managers on the basics of  “how to do social media for business” so that they can experiment without fear.
6. Creating more robust social media guidelines for my company and employees.
7. Having my managers attend (maybe even host) tweetups and other events that allow them to meet virtual contacts in real life.
8. Doing more with video (video testimonials, video tours, videos of my managers, videos of our referral partners, etc.)
9. Experimenting with Facebook advertising.
10. More experimenting with tools like Hootsuite and Sprout Social to better scale my social media experiments.
11. Creating and managing to an editorial calendar.
12. More connecting with local bloggers.

For the bonus round, here are are few social-media-ish things I’ll be doing with SellingStorage.com in 2012

1. At least 40 SellingStorage blog posts are going up (this is number 3).
2. Putting my follow up workshop on sale for a couple days next week to help you start 2012 with a BANG.
3. Figuring out a legitimate reason to have the SellingStorage Facebook page or I’m shutting it off.
4. Guest posting on other blogs (at least 5 posts).
5. Continue #StorChat.
6. Speaking at ISS in Las Vegas on Social Media Marketing.

What are you up to this year?  What do you think I missing?

Photo credit: Cappellmeister 

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It’s January and everyone is setting goals and resolutions.  You probably have budgets and financial targets for your self storage locations.  Am I right?

Two Parts

Setting the specific objective is only the first part.  Clearly communicating the objective and why its important to everyone who is involved in making it happen is the second.

I sometimes don’t do as well communicating with my part time staff members.  At other times I do well at sharing the objective, but fall short in explaining why it is important or why the people on my team should care.

Here’s a Quick Checklist

What is the specific revenue goal for this month?

What is the specific delinquency goal for this month?

What is the merchandise sales goal for this month?

What is your tenant insurance conversion percentage goal for this month?

What other performance areas need the focus of a specific goal?

Does Everyone Involved Know The Goal? Do They Care?

I find that over-communicating never happens (it’s always the other way around).

How about you?

You’ll do better if you have both the goal and the communication done well, don’t you think?

Photo Credit: Bayassa

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I wish I had a property manager I felt was ready to become my new district manager.

But I don’t.

Comparing my property managers to candidates from the outside, I can see that I haven’t done a good job preparing my property managers to make the jump from single to multi-unit management.

The Missing Skill

One skill that I find consistently lacking in single-site managers that is absolutely necessary for a district manager is the ability to find meaning in data pulled from financial statements and other management reports. The business’s numbers tell a story, but most property managers are innumerate.

That’s not a slam or insult.  Most of the smart people I know wouldn’t have the foggiest idea what to make of financial statements or other data relevant to the operation of a self storage facility without some help or coaching.

An Example

When looking at revenue it is easy to see whether it is trending up or down; however, the trend alone is not much of an insight.

To get insight you have to ask deeper questions. If revenue is trending down, is it enough to be alarmed, or is it just seasonal? Why is it trending down (or up)? What is the appropriate response? Lower prices, raise prices, more advertising?

Did  a change in occupancy cause the change in revenue?  Perhaps she looks at delinquency to see if an increase in uncollected rent has lowered the month’s revenue.

Or maybe the amount of outstanding uncollected rent has remained consistent, but fewer people pre-paid this month causing a dip in the store’s pre-paid rent balance. In this case fewer prepaid rent dollars shows up as a decrease in the collected revenue for the month.

Reduced revenue for the month due to reduced occupancy requires a certain response.  Reduced revenue do to increasing delinquent accounts requires a completely different one. And finally, reduced revenue due to a reduction in pre-paid rent is probably nothing to worry about.

These are just a few of the conclusions I rely on my district managers to get right.

Can You Fill The Gap?

My property managers are, by and large, completely capable of doing the types of financial analysis I’m describing here. My problem is that I’ve never really given them the chance to try, to learn, or to practice.

Is there a way to help your property mangers practice?

I think so.

Here’s an outline of how it could work.

• Start by providing them with more data and ask them to interpret, draw conclusions, and make recommendations based on the data.
• Give them feedback and let them try again with the data from the next month or from another store.
• List out the common analyses and explain how to do them and why they are done. (That could be another blog post itself.)

It would be interesting to see who would be the most adept at the analysis. The high potential property managers would self-select.

I’m convinced that even if I never have the opportunity to promote the property managers who become competent in this area it would still be a win. They would be more engaged. They would be better able to self-manage and self-correct. Hopefully when life pushes them out of my organization and into another job they are ready for more responsibility and higher pay. I would consider that a win too.

It looks like I have a little bit of work to do in 2012 in further developing my team.  How about you?

P.S.  If you are the district manager I’m looking for or know someone who is, feel free to email me.  My email address is on my about  page.

Photo credit: Herval

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A sincere thank always makes an impact.  I’m not talking about some benign “thanks,” but a real, heartfelt thank you.

You’ll make even more impact when you say “thank you” with video.  A video thank you is as easy as talking and gives you a chance to heighten the intimacy and sincerity.  You customers will see your face (or your store manager’s face) and will be able to feel the energy and emotion in a way superior to a text-only note or email.

Below are a few thank you videos I filmed while visiting a few of my self storage properties in Kona, Hawaii.   The first two videos show how I filmed a thank you video to my team in Hawaii. The third video is the actual thank you video as my team in Hawaii would see it.

The last two videos are a two more examples of thank you videos that I recorded for Darlene McDonagh and for Gina Six Kudo who have been supp0rtive of our weekly self storage industry chat on Twitter.com called #StorChat.

I did all of the videos in one take.  I held the camera in my hand at arm’s length and I used YouTube.com’s free image stabilization feature to take out most of the shakiness (caused by not using a tripod) after I uploaded the videos.

Scroll down past the videos and  I share some pointers to help you make a good impression and to help your videos get shared.

Here Are The Documentary Videos

My video setup

Here’s the video thanking my team in Hawaii

Here’s a thank you video to Darlene McDonagh at U-Lock in Canada

Here’s a thank you video to Gina Six Kudo at Cochrane Storage in California

Tips For Making A Good Thank You Video

1. Put the main light source behind the camera so it is shining into your face, not coming at the camera from behind you.  In my videos above sometimes break this rule and have the light coming in from the side because I wanted to have the ocean in the background of some of the shots.  It worked OK, but the shots with the trees in the background came out with better contrast because I did a better job of turning toward the sun.

1. Be sincere. You may be able to fake positive emotion in a written note or email. It’s a lot harder to fake on camera.  The intimacy created by video can boost your impact, and it can also destroy it if you don’t really mean what you say.

1. Write down your thoughts before you start speaking if you want to get the shot in one take.

1. Use a tripod to keep your video steady.  Shaky video is harder to watch and you can get a tripod for less than $20. Less than $100 for a really nice one.  It’s worth the small investment.

1. Upload the video to YouTube.com.

1. If you hold the camera in your hand (opposed to using a tripod), click on the “Edit Video” link and activate the image stabilization option.  Preview the “stabilized” version of your video and if everything looks ok, save your work.

1. Put a link to your facility website in the description.  Be sure to type in the full URL including the “http://www.” at the beginning and YouTube will turn it into a clickable link.

1. Once you have the video uploaded email a link to the video to your prospective customers.

1. Wash, Rinse, Repeat.  Use this technique with people who refer business to you, vendors who do a great job for you, and for other great customers.

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Just because you haven’t written down your sales presentation doesn’t mean you’re not following a script.

Think about your last 10 interactions with prospective customers. Did you answer the phone in 10 different ways? Did you use 10 different phrases to ask the customer to purchase a lock? Did you try to sign up your customer to automatic credit card payments with the 10 different invitations?

Face it, we all tend to get complacent when explaining things that are familiar to us.  That leads us to having a “hidden script” whether we like it or not.

I’m not suggesting you mix things up for the sake of variety. What I am suggesting is that you take a close look at the language you are using and ask yourself if you are making the best language choices. Can you improve upon the words and phrases you have come to rely on?

Assuming you want to improve, here are a couple of exercises.

Exercise 1: Write Your Script

Write down a hypothetical conversation with a customer and circle, highlight, or underline your “standard phrases”.   Look for the phrases you tend to use on a regular basis and say out of habit.

For each of your standard phrases, force yourself to come up with at least three other approaches to that part of the conversation.

• Maybe you ask another question.
• Perhaps you change up the order?
• Maybe you figure out a way to be more concrete and specific in a description (concrete details are more persuasive than generalities).
• Look for ways  to build more urgency into your invitation (urgency gets people to act).
• Try to figure out a way to sound more likable and authentic.

The point of the exercise is to force yourself to thoughtfully and deliberately consider other approaches. Not everything you come up with will sound great, and that’s ok. It’s just part of the process. What you are trying to do is to unearth a lot of ideas and then choose the best ones. Undoubtably, you will find that you have some really good ideas and will want to shift your approach in some areas.

Exercise 2: Look For Patterns

Take a minute after each phone call and jot down some notes for yourself.

1. Keep notes on when your well-worn approaches worked and when they didn’t. For example, when a customer declines to make a reservation despite your best invitation, write down your best guess as to why they declined. Do this for five to ten sales calls, then move to step 2, ‘look for patterns”.
2. Look for patterns. Do you seem to have trouble building rapport? Do you find yourself hesitating or lacking confidence when it comes to inviting people to rent a storage space?
3. Experiment. Take your best ideas and insights and make some changes. All of this self-analysis and introspection does no good if you never try anything different.
4. Short circuit the whole process. If you already know you are weak in a particular area then forget all of this self analysis and get to work on improving the trouble spot. Find a co-worker or manager who is willing to practice with you and put in some practice repetitions. One of the reasons call center representatives improve so quickly is because they handle so many more sales calls per day than the average on-property self storage manager. If you want to get better, you have to practice.

Jump Start Your Thinking

Let me know what you think in the comments.  Are there some places your “hidden script” may be getting in the way?

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You Want Them To Like You First

Let’s say you want to establish a relationship with a local apartment complex where you refer customers to one another.

A common mistake is trying to cover too much ground in the first meeting.

Prospect First – Sell Second

The objective of the first meeting is simply to open the door to a deeper discussion of how you might work together. Professional sales people call this prospecting. Some self storage facility managers don’t have a lot of experience prospecting because in our business prospective customers come to us self-identified as interested in our product.

Nevertheless, approaching prospective referral sources is different because you are usually the one initiating the relationship, and you have no idea whether they’re interested collaborating with you.

When you try to cover too much ground in your initial meeting you run the risk of coming on too strong and causing your prospective referral source to see you as a salesperson or solicitor instead of a friend. It’s counterproductive to try to cover every detail or to enroll everyone in your “referral program” during the first visit. If the person you approach is familiar with cross-marketing relationships and is enthusiastic about working with you, you may be able to enroll them right away. However, that shouldn’t be your expectation.

An excellent first visit might only last five minutes. Simply introduce yourself and your business, let them know you serve similar customers, that you are interested in working with them, and see if they are open to the idea.

A Simple Invitation

You might something something like the following: “It was really nice meeting you. (Or if you’ve met before… It was really nice getting to know you better.) You know, it seems we both are interested in meeting people who are in transition. I’d be interested in exploring how we can refer business to each other. Are you open to setting aside 30 minutes for a follow up meeting or phone call?”

If the other party is open to exploring, then set an appointment and pat yourself on the back for successfully taking the first step in building your referral network.

If you want to deepen the relationship with your referral sources you should take a peek at A Dead Simple Way To Get More Referrals That You Have Overlooked For Years.

How do you get the ball rolling when you meet someone who might be a source of referrals?

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Photo credit: KrystalT

Update: To be clear on the schedule  #StorChat will be held every Wednesday from 3:00 – 3:30 pm Central, starting on 9/7/2011.  If you can’t join us on 9/7/2011, then join us a following Wednesday and we’ll be glad you came!

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Are you or any of your store managers on Twitter?  Do you want to be?

Now is a great time to jump on the social media bandwagon because I’ve teamed up with Rachel Greenfield, the social media maven at Sparefoot, and we are hosting a weekly Twitter Chat called #StorChat.

What is a Twitter Chat?

A Twitter Chat is an online conversation in which online users gather at a specified time to discuss certain topics. We will be kicking off #StorChat by discussing how people are using social media marketing in the self storage industry.

The great thing about a Twitter chat is it brings users together from all over country or world to a place where they can interact in real time rather than communicate in a delayed manner as they might through email or through posting in forums like SelfStorageTalk.com.

We Are Launching #StorChat on Wednesday, September 7th, 2011

We’re going to launch the first ever Twitter Chat for the self storage industry with #StorChat on Wednesday, September 7th from 3 to 3:30pm Central Time. You are invited to join us and participate.

Participating is super easy. Here’s what you need to get started.

1.  A Twitter Account. Sign up at www.twitter.com if you need one. You can find me at @kennypratt and @sellingstorage
2. Go to Tweetchat.com and sign in with your twitter account
3. Use the search box at the top middle of the page and search for StorChat. That will provide you a realtime stream of tweets that mention #StorChat.
4. Participate in #StorChat by answering and asking questions through Twitter. Just remember to put “#storchat” as part of your twitter update so that everyone can follow along.

If you are new to all of this twitter stuff, why not come cut your teeth with a group of supportive people. Once you get the hang of it you can look for other Twitter Chats that focus on your local or regional issues and are likely to draw in people in your target market. It would be an easy and interesting way to get the attention of lots of people in your market who may eventually rent from you.

How #StorChat Works

I’ll be hosting the Chat from my account @sellingstorage along with Rachel who will be tweeting from the @sparefoot account.

One of us will ask a question in this format: Q1 How are you using social media personally and for your business?

Then you can reply to the question or maybe comment and dialogue with other #storchat participants. We are all in this to learn from each other, so jump in and participate in the way the works for you.

Depending on how lively the chat is we’ll keep flowing on a question/topic or move on to another by posting something like Q2: How do you get locals to follow you on Twitter or “like” you on Facebook?

Just remember to append the notation/hashtag #storchat to all of your tweets you intend to be part of the Chat so that we can find your tweets during our online conversation.

It really is simple. Just try it out. Twitter rewards those who experiment

Here are some additional resources to help you get your head around the whole thing.

If you have never used Twitter the easiest way to figure it out is to register for an account and then just start messing around. If you want to have a beginner’s tutorial check out this How To Twitter video from HowCast.

• If you’re curious about Twitter Chats, check out how they do it over at #blogchat, a Twitter Chat about blogging: Blog Chat
• Here’s a peak behind the curtain with an article about how #blogchat is organized: 10 Steps to Creating a Successful Twitter Chat.  Mack Collier and #blogchat are a big influence on how we put together #StorChat.

So there you go… Please ask questions in the comments below, and I’ll help you however I can.

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