» Self Storage Business

Welcome to the self storage blog, PhoneSmart’s diary on the self storage business.

I had a chance to visit with some members of the New Jersey self storage association last week. One member I always enjoy visiting with is Tom Garden from Syrasoft Software. He stays in very close contact with his clients and usually has an interesting take on the storage events of the day. One thing his comapny has developed as a specialized add-on is a car storage tracking component. Storing titled vehicles poses some interesting and sometimes complicated issues for self storage owners. This is particularly true where you store antique or collector vehicles. You have some additional liabilities. You certainly have additional complications with auction and lien proceedures. It makes a lot of sense to have an added componenet to carefully track any vehicles you store.

If you are storing vehicles now, have you ever had a nightmare scenario? If you have questions about how you are currently tracking the vehicles you store, you might want to contact Tom or his staff and see what recommendations they might have for you.

Part of the reason Tom and his staff developed this add-on is because he has a customer that stores collector cars and had sepcial requirements. But it is also because the New Jersey and New York storage associations under the leadership of Chris McGrath made a lot of headway in clearing up title complications for vehicles that go to auction at your storage facilities.

What other types of goods do you store that create complications?

bye for now, Tron

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Welcom to the self storage blog, a window on the self storage industry.

I was talking to a self storage insider this morning who I’ve known for a few years. Industry vendors tend to have a circle of acquaintances they enjoy visiting with at the trade shows. Chuck Slagle from Bader Insurance is a person I always enjoy seeing. I was visiting with him about a client today and he mentioned the self storage blog from the other day where I broke the ownership group into those who are just taking cash out of their property and those who are trying to run a business.

Chuck has been promoting tenant insurance for years to the self storage industry and has seen a long sales cycle. I agreed with him that I also see a long sales cycle in our business.

Chuck thinks it is because the storage business is a little like a small town. He didn’t mean it in anyway to be disrespectful. But I think he has a point. People in a small town like to do business with people who have been around for a while. They aren’t so comfortable with new-comers. Small town folks like to wait and see how you do for their neighbors and see if there is any “bad talk” about you.

They also like to see people compete for their business and like to wait to see who is left standing. Small town folks love new gadgets and new business models. Only they don’t like them for themselves. They like to follow the trends and watch them to see what happens. Then when they feel comfortable that you are no longer a new-comer and that you have “paid your dues”, they will walk up to you and say, “OK. Show me what you’ve got to offer. I think I’m interested.”

Offering tenant insurance seems like a “no-brainer”. But there are still lots of operators who aren’t offering it. It will be interesting to see how the self storage market continues to develop.

bye for now, Tron

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I don’t know how business has been for you today, but we are in our mid-week, mid month anti-climax. After having several very good days for rental activity, we are seeing primarily non-rental calls today. The volume has been good, though. This is normal self storage trend activity. Early in busy season many renters get their phone calls done early in the week. The mid week sees more people calling about their past due rent or people calling about truck rentals. Trucks are hard to come by as things get busy, as you well know. This means people are making a lot of phone calls trying to find a truck to rent. So we get to talk to them. Then later in the week the people who like waiting until the last minute will call about needing a storage unit this weekend. So Thursday will be pretty good and Friday will be busy with rental activity again. Our PhoneSmart call center reps get used to the early week action and are always disappointed by the mid-week lull. It gives us time to catch our breath and get ready for the weekend. Those of you who have been reading my self storage blog are probably not newcomers to the world of blogs. But it looks like self storage secrets are not the only secrets loose in the blog world. I saw a piece in the Economist Magazine today that is all about how a blogger in Minnesota is taking down the Canadian government by writing about the testimony in a Canadian political trial. I heard on the radio how the Chinese government is trying to delete any blogs, discussion boards and emails that have anti-Japanese messages in them. I guess blogs are making an impact. I’d like to hear from you about some of your impressions and reactions to some of my entries. In the mean time I am finishing up some programming for a new client who is giving us a few stores to answer for. It is a good time of year to get started. We will send out a lot of leads over the next few months. Bye for now, Tron.

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The middle of the month is usually soft for phone rental inquiries. A lot of calls are tenants calling about past due rent. I like to look at call activity early in the day on a mid-month Monday. This will also tell me what kind of a week we are going to have and what kind of an end-of-the month run we will have. April is the real start of busy season for us, but we want to know just how busy. This helps us calculate staffing requirements for one thing. The call center business is all about right–sizing your staff. So we need to have enough people on the phone, but not too many or too few. We also need to be able to alert clients when big spikes in demand are expected.

So far today, I am happy to see steady demand and lots of reservations. One of our reps is averaging three reservations an hour so far. Everyone else is doing well, too. And the rush has not even started yet. We normally see a heavy morning rush start between 9:30 and 10:30 in the morning our time. It is about 10:20 and it hasn’t started yet. Now it might be that today is going to turn out to be a quiet day and we were able to catch some action early before all the stores opened. And now that they are all open, our phone volume may die off completely. We will know this one way or the other in the next hour or two.

Bye for now, Tron

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So far today’s call volume and rental demand is living up to expectations. It has been a great day. We are on our way to a year to date best day for calls and for leads and reservations. A day like today gives all our call reps a taste of what the busy season will look like. These busy days demand focus. The calls come rolling into our call center one after the next. We get extreme spikes in call volume, where people who normally do not take phone calls have to pitch in to help. We get a few slow periods where everyone has a chance to catch their breathe and take a brief break before the next wave hits. But when the reservation activity is good like this, we are making money for our clients hand over fist and our reps are averaging about one to one and a half reservations per hour. This helps their paychecks, too.

We also hired another Spanish/English bilingual speaker today. Storage insiders will tell you that the Spanish speaking polpulaiton is beginning to be a bigger and bigger portion of our storage customers. The Self storage trade shows have featured sessions on marketing to the Hispanic population. We are getting ready for the wave. As with every other imigrant group, the Spanish speakers are moving up in salary and economic status. So they will need to store their new stuff. When they talk to us and are able to speak in Spanish, we double the odds of doing business with them before we even get into the phone call. “Si, hablo espanol” is all we need to put the odds squarely in our favor. So far we have reps who hail from Mexico, Southwest Texas, Bolivia, Southern California, Colombia, Peru and Missouri, who can handle the Spanish calls. NOt only can they handle the calls, but they are very good sales people, too. We plan to add more.

Bye for now, Tron.

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