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SpareFoot Releases Free Tenant Value Calculator For Self-Storage Businesses

AUSTIN, TX., May 8, 2012— SpareFoot, the online self-storage marketplace, announced the release of a free Tenant Value Calculator. The new interactive tool empowers storage facility owners and operators to understand the lifetime value of a new tenant, giving them an idea of how much prospective tenants are worth. For the first time, storage businesses can instantly compute this analytic using their real numbers around rental rate, length of tenancy, and acquisition cost.

Brainchild of SpareFoot Account Manager Sara Richardson and built by Developer Evan Huston, the Tenant Value Calculator was created as a solution to a common problem for storage businesses— determining how much they should spend on marketing to earn ROI from every new tenant. It’s a notoriously tricky metric to determine, but essential to making informed marketing decisions.

“They’re exact calculations, down to the penny. You can use it to calculate the ROI for one specific person, or your average,” Huston explained.

The calculator adjusts in real-time based on user-entered data to reveal the date on which a storage facility can expect to profit from a new tenant. Two graphs illustrate revenue...

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  • SpareFoot Releases Free Tenant Value Calculator For Self-Storage Businesses
    By Joel on May 10, 2012 | No Comments Comments

    AUSTIN, TX., May 8, 2012— SpareFoot, the online self-storage marketplace, announced the release of a free Tenant Value Calculator. The new interactive tool empowers storage facility owners and operators to understand the lifetime value of a new tenant, giving them an idea of how much prospective tenants are worth. For the first time, storage businesses can instantly compute this analytic using their real numbers around rental rate, length of tenancy, and acquisition cost.

    Brainchild of SpareFoot Account Manager Sara Richardson and built by Developer Evan Huston, the Tenant Value Calculator was created as a solution to a common problem for storage businesses— determining how much they should spend on marketing to earn ROI from every new tenant. It’s a notoriously tricky metric to determine, but essential to making informed marketing decisions.

    “They’re exact calculations, down to the penny. You can use it to calculate the ROI for one specific person, or your average,” Huston explained.

    The calculator adjusts in real-time based on user-entered data to reveal the date on which a storage facility can expect to profit from a new tenant. Two graphs illustrate revenue from a tenant over time. The calculator can also be used to compare the value of different marketing platforms, such as fliers or online efforts.

    “I’m excited anyone can use it, even without being a client,” Richardson said. “It gives facilities an idea of what our company is about.”

    The calculator was devised in one of SpareFoot’s company-wide, think-tank style Hack-A-Thons. At these monthly-ish events, any employee can pitch unique ideas for the development team to create outside of regular business operations.

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    Disclamer: This entry is intended to promote our partner StorageMart and some or all participants received compensation.

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  • What is in a Name?
    By Joel on April 23, 2012 | No Comments Comments

    Do you like your name? What is in a name? Do you as a self storage company put a lot of stock in making sure you have the right name for your company? Would you change your name in order to be more competitive? It is sure that self storage companies go through some sort of thinking process to try to figure out if the name of their self storage company is good and will attract customers. Most companies try to think of something clever that will stay in the minds of customers.

     

    I don’t believe that I have heard anyone say they decided to store with a company because of their name, but I have also heard of customers turning away from a company because of their name. So a name is important in one sense but in the long term you still have to have a good company to back up your name. Customers will associate your name with the quality of service they got from you. So in short, what is in a name, the ability for you to gain the respect of those needing storage.

     

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    Disclamer: This entry is intended to promote our partner StorageMart and some or all participants received compensation.

  • Storage Experts
    By Joel on March 9, 2012 | No Comments Comments

    Ok. I am going to say it right here and now. Customers do not always know what they are talking about when they are looking for self storage. Ok the truth is out. I am making light of this topic, but the truth is that self storage customers seem to call with some outrageous, preconceived idea that they know more about storage than any storage agent or property manager. That is just like telling me that I do not know more than a rocket scientist. Ok, well that is a bad comparison, but you know what I mean. There are millions of different professions out there and the person that is actually doing the work will be the one who knows the most about it.

     

    It is just silly to think that if you have never rented storage before that you could walk into a self storage facility and tell the manager what you want. That manager will do their best not to laugh in your face and to take over the conversation. They have had many people walk into their office and let them know what the deal is. There are actually customers who get mad when the manager does not give them the answer they want to hear. I am sorry, you are naïve to think that you can get a one hundred square foot unit in New York for only fifty dollars. Unfortunately people will freak out when hear they are not going to find what they are looking for, but the manager is prepared. They just have to make sure they do not laugh at the customer. That will make the customer mad.

     

    Self storage customers are a different breed of shoppers. The reality of it is that they believe that they can assign a value to an empty space, they are always way off of their mark. Now if a customer has done their due diligence and done some shopping around then they will find that maybe their idea of storage prices are not where they thought they should be. Sometimes it is not just the price the self storage customer has not thought about when they are calling. They sometimes want the self storage managers to be mind readers. They want the managers to figure out what the customer is storing then recommend the right size for them. This is magic act that I love to see.

     

    Customers call looking for self storage and they are not sure what they are storing at this point. They just do not think about the idea that they just do not understand that the price is completely reliant on the space you choose. The space you choose is the is dependant on the amount of things you are storing. So as you see, if you do not know what you are storing then you can’t be given an accurate price. This is where it gets tricky. When a customer hears that, they just want to know all the prices and then choose which one they will store in later. Well that is not how it works. Self storage managers do not just want to give out a bunch of prices. They want to give a price and then have the customer rent. Customers do not always realize this. They feel they are entitled to the price and the manager should honor this.

     

    To wrap this up, the people that are working in storage are the storage experts. Customer should stop arguing with them and let them be of service. The manager wants to help these customers if they are allowed to do so. There are many times in which the manager and the customer will not agree on something. Most managers will do their best job to assist a customer with any situation they are involved in. As a customer, whatever you do for a living, you will be the expert in that. No matter how much research you do, there will always be the person at the store, that is more of an expert than you are.

     

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    Disclamer: This entry is intended to promote our partner StorageMart and some or all participants received compensation.

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