4 Tablespoons Curb Appeal

1 Quart of Apartment Training

½ Cup of Welcoming Office Environment

¼ Cup of Targeted Marketing

1 Pint of Community Reputation

2 Cups of Answering the Phone

2 Cups of Returning Prospect Emails

3 Cups of Welcoming Prospects at the Front Door

2 Cups of Follow Up

1 Smile from Ear to Ear

1 Heart that Wants to Help Someone Find a Home

1 Handshake with a pinch of determination

Blend all these ingredients well.  Cook at 350 degrees of Passion.  Don’t ever let it cool.  Decorate the lease with resident retention rosebuds.  Make your presentation and make that resident drool with anticipation.  Repeat this process daily.  Don’t be wowed by any add water and stir recipes that are out there.  Stick to the fundamentals and you will bake something special every day.  Did I miss any ingredients?  Let me know in the comments below.

Written by Jonathan Saar  If you wish to subscribe to regular posts, please subscribe here.

Coming up on three quarters of this year, Indatus and The Training Factor have been working hard to bolster our impact on the combination of tracking calls and using the data from that to initiate training.  This post is more of an update to our original partnership announcement that occurred early this year.  As many of you know Indatus has gone through a complete makeover this year to more accurately represent the products and services they offer.  You can learn more about their transformation story here.

Both of our marketing departments felt it necessary to update everyone on the overall specifics of what the services are and how they work together for you.  The other reason for this post is to answer any questions that you may have about this alliance or the services themselves.  Many of our clients on both sides are very happy with the results that this partnership has brought for them.  Below are a few highlights of what is available.

Call Tracker

Call Tracker is a powerful solution for measuring the effectiveness of your marketing efforts by tracking phone data. It accurately identifies how much phone traffic each ad generates.  It also allows you to measure the quality of your employee phone interaction.

Scoring Feature within Call Tracker

As a result of our partnership, we not only use recorded calls as tracking but a teaching mechanism. We not only show you the problem but we help you solve it! While using the scoring feature as an option, a predetermined number of calls per community will be evaluated and scored with our customizable evaluation card and appropriate training will be administered based on a predetermined score baseline. Just watch as your leasing professional’s skills and your closing ratios improve.  Really the scoring turns into teaching!

ROI

You spend a significant amount of marketing dollars attracting potential residents why not get the most of the money by utilizing both Call Tracker and the Call Scoring teacher to increase your closing ratio and your bottom line.

Call Tracker:

- Inserts a unique national toll-free or local telephone number into any ad (or series of ads).

- Instantly routes each call to any business phone of your choosing.

- Every call to that unique number is tracked, stored, and associated with the ad.

- While your business is engaged with the prospect, the software captures caller information and records the phone conversation.

- Once completed, Call Tracker compiles the call information and saves it.  At any time, you can go into your online Management Tools and generate reports.  A few of which are:

– Cost per lead

– Caller profile

– Time-of-day

– Geographic details

– Missed calls

Call Scoring Teacher:

Listens to and evaluated a random sampling of a communities leasing calls

Imports evaluated scored calls into a Learning Management System and notifies employees of their evaluations

Initiates training based on a predetermined baseline score

Notifies supervisors if training is not achieved in given time line

At any time, you can go into your online Reporting tool and generate grouped reports

We can’t tell you enough how happy we are with this program thus far.  Turning data into information that can help out the team’s onsite is priceless.  Information and knowledge only serve to help companies and their member’s progress and do a better job for our residents.  Like I said earlier in this post, we want to hear from you.  If you have questions about these services that are available we are happy to address them.  Feel free to pose your questions and thoughts in the comment section below.  On behalf of The Training Factor, I want to express a big thank you to everyone who reads these posts.  We know budgets are a big concern at the moment and as Eric Brown pointed out to me this morning on Twitter: “Companies are just devising ways to do more with less. That is the new economy.”  One of the main goals of this alliance was to help property management companies do just that…do more with less.

Written by Jonathan Saar

Mack Collier wrote a post the other day that coincided with research I have been doing for the past few weeks for a presentation that Tamela Coval from RentWiki and I will be handling for the Atlanta Apartment Association.  He wrote a great piece called “Here’s why you shouldn’t treat social media as being ‘free’” Please take a moment to read it!  Mack knows his stuff.

He was speaking about how you can make a blog for free and its connection to your overall website and SEO.  Tamela and I are about to present some information regarding Facebook pages and what it takes to make them successful.  I have reviewed about 100 or more property management and community Facebook pages and my findings were conclusive and probably of no surprise.  Over 90 % of the pages I reviewed were standalone pages.  There was no connection from the website to the page or vice versa.  We know it is very easy to make a Facebook page and maybe as Mack stated in his post that it was an easy buy in from the boss, because it’s ‘free’.  What about your overall goals in creating the page in the first place?

The reality is that if you do not make the connecting points and spend the time and money to make sure you have a full circle approach to your Facebook page, website, blog, twitter account etc., then you are wasting valuable time and resources.  If time seems to be an issue to in monitoring these channels then part of your planning phase should be to come up with a comprehensive strategy to keep these factors in mind.

• SEO
• Return on Engagement
• Resident Retention
• Community Outreach
• Return on Investment
• Corporate Culture
• How to be Social

The last point may seem kind of odd but from the status updates I am noticing that really does need to be discussed.  What are we going to talk about to our residents?  What are they interested in?  What will they respond to and appreciate?  I am sure you have some thoughts on this subject that will lend to this discussion.  What have you found that is working for your company, property management or otherwise?

Written by Jonathan Saar

Have you become a fan of The Training Factor on Facebook?  Thoughtful discussion and regular relevant content is posted daily.

A very inspiring moment happened today while I was shopping.  I am in line checking out and posting something on Twitter with my iPhone.  (Please don’t think I am obsessed)  The lady behind me asked me how I liked my iPhone.  I told her how much I love it and was grateful that my wife bought it for me for our anniversary.  She then said to me, “That’s good to hear, I work for AT&T”.  We then had a real cool conversation about different phones coming out and app’s etc.  I left the store thinking to myself that she did not need to do that, but it left an impression on that she made that effort.

That experience led to today’s blog post title.  I doubt very much that what this lady did was required in the AT&T’s policy and procedure manual.  I feel she did it because that was what she wanted to do and enjoys her work and wanted to make sure that the people who help her paycheck are happy to.  Do you think that is a fair analogy?  Resident retention for property management companies and customer service on the industry partner side is not a 9-5 job.  If you love what you do and the people whom you serve mean something to you then it’s an all the time job.  You will seek opportunities to make a difference as opposed to going through the motions of what your policy manual dictates.  The human element makes the difference.  The AT&T lady made in difference in my day,  what do you do to make a difference for your residents or customers?

Written by Jonathan Saar

Check our YouTube Customer Service Video- An overview of our Customer Service and Resident Retention course

Probably one of the most common human expressions we use is “I didn’t think it could happen to me”. Unforeseen occurrences can happen at any time.  At work even the most minor of situations can turn into a serious injury.  That is why it is OSHA required to have regular monthly apartment training safety talks on various topics in order to keep the reminders fresh on our team’s mind, with the hope that this training will help them think before they do.

Accurate record keeping is also an OSHA must for property management companies.  Leasing apartments may not be as dangerous as building a high rise, but perhaps this faux appearance is what can get us in the most trouble.  If an incident does arise, what documentation should your records have?  OSHA requires the following:

Each employer is required by OSHA to keep records of fatalities, injuries, illnesses, and must record each fatality, injury and illness that:
(1) Is work-related; and
(2) Is a new case; and
(3) Meets one or more of the general recording criteria of Section 1904.7 or the application to specific cases of Section 1904.8 through Section 1904.11 which can be found at www.osha.gov

What are some of the more common office situations where an injury can occur?  Below are some bulleted items.

Falling down is probably the most common accident.  Whether it’s tripping over wires, using a chair instead of a ladder, traversing in a dark office or apartment and many other situations can arise.

Office furniture and equipment can also pose hazards.  Getting fingers pinched or stuck.  Staplers falling off the top of file cabinets onto our head or feet happen all the time.  Have you ever burned yourself on the coffee pot?

Lifting items the wrong way can quickly put you in traction for a few weeks.

Incorrect posture can cause back, wrist, and neck problems.

Can you add to this list? What are some common hazards that you have come across in your office?  In a future post we will discuss safety from a maintenance teams point of view.

The Training Factor has already released the first set of monthly safety talks as a required course for your curriculum. Contact us today and make your property management company OSHA compliant!

Can there be any doubt of what a smile can do for another person.  When a prospective resident walks through that door, you have less than a couple of seconds to make that first impression.  It all starts with a smile.  Does a smile only come from your lips?  Absolutely not!  A smile comes from your whole body.  A genuine smile can be seen and understood from our whole demeanor.  Can you think of ways of how our whole body smiles?  Can a genuine smile really make a difference in gaining a new resident who will lease and call your community home?

How about our eyes?  Certainly they play a huge part.  Make sure your eyes on focused on theirs and not anywhere else.  Of course don’t be creepy about it; you don’t want to make the prospective resident feel uncomfortable.  Be relaxed about your eye contact; do not come across as forced.  Make sure you are not distracted by other things going on around you and remember that you are a professional.  Avoid eyeing the prospect from head to toe and back.  That would be really creepy.  If something does demand your attention while first greeting the prospect, make sure you say: “Excuse me”, turn to the person who is distracting you, address the matter quickly, then turn back and continue the conversation.

The handshake is also an important part of the smile.  That really helps translate the warmth, enthusiasm and overall happiness you are feeling towards the prospective resident.  In other words, don’t give the prospect a boiled spaghetti handshake, they need a determined and firm handshake that shows that their visit means the world to you and you can’t wait to fill their apartment needs.

Make sure our smile is natural.  Sometimes we can over smile.  This can come across as showing too much teeth or the cheese smile.  If we over smile it will be shown in our facial wrinkles.  You could be stretching your face so much that appears that we are completely overdoing what should be a natural act.

One of the best ways to get feedback about your smile and its affect is to ask someone.  There is only so much we can learn by looking in the mirror.  Ask someone close to you to give you an honest assessment of your smile in natural settings and its power over others.  Our ultimate goals are always to command the room…and it starts with a smile.  Does a smile really make a difference in securing leases?  Switch roles for a moment and pretend you are the prospect or consumer.  What impact did a smile have on you?

Written by Jonathan Saar

In case you missed it, check out our 15 steps to telephone leasing success.

There really has been little proof that leasing via twitter is or could ever be a reality.  A few of us have been testing the waters and “listening” to those on twitter who use the keyword apartment or apartment hunting.

By sheer coincidence I spotted a tweet from someone I was following already.  Cristin was kind enough to let me blog about this experience which began with the tweet captured above.  I asked her a few questions about what the difficulties were and where she was looking.  Up to this point I had really not tweeted very much with Cristin expect on a couple of chats.

I then began to use my network and send out some messages to property management companies on twitter who have communities along the east coast.  Cristin was looking for something in the Philadelphia area.  Mike Whaling suggests I ask Ellen Thompson since she had communities in that region.  I introduced Cristin to Ellen on twitter and Ellen very kindly provided assistance and found a community with availability in the location Cristin was looking.

Cristin tweeted a couple of times about her experience and how she was on her way to look at her apartment.  I checked in on her just to see what the outcome and here is her tweet in reply.

Please understand the context of this blog.  I am in no way saying that this is the next greatest way to get leases.  I felt compelled to report to my multifamily friends this experience and to demonstrate the power of listening and networking with the end result being a happy prospective resident that started out stressed and ended up happy.  As the dynamic of how prospective residents are changing it behooves us to closely monitor trends and to be in position for opportunities such as these.  There is so much change on the horizon.  How long will it take us to be ready for it?  I look forward to your thoughts on this topic.  What do you see on the horizon?

Written by Jonathan Saar

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Our ability to be a true example of successful conflict resolution begins outside the office and especially in down time situations with other team members.  If offsite situations rattle your cage then your sincerity to handle onsite situations will not shine through.  You can’t fake conflict resolution.

Put yourself in the following scenarios and ask yourself how you reacted the last time they happened.

The airline misplaced your baggage

The restaurant took long to bring your order or brought you the wrong items

The bank incorrectly applied service charges to your account

The cashier did not ring up prices correctly on your purchases and does not know what to do next

I am sure you can think of other very aggravating situations.  Feel free to tell me below.  Now I want you to view these situations from both angles.  First of all how did you initially react to these inconveniences?  Did you blow your top right away and become very demanding?  Or did you patiently try to work through the situation?  Now look at from the other side.  How did your emotions change based on the reaction of the person who made the mistake?  Think of the times when you knew the person really could not care less about what happened to you but is merely voicing script in order to handle the situation.  Now contrast that with the times when you genuinely felt the sincerity of the individual who is trying to rectify the situation.  Can you see how it is not possible to fake conflict resolution?

Our teams need to see us as a strong example of living conflict resolution as opposed to just reading a script.  Team leaders who portray this successfully win the hearts of their teammates and of those around them.  In the apartment world and in life in general there are conflicts daily.  The more challenging situations are probably right in the office.  Not faking conflict resolution is no easy task.  It is hard to control the thoughts of wanting to pop someone in the jaw.  The question is how often as companies, do we address this topic?  What are you doing in your coaching, mentoring and training in order to address this topic on a consistent basis?

When you think back to all the situations when we knew that someone was “faking it”, it really gives us grounds and room for improvement within ourselves.  Don’t fake it….live it.

I am interested in hearing your approach to this topic with your teams.  What have you found successful?

Written by Jonathan Saar.

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The following letter was from a resident to one of our clients.  This letter was a must share and there is an interesting lesson to learn from it.  I removed the names for privacy purposes and I really appreciate our client forwarding this to us.  This is a huge testimony to what an overall company culture can do for an organization and how effective training in skills such as customer service really pays off.

“Dear Management Company:

I am writing this letter to Thank Awesome Leasing Professional, one of your leasing agents for her professionalism and hospitality.

On May 28, 2010, I arrived an hour before closing at Community Awesome in a frantic panic. I had just left a neighboring apartment complex where I was to move into one of the units on that very day; but to my dismay, the apartment that was discussed was not presented. In fact, the unit was located in an area that I clearly stated was not going to be comfortable or even safe enough for me to reside in. At that point management proceeded to show me another unit that was 4 flights up and to add insult to injury, at a higher rate.

Well, you can imagine, I had a lot of emotions come over me all at one time. I was hurt, angry, disappointed, and scared about where I was going to live. I had a time frame to be out of my current home and had reserved a moving truck, turned on my electricity, moved my phone and internet service along with getting all of the monies together to move into this apartment the following day.  When I asked management about what we had discussed, they simply said “Well, this is all we have available, think it over and get back to me later this evening, take care”. I was floored! Here I am, scheduled to move in the next day and there was absolutely no concern about my well being or about what was discussed in regards to the living space. I got in my car and drove directly into the parking lot of Community Awesome.

Thank God for Awesome Leasing Professional! I had met her previously before when I initially was looking for a place to live. As I quickly walked into the office, her face was the first thing I saw. I immediately started rambling about my situation and how I needed to move in ASAP! In fact, if it was possible the next day. She was so kind and accommodating as she pulled up my information and calmly took charge of my chaos.  She explained to me exactly what I needed to do so that she could get the ball rolling for me. At this time, it is just a little after 5pm as she handed me the application to complete and gave me instructions on the next course of action.  I still needed to go to the bank and get my monies redistributed to bring back the money orders to finalize my application.

Awesome Leasing Professional, waited patiently for me to complete my transactions as I returned just a couple of minutes before closing time. She assured me that everything was going to be okay, in fact she stated that she was going to come in the next day, which just so happened to be her day off, to ensure that my paperwork was done for me to move in by June 1, 2010.

To say Thank you just isn’t enough. I was moved to tears, and grateful that she took it upon herself to not just get another tenant, but she showed heart felt compassion and empathy for my situation. As a consumer, it is refreshing to have people really listening to you and taking the time to resolve your issues.

I want you to know that Awesome Leasing Professional is a true Gem. She represents your organization to the highest levels of integrity. I personally wanted to thank her for being here for me in my moment of despair. She brought the sunshine into a cloudy day.

I am now a resident and this has been a wonderful beginning. I am happy and excited about living here.  Your whole staff has been amazing! Please continue to support them, because it is “rare” to get great service and it has been impeccable! Thank you again.”~~Contributed

Did you notice that this resident initially had made a decision to move into another community?  Can you imagine the situation if the Awesome Leasing Professional did not create a memorable experience when the potential resident first met her?  There are some amazing lessons to be learned by this situation.  You never know how you are going to close a lease.  Even if it seems that you may not get the sale, can you not see how important it is to maintain a full force customer service demeanor right down to the end.  Awesome Leasing Professional did and the results speak for themselves.

What are your thoughts on this letter?  How do you maintain that full force customer service demeanor through the entire process of dealing with potential residents?

Written by Jonathan Saar

Did you know that our Learning Management System is not only a fantastic value add for property management companies but also for apartment associations?

I have wanted to share The Training Factor social media program for some time now especially on the topic of time and ROI.  There continues to be the never ending question of exactly how long it takes and what should you be seeing.  Every company is different of course so this is not a “You should do this” post.  It’s simply going to show you that it works and to give you something to compare the time factor involved.

I hope you had a chance to read Social Media Examiner’s post on how Time Pays with Social Media Marketing. It provides some great statistics on a broader scale.

My program was literally one day at a time.  Early in 2009 I started working with different social media platforms and did my research, reading and observing of others to learn what to do and obviously what not to do.  Just some basic experimenting and familiarizing myself with platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Delicious, Plaxo, and others took about 5 months.

The buy in was challenging.  2009 was certainly not a time when people were reaching out for anything.  Most companies were huddled in the trenches and riding out the economic war that was taking place.  The subject of “How long does this take?” came up often during our team meetings.  I am grateful to a wonderful company who believed in my plan and philosophy and was willing to be patient despite the challenging year 2009 was.

It took some time for me to develop a consistent approach to what I was doing each business day since every day was a learning experience.   There was a lot of experimenting in order to test reactions and see what the overall affect was.  So here is a basic rundown of what I monitor each day.

1. Check our LinkedIn Group and monitor activity
2. Find relevant content for our Facebook pages.
3. Interact with comments and questions on our Facebook pages.
4. Find relevant content for Twitter account
5. Interact and have conversations with various professionals on Twitter
6. Read various blog posts and make comments
7. Create informative and relevant blog posts for our viewers.
8. Analyze analytics on all platforms.
9. Educate myself on latest news and updates that change constantly on the topic of social media.
10. Screening data from “listening” platforms such as Google alerts and others.

Now how much “time” do you think this takes on a weekly and daily basis?  Obviously I have numerous other responsibilities during the day.  I have customers I reach out to regularly.  I have numerous companies who I contact regularly that have demonstrated interest in us.  I collaborate with team members on a regular basis on the numerous projects we have going on and the list continues.

The bottom line is it takes a solid consistent approach in order to make it work.  The results speak for themselves.  Obviously I started with big Zeros on all angles.  I was starting from scratch.  From a search engine optimization perspective the results were phenomenal.  The moment we transferred our blog to our actual website, our traffic doubled.  The more blog posts I put out, the more traffic comes in.  As a result of a well rounded approach, traffic sources come from all over the place.  In my opinion, every inbound source is gold.  We are even seeing our Facebook pages show up in Google alerts based on certain keywords.  Whether it’s organic, or from social media platform referrals, each instance helps our Google rankings.  Did this happen overnight? NO! Was it a struggle to keep consistency when initial results were slow?  YES!

The big question is has it worked towards the bottom line?  As a company we have no trouble in saying…Yes.  Did it require patience?  Yes!  Can you just jump in blindly and hope it works?  To me that is like jumping off a bridge into a river when you do not know what lies beneath the surface.  A definite moldable goal and plan is an absolute must.  A consistent patient approach will pay off.

I am interested in hearing your stories.  What were your feelings when you first started using social media for your business and how have you found it working for you?  Thanks for stopping by.  If you value these posts feel free to subscribe via email or RSS feed on the top right corner.

Written by Jonathan Saar

Are you going to NAA this year?  Make sure you stop by booth #1740 and say hi!

Do- Look for room for commendation for every team member.

Don’t- Single out failures on any one team member’s part.

Do- Allow room for everyone to express their thoughts on the agenda items.

Don’t- Insert random items that are not on your agenda.  Your team will not be prepared for the item and this will inhibit the productivity of the meeting.

Do- Create specific guidelines for how the team will implement agenda items

Don’t- Use “Air Statistics”.  In other words do not make statements as if they were facts. (Pulling them from thin air) This is especially important when referring to your competition.  Don’t make up items.  This will only intimidate and discourage your team. Making up facts also discredits you as a team leader.

Do- Create healthy and realistic goals for your team.  Help them have something to look forward to as a result of the agenda items outlined.  Having goals increases productivity.

Don’t- Go Overtime on your agenda.  Stick to the allotted time for each section.

Do- Use visual aids to assist with agenda items.  Using print material, whiteboards, projectors, and other items will greatly assist with overall retention of key agenda items.

Don’t- Develop an “I” problem.  Always be selective in your word choice so that the meetings overall aura is positive and is fostering a team spirit.

I am sure you can add to this list of Do’s and Don’ts.  Whether you are in the property management industry or any other, what are your tips for a successful team meeting?

Thanks for reading today’s post.  Feel free to share it with your friends.  So you don’t miss out on any post, there is also a “subscribe to” function on the top right of the page.

Written by Jonathan Saar

Did you know that The Training Factor is now doing mystery shops?

Another epiphany hit me this morning when I woke up besides the fact that I really wanted more coffee.  I got to thinking about all the projects I have on my plate and also the list that each of my team members have in anticipation of future events.  The word “deadline” was the associative word of the moment.  Then it kind of struck me how really that is such an awful word.  I tweeted it out, put it on my Facebook page and I had people agree with me.

The next step was to find out where this word came from.  So here is what I found.  According to the Online Etymology Dictionary the words history comes from the civil war era where prisoners were warned that if they crossed a literal line they would be shot.  Chew on that for a moment then continue to the next paragraph.

So now that we know this it behooves us to ask ourselves the question: “Why do I use this word as a daily business term in order to set a time limit on a project?”

The word screams negativity!  It has the word “DEAD” in it.  I thought to myself all the times I put myself on a deadline or was given a deadline or realized my deadline was in just a few hours and every time I recited the word in my head or remembered those moments the only feeling that I experienced was….fear.

The property management industry is project oriented.  Multifamily professionals across the board are working hard each day to improve their business profile.  Is there not a better word we can use for our teams to signal a completion time frame?

We are required to inspire our team not scare them.  So I now I put this out to you.  Am I in left field with the crows and cornstalks on this post?  What kind of lingo do you use to help your team see their projects through to completion?  I look forward to your comments.

Thank you for taking the time to read today’s post.  If you feel this and my other posts have value, feel free to share them with your friends.  To not miss out on a post, there is a subscribe to feature available on the top right corner of this page.  Thanks so much!

Did you know that we now have student pay per course options available now?

See you at the National Apartment Association Educational Conference at booth #1740  Don’t forget to register!

Written by Jonathan Saar

1. When the telephone rings, answer it!  - With a smile!

Do you have anything you can add to this list?  I look forward to your comments.

Posted by Jonathan Saar

We are looking forward to seeing you at NAA in June! We will be in booth 1740.  Come by and say hi!

Many years ago, I happened to be traveling with a furniture repair technician on his route.  I knew the guy very well and I was kind of curious about his business and what it was all about.  On one of his calls there was a square end table that had some damage on the corner.  The customer pointed out the problem and let him go to work.  He then did what he was trained to do.  I watched him handle the repair and was amazed at the quality of his work and thought to myself that compared to what it looked like originally, to what it was now that this was top notch.  What happened next kind of bothered me and I never forgot it.  When the job was done and he was putting the table back he turned it 180 degrees and then put the accessories back on the table.  The customer came back to inspect the work and only looked at the corner where they thought the repair was done, meanwhile it was now on the complete opposite side.  The customer was happy and paid the bill.

When we were leaving I could only wonder what would happen when the customer went to dust her table.  If she was savvy enough, she more than likely would have noticed that her table was turned.  Maybe she spotted the repair on the other corner and still thought the technician did a great job, but the final step was in essence deceit and deflection.  Do you think she would call that company again?  From my point of view honesty would have been the best thing.   Repairing something that is damaged does not always result in perfection but it can result in at least satisfaction and future business.

Can this analogy apply to how apartment reviews are dealt with?  I am sure you won’t look at furniture repair technicians the same way again.  However I do look forward to your thoughts in the comments section below.  There continues to be a sense of fear and the need to cover up or deflect negativity or imperfections within our communities.  The bottom line is that they will always be there.  How do you deal with complaints?  What’s better for the apartment industry?  Deflect or embrace?

Written by Jonathan Saar

Want to get more leases from your internet leads? Try these 12 steps when responding to prospects.

~~A  post by Mechelle Flowers-President of The Training Factor

1. Reply to it!

2. Reply to it within 2 hours.

3. Use a catchy subject line… Example- “Your perfect home is waiting”

4. Use a personal greeting… Example – “Hi there Deshawn”

5. Speak to the person… Answer all the questions. – Don’t use a canned email!

6. Write with features and benefits of the apartment and community –

Example 1-  “The apartment I have in mind for you has a roommate floor plan.  That means that your bedroom will be separate from the other bedroom, giving you a little place to escape at the end of a long day.”

Example 2 –“You mentioned that you have children, what are their names?  They will love to play at our beautiful playground that is within view of your living room window and during the hot summer months, they can swim in the sparkling pool while you relax on one of the many lounge chairs.  If they like video games (what kid doesn’t?) we have an arcade and small DVD and book library for those rainy days as well.  The schools here are beyond compare and your children can hop on the bus while you wave to them from your balcony as you sip your morning coffee.”

7. Include Links to helpful information:

Example-

Web commercial – Click here to see a video of our community - www.webmercial.com

Website – Click here to see our apartment and community features - www.website.com

2×2 floor plan- This is the floor plan I had in mind for you.- www.floorplan.com

Local School Website- www.localschool.com

8. Ask questions back: Example -

“In the hallway, you’ll find a large closet with your washer and dryer connections which would comfortably fit, not only your laundry appliances, but a comfy corner for your kitty as well!  What is your cat’s name, by the way?  I have a cat too and I just love her!”

9. Include the community phone number.

10. Use some sales skills!  Paint pictures with your words focusing on the prospects needs.

Example – “You mentioned that you have children, what are their names?  They will love to play at our beautiful playground that is within view of your living room window and during the hot summer months, they can swim in the sparkling pool while you relax on one of the many lounge chairs.  If they like video games (what kid doesn’t?) we have an arcade and small DVD and book library for those rainy days as well.  The schools here are beyond compare and your children can hop on the bus while you wave to them from your balcony as you sip your morning coffee.”

11. Invite them to come to the community and include your office hours.

Example- I can’t wait to meet you and your children!  When will you be able to come and see your new home?  I am available to meet you, either over the phone or in person all this week.  Our office hours are M-F 8:30am to 6:30pm and on the weekends from 9:00am to 5:00pm.  I’d love to talk to you, so please email me back, call me or stop by soon!  Your home is so great that I would hate for someone else to snatch it up before you have a chance to look at it!  I’m including some more information about your home, so please take a look when you have a moment.”

12. Make sure your email is grammatically correct.

Please share any tips you may have for internet leasing success.  The more feedback the better for the industry.

Written by Mechelle Flowers

Be honest with yourself and figure out what your ratio of front burner to back burner projects is.  A few weeks ago I wrote about how technology can be a blessing or a hindrance to our overall time management, but today it’s just about the level of importance we place on projects.

On a daily basis there are decisions that are clearly in our court.  We may not need the direction from someone above us.  We have in front of us a challenge, options and then the moment to pull the trigger and do something about it.  It’s at this moment that a character moment is about to be born.  Does it become a front burner or a back burner moment in your business day?  Complacency can be a huge job killer.  You are in a rut as a result of the same perhaps monotonous routine each day, and as a result of this decisions that should be made are not and put on the back burner.  The results are clear.   There is a reason why a project appears.  There is an obvious need to that has to be filled and addressed.  When it goes to the back burner it affects your team, your company, and your personal image.

It’s interesting to note some statistics on how much procrastination takes place.  According to an article in Ezine, 95 % of us do procrastinate with 20 % being chronic.  Now that’s staggering.  When it gets right down to it, time management is revenue management.  The more time we spend on rolling out key projects, the more money we spend, and the more money we lose.  The multifamily industry is working through another major shift.  An interesting combination of sheer survival in this economy coupled with quickly advancing new technology has made the influx of projects staggering.  As leaders and potential leaders it’s always good practice to step back for a moment and analyze our process.  Here are some thoughtful questions.

What dictates the decision to put a project on the back burner?

Do I have personal goals as to how long a project will take and see completion?

Do I clearly recognize the sense of urgency surrounding a project and how does that affect my process?

I found this advice from Procrastinationadvice.com to be very compelling.  Below is a partial quote of the article which had some important tips for effective time management.

Important Tips:

• Distribute large chunk of projects into smaller and more manageable size as well allot appropriate time to attain every task.

• It is a normal phenomenon to extend beyond the time limit that is allotted for every task. Hence, one of the important procrastination tips is to pre-determine the time limit. For instance, an individual can schedule to file papers for 30 minutes.

• Initiate each week in creating a planning session, bifurcating the weekly as well as daily plan. Note all the vital appointments and deadlines that are approaching. Set reminders a day before the deadline date. Make use of highlighter pens to mark the most exceptional task on the calendar.

• Schedule the most important activities as per the maximum productive time zone of a particular day. It is considered to be one of the best procrastination tips, a person highly active in morning needs to plan majority of activities around morning time, since this is the time when a person has less likelihood of procrastinating.

• It is suggested to complete a minimum of 1 undesired job during the morning hours. This will result an individual with a feeling of accomplishing at least something during the remaining portion of the day.

• Preclude the most likely disturbances, prior to their occurrences. It implies switching off the cell phone, hiring a babysitter to take care of the child and so on. This is also one of the most helpful procrastination tips that will enable an individual in achieving more in less amount of time, devoid of any distractions.

Source: Http://www.procrastinationadvice.com

Now it’s time to hear from you.  What are you doing to effectively manage your time?  If you have ever been in a rut before, how did you dig yourself out of complacency?  Any special tips or hints you can share to manage time effectively?  Thanks for your thoughts.

Written by Jonathan Saar

Today’s video blog speaks for itself.  I want to commend all of the new multifamily folks that I am seeing on twitter.  I know in time you will see the value in the platform not only for your company but for your current and future residents.  I wrote a post not too long ago entitled Twitter Etiquette: Why did you unfollow me?

Today’s post is a follow up to that since today I was blocked by a new Twitter user.  Find out why in the video.  If you have any thoughts on Twitter chivalry for all of us in the apartment industry, please feel free to share in your comments.  Thanks for tuning in.

Written by Jonathan Saar

Good day folks.  This is my first attempt at a video blog but I think it went well.  Optimization Summits taught me that sometimes you just need to make the jump and see what happens.  You will never learn anything without trying.  There are some great posts out there recapping highlights from the conference.  I am sure I missed some so please feel free to post any additional links in the comments section below.

Some Optimization Summits recap blogs

Mack Collier’s Blog

Geno Church with Brains on Fire

Ryan VanDenabeele from PCMG

Brett Duncan with Marketing in Progress

Christopher S. Penn Awaken Your Superhero

Jay Ehret with The Marketing Spot

Duncan Alney with Firebelly Marketing

My take on the whole conference is very personal as you will see in my video below.  This conference was completely about doing.  Make sure you plan for September when Optimization Summits will take place again.  I look forward to your comments on my video today.  Thanks for tuning in.

If social media is overwhelming you with the plethora of tools, platforms, fan pages, accounts, usernames etc, then it’s imperative to stop for a moment and organize your thoughts and process.  You may be voicing your frustration and throwing up your hands and saying there is nothing but a bunch of noise going on.  Or you may be wondering how in the world you can keep up with the pace that these platforms are growing.  Let’s reflect on another platform that morphed and that we quickly evolved the ability to control how we used it.

Jump back a couple of decades in the television world and reflect on what was available.  Mainstream television did not even become available to most people until the 50’s.  Those were the days when you only had one or two channels tops and you had to get out of your chair to turn the TV on.  As the decades past, the amount of options and information increased.  Currently you can make a choice on what kind of channel package you wish for yourself.  Some can be as low as 200 and then the options continue to climb.  Within these packages are channels dedicated to certain topics.  We have The Weather Channel, The Food Network, ESPN and many others.  Does this mean that you leave your TV on just one of these channels all day long?  Of course you don’t.  What was the premise behind making channels that focused on just one topic?  So that the viewer would always know where they could find the specific information that they need.  Maybe at first people as the viewers were a bit perplexed at seeing an information specific channel available, however we learned the ability to change the channel.  You got to love remote controls for that!

So where can this be applied for the current social media hysteria.  Social media platforms do have the ability for you to change the channel; you just need to learn how to use the remote.  Facebook has a feature at the top of its page called “Top News”.  Facebook uses its own algorithms to ascertain users and pages that you interact with most often and makes these its suggested “Top News” for you.  You can also set up various lists that can quickly change your feed.  I currently have 6 different lists (channels) that I have made for my Facebook account.  I know I will be adding more soon.  This enables me to change channels so to speak in order to review information based on my categories.  Twitter also has this feature.  You can now create lists based upon different categories of information you may want to review.  Third party platforms like Tweetdeck allow you to add as many columns (channels) as you wish so that you can review information at your leisure that is topic or industry specific.

Just as with choosing a channel package for your home television, you also have a choice as to whom you will friend, who you will fan, and who you will follow.  Some may provide value and some may not.  Some you may be interested in slightly but not as much as something else.  This is where your choice comes into play.  The difference is you are in the driver’s seat.  You get to make your own channels.  Some people started throwing their TV’s out because of this radical change but that did not make sense.  Neither does it make sense to just completely shut down your social media platforms.  You can reduce your “channel” package or set up your favorites so to speak.  So if you feel you are in hysteria mode at the moment, remember that it was not too long ago when television had a similar impact when it went from 2 channels to 2000 in a matter of decades.  It did not take decades for this to happen to social media but the ability to control the information has not changed.  The remote control is in your hand and you get to choose your channels.

If you have any other suggestions on what has helped you to control the flow and overflow of social media information, please feel free to share with the rest of us.

Written by Jonathan Saar