leasing
Follow Up
Follow up can be equated to the gold mine of all gold mines in property management. Ask any leasing consultant worth his or her salt and they would all tell you that following up yields them some percentage of additional sales that they would not have otherwise booked.
It Matters
Two Saturdays ago I made an unscheduled trip to my local urgent care – yeah, pneumonia. Prescription – get more rest.
To the point – that was a Saturday; the following Monday afternoon I get a call from a strange number. I don’t answer and they leave a voicemail. Guess who; yes – a nurse from urgent care. Just checking in on me to see how I was feeling. Took all of 2 minutes to make that call and leave that message.
Two minutes that – god forbid I have to go back – insured that I will return to do business with them in the future. That is despite the fact that I don’t know anyone at the urgent care. Not enough to call them friend or otherwise.
Caring Matters
It boils down to Care. Now one could argue that it’s superficial. Okay – but it is effective.
Take away – pick up the phone and call someone you do business with and see how they are doing. Just check on them with no mission in mind. Work on securing some loyalty down the line.
Your follow up on someone today multifamily maniac,
M
Distractions
There are distractions all around us. How easy is it to get lost in a status or tweet stream review? How easy is it to get caught up in a conversation that is not really moving your business forward? How easy is it to get into the busy and forget about the important stuff?
What do you spend your time on?
What is the first thing you do when you get up in the morning? If you are like most you grab the phone sitting beside your bed. Or you scramble to find it buried between the sheets because you fell asleep reading something.
Focus is fast becoming the number on asset of excellent knowledge age worker. Property management professionals everywhere – it’s time to raise the stakes. It’s time to lay the phone down and get some serious quality work done.
Now before you start defending your opinion on the subject – let me say this. I’m not suggesting you put the phone in the drawer and ignore for the full day. I am suggesting you set blocks of time whereby you ignore the incoming text messages, emails and phone calls. Ignore the status updates and the urge to kill the next round of angry birds or fill in your word for a friend.
Raise the stakes and make some good work happen.
My guess – if you are looking to differentiate yourself from the pack; the skill of focus will be your linchpin.
Your always raising the stakes multifamily maniac,
M
Abolish Leasing Commissions
I am 100% convinced that leasing commissions need to go away.
They are a long survived sacred cow and serve no real purpose in the way of motivating people to lease more apartments or more importantly – serving people.
My solution – pay people a fair wage and tie 10% of that to your companies year over year same store revenue growth or some like kind metric.
Best kept Apartment Leasing Secret
This ranks up there with answering lead medium whatever they may be (telephone, text message, facebook post, email, etc..) following up and asking for the sale:
Let’s Do Some Average Work
Average is easy
Average gets a leasing person a fair amount of sales
An average service tech can do a fair amount of tickets in a day
An average make ready tech can do a fair amount of turns in a day
An average assistant manager can process a fair amount of transactions in a day
An average manager can lead a fair charge
Ever Get Annoyed?
Do you ever think – I really have a disdain for this guy or that gal because they seem to get more done in an hour than I get done all week? They get twice the commissions for half the work. They get twice as many service requests done in a day than I do and they head home on time everyday.
Get Annoyed Get Excellent
Put that ill-headed pride aside – get pissed – get over it and just ask. Ask that top producer what it is that makes them different. Ask them how they organize their day. What they say to people during the apartment tour and demonstration that gets them so many leases. Ask the leader how he/she gets so much out of their team. Then get busy doing that stuff.
This note from the margin got me thinking about the things that I do to avoid being average –
- I am number challenged. Budgets, forecasts and proformas are the bane of my existence. This is the hard work part of the business to me. What did I decide to do about it. I took out a budget and starting a blog series. I will take roughly two years – writing once a week – to think through and define every single line item right through the debt.
- For the longest time I really struggled with the written word – to combat that, I started reading everything I could get my hands on. I took the time to memorize the 5000 words used on the SAT test. And, I started this blog.
- I struggled with giving and taking feedback to and from industry leaders. Answer – I started participating in industry forums like the ones you see on Multifamily Insiders.
- I struggled with finishing. I love to start things but I get to a point and I lose interest. Answer – this is the eighth year of M Brewer Group. I have changed the name three times over the years and have written well over 2000 posts. And, I hope to never finish but not for lack of an endgame.
- I learned some basic code language so I could tweak the look of my blog. Word to the wise on this point (have a Mike Whaling backup plan if you get it wrong).
- As mentioned above – I read a ton.
- I am constantly trying something, suggesting we try something or pushing to get something done.
- I exercise.
- And, I love people where they are at without enabling them to settle.
Guess what, I still misspell words, break the rules of grammar, start and don’t finish, muck up budget work and go long stretches without posting to this blog. Do I fret – no. I acknowledge, learn from it and move on.
What do you do to keep yourself from doing above average work?
Your looking past average work multifamily manic,
M
