Overcoming Reservation Faux Paux

When taking reservations for storage units, different companies have different approaches.  Whether they charge $10 or $25 or $100, the purpose of the “reservation fee” is to create a sense of commitment.  Some storage facilities, however, do not actually charge anything for the reservation but still require a credit card in order to guarantee a storage unit.  To get the reservation, it may be easy to tell the customer that they can just cancel the reservation if it doesn’t work out for them. However, that is defeating the purpose of the reservation at all. 

Reservations are meant to create a sense of commitment as I mentioned, and along with commitment comes a sense of ownership.  By putting the reservation through, the customer in a sense feels a sense of ownership for the space and that brings them in to the office to finalize everything.  The word “cancel” disassociates ownership and hinders the sales process.  There is no ownership and the customer may still continue to inquire about storage with different facilities.  In essence they are looking for a reason to cancel that reservation by finding something better, closer, even cheaper.  So with a non-prepay situation then, we should put the emphasis on not charging the card and not at how easy it is to cancel the reservation.  It’s a win/win situation: the customer doesn’t feel like they had to pay extra and you get commitment without having to charge the card.  This is an excellent sales technique and can help create a sales increase for our client store.

Written by Julio Montes, evening supervisor.

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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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