» Storage Owners

Mini self storing has become the latest real property venture that has proven to be a money spinner with each mini storage building coming up all across the country is only supporting the fact. The regular storing facilities are being left behind by the popularity of the mini storing facilities as people are finding it cheaper and convenient to store their articles in smaller storing facilities than the large areas that they had to earlier hire for articles that rarely filled up the space. Together with the facility of free transportation, people are now finding everything and anything to store. So if you are already in the business or willing to get into, you have made the best choice of the moment as far as real property investment goes.

Whatever may be your experience, it needs no introduction that you will need a mini storage building to start your business and it should be reliable enough to make people rely on you. The attractiveness of the business lies in the strategic location of the buildings and low marketing cost supplemented with a strong marketing plan. The better this combination the better is the business. The vital installation, the building, needs to be properly planned and constructed to maximize profit and a good building contractor can do wonders with this.

Steel has become the most popular of all the building materials and almost every mini storage building is being made with steel these days. There are the prefabricated buildings and the custom made buildings. The prefabricated ones are gaining popularity not only in construction of the storing facilities but also a wide range of constructions like industrial, institutional, commercial and recreational buildings. The prefabricated structures can be used for covering large spans and high walled facilities. Moreover, if you are considering building your storing facility in a new location where construction is a difficult proposition, the transportability of the prefabricated portions makes it an ideal construction option. Finally, the construction involves minimal labor costs and this makes the building cost effective.

With a mini storage building made of prefabricated portions, the return on investment will be faster. If you already have a running business and thinking of remodeling or expanding then you can opt for the prefabricated portions. The contractors are not only the installers but nowadays they are also the planners and managers for the self storing units. The contractors start from discussing with the owners about the matters relating to efficiency and security. Then they look after the access control and design the exit and entry to facilitate convenience of the customers. Then comes the matter of lighting and electrical connections so that it maintains both efficiency and aesthetics. After going through all these they take up the construction.

A mini storage building made of steel comes with a lot of features like long-time warranty on roof and construction and workmanship. The bright colors that you see on the walls are long lasting too and are guaranteed for quite a long period. The facilities can also be insulated to provide for climate controlled units. There are various types of insulation that can be fitted on the prefabricated buildings. So when you decide on the use of prefabricated steel structure to construct your storing facility you do not miss out on the conventional construction but rather gain with the quick installation and almost immediate start up of your business.

Self Storage in Chicago

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Written by Ronald Smith, PhoneSmart call center reservations specialist.

Welcome to the PhoneSmart call center blog an insider dairy of the self storage industry.

Your local self storage unit provider in 1601 Twilight Trail Frankfort, KY. 40601

Quality Assurance Management at Total Quality Assurance Services

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welcome to the self storage blog, our diary of the self storage industry written bby and for self storage insiders.

There are many challenges that self storage owners have to deal with on a day to day basis. One of the great things about the self storage business is the fact that people in self storage like to be helpful to each other. Every meeting of owners, operators and managers is really a big idea exchange, networking event and best practices forum. A lot of other industries are not like this. I have been involved in other industries where people did not talk to each other and would never swap best practices ideas.

State and local associations have been great places for this gathering and sharing of experience to take place. Traveling a few hours to discuss business for a half a day is a lot easier than spending several days and traveling far to a big conference.

In the past, state associations have had some participation from the most interested owners and some states have assembled enough members to have viable associations. Even if a state is big enough and generates enough membership dues to hire a director or an association management firm, it has been tricky to get to the next level of participation. There are so many self storage owners, operators and managers who do not participate in state activities and meetings.

The same thing happens on a national level. As an example, Canadian self storage operators have tried working together many times, but without a steady flow of national issues to motivate them, their efforts have mostly been on a local or provincial level.

The USA’s SSA went through many years of struggling with membership numbers in the 70s and 80s until it reached a threshold of momentum.

In many cases participation doesn’t jump up a notch until someone in a government body wants to target self storage for a bill or regulation that would have a negative impact. Then everyone gets the hair on the back of their necks up and throws in a few dollars to campaign against the bill or regulation. Sometimes associations have been able to carry this momentum past the initial battle to grow the organization. Other times interest from members tails off.

The self storage association has tried a few times in the past to rally the states and other nation associations together to take advantage of the combined synergies. For whatever reason, the past efforts never quite came together. But this time it is happening.

The self storage association created an Affiliated Associations Council and created a long list of benefits for the state associations and state members to create a win-win-win situation. The association went so far as to hire Kathie St. Clair as the director of association relations. She has done similar work for other associations in the past. She is responsible for making sure the states and the national organizations are working together to everyone’s benefit.

So far she has made a lot of great things happen. I expect more is on the way.

So far there are 17 or 18 state associations and the Canadian self storage association in the affiliated council. These affiliated associations are able to sell SSA materials, advertise in SSA outlets and take advantage of SSA’s buying power in the areas of health insurance, web site development, membership drives and event planning. The group is also working together in watching developments in the legislative and regulatory realm. In return, the SSA requires that the affiliated associations do not compete against the SSA in areas where the SSA is active, such as events, training certifications and publications.

I have a personal interest in the developing relationship between the affiliated associations and the SSA. I was named the chair of the Affiliated Associations Council for 2006. As in anything else I get involved with, I want to see the Council become successful. Success in this case means several things.

1. Helping more associations affiliate with the SSA. Any state or national association is eligible. There are many states without an active association that might take advantage of this opportunity to build an active membership. There are many countries in the world that are seeing self storage blossom as a business and might see the affiliation as a way to help continue to grow and prosper.
2. Help the affiliated associations build and run their associations. It takes a lot of time, effort and expense to get any association humming and the help that SSA can offer and the help that other associations can offer should really give a boost to everyone.
3. Help owners, operators and managers get the information, assistance and contacts they need to accomplish their individual business goals. Getting more resources and more chances to share experience to more people means a better industry for everyone.

It looks like the momentum that the SSA has created for itself along with the significant numbers of active people in the affiliated associations will create the atmosphere that many have hoped for over the years. If you are not participating in or supporting your local associations, I urge you to do so. It takes a little time. But the contacts and ideas you will share will be more than worth the time, effort and expense. Self storage is becoming more and more of a business that requires attention and innovation. It is no longer a matter of only getting the building up and the sign lit. There are lots of interested and helpful people ready to share their experiences and practices with you. All you have to do is to show up and start visiting.

More info is available at www.selfstorage.org

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Thanks for stopping by at the self storage blog, where we keep an eye on trends in self storage.

I had a client talk to me today about the size of July’s PhoneSmart invoice.

Occasionally in the summer busy months a store that sends us a ton of phone calls looks at a decent sized invoice. Most stores send us about 50-70 phone calls in the busy season per month, which means they don’t spend a whole lot, but they rent a lot of units. This makes us a super investment. Where a store sends us two or three times the volume, the invoice starts looking large. Although the number of rentals we create also increases by two or three fold and one of two things happens. Either the client thinks about sending us roses because we rent so many units, or the client calls to see how to lower the PhoneSmart invoices.

The problem is that someone has to answer the phone calls to the store, unless you don’t want new renters. Now if you are at 98% physical occupancy and 99% economic occupancy, you might not care about the phone. Or if you get 90% of your new customers from walk-ins and drive-ups who do not call on the phone first before they come in to rent, you might also not care about the phone. For the rest of you, someone has to answer the phone. So you have to do the math to see who you want to pay to answer the calls.

Here are a few things to consider as you are doing the math. The question becomes a matter of shifting dollars you are paying us to payroll. You might also consider that on average we are creating more leads and reservations per phone calls than store staff. This may not be true in your case. But this does often make it more tempting to let us handle more calls, as we tend to net more rentals per calls.

Do you pay additional staff dollars and payroll costs to decrease your PhoneSmart invoice?

Do the PhoneSmart dollars amount to a lower cost of acquisition of new business when all things are considered?

Don’t forget to enter our contest to win a registration for the Self Storage association conference in September. It will include a dinner with our PhoneSmart crew. All you need to do is send me an email with the names of three people who have submitted a blog to this self storage blog site. I will draw at random form all the entrants.

Bye for now, Tron

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Welcome to the self storage blog, our diary of the self storage world.

Today is the day that the beast wakes up. All the work and preparation for a busy season that you and we have been making are going to be called into action today. Our call volume day got off to a mediocre start early this morning and then a few minutes ago, the flood gates opened and the calls started rolling in like crazy. This whole week will be busy and next week will be very crazy. If you are not ready, it may be too late.

Are you prepared with stafing levels? Have you gotten all your promo materials out? If you are working on occupancy, do you have some good specials available? If you are pushing revenue, are your rates up high enough? Do you have plans to increase street rates by the middle of next week if you need to? Do you have us answering your missed calls?

Last year, the last day of July and the first Monday of August were our two busiest days of the year. This year the 31st falls on a Sunday and the 1st is a Monday. Look out. This means call volume increasing events are overlapping.

bye for now,
Tron

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Welcome to the self storage blog, PhoneSmart’s diary of the self storage world.

I wrote yesterday how all our call reps get a little down this time of July when the “good” calls dry up for a little while. One of our best reps went an entire shift without getting a single credit card reservation today. He was astounded. He is normally in the top 3-4 slots for the top dog of the day. He even gets reservations on a snowy day in January. I told him this is exactly what I was writing about in the self storage blog yesterday. He was glad to be reminded that next week will be better and then it will get very good by the 18th. He got so few actual rental inquiries today and most of his rental inquiries were for far out in the future or were from people who did not have a credit card available.

I also told him it was good to get a “bad” day out of your system when the quality of calls is sub-par. Everyone has an off day from time to time. So it is better to have an off day when the phones aren’t sending you good calls to work with anyway.

These kinds of experiences are what separate the good sales people form the pretenders. The good ones like the fellow I am talking about let a day like this roll off their backs like water flowing off the back of a duck. The pretenders get mad and sulk.

In the same vein, the good reps don’t get overly impressed when they have a good day or even a great day. This is because they know selling is a roller coaster ride. In order to maintain your sanity you have to keep from crying when you strike out and keep from getting over-joyed when you hit the long ball. You survive by staying level headed and swinging with your best effort at every ball that gets close to the strike zone. You also know that even great hitters go 0 for 5 some days.

Next week the balls will be getting closer to the strike zone again.

bye for now,
Tron

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Welcome to the self storage blog, where we let you in on the experiences we have at PhoneSmart dealing with the world of self-storage.

We are taking some time to examine how consumer behavior towards self storage is changing and/or staying the same. When we started five years ago, nost callers started by saying, “I need to store my stuff. What do I do?”. About two and a half years ago we saw the balance was shifting towards an opening question like this: “How much is a storage unit?”

We are starting to see a change. More and more people are asking first: “Do you have any specials?”

We still get some people who say they need to store and ask for help figuring out what they need. We still get plenty of people who lead off the conversation with a price question. But if the trend continues, the specials question may become the majority.

I know that people in the apartment home business are sensitive to this quesiton. It has been the prevailing question of callers for some time, as overbuilding and the unprecendented rise in home ownership has put pressure on the apartment industry. Their situation is a little different, as amenities mean a lot more to an apartment renter than a storage renter. You might disagree, but you are a little more particular when you are going to live somewhere as oppossed to just leaving your belonings somewhere. Apartment leasing pros still do not have a graet way to get someone enthused about renting with them without a special offer.

The fact that people ask about specials may mean that there are enough newer and luxurious storage facilities in most markets, that they are all starting to look alike and the newness and the neat features are less interesting than they were two years ago. It may mean that people are doing more “shopping around” than they used to and whoever they talked to earlier made it seem like the special is the “Thing”. I know some large companies work very hard to promote its specials. Maybe they have been successful enough that callers are conditioned to look for specials.

Whichever the case may be, you have to give buyers what they want. We certainly have more success creating leads and reservations for stores that give us specials to offer.

How does this fall into play with how we revamp our selling proceedures?

Tell me your thoughts about specials.

bye for now,
Tron

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Welcome to the self storage blog, where we look at the self storage industry through the eyes of storage insiders.

I visited a site the other day that was brand spankin’ new and looked beautiful. The site was nice, the office was professional and had that retail feel we all seek. I looked at the rent rates and found they were twice the competition, which was all first generation and unimpressive. The first phase of the site was almost full and the second phase was just starting construction. If you were calling around for prices, you might be tempted to go to the old first generation site and rent. If you toured the two, you would forget the old site and rent at the new site, even if it was twice the rent.

A site like this has a challenge with phone traffic. Our job is to figure out how to paint a picture of the site, so callers can see and feel the differences over the phone. Our job is to get price out of the caller’s mind and get them excited about new , clean, well-lit, state of the art security, great customer service and easy location.

What I don’t know is the cost basis of the old site vs. the new site. The old site may be very profitable and have very low expenses. It may be a wonderful business on paper. But what is its long term potential? Will there always be room for a “low end, low service” product? Will consumers become so used to nice and new that the old and unimpressive sites become empty? What is the long term potential of the new site? How far can you push rents without hurting profitability? Are we seeing market segmentation? Where there used to be just self storage, is there now beginning to be high-end and economy?

These are the questions you see people asking themselves on either end of the spectrum. What are your thoughts?

bye for now,
Tron

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Welcome to the self storage blog, where we look at issues in the self storage industry.

When you look at the numbers of users and the number of self storage facilities per capita, Europe looks pretty good as a place to do business. Of course, going to a country you are not that familiar with and adjusting to new regulations, new ways of doing things and new customs, makes things a little more interesting and challenging than you might like. You owe it to yourself to take a closer look at Europe. It is developing as an economic powerhouse.

I am going to take advantage of a seminar given by the European Union Center at the University of Missouri, Columbia. On June 9 and 10, The EU Center will hold a trade forum in Kansas City focused on helping small and medium sized companies do business with EU countries. It seems to be geared more toward export industries, but I guess you can consider Self Storage to be an export. The US has been a leader for the last 25 years, even though recently several European operators have been putting their own stamp on the storage business model. European companies continue to look to the US for hints and patterns to use in their models. For more information go to www.eu.missouri.edu .

For those of you who watch call volume patterns, this Memorial Day weekend was pretty much what we expected and today is very nice, We had our year-to-date best half hour period of phone calls this morning. I hope some of those leads and reservations went to you.

Don’t forget to enter the contest to win a Gold registration package for the Miami ISS conference in October.

bye for now, Tron

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Smart Growth
by Michael T. Scanlon, Jr., President & CEO, Self Storage Association

“To stop learning is to stop growing.”

Did you know that there are now 46,883 self storage and mini storage facilities in the United States? Well, according to the Self Storage Association’s new National Facilities Database, that’s true. Perhaps the most interesting impressive number is that 38,600 of these facilities have been built in the last 20 years. In fact, 6,730 facilities have opened their doors in just the last two years! If my math is correct, that means that 280 new facilities open somewhere across the nation every month. Now some of these facilities might have just 4 units, while others might have 1,400 units; but square footage aside…

That’s what I call development! That’s industry growth!

Industries can go through cycles of boom and bust. And it’s true that no two regions of the country are the same. Point in fact: people are leaving the Northeast and Midwest and are moving to the South and the Southwest. Thus, there are great regional differences that must be read into any data.

Self storage has been on a development and growth “tear” for the better part of the last 30 years. Thus, the question arises, “are we overbuilt?” The answer is both yes and no.

I believe it is fair to say that the industry cannot keep this same rate of growth and national pace of development at the current rates for too much longer. At some point such growth would have to affect occupancy, revenues and net operating income. In some markets that effect is taking place right now.

I’ve heard many owners and operators say that the secret to future growth for self storage is penetration – more American households starting to use self storage for the first time. Well, that too has already taken place. In the last ten years (1994-2004) American households have increased their usage of self storage. A decade ago, one in seventeen American families (6%) rented a self storage or mini-storage unit; today, one in eleven (9%) rents a storage unit. That represents an increase of 50 percent in just ten years. So ask yourself is there really much room left for growth via penetration. Some would say “sure.” Others might not.

According to the data contained in the Self Storage Association’s new ”Self Storage Demand Study – 2004 Edition,” it can be interpreted that those markets where there is genuine population growth still have room for development and the construction of new facilities. However, in those markets where there is negative population growth (say the “Rust Belt” states), the negative impacts of saturation are likely to set in all too soon.

According to Dr. George Leon of National Analysts Research & Consulting (the firm commissioned by SSA to conduct the Self Storage Demand Study) – “…there are some signs – and definitely concerns – that we may be exhausting pent-up demand and that new starts are trailing in some markets.”

All this leads to the conclusion that our industry is maturing. Fewer and fewer of us will be able to stand in a cornfield and hear a voice saying, “Build it and they will come.”

I’ve heard corporate CEOs say, “if you’re not growing, you’re dying.” Growth is vital to a business; but planning for growth just for growth’s sake can be risky.

From this point forward all the new the data is pointing to the inevitable conclusion that owners and investors in self storage must make smarter and wiser decisions regarding growth based on more and more due diligence.

In the short term, self storage organizations should no longer have a knee-jerk reaction to the concept of growth that says “let’s develop…let’s build from the ground up.” There are other options to ground-up development and each of us must all take a good, close, objective look at each of them.

The next time your accountant or banker asks about the future growth of your business, you can lay out some options. Ask yourself: (1.) is it time to divest or sell? If you’re on the cusp of retirement maybe this should be considered; (2.) is it time to expand? – perhaps vertically if you are on “good dirt” but limited horizontally; (3.) is it time to acquire – someone else’s “dog” could end being a “cash cow” for a sharp operator; (4.) is it time to diversify? A new retail storefront or an added car wash or some other revenue stream could help you grow if you’ve got room; (5.) is it time to take on a refurbishment? Is there a vacant building in your market that just begs to be a self storage facility; or, (6.) is it really time to build? If population in your market is still truly growing then perhaps ground-up development is the right growth option for you.

No one knows your market like you do (or like you should).

Just remember, business growth can come in many forms. Think about it. Do your research and due diligence and you’ll make a much more enlightened decision as to growth. Don’t rely on industry clichés and habits. Never stop learning. Your industry is certainly changing, the business environment is certainly changing and the market is certainly changing. Change your approach to growth decision-making. Keep on top of it all. Keep learning.

And oh…by the way…the Self Storage Association has many educational programs and two new studies that might help you to evaluate which way to go. Go to our Web site: www.selfstorage.ORG and consider attending a Conference, Seminar or Workshop or buying the “Self Storage Demand Study – 2005 Edition” and the “Financial & Operational Characteristics of Self Storage Facilities – 2005 Edition.”

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