What business is missed?

Welcom to the self storage blog, where we examine issues that impact the profit levels at your self storage facility.

How much business is missed?
Stores are missing a lot of phone calls. We talk to about 50 live callers on average per month in the summer for our stores on the overflow call service. Since about half of the people we talk to are current tenants, you can assume the average store is missing 25 rental opportunities in a month.

There is a wide variation in the actual number of calls we take for a store. Some smaller properties in smaller markets only send us 20 or 25 callers. And some larger stores are sending 75 or 100 callers.

Anyway you slice it, it amounts to a lot of money left behind. The bulk of the calls come during office hours while the manager is busy doing something else or while the office at the store is full of tenants and prospective renters. We also get a good amount of calls in the hour or two just before and just after opening and closing.

We also see very little late evening calls from the west coast. Many believe that people like to shop after work. The bulk of the calls we get late in the evening are from the east coast. In our experience, west coast shoppers are done shopping by six or seven in the evening.

What we don’t know is the value of talking to current tenants. Does reaching a friendly person on the phone rather than a busy signal or an answering device help a tenant stay an extra month or two? If that were true, than there would be some real value in making sure all callers got a live voice. We must assume that any excuse a person can come up with to leave their belongings in storage is a good one. If the pain of paying the bill is less than the pain of going and removing the stuff, than the stuff stays. So if the phone experience is not painful, it must help in the long run.

Driving People to store:
The old tale says that if you can get someone in your store, you can rent to him or her. This proves to be truth time and time again. So our mission is to get people to our client’s stores. We have found the best way to get someone to the store is to take a credit number to reserve a unit. If this option is not available, a conditional hold or a first-come, first-served reservation is good.

If this option isn’t available, for instance the caller does not know for sure when a unit is needed, a site tour or visit works. When all else fails and we can’t do anything to get the caller to the store, a follow-up call from the store staff can do the job. Between the time we talk to a caller and the store calls back, the situation may have changed. Or the store manager may know enough about the local market, that this knowledge can help the caller overcome any hesitancies and come on down to the store.

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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