» Announcements

Well our early morning indicators proved true for yesterday. It turned out to be our second best call volume day of the year and one of the best days for reservations. The calls started coming right after I clicked “submit” to send yesterday’s blog. And then it got really busy in the early afternoon. We had a long rush around 2:00 pm and then it tapered off much more gradually than it might on a Monday. Today has been very busy, too. I feel confident in alerting you that the week of the 25th through 30th is going to be very busy, even busier than you might think. Saturday will be the last day of the month. Whenever a Saturday is also the last calendar day during the rental season you can multiply demand by 20% over normal projections. This also means that the weekend of the 23rd and 24th will be busier than you might think, too. Don’t think you are going to have a quiet weekend and can get away with skeletal staff on the 23rd and 24th. Lots of people will be trying to get ready for the end of the month.

We are taking whatever steps needed to make sure we are staffed heavily enough for the entire end of month period, especially Monday and Tuesday the 25th and 26th. These two days will feel like the retaining wall has broken and the demand will be overflowing. If you aren’t already using PhoneSmart to catch your overflow calls, you will miss a lot of business on this last week of April. Those renters you can’t handle will all be going down the street to rent with PhoneSmart clients. While renters will get a busy signal, no answer or a short and curt treatment on the phone at your number, because you have no back-up plan to handle the excess traffic, your competitors will have our experienced sales reps watching their backs, making sure your rental inquiries end up in our clients’ stores.

I have great faith in our PhoneSmart reps because they have experience levels second to none. I am pleased to announce here and now for the first time that PhoneSmart has exceeded 200,000 leads and reservations. We started taking calls on Christmas Eve, 2000 for 15 stores. Our first leads and reservations were written on that day. Some self storage insiders thought a call center that handled a variety of clients was a silly idea. Some store owners still mistakenly think we are a cost rather than a money maker. Today we crossed the 200,000 threshold. Lead 200,001 was written by our sales rep Ann and went to a Central Self Storage store in Island Park, NY. It was for a Pharmaceutical rep that needed a unit right away. Because we prevented this call from going to Central Self Storage’s competitor, the Pharmaceutical rep took a unit with Central. As you know, a Pharmaceutical rental might stay for years. If 200,001 leads and reservations won’t make you a believer in PhoneSmart yet, let me know what it will take!

I’d like to send out a huge thank you to all of you who helped get us to 200,001. All our clients and the self storage associations have been great. We look forward to 200,000 more. Bye for now, Tron.

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I am reading parts of the SSA market survey and hope to report our reactions to the questions and answers.

bye for now, Tron

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