Manage your leads

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You often see or hear me going on about how important a good lead management system is in creating profit in your projects. Our parent company StorageMart has been working on lead management programs for five years and it has made a lot of progress. StorageMart recently bought several properties in the Austin and San Antonio, Texas markets. These stores were not performing that well pre-StorageMart. They have been performing very well since StorageMart took over. StorageMart hired Angel Morales to lead the region. I knew he’d do great, because he spent a lot of years living in Brooklyn, NY as I did. You can’t go wrong with people form Brooklyn, you know. I asked Angel to share some of his thoughts on the success his region has had with its lead management systems. Here is what he said.

“We here in Texas are excited and happy about our success with the Lead Management Program. We understand that it takes a little work on our parts to bring up the numbers and then we reap the benefits. By virtue of the fact that I have no prior experience in the free market storage field, it was easy for me to adapt to the StorageMart way of thinking. My training allowed me to understand how the system can work if you give it a chance and stay consistent. One of the first things that I was taught by Kathy Winkelman, the StorageMart Operations Director and my counterparts was the importance of Lead Management and how it develops customers.

In each of my stores I explained to the managers the importance of maintaining and also updating the Lead Management files. They understand the concept of follow-up and how we as managers can not settle for just waiting and hoping that customers rent from us each and every time they come in. They know and understand that it is vital and necessary to follow up every lead, every customer …and be innovative in their approach to obtaining new customers.

With competition being so stiff, it is incumbent upon us to know what the trends are and also what we as a company can offer as opposed to our fellow competitors. In just one store we have gone from zero units rented to over 140 in less than 2 months. We did this without Yellow Pages, signage, a gate, and finally without a counter. Persistence paid off. They also went from zero percent occupied to 34 % in the same period.

I tell all my managers to pull out their manager reservation books as soon as they communicate with a customer whether it is in person or via telephone. I check the reservation folder racks each time I go to the stores to visit, and every now and then I will throw out a little carrot to encourage them to believe in the system. I once offered to pay them an extra $5 for each and every Hot Lead and Credit Card that they had booked prior to the 15th of the month. This was in addition to the regular $10 and $15 bonus that they receive for these things. This month I am giving a bonus to the store that books and rents the most credit cards and hot leads.

One thing I do notice and I hope I am not being partial: it seems to me that the people that I hire without storage background do better and seem to adapt better to this system. They are eager to please and hungry. It takes a little while longer for the ones with storage experience to come around. But once they see that it does work, they become really motivated.

Finally, the system works but you have to work they system. If the manager is fine with just a salary, then Lead Management will not do as well as another store where the managers are fired-up and hungry. I only see brighter days for the Texas region.”

So if you are not fired-up about creating more leads and managing them better, you might want to get with the program.

Bye for now,

Tron

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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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