» Self Storage Almanac

The call wave for April is doing exactly what we had projected so far. This Monday was a little stronger than last week and Tuesday and Wednesday have been tacking parallel in call volume. So the question remains about next week. Will it be 10% busier than this week, 20%, or 30%? 30% is quite unlikely. That would be a huge jump like what we have rarely if even seen. 10% is also unlikely. This would mean that end of the month demand would be much softer than how demand is currently trending. Here is how it is likely to play out. Monday the 25th will be about 15% busier than the 18th. Tuesday will be almost as busy as Monday. Wednesday will drop off to the kind of volume we have seen on the first and second Monday of this month. That is still very busy. Thursday will quiet off a little. Friday will get busy again and be almost as busy as Monday. Saturday will be almost as busy as Tuesday.

This may sound like a lot of gobbledy goop to you, but it means a lot of money to our clients. If we can staff correctly, we will not miss very many phone calls, nor will we be fretting because we have too many people on the phone. Staffing too light means fewer leads and reservations will go to our clients. Staffing too heavy means our payroll cost will be higher than our revenue for the period. At the same time, we will be keeping the standard of our call quality up to our high standards. Our internal secret shopping crew will pull recordings for next week to evaluate. We evaluate rental calls and non-rental calls. Each type of call needs to be handled well every time. I make a big deal out of all of this, because it is our business to be prepared to back up our clients in the best fashion possible. Just as it is your business to give your storage clients the best storage experience you can.

Will you be ready for next week’s demand? Are you anticipating the increase in phone and walk-in traffic? Are you prepared to increase pricing by the end of the week if units start moving fast? Have you allotted your staff the time needed to follow up with all the people they have contact with next week who are not quite ready to commit to a unit, or will you let them fall through the cracks?

Make sure to come to the self-storage blog on April 27th and read a guest blog entry from Mike Scanlon, the self storage association president and CEO. As a self storage insider, he can give you his view of self storage trends, selfs storage secrets and where he sees the self storage business right now.

Bye for now, Tron

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One of the things I will touch on in the self storage blog is self storage trends. Since our call center has been applying its sales techniques to the storage business, we have learned a lot about demand patterns. On Monday the 28th of March there will be several demand increasing events occuring at the same time. Almost all the self storage facilities in the 50 states will be closed Easter Sunday. It is also one of the only four days of the year that PhoneSmart is closed. This means a lot of people will need to take care of their storage needs on Monday. It is also the last Monday of a month, which is always busy. And it is the last Monday of March, which can surprise some people.

The end of March is the start of busy season.You may have seen a nice build up in demand these last two weeks. Even so, people are often surprised when March goes out like a Lion as far as storage demand is concerned. All of our sales reps are eager to get to work on Monday. They know we will be booking a lot of units for our clients’ stores next week.

So if you want to beat everyone else to a few customers, you should be open Easter Sunday and open early and stay late on Monday the 28th.
Bye for now, Tron.

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