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Welcome to the PhoneSmart call center blog, an insider diary in the self-storage industry

Sarah Little, our Secret Shop specialist and all around Admin star offers the self storage Role Play Helpline

Let’s pretend you have an employee named Emily and Phone Smart has a call center rep named Lucas…

PhoneSmart Your Offsite Sales Solution
Property Management Blog The ins and outs of Property Management
Self Storage Search Engine Self Storage in Wisconsin

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Sarah

Self Storage Education Learn about the Self Storage Industry

StorageMart: Texas Find Storage Near You

Self Storage Insurance MiniCo: where the pros go

Property Management Blog

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PhoneSmart turns your missed calls into profit…and then some! PhoneSmart is an off-site sales force experienced in creating rentals.

We help storage operators send profit to their bottom lines through our call center, sales training, secret shopping, ad tracking, on-site call recording and lead generation services.

Whether you want our sales people taking your missed phone calls, or you are concerned with creating and converting more rental inquiries, PhoneSmart has a sales solution for you.

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Thanksgiving time

Before you get busy preparing for this weekend’s activities, I wanted to take a minute to thank you.

Thank you for paying attention to our blogs and passing them on to your friends and associates. Our readership keeps increasing and that can only happen when you care enough to spread the word.

Thank you for supporting PhoneSmart’s effort to be relevant to our property management, secret shopping and self storage customers.

Thank you for being a client and helping us create a business model that helps you run a better business.

As you spend time with friends and family this week, I hope you take the time to be thankful and be joyful.

You will be on our list of people to thank.

Thank you,

Tron

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Since we have a lot of Spanish speaking sales reps and since we take calls for lots of parts of the country where there are Spanish speakers…

PhoneSmart adds Spanish Call Group.

In order to meet the growing needs of Spanish speaking Self Storage users, PhoneSmart is adding a Spanish call group option for its call center customers.

This means that incoming calls from stores where Spanish is the prevalent language will ring straight to PhoneSmart’s many Spanish speaking sales reps. The added convenience for callers will mean more rentals for PhoneSmart clients.

Tron Jordheim, PhoneSmart director said, “Better than a third of our sales reps speak Spanish, so the time is right for us to add this feature. We answer for many stores in Spanish speaking areas and we have seen how successful you can be with Spanish callers. The Spanish call group will be just one more way we help our clients rent more units.”

PhoneSmart is a sales solutions provider for self storage owners, offering call center, secret shopping, sales training, lead follow-up, lead generation,
ad tracking and on-site recording services.

More information is available at tron@phone-smart.info .

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Have you seen our new PhoneSmart web site?

We did a redesign so it is more user friendly. Take a look at it when you get a minute and let me know what you think

The address is www.phone-smart.info

I get to hear the names of a lot of storage businesses. I heard one recently that really tickled me. It is called “Cram-a-lot”. Every thing is decorated in a “King Arthur and the knights of the roundtable” theme. Pretty cute, eh?

Thanks

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When you buy a link on Want2Store and get your free web site, this is what you get…

Look at www.justestuff.com and see an example.

Here you go:

Possible Pages include:
Email list page
Driving direction page
Calendar page
Event page
Online form
List form (to build marketing lists)
Bulletin board
Document page
Price page
Picture page
Frequently asked question
List documents
Benefits include:

Professional Templates
You can choose over 100 professionally designed and customizable templates to create your websites!

No Software to download!
The administration/publishing interface is web browser-based, so it can be accessed from anywhere in the world at anytime.

Navigation Bar / Buttons / Menus
Site Express allows you to create customizable / professional looking navigation menus and buttons.

WYSIWYG browser based editor
Interactive editor that allows you to style your html contents without knowing html codes or any other programming language. This editor is very similar to MS. FrontPage/Dreamweaver and it’s web based!

Real Time Integrated Shopping Cart
There is an integrated Shopping Cart that can be added VERY quickly. The shopping cart has real-time UPS shipping integration, 3rd party credit card processor integration, and a fully customizable administration utility.

List Manager
Build-in list manager that will allow your visitors to subscribe their email address to your site. You can then broadcast your advertisement or information to your subscribers as easy as 1-2-3!

Real Time Stats
Real time webstats that will display traffic and visitor information of your website. This will help you manage your growth and marketing directions!

Page Colors
Select from over 1000′s of background colors, text colors and link colors for that unique look.
Background Images

Most templates allow you to choose from over 100′s of background images for your page. The background images are optional. You can even upload your own!

Image Library
Select from over 1200 images in the image library.

Icon Library
Some of our templates use an Icon for the upper left of the page. You can select from our library or upload your own Icon.

File Up-Loads
File up-loads through the browser, both images and HTML files.

File Management
Complete file management through the browser. Eliminating all need for FTP. You can Up-Load Files, Rename Files, or Delete Files.

Advanced Page Editor
The HTML code for your pages can be edited at any time. You may add javascript or enhance your pages in any way.

Manage Pages:
Add, Remove, Or Delete a Main Page or a Sub-Page.
Add/Edit content on pages, change the PageType, or change the name of a page. You can also “Change Page Order” or “Pages Per Line” in the manage pages section.

Site Options:
Change your header text, graphics, or colors. Change your websites lefthand graphic or your footer information. From the Site Options section you can also change your : Theme, Buttons, Metatags, or Site and Text Colors.

Manage Images:
View / Delete images that are currently available to your website. You can also upload new images to be available for content on your websites pages, or for product images.

Company Information:
Change your company information, footer information, administration password, or register a domain for your website.

WebSite Marketing:
Register your site on Search Engines, or do an email marketing campaign with all emails in you email list.

E-Commerce Options:
Activate and setup your e-commerce catalog on your website. You can add products that you want to sell, setup your shipping methods, setup a real-time credit card processor, or view orders that have been placed on your website. You can also view full website visitor statistics from this section.

Manage Categories Section:
This section allows you to add, edit, and delete categories from your catalog (place on your web site where your products are sold). Categories group up products so that customers can quickly find what they are looking for. If you delete a category, all the products under that category are not deleted, but you will have to assign them to a different category under the “Edit Products” section in order to have them visible in the catalog.

Manage Products Section:
This section allows you to add, edit, or delete products from your catalog. If you delete a product it is gone for good, but if you set a product’s status to “Inactive” then the product will not be seen from the website, but it will not be deleted from your catalog. To set a product to “Inactive” edit the product, and under the “Active Product:” section, set the drop-down to “No”.

View Orders Section:
This section allows you to view orders that have been placed on your website. You can view them by date ordered, by amount of the order, or all of the orders at once. Once you have the orders listed, you will see all the collected information about the order, and will have the option to delete the order (which is permanent) or you can bring up the printable version, which creates a order that is print formated.

Shipping and Tax Section:
This allows you to set shipping and tax options that are appropriate to your needs. The tax is figured out based on your state, and a percentage that you set. The shipping is more complex, and can be setup to fit almost any need. See the Help under the shipping section for a more detailed explaination.

Real-Time Processors Section:
This section allows you to select which real-time credit card processor you want to use. You will need to have an account setup with these processors in order to use them. Or there is the “Regular SSL” option that doesn’t use a 3rd party processor, but collects all the information from the customer locally.

Terms and Conditions Section:
The terms and conditions are displayed for the customer just before the final checkout is completed. It can be last minute details about the order, or simply the terms you have layed out for the order.

Check Statistics Section:
This section give full statistics about the visitors to your website. It gives visitors, page views, by date, and also tells ip and connection information. There is even a graphical representation of the hits to your website.

Turn E-Commerce Off Section:
Toggles the E-commerce on your website. You can turn it on and off without loosing any product or sale information, but it isn’t recomened to click this button unless you are serious about turning the e-commerce off so that customers can’t make purchases on your website.

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New “Hold” policy on
credit card reservations

PhoneSmart is changing the timeframe for reserving units to help you close more deals.
We reserve the units based on the number of vacant units you report to us.
If you update us on the web, you can control how long we hold units by using the following formula.
If you push us automated updates, we will work off of those reports.

20 or more of a unit type available = 4 week hold with credit card
11-19 of a unit type available = 2 week hold with credit card
5-10 of a unit type available = 1 week hold with credit card
3 or 4 of a unit type available = 3 day hold with credit card
1 or 2 of a unit type available = conditional hold with credit card

(We tell those who do a conditional hold that the unit may have been sold out in the last few minutes… and if it is sold out the store manager will find something that will be suitable at a good rate.)

We will start the new hold policy on October 15, 2005. We think it will help you rent more units. This time of the year many people have needs that are not immediate and you often have a few units to rent.

Have you seen our blogs?

Look at :
www.selfstorageblog.com

www.secretshoppingblog.com

www.propertymanagementblog.com

Find out what is going on today in the industries we serve.

“At PhoneSmart, we turn your missed calls into profit”

See Tron Jordheim in Miami
at the ISS Conference Friday Oct. 28th at 8:00 AM

Tron will be a featured speaker for the session:
“Winning Sales Strategies”.
For more information go to www.insideselfstorage.com .

Go to www.want2store.com

* ONLY $60.00 per year per site for a link to your stores
* Paid Preferred Ranking available by Zip and State

This is PhoneSmart’s on-line storage locator with over 4,300 self-storage facilities listed. Make sure you are listed to take advantage of our traffic building strategies.

Look at your zip code. If you are not there or have not purchased a link or preferred ranking, contact us now.
Email changes and requests to tron@phone-smart.net .

PhoneSmart Sales Solutions
*Call center captures missed rental calls and helps you close them.
*Secret Shops improve your staff’s sales and service skills.
*Sales Training helps you rent to as many prospects as you can.
*Want2store.com on-line storage locator and demand driver.

“Don’t let another rental inquiry pass you by.”

Bring a “Selling Self-Storage” Seminar to your Company or State Association.

If you would like to benefit from the selling skills our reps develop from talking to hundreds and hundreds of rental inquiries each day, contact us. We might be able to bring our sales training and management seminars to you or your next meeting.
Email us at tron@phone-smart.net

“Turn your phone calls into profit”

New services available…
Click below to start sending more dollars to your bottom line
tron@phone-smart.net

Lead follow-up service.
If you want to make sure your phone and web leads are followed up on consistently, let us make the call! Our conversion rates will make you smile!

Sales Role-Play Hotline.
The perfect tool to fine-tune your sales presentations. Your staff can focus on individual concerns and discover some of the ways to overcome sales obstacles and make the sale!

Web leads for sale.
People are searching the web for storage. We can provide you with additional leads so you can increase your occupancy. Get started.

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Welcome to the self storage blog, PhoneSmart’s window into the world of self storage. Here is our latest list of services that we offer you.

PHONESMART SALES SOLUTIONS WILL HELP YOU RENT TO MORE PEOPLE!

PHONE SELLING AND CUSTOMER SERVICE SUPPORT

The professional telesales reps in our ROLL OVER CALL CENTER will turn your missed phone calls into credit card confirmed reservations and Hot Leads – and we’ll give your current tenants a great phone experience, too. Our call center pays for itself many, many times over – each rental you get from us is worth an average of $500.00 to $1,000.00.

Our professional evaluators at PhoneSmart’s SECRET SHOPPING SERVICE help your staff improve phone techniques, improving sales numbers in return. Most clients use the PhoneSmart Secret Shopping service twice a month to make sure their staff people are friendly and capable salespeople.

Now your staff can practice selling skills any time they have a few free minutes by placing a toll free call to our sales reps at our PhoneSmart SALES ROLE PLAYING HELP LINE. This is a great opportunity for your people to practice selling in challenging situations or just fine-tune the basics.

SALES TRAINING SUCCESS

Take advantage of our years of sales success with PhoneSmart’s SALES TRAINING PROGRAMS. All our collective sales experiences are in this easy to use training program of audio CDs and workbooks. Use it for self-study or with a training leader. Use it in conjunction with our secret shopping and sales role-playing and see your staff turn into a super sales crew. PhoneSmart director Tron Jordheim is also available to travel to your company and lead an engaging, enjoyable and very effective half or full day training session for your staff.

SALES LEAD FOLLOW-UP

Do things get busy at your property and you find that leads are not getting worked and are going stale? Don’t let the leads we generate for you go to rent somewhere else. WITH SALES LEAD FOLLOW UP HELP from PhoneSmart we’ll make the follow-up calls for you. We can turn up to 35% of your non-reservation calls into rentals. When we generate a lead for you, our follow-up team is notified immediately and we will continue to follow up on your leads until they rent with you. Our polite, professional, persistence will help you rent more space!

WEB LEADS FROM PHONESMART

Get listed on www.want2store.com. Buy a link to your web site for next to nothing and get ranked number one in your zip code for just a few dollars a month. Our site comes up in the top 5 in internet searches for “storage locator” or “storage finder” on Yahoo. Also take advantage of our relationship with other web search engines. Because of our large peer group of clients, we can purchase completed storage request forms wholesale and pass them on to you at a considerable savings. Don’t let internet requests for storage go unanswered- buy them from us at a discount!

Don’t forget to check our Blogs – keep up with the latest trends and find out what we learn everyday.
www.secretshoppingblog.com
www.propertymanagementblog.com
www.selfstorageblog.com

PhoneSmart ● PO Box U ● Columbia MO 65205 ● 866.639.1715 ●
www.phone-smart.info

BYE FOR NOW,Tron

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One of the unseen benefits of dealing with a sales organization like PhoneSmart is our internal secret shopping program. Sure we have lots of clients who take advantage of our secret shopping service for their self storage properties. They enjoy knowing that someone is “watching the store” so to speak. Self storage insiders have been promoting secret shopping for a long time as a way to catch employees doing something right, maintain and improve sales technique and hopefully see a sales increase. Part of the challenge of the self storage business is that you have very little day to day control over what goes on at the store unless you are on site often.

When you use a call center like PhoneSmart, you get a very controlled environment. Supervisors and managers are close by to help reps with any questions or problems. We can hear how phone calls are going and how reps are approaching callers out of the corners of our ears as we go about our other duties. As I am typing this entry I hear one of our reps talk up the amenities on a store and urge the caller to reserve a unit now because things will fill up in the next couple of weeks.

We also record all the calls that come in. In reality we capture about 90-95% of them. This gives us the ability to pull calls for all the reps during the month and spot check live calls. Part of the reps’ compensation comes from how they score on these random internal secret shops. We pull rental inquiries to score and we pull current tenant calls. The criteria for current tenant calls is simple: be fast, be friendly and be helpful. The rental calls need to be handled according to our selling system, which requires reps to qualify callers, sell the store and ask for the order. Of course these things are always easier said than done. Most calls are fairly normal. Some calls are unpredictable, tricky to manage and test a rep’s skills. We can also tell who is doing the best job selling, who needs review in some areas, who is sounding bored and who is coming up with innovative and effective ways to sell storage.

For instance today we pulled a call from one of our best reps. The caller had a thick foreign accent and a speech impediment. And he asked a lot of questions to throw off the rep’s rhythm. It was a difficult call. Normally this rep makes friends with difficult callers and takes them off the market for the stores they are calling and makes it look easy. You could tell that the rep was tired and a little off balance on this call. The call never did go in the direction that the rep would have liked. The rep got a little frustrated and you could tell that neither the caller nor the rep were having fun. They never caught a rapport.

The rep listened to the call and no one had to say a word. It was plain as day, so the rep could do a self-correction and attitude check and get back on her feet and do the outstanding job that she normally does. These are the kinds of experiences that make good reps outstanding. If we did not listen to calls and use them for training and correction, we would not be able to offer the outstanding service that we do. How are you keeping up the quality at your store? How are you continuing to challenge your staff to better themselves? How many units do you think you rent every month because you keep reaching for better results?

Make sure to look at his self storage blog on April 27th, when Mike Scanlon, the President and CEO of the self storage association will be our guest blogger.

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