The Property Management Show

Today, we’re giving you the inside scoop as we listen in on one of our clients, Ryan Weir, with Walker Weir Property Management in Auckland, New Zealand. We’re going to dissect one of his sales calls, received from his Google Ads campaign – an owner lead, interested in property management. We’ll listen to Ryan navigate this call, and we’ll make comments in between and talk strategy. Below you’ll see the transcript of the call. Feel free to use this topic to train your staff: Ryan: Good afternoon, Walker Weir Property Management, this is Ryan speaking. Caller: G’day, Ryan, it’s Richard here, how are you? Alex: Right off the bat, what do you hear? This introduction is what you need – he gives: the name of the company the service he provides and he gives his own name as well Train your salespeople and get in the mode yourself that you identify who you are and what your company is every time the phone rings. You want to be friendly and welcoming to the person who is calling. Ryan: Hi Richard, I’m good, how are you? Caller: Good. The reason I’m calling is because me and my wife just bought a new place down in ____, but we have that place in ______ that we want to rent out. One of the terms on our financials is to have a rental appraisal that’s around the 620 mark per week. So, I was wondering how we go about getting an appraisal for that house? Ryan: Sure. What was your last name, Richard? Caller: —— Alex: Here’s something else to notice right off the bat. Ryan is patient and he’s listening. He’s not interrupting and instead of going in to ask some questions, he’s going to identify the person and get the contact information prior to gathering more information. Let’s keep listening. Ryan: Did someone pass our details on to you? Caller: I found you on the internet. Ryan: Perfect, okay. Where is your property in _______? Caller: It’s at _______. Ryan: And you’re moving out to ____ did you say? That’s pretty exciting. Caller: Yeah. We thought it’s a good time to make a move and get some land. Ryan: And will you be enlisting the services of a property manager such as ourselves? Caller: I think that’s the goal, possibly. We will want someone to look after the place. Ryan: The prices for rental property do change a little bit throughout the year. Auckland is a bit seasonal. So, when are you relocating out? Caller: February. Ryan: Cool. As it happens, that’s a good time to rent properties. The prices are good, and there are more tenants to choose from. Can you tell me a little bit about your _____ property? Alex: So, what Ryan did there is pretty brilliant. If you noticed, he asked how did you find us. The prospect said the internet. So, that’s a good bit of information. You don’t have to dig too deeply into it. Your digital channels should be aligned, and you should be able to go to your LeadSimple software to track and capture those details. You don’t want to move the call away from its purpose. But this is a good initial bit of information. Then, Ryan did what we always recommend and train – he said “tell me a little bit about your property.” People are emotionally connected to the homes they live in. Now that they’re renting it out, they want to know that you’re interested and that you care. It’s a great question to use when you’re jumping into the discovery phase. Caller: Well it’s three bedrooms, one bathroom with a separate toilet. We bought it about three years ago, and it was an old hoarder’s house. I own a building company so we renovated it. There’s a new bathroom and kitchen, it’s insulated and painted. Obviously, we planned on living there for some time, so we didn’t want much wrong with it. Ryan: Does it have a garage? Caller: Yes, a large garage. It’s sort of a single plus workshop garage. It sits on a large property, about 680 square meters I believe. There’s a private courtyard in the back that’s fully fenced. There’s a heat pump. It doesn’t have an HRV. Ryan: I can look at some details online, but I always like to hear about it. Caller: Yeah, the online pictures just don’t do it justice. Ryan: Sure, if you’ve renovated it, I’m sure it’s quite nice Caller: Yes, we have a concrete driveway that goes all the way up and a footpath. It’s all groomed. Ryan: I’ll do some work on that and I can give you a call back tomorrow with an appraisal. Caller: Perfect. Ryan: And we can give you an appraisal that is satisfactory for the bank. Alex: And at this point in the call, most people would simply give up. You have the address and some information about the house, and you’re going to give this person an appraisal that’s required by the bank for a new home they want to buy. Most people would say goodbye and get back to them the next day. But, Ryan doesn’t do that. He continues. Ryan: It goes without saying that we’d love to manage the property for you, but we can keep in touch about that. What’s your email address? Do you have any idea about what we do here? Caller: Well, what kind of rates would I be looking at for the property management of that home? Is it done by percentage? Ryan: Yes, it’s done by percentage which is great because it gives us plenty of incentive to get the property rented as quickly as possible to a very good tenant. We only get paid when rent is paid on your property. Our going rate is about eight and a half percent. We’re a little different in that our owners get a free rental guarantee, which means when we put a person into your property…. Alex: Let’s talk about what’s happening here. By doing discovery and satisfying the prospect’s initial request, which was an appraisal, Ryan earned the right to present his company as a solution to this person’s rental home. Right away, you hear the differentiation that he introduces during his presentation. He explains why they’re different. That’s a great way to make sure you introduce points of difference and why you are the best person to earn their business. Ryan: ..and if the tenant misses a rent payment or is late with rent, we still pay that rent to you. It’s a promise we give because we’re really good at collecting rent, so we put our money where our mouth is. If we find good tenants and we want to put them in your property, we have to back that up. Caller: Despite what the bank needs, like 620, realistically we can cover our mortgage quite well at a lower rate. Ryan: Yeah, they want you to be able to cover your payment by 1.5 times. It’s what they do. The other thing we do is we do meth testing at the beginning and end of the tenancy. That’s not because we’re picking people who do meth, but because every corner of society is now misusing it, whether a banker or a builder or an engineer or whatever. We do that test right in front of the tenants so they know we’ve tested the property. Caller: That makes perfect sense, so they can’t say you manufactured anything. Ryan: The other thing we do is to help with smoke alarms. This year, they became mandatory in all rental properties, so we make sure you comply and every year we test it and give you a certificate to state you have working smoke alarms. Caller: That’s really positive, yeah. Ryan: And, we ensure your property is looked after by inspecting usually every quarter, and then we send you a report. It’s about 17 or 18 pages with a lot of high quality photographs. We just want you to know what’s going on. The owners like to see the inside of their properties. Caller: That sounds really good. Ryan: I’ll include a booklet and an e-book that tells you everything that we do for you, so take a browse through it, and I’ll send you your appraisal. We’d love to manage your property and find you some great tenants for when you guys move out to _____. Caller: I really appreciate it. You’re actually the first company I’ve run into, so that’s fantastic. Thank you. Ryan: I’m glad. I’m a second-generation property manager. I rented out my first property when I was 19, and now I’m in my 30’s, so I’ve been doing this for a while. I’m also the owner, so I put a big emphasis on inspections. Caller: I appreciate your time, and I look forward to working with you. Alex: So, let’s bring it all together. What do you think is the likelihood that Ryan will get this deal? Pretty high. So, let’s examine what he did and how he did it to get to this outcome. Identify Yourself Pick up the phone and identify yourself. Be friendly and then just listen to what the person has to say without interrupting. Get the contact information and ask how they found you without digging too deeply into it. You should let your tracking do the measuring if the lead came from the internet. You’ll know if it’s from AdWords or your website or some other source. Discovery Phase Next, you want to gather information. Ryan asked the caller to tell him about the property. That means so much to the other person. Most of us don’t realize it because we’re so much into the business. Sometimes we assume things. That really does a disservice. Every customer and prospect should be treated like the only customer you’ve ever had. What if every customer is your only customer? How would your attitude and your approach change? Treat it as such. The Presentation After the discovery process, you get to start your presentation. Ryan did an amazing job of quickly putting three key differentiators of his company. He explained them and connected the why. The first was the rental guarantee. Why is it important to this caller? Because he needed to guarantee 1.5 the amount of his mortgage payment. That was a qualifier. The rent guarantee gets him there. The next thing was the meth test. Maybe it’s not as relevant in the U.S. but in New Zealand, it’s a huge factor. So, they are on top of this problem and doing this test for the tenants pre and post tenancy. This is a unique value proposition and it speaks to the FUD that a new landlord might have – Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. It’s realistic. The reality is that a meth user can destroy the property’s ability to make money in the future. Finally, he mentioned inspection reports and he told the caller that based on the size of his house, he could expect a 15 or 18-page inspection report. You could even offer to send a sample inspection report. There are also probably some nuggets in Ryan’s book as well. When he closes the phone call, he says he will send the appraisal the bank is looking for, and he’ll also include an e-book with all the details describing the service he provides. At this stage, the fee that Ryan brought up is not really a problem. He focused the discussion on how he earns that fee and why these issues are important to the prospect even though he did not know about these things. Ryan was the first person he called, and I think he’ll be the last person he calls. End with Experience Ryan ended the call by talking about his experience in the property management business. It shows that he knows what he’s doing. If you’re the salesperson and not the owner, you can still say “we’ve been in business for five years and we have these awards and manage this number of properties.” Prepare your close with the experience that differentiates you. Then, the caller knows that you speak and listen well and you’re qualified to do this kind of work. At the end of the call, you know it’s likely that this is going to turn into a management contract. We run Google Ads campaigns for property management companies, and we track these calls. We provide customers with a recording of every call, even if it’s a missed call or a voicemail. These are useful tools to train and coach your team. You can sit down and do reviews with your staff. It’s phenomenal what you’ll learn. At Fourandhalf, we have a tradition of doing “Breakfast Clubs”, which is an hour-long meeting every Monday morning. We learn something new each and every week! Something like this would be a great opportunity for your staff in a staff meeting – go through the specifics and make sure everyone is trained. We hope this helps you get better and close more deals. If you have any questions, contact us at Fourandhalf. The post The Anatomy of a Successful Property Management Sales Call appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.

For this episode of the Property Management Show, we provide answers to sales questions about growing a property management business. This was done as part of a live segment at the recent PM Grow Summit in West Palm Beach. Along with Alex Osenenko, we bring in three experts who have already built high-growth property management companies, or have closely tied experience within the property management industry: Deniz Yusef – Gained 900 new management contracts over a 4-year period. Mentors agents across the United States, Australia, and New Zealand as The BDM Coach. MaryLou Tyler – Founder of Strategic Pipeline, a Fortune 1000 outbound sales process improvement consulting group. She is also the author of Predictable Prospecting: How to Radically Increase Your B2B Sales Pipeline. Jordan Muela – CEO of LeadSimple and ManageMyProperty. Co-Organizer of the PM Grow Summit. All questions and answers were compiled live at the event from real property managers. Below we have the transcription of the panel. Q. [1:54] Deniz talks a lot about live presentations and showing up to present to a client at the home. How do you modify that if you’re out of the state or even out of the country? – Bob, Alarca Property Management in Charlotte, NC Deniz: I love this question, and showing up to present to a client at the home they want to rent out is really important. If you’re out of the state or out of the country, you have to use technology. Skype sessions make it possible to do a face to face presentation if your client is not local. Book an appointment, and send your information in an email ahead of time, and then go through everything. You can’t necessarily walk around the property with the client, but there are ways to work this out. You could do this through Skype and Google Hangouts and Facetime, and you can still be face to face with your client. There’s no excuse to not getting in front of a client in this day and age. You can engage and win their business by looking into their eyes and getting in front of that client. Q. [3:26] Why go through the trouble of tracking sales activities if you already know the results? If I know the outcome, why go through all that hassle?   Marylou: First of all, it’s not a hassle. You may know how many properties you’re closing, but it still matters that you track that activity. It’s fine tuning the process of getting from that initial conversation to identifying the opportunity and gaining the business. It helps you to close the lag time and note what pain point or challenge you could overcome for the client. Tracking sales activities can create a shorter sales cycle and helps you identify on what’s working and what isn’t. Q. [4:21] I like what Deniz talked about in his presentation and my question is, how long or how much time should be spent at a presentation when you’re at a home? – Chris, Rent Pros Property Management in Sacramento, CA Deniz: Give yourself about an hour and a half for the presentation. It may sound long now, however you want to be deliberate enough so you don’t go back and do a second presentation. It’s not very efficient to set multiple appointments for one door. Give yourself that full 90 minutes to plan and spend with a potential client. You can go to the property and do your presentation in that timeframe because before the meeting, you will have asked the important questions already. Make sure you can overcome every objection that you might hear. So, work on your presentation skills, practice, record yourself on the phone and really put together a great presentation. You’ll be surprised at how fast that hour and a half goes. Marylou: There’s a process at the front end that needs to be in place. You want to do your qualification process and keep track of the client and the property before you get to the presentation. Q. [5:56] Here’s a situational scenario. Let’s say I run a 200-unit property management company, and I do all the sales myself but I’m ready to hire a Business Development Manager (BDM). What are the first things that I do to structure the process so when that new BDM walks in, so there’s something for them to do? Simplify the first steps.   Marylou: You need to immediately map out the steps for your sales process from the first conversation to the first visit, whether it’s remote or on-site. Look at the key milestones along that way so you can see the actual steps that create forward movement into your pipeline. Have those mapped out so you’ll know how long it takes, how many people you need to go through, and all the other details. That will shape the daily life of a salesperson doing this on your behalf. Deniz: Have strong systems and procedures in place in your office. Even if you are starting your property management business, have the infrastructure in place to handle growth. You don’t want to have Band-Aids all over the place because you weren’t prepared. Show that you’re prepared for the growth and the handover to your BDM. When you talk to the BDM, get them to understand the process so they know how to sell your services. So many people in that role don’t know why the office is advertising or marketing the way they do, why they collect the rent a certain way, why they evict tenants or how. They need to know all systems and procedures of the office so when they have an opportunity to pitch for the business, they can explain everything and talk about the mistakes that were made and the knowledge that was gained. Q. [8:34] For us as property management company owners, looking at marketing and advertising options, what kind of ROI should we look for based on your data? What’s the best baseline? – Duke, Dodson Property Management in Northern Virginia Alex: First, you have to take a pulse on your existing business. ROI depends on the channel, such as Google Ads or referrals. Create a benchmark for each channel. Even if you’re only business is through referrals, out of ten referral leads, how many of those do you convert? Look at where those referrals come from and move from there. Once you have the pulse, line up your benchmarks, put it on a spreadsheet and set goals for each month. Every business is different. What works for you on one marketing channel might not work for another property manager, this can be attributed to your location or other factors. Set your benchmarks and goals, track your data, and see if you hit them. Marylou: Every channel should be accountable down to the penny. So, you can see where you should put your marketing dollars based on your current clients or your ideal client. There’s a waterfall for outreach. There’s a crawl, walk, run stage. Usually, within 6 to 9 weeks we have something crawling and something walking. You can see your ROI in as little as three months with most marketing channels. Jordan: Another way to frame it is by tracking time to payback. If it’s longer than 18 months, that’s unacceptable. If your time to payback is six months, you’re doing really well. You can also look at your customer acquisition cost and lifetime value ratio. Getting that at a 3:1 ratio is really the upper limit of what will be profitable. That’s what you can look at in terms of ROI. It can tell you your cost per lead and you can create a target. Q. [11:34] Deniz mentioned sending videos out to prospective tenants and investors during the sales process. One of our difficulties is implementing a fail-proof process. What tools do you recommend with text messaging videos to make it more streamlined and efficient so we are sure it goes out every time and isn’t necessarily dependent on a BDM or a salesperson? – Michael, Real Property Management in Salt Lake City Deniz: Sending text videos out to prospective tenants and investors during the sales process is an important part of preparing them for your presentation. A tool like VirtuallyinCredible can set it up for you. Doing video for sales is/should be a part of the job, simply because that is where technology is headed. This goes for creating content as well. Have that YouTube channel optimized to your website so everything works together. Some people prefer to read and don’t like videos. Make sure you cater to everyone just so you won’t miss out on anyone. Q. [13:41] During a listing presentation, when you get towards the end, how do you transition into the potential closing? You want to get through the documentation, and there’s a bit of awkwardness after you’ve given the speech and it’s time to sign. – Brad, RentWerx Property Management in Austin, TX Deniz: After you’ve made your presentation, and you’re at the end, how do you transition to the close and get your management contract signed? When you’re about to go in for the ask, re-visit the pain points that you discussed during the presentation. If your prospective client expressed concern about the type of tenant that would be moving into the property, re-iterate that question they had, and ask if they are comfortable with the way you said you’d handle it. Go through it again if you need to, and then ask if they are happy with the way you would manage the investment property on their behalf. You’ve brought up the hot points, so they’re going to say yes. Then, you can explain that you’re going to discuss the authorization form with them. You don’t want to push it on them, but you do want to go through the contract and leave it with them. This explains all the processes of property management. They have to agree to all your services and by this time, they are ready to have you take over the management and find a suitable tenant. It works almost every time. Alex: This illustrates why the discovery process is so important. You have to ask the questions and listen so you can fish out the real pain points. They will realize your value when you go through their pain points and offer your solutions. Usually, you’re at the point where they’re ready to sign. If there is friction or something you have to come back to, you won’t get the signature at that moment. But it’s a natural process, and if you’ve done more listening than talking, you should be able to close that deal and get that signature. Use your tools. They will be ready to sign when you can help them. Q. [17:51] I’m in New York City, where we have over a million buildings, and a lot of property managers. There are 20 people just like me in every corner. I’ve had to do sales pitches in front of a board with three other property management companies in the room with me. How do I compete in this market? – Abdullah, NewGent Management in New York Marylou: The thing is, there aren’t 20 people just like you. If you need to compete in a market like that, you need to differentiate yourself. Dig deep into why you matter and what sets you apart from everyone else. Be able to explain why people want to do business with you. Focus on the reasons people should change property management companies and work with you instead. When you take the time to do this, it won’t matter how many other property managers are out there. Once you get that core essence of who you are, it will propagate through all your messages and videos. It bubbles up and resonates with your audience. Alex: Branding is important as well. Go back to the basics. The power of content can really work for you because it gives you a chance to educate people and be a teacher. How many of those other property managers in New York City are educating and being open about what they do, how much they cost, and why the properties they manage are so successful? Probably none of them. So, stake that one corner and be the authority. Figure out what your ideal customers are asking, and answer those questions. Record 20 videos and use the content in your emails, texts, and brochures. You also have to ask for the business. It’s that simple sometimes. Talk to your current clients and find out why they chose you. It’s an eye opener. A lot of people see themselves one way but their clients see something else. Have any questions about growing your property management business? Contact us at Fourandhalf – Internet Marketing for Property Managers. If you enjoyed this episode of The Property Management Show, be sure to subscribe on iTunes, and YouTube to stay up to date on the latest episodes! The post Property Management Sales Strategies – PM Grow Summit 2017 Panel appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.

Today, we’re talking with Brad Larsen, Founder/Owner of Larsen Properties in San Antonio, about The Top 10 Property Management Mistakes and How to Learn From Them. These tips will help avoid the pains of growing a property management business. We are excited to bring in Brad, who: is a retired army captain. earned a master’s degree in business administration. runs a property management company in the ultra-competitive San Antonio property management market. Larsen Properties started in 2011 and has already emerged as a market leader in the San Antonio area. Brad will share 10 mistakes that he wished he had known about when he first started Larsen Properties. #10 – Waiting Too Long to Hire Business Development Talent Larsen Properties waited until they reached 250 homes under management before hiring a business development manager for their company. Brad was first introduced to the idea of hiring a business development manager from the Leading Property Managers of Australia. This is one of the first things you must do if your intention is to grow. As a business owner, you are doing so many things from payroll to operations that you simply cannot commit to dealing with 4-5 appointments/week. Also, Brad recommends on not waiting too long in implementing a solid CRM platform, like LeadSimple, to systemize follow-ups to help your property management company. Combining those two areas will help your business development manager effectively do their job, as well as you being able to passively oversee the activity that is going on with your lead generating efforts. Think about compensation as well because your model needs to be sustainable. Do a base salary and a percentage or a commission based on the lifetime value of that client. You want a motivated sales person, not a converted Realtor. A great tip to convert a higher rate of deals is to consider having a portfolio manager go with your business development manager to appointments so that the potential client can meet the person who would be their point of contact. That helps a conversation start about tenant handover procedures, what will happen to get a home ready for the market, etc. Speaking the language is important, and the prospective owner will appreciate talking to someone who will actually manage the property. Larsen Properties recommend that 100 homes is when you should start to seriously consider hiring a business development manager. At that point, you have more than enough to manage and you have enough income coming in from management agreements that can help you pay for that talent investment. #9 – Not Establishing Metrics Early Larsen Properties started a spreadsheet a few years ago that helps them track metrics Track your metrics religiously every month. You can make adjustments quickly and discover where you are spending incorrectly. Key performance indicators (KPIs) that Brad likes include: Staffing to revenue ratio – staffing expense costs compared to annual revenue. The magic line in the sand is around 50 percent, and it might fall between 40 or 60 percent. If your total revenue is $1 million and your staffing expense as $500,000, that’s half of your revenue spent on staffing. It’s where it should be. Smaller companies can run their staffing at about 40 percent. If you’re above 60 percent, you want to look at that metric and see if you’re spending too much on staff. Sundry income to management revenue ratio. Sundry programs are small programs like eviction protection, early termination fee, late fees, rental guarantees, and any other things you may have against your management fee revenue. In Australia, it’s tracked at .25. So, for every management dollar you earn, you could/should be earning an additional 25 cents of additional revenue. At Larsen Properties, they’ve managed to earn 70 cents on every dollar above and beyond their management and leasing fees. Pro-tip: One of the ways Larsen Properties is able to earn 70 cents on every rental revenue dollar is by charging a pet administrative fee. That covers the property manager’s ability to cover any damage that a pet causes above and beyond the security deposit. It’s a creative way to earn that sundry income. #8 – Not Joining NARPM Right Away It took Brad 2-3 years before he got really involved with NARPM NARPM – the National Association of Residential Property Managers – provides resources, leadership, and mentors. A lot can be learned at broker-owner conferences and other events. You learn how your peers solve common problems in innovative ways. Check out NARPM.org if you’re not a member yet. There are state chapters as well, which provide excellent speakers and opportunities. You also get face time with vendors, which helps you get to know the people behind a product/service. #7 – Not Establishing Enough Points of Difference You need to create some points of difference between you and other companies. It should be easy for you to attract a specific category of clients who have a unique need; you can be the company that: Has an in-house maintenance company. Does videos that no one else does. Offers an eviction protection program. Works in a specific part of town. Offers a single point of contact. (Larsen Properties’ point of difference) Specializes in working with investors. As you can see, there is probably something you already offer that the rest of your competition does not. There has to be a way to create a point of difference between you and your competition that will set you apart from everyone else who is managing homes. At Fourandhalf, we can personally attest that companies that are able to differentiate themselves with a unique value proposition usually see the best results. Work out how to differentiate yourself, especially before you launch a big property management marketing plan. (This is something Fourandhalf can help you with.) #6 – Making Bad Hires Brad admits that his strong suit is not in hiring people. At some point, everyone will make a bad hire. The old adage, hire slow and fire fast, holds up, however, there is no perfect solution. A few ways to conduct interviews is by: Do a panel interview after the initial telephone interview. Have your general manager and one or two other employees interview prospective new team members, and have a discussion about who to hire. Turn the process over to someone else who will be good at hiring the right people. You can also use a PEO, which is a payroll provider company that contributes HR help. You’ll get benefits at a much better rate. There are performance concerns and culture concerns. Low performance is easier to measure and coach. A culture fit can be more difficult to address. That’s where having many different people interview a prospective employee can help. You want to understand the personality and make sure there’s a drive and a competence that will help your company. To put it simply, you want to hire people who care. #5 – Dealing with the IRS Larsen Properties kept getting hit with fines before instilling quarterly audits to keep things accurate. Make sure your 1099s are in order to send your owners every January. Go through your process, make sure it’s watertight, and make sure you have good taxpayer identification numbers for the people you manage because the IRS will fine you on every incorrect one. This can be a headache. Larsen Properties tempered these fines by instilling quarterly audits to help keep things accurate. You also want to file all your tax returns for your LLCs, if you have those set up. When you have an LLC with no revenue, it can be easy to forget to file. Get a good CPA who can manage this process for you. What seems like a little thing can lead to a huge IRS fine. A good bookkeeper will save you money. #4 – Handling Vendors/Maintenance Larsen Properties had to downsize their maintenance department to be more profitable Everyone is going to have to do maintenance and there are different ways to handle it. If you run an in-house maintenance company, stay small or go big. Don’t be in the middle because you won’t make money. An in-house maintenance guy with a van might be all you need and that is what Larsen Properties does with a portfolio of 600 doors. The middle is having two to five staff members working on maintenance. The reason this didn’t work for Larsen Properties, is that over the course of a year, you will have downtime and it will kill your profits. Keeping all your staff people busy full time when you’re a medium sized maintenance company won’t work. If you have 15 or 20 maintenance trucks out on dispatches all the time, you’ll make money. However, the middle range is not profitable. Talk to vendors who you’re looking to hire and secure discounts from them. Most software programs allow you to pay vendors a discounted rate. You have to negotiate that rate. Maybe you get an invoice for $100, and you have negotiated a 10 percent discount with a vendor. So, you write a check for $90, and now you have a 10 percent margin of profit just by doing that one thing. It can work up to thousands and even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Maintenance and management go hand in hand, so a preferred vendor list will help you from the very beginning. #3 – Not Embracing Yelp and Google and Review Sites Larsen Properties has a 4.8 average with 160 5-star reviews on Google Make sure you’re present on Yelp, Google, Angie’s List, the Better Business Bureau, and any other review site available to you. Get past the point that you’re mad at Yelp. Everyone complains that anyone can say anything about you on Yelp. Turn your attitude around and embrace the review platforms. In the long term, they will probably be white noise. People will put a diminishing value on them, because at some point it all evens out. Right now, you want to embrace review sites and make yourself stand out. It’s another good point of difference to have great reviews. Most of your clients and tenants are happy, but they won’t review you without you asking. #2 – Failing to Implement Brad learned quickly that by not implementing new and innovative ideas, that he would be losing money. This is almost the biggest mistake you can make. If you fail to recognize a good idea and use it in your business, you’re missing a huge opportunity. If you see something at a conference and it sounds like a good idea, but then you go back home and forget about it, you’re making a mistake. For example, Larsen Properties learned about tenant liability insurance at the Minneapolis National NARPM convention. He learned how one can earn thousands of extra dollars a year by implementing a program like that. It was a no-brainer. However, if he hadn’t implemented that immediately, he would have been out thousands of dollars over the past couple of years. Write things down with a pen and paper. It can be easy to take notes on your phone, but writing something down physically is a tactile response and it will stay in your brain. Then, organize those thoughts later on and you can get to work. Complete the things that will make you more revenue. #1 – Utilizing Set-It and Forget-It Instead of Measure and Improve Good companies can fail in growth by thinking that they will hire a marketing company and stop thinking about marketing. Or, maybe they’ll implement Appfolio or Rently and think they don’t have to do anything more. Business growth requires that every system is always providing measurable indicators. Make sure your employees are responsible for certain aspects of your business and you can compensate for performance. Everyone should be aligned behind a single purpose. Manage your process and make decisions about how to improve your systems on a regular basis. Pick up on what’s out there, then come back and put it into your system. That will get you to a new point. Implementation is critical. These are 10 major property management mistakes that you want to avoid making. If you enjoyed this topic, make sure to subscribe and leave a review for The Property Management Show on iTunes. If you have any questions about growing your property management business, feel free to contact us at Fourandhalf. The post Running a Property Management Business: Top 10 Mistakes to Avoid appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.

Our guest today is Jason Goldberg, who is a life coach, international best-selling author, a speaker, and just a great human being. Subscribe to The Property Management Show on iTunes Q: I have your book here, Prison Break, and let me set the stage for this podcast. I want to use our time today to get some deep wisdom in a fun and non-pressure environment. I also have a selfish purpose here, and this is it: for the last six months or so, I’ve been looking for a business and potentially a personal coach to help me and my team elevate to the next level. I’ve never done a coach interview for myself, so I’m hoping to use this as a discovery mission. Hopefully business owners in my shoes right now who need inspirational leadership from a coach can find this to be a helpful tool. How does that sound? A: I love that. The only thing I care about doing in life is being of service, so let’s create an intense and massive service for you and your listeners. Q: I’m defining service as the purpose of life. It’s such an immense satisfaction when you serve someone other than yourself. A: Yes, but serving others is the most selfish thing we can do in the world. Anyone who tells you they serve others out of the goodness of their heart is lying. The reason being is we can’t help but to feel good about ourselves when we help others. And that’s okay – there’s nothing wrong with contributing, making the world better, and feeling good during the process. It’s an incredible feeling. Q: You have coached a lot of people, and you have this element of knowledge where you can look inside someone’s brain and help solve their problems. How do you help business owners define what they want? It seems like such an evasive thing. I don’t even know what I want. How do you help people do that? A: Trying to answer that question becomes this intellectual exercise and one more thing to do on the to-do list. I am a fast person, and one of the biggest transformations in my life was to slow down. That doesn’t mean you don’t still work hard and hustle and do a lot of stuff. I still do a lot. But what I do differently now is I don’t allow the outside chaos of the world to impact the inside chaos of my mind. When you ask a question like “what do I want?” – if you’re trying to answer it from the head space of needing to figure it out, it won’t come. It can’t be pressure-filled and serious. Settle and slow down your thoughts, and mentally close your eyes to visualize it. Picture a snow globe with a base and a glass and all the fake snow and liquid swirling around. When you shake up the snow globe, it’s beautiful from the outside. People love it. But think about it from the inside looking out. If you were inside the snow globe looking out, you’d freak out. You can’t see anything except the swirling flakes and liquid, and you just want everything to slow down. So, we are inside the snow globe and in that place, we can’t answer the question – what do I want? You can’t see the possibilities. You need to let things settle. Q: What is it? How do you settle down a snow globe? A: You have the snow settle by putting the snow globe down and stepping away. When it’s not being agitated, it’s calm. So once everything is calm and the snow settles, you’re inside this glass globe and you can see all the possibilities. When you’re wondering what you want, don’t answer from a place of chaos, but look inside, and settle down and allow yourself to figure out what you want. Look at it through a different lens. Q: But you have to be purposeful in terms of looking for that answer. Putting things down feels like things are going to be ignored. I’m walking by the globe, but not paying attention. A: Anything I know is from screwing up. So, you may think you’re walking past the snow globe and ignoring it, but you’re still in the chaotic mind space. Once you slow down, you can figure out what it is you want. Ask yourself what your ideal day looks like. Just an ordinary day, not an amazing day. This is everything from morning routine to how much time you spend with your family to the time you have for exercise or reading to what you do with members of your team to develop them to the time you’re out in the world to your at-home time and the meals you’re eating and the time you go to bed. All this really matters; you have to figure out what your ideal average day looks like. It’s a great first exercise, but the real thing that transforms business leaders is to look at that and decide who they need to be in order for it to be the average day. Who do I need to be? What do I need to cultivate to make that happen? Is it more courage, creativity, empathy, presence, what is it? Everyone knows what is holding them back. That’s something everyone knows, they just don’t give themselves the time and space to figure it all out. Q: One of the most influential people in my life is Albert Oaten, who was a VP at a company I worked for. He was amazing at this one concept. He always asked “what does success look like?” He asked that about everything, and instead of engineering things as he goes, he actually visualizes them. He helped me to learn that practice, to visualize what the success looks like and then work backwards to achieve it. Is that similar to what you’re talking about? Visualizing your ideal day and writing it down to make it happen? A: Yes, that’s the doing. There are two parts to success in my mind. It’s the being and the doing. We do ourselves a disservice when we focus only on the doing. I was speaking to a large Fortune 500 company about my plans to speak to their people, and they wanted me to come to a conference. They wanted the first half of the day to be devoted to talking about strategy and practices and hiring talent and social media, and more strategic doing things. Then they wanted me to talk about self-leadership in the afternoon, and I told them I had the perfect name for my session: Why What You Learned the First Half of the Day Will Never Work for You. It’s not that the doing is worthless, but if you don’t focus on who you’re being in the moment and your own level of calmness and connection and creativity and relationship with others, the best strategies in the world will do nothing to grow your business. And even if they do grow your business, it will be done with such a heaviness and force that you’ll never enjoy it. You’ll resent your own success. Q: Let me ask you a rapid-fire question that may seem silly: how often do you get your haircut? A: Usually every two or three weeks. My wife trims up the back of the neck and she’ll also trim my part. Q: You always look sharp in your Facebook Live sessions and I imagine you travel a lot. Is it normal to feel bad between haircuts? I don’t feel great between them. A: That’s not so silly. A dear friend of mine, Shawn Stevenson, has this practice that he calls the When Life Works list. It’s a list of when life works. There are 15 or 20 things on there, and when he’s doing them, his life just works. I would invite everybody to sit down and ask themselves: when your life is working, what is going on? What are you practicing and what are you doing? There might be 20 things on the list, and as long as you are doing two or three things on that list, life is working. One of the things on my list is to have a fresh haircut. So, I know that when I have a fresh haircut, my life works better. Q: That’s pretty interesting. I feel like I blunder through it, and just try to help everyone around me. And not go insane. But I like the Life Works list. Here’s a more substantive question. As business owners, we need to tell good stories. It’s podcasts, blogs, conversations with associates and employees; you have to be a good storyteller. Jason, you do Facebook Live sessions and then you surprise me with the depth of these everyday situations that you convert into life lessons. You seem to shift your mind to perceive life differently and get lessons out of it. I used to be a good storyteller. Then when I was 18 years old, I read Dale Carnegie’s How to Influence People. It made me who I am today. But I realize now that I over-corrected. I stopped being interesting and I started looking for other people to be interesting. How do you practice storytelling? Give me some wisdom. A: Business owners have to create relationships, especially today where social media has removed all geographic barriers. Intimacy with people is the new currency, I don’t care what business you’re in. It could be property management or a yogurt shop. The way to be successful is not your advertising business or dominating your local market. It’s about truly connecting with people online. Storytelling has grown and is needed for all entrepreneurs, whether they are looking for investment money or sharing a message with the world. I am always looking for unrelated instances that are actually clues pointing me to some place that I need to grow. When I can find that for myself, I know that I am not special. Anything I am struggling with; millions of people are struggling with the same thing. We can be intentional about looking through our day for material to use for storytelling. You don’t have to be Tony Robbins or go to some special school. Just be intentional about looking for lessons in your day. Any small nugget will work. Not everything you share with the world has to be revolutionary. Tell a story that is evolutionary. If you believe one thing and then you hear a story that makes you think something different, that is evolution. It helps you and it’s better than sharing the greatest story in the world. Slow down, see what’s happening in your own life and be evolutionary. Q: We have customers who can’t get away from a perception of perfection. If we ask them to film videos and get their story out, they feel very incapable of delivering even if they’ve been in business for more than 10 years. How do we help people go beyond this barrier? A: It’s so simple. I struggled with this in the beginning. Public speaking is the number one fear of so many people. I get nervous every time I go on stage or do a video. They key is simple and illustrates why the being has to come before the doing. The shift is that when you’re too worried about being perfect or being in front of the camera, you need to shift from a place of ego to a place of service. It’s that simple. If you tell me I’m afraid to be on camera and I’m afraid to share my message, and I tell you that a woman will be watching this who has only two weeks to live because she has terminal cancer and all she wants to do is watch someone talk about what they really care about on camera, would you do it? She isn’t a business owner and she isn’t going to buy anything from you, she just wants the relief of watching someone talk about what they really love. Can you help her with that? In that moment, of course you can do it. Why wouldn’t you. That’s the shift from it’s all about me to it’s all about them. Shift from ego to service. Just show up. Q: That’s incredible to use that perspective. It is ego. You’re afraid to be judged. It comes down to caring too much about your own self rather than putting information into the world and helping others. If you own a Chinese restaurant and a next door a competitor lowers prices by 30 percent to squeeze you out, what do you do? A: That’s awesome because now they’ve created the ability for me to create a distinction. I’m not going to compete on price; even if I could do that, it’s not sustainable. The race to the bottom is never sustainable. So, I want to up the service level and up the experience level. I want people talking about my restaurant so much that the people next door could be giving away their food and people still won’t go there. There are a ton of different ways to do that. The biggest thing to do is bring creativity to this exercise. How can you create an experience? I want to maybe create some level of exclusivity. Let people feel special when they come into my restaurant. If I want to position myself as a premium restaurant, I might remove half the seats from my restaurant right away. It sounds ridiculous – why would I take away half of my revenue? But as soon as I remove half my seats, it’s 50 percent more difficult to get a seat at my amazing restaurant. And the people who do get in, they will be so grateful they got in, that when I deliver – and you have to deliver – I will create an experience not to be forgotten. You’ll be able to tell people every day that you’re sold out, and word will get around. Then, you can start adding five to 10 seats back in every week, and you’ve earned more business without raising your own prices. Q: Go for scarcity, deliver a great product, and get the message out. A: The key is, you have to have an incredible product. These aren’t tactics or strategies. These are ways to help people experience how good you are. When Steve Martin was asked how he got so successful, he said he did the work and he got so good at it that people could not ignore him. That’s how we want to be in our businesses. We want to get so good that people can’t ignore us. Q: Gamification is a topic in your book. How does it help and how can business owners do it? We run a serious business, and property managers have tenants looking for good places to live and owners who want to earn rental income. How do you introduce gamification and make that work fun? A: I like that you called your business “serious.” If I was your coach, the first thing I would ask is what that means and I would ask you to prove to me that the work you do is serious. I think you’d have a hard time doing it because unless someone dies from something that happens, not many businesses on this planet are serious. We believe that they are, and if we look through the lens of everything being serious, then everything will seem serious and it’s hard to implement things like gamification. So first, allow yourself to relax and see the possibilities of how you can have fun. Last week, I had things I had to do that I didn’t want to do, and there are different techniques and strategies I could use to help myself. So, I was making lists and following my strategies, but then I realized that I don’t have to do any of it. I can stop all this and go get a job at Starbucks. So, I realized I can either find the fun and the enjoyment and the possibilities or I need to stop complaining and go get a job somewhere else. And this isn’t to beat myself up or make myself feel bad. It’s to create a sense of freedom and empowerment to see that I am choosing to do these things and that I have the ability as one of the most creative beings on this planet as a human to make everything more fun. Gamification comes into play because we love games. I don’t have kids, but I have nieces and nephews. If you tell a kid to clean a room, they will pout and scream and cry. But when picking up your clothes becomes a basketball game, and you’re tossing clothes in the hamper, they are more likely to do it. We stopped playing games because it has been conditioned into us that the workplace is serious and not a place for games. Whatever your biggest challenge happens to be, you can create some friendly competition or games to address it, no matter how absurd it may seem. Create games around your biggest challenge, and it immediately becomes more fun. Q: We manage people’s growth, which is serious. We have to deliver. So gamifying systems and goals is something I haven’t spent enough time thinking about. But I have thought about the jobs I really enjoyed. A lot of it was when things were interesting, and when there was a fun environment. When things stagnated and people became serious, it was dreadful to work. A: So, you know what that feels like. And the distinction in that chapter of the book is game versus shame. You can’t fix things through shame. Let’s play with this for a couple of minutes. What is one of the biggest challenges Fourandhalf has? Let’s see if we can gamify it. Q: One of the biggest challenges is the perceived notion of work. If our customers don’t see us doing anything, their presumption is we’re not doing anything for them. So, the business owner knows they are paying us $500 or $1,000 a month and they don’t know what they’re getting. They don’t see us doing specific things on a daily basis. They’ll call us and ask what we’re doing for them. As you grow, that becomes intense. That’s something we struggle with and we need to solve. How do we gamify that? A: That is a communications issue and an agreements versus expectations issue. So, we probably can’t dive into the distinction between expectations and co-creations, as I call them. I get the difficulty of not having a physical deliverable. That can make it hard to justify the cost, so there are fun ways to gamify the communication aspect of this. The first thing that popped into my mind is an opportunity that 99 percent of service providers miss. Every single correspondence that a client gets from you should raise their level of consciousness and raise their spirits. They should see an email from you in their inbox and be happy. That’s something we don’t slow down enough to think about. Before we send an email, ask how it will make the person’s day five percent better. It can be a joke, but it doesn’t have to be humor. There are four elements to the perfect correspondence. The more of them you have, the better. One is humor, one is value, one is possibilities, and one is curiosity. If you just slow down before emailing a client to find out if you are providing value, invoking curiosity, or helping them see possibilities, you can decide whether you really need to send that email. Do you ever get holiday cards or letters from people? Friends and family tell you what’s been going on over the last year. That’s fun. It’s like a year in review. So, what if your dedicated account managers were to send correspondence through that lens. Here’s what’s going on in our world, and here’s what we’ve been doing for you over the last two weeks or three months. Don’t just do a check-in. No one forgot about you and if they did, you aren’t serving them, so stop with the check-ins. Give actual value when you’re sending an email. Share an article about a new thing you’re researching for a company. Just give them something – a possibility, a value, a humor, and they will never again question where their money is going. Q: That’s good. We do a weekly breakfast club where we learn together about a concept or hear a podcast and I think that will be our next breakfast club meeting topic. We can deliver additional value to our communications. Our clients have the same challenge. Their owners don’t hear from them until something goes wrong. As service providers, we are doing a lot of work but we don’t have good ways to communicate it or show it. Instead of focusing on property management as a negative business and worrying that all our clients hear are complaints, we can focus on delivering the highest customer experience. We can remove half those chairs from the restaurant and still grow. I like that explanation. Our challenge is to get to the filming of blogs. Our content sets the foundation of everything else we do. Content is an essential and foundational piece, and we can’t get people to that stage for filming. The ego versus service answer you gave earlier helps us add value to those communications too. A: Service is really the way to go, and one of the core tenants of my business is a concept of Client Astonishment. I talk about creating clients, not finding them. You must transform some part of their life. If you have a business, you are trying to transform someone’s life or business. So, a lot of people understand Client Astonishment, and then it goes away once the client is signed. Don’t focus on client creation but on client re-creation. For your breakfast meetings, a tremendously impactful thing you can do is to have a small session on client re-creation. All those clients can go into a cup or a glass and on that day, pull out one client’s name and focus on astonishing that client. Do something they never saw coming. When a creative person really focuses on one name and you really get into it, and think about how you can astonish them, you will come up with incredible ideas and you will have that client for life. Q: My business is based on my clients’ businesses, so this is important. Our problems are similar. Property managers are responsible for a portfolio of clients, so this concept works. Let’s shift to a rapid-fire question. What is the least manly thing you do on a regular basis? A: Everything I do is non-manly! I don’t like sports and I do like fashion. The least manly thing I do is to shop for socks online. I’m a huge sock person. Q: Socks are interesting. It’s a bit selfish. People don’t see your socks, only you do. A: Well as men, we don’t have as many accessory options as women. So, I like coordinating socks with shirts or ties or just my mood for the day. It’s fun for me. Anytime I do cross my legs, people will start talking to me because they see my socks. It starts conversations. I took the thing I love the most – socks – and I used it to astonish clients. Someone wanted to be more bold and courageous in her job at a bank. I found some socks, one of which said bold and one said courageous. She knew that I was a sock person, so when I sent them to her, she wasn’t surprised. But she was astonished that I thought to send them to her. And then we did gamification. Now her challenge was to wear them at least once a week and show them to at least two people at the office when she wore them. It became fun, and she had to be bold and courageous. This created connections with her employees, and she felt like she was being more of her bold and courageous self. Q: What kind of car do you drive? A: A 2016 Kia Optima. This is my second Kia and I love it. Q: My next question was why. Is it just transportation or does a car have more meaning to you? A: I’ve always liked cars and I was into Japanese imports when I was young. It is a thing for me. I like comfort and technology and it feels good. I’m in the car a lot and I need to be comfortable. Q: That’s less of a status symbol but an everyday important thing for me. It’s on my When Life Works list. I have a three-mile commute but I have to drive a stick shift car that I love. A: I love that you’re clear on that. Q: Let’s talk about the Game Winning Shots. You talked about an interview you had for a speaking opportunity and how instead of focusing on closing the deal and being intense and selling your value, you took the opportunity to shift your mindset and you decided to be relaxed and build a relationship. My question is, how do you do that? If you’re a professional sales person, how do you apply the concept of not every shot is a game winning shot to a daily sales routine? A: First, it’s a top-down thing. There’s a conditioning in sales. Before starting my entrepreneurial endeavors, I was in I.T. and I worked in the telecom industry. Telecom is very challenging and it’s a race to the bottom. The stress and pressure on the sales people to learn a complex technology and then go out and sell this recurring revenue stream that could be in the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per month and millions over the course of a contract is crazy. The fact that they have to close the deal quickly is something I don’t understand. I hated sales when I became an entrepreneur. So, by slowing down and asking myself what was really going on, I realized I didn’t hate sales – I hated rushing relationships. It’s a top-down issue. If we had sales leaders or people in leadership saying our goal is to be of service and to find ways to astonish people even if it’s not on the PDF sheet of services and products we provide, we will eventually have all the clients we need. Instead, what’s rewarded are the quotas and conversions. I’m not saying don’t measure them – you need to know what’s working. But I’d rather focus on conversation over conversion. This is a distinction that a good friend brought up to me. To go into deep conversations, we have to go into the conversation saying “I don’t know if I can help you” instead of “I can do this I must close you.” So, it’s a conditioning that needs to be changed. Even if you are in one of those places with expectations and quotas, going into conversation with prospects from a more relaxed place, you will see more opportunities to serve. You will hear what’s going on between the words they say. You can be creative when they say no. Because within that conversation, you’re getting clues to what will turn the no into a yes. If you can be in this relaxed creative place, you’ll see opportunities. Don’t come from a place of scarcity. Q: My career path was sales. I did gadget sales and software sales and then as a sales person, started my company and did all the sales for many years. I was never a slick talker; English isn’t even my first language. For me, it’s always been about discovery. It’s about being so curious that I’m more interested in my customer’s challenges than anyone else they will talk to. That was my success. I was a top sales person because of that. There was no slick sales strategy. I just listened a lot more. It also messed me up because I’m not as comfortable talking about myself or my stories. I’d rather educate. A: if we went out in the world and were more of a Sherlock Holmes and less of a sales person, we’d create a lot more business. For sharing the story, I only ever share my experience of life. Nothing I have said today is right. I don’t do right or wrong; there’s effective and ineffective. Productive or unproductive. There’s no arguing because everything I do comes from my own experience.   Q: This has been a great conversation, and I have one more question for today. Abi is our director of sales and she wanted me to ask you: often our clients deal with a client loss. It can be a loss of a client with one property or a larger client with 100 properties. This is a business loss and growth loss. What tips do you have for dealing with that cycle of business? A: This is a call for more creativity. It’s beautiful when we lose a client because it allows us to step back and ask ourselves what is really going on here? If you lose a client that accounts for a large part of your business, you can come back and ask if you were focusing on the right mix of clients. Were we putting too much certainty or too many eggs in one basket? How can we get more creative? Is this even the type of client we need to be serving? It can be a blessing and a gift. That client leaving will teach us something about how we’re doing business. When we think about customer service as the person who takes the complaint calls, we need to switch that to having projects instead of problems. You’re getting real-time feedback from people who pay you. This is an opening for personal and professional growth. It’s time to sit down and see how you didn’t see the loss coming. What was missed. Then, have a conversation with the client and ask for feedback for future clients to make sure your service is at its best level. And remember that this does not make the client dead for you. If they are changing and moving to a different service provider, you can stay in contact. Continue providing value. This is not an effort to get them to switch back to you, but to show you that you do care about them. One of my favorite questions that I ask clients any time something like this happens is – what is trying to emerge in this moment? What am I being called to step into in this moment? Am I being called to communicate better, to add more value, or to be more transparent about what’s going on? What is it that I am being asked to step into as a leader? Q: Jason, this was as interesting as I expected. Thank you for your time. Where can people find you? A: Thank you, Alex. I’ve set up webpage just for you and your listeners, where everyone can get a free copy of my book, Prison Break. It’s at www.thejasongoldberg.com/fourandhalf.  You can follow me and keep up with me there.  That’s gracious, thank you. I approach everything with skepticism, but I connected with the book so I recommend that everyone give it a shot. Thanks to our listeners, and if you have any questions about what Jason has shared with us, you can contact us at Fourandhalf.com.   The post Jason Goldberg on Perspective, Stress, and Overcoming Property Management Challenges (Free Book Offer Inside) appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.

Today our guest is Deniz Yusef, who trains business development people in Australia’s property management industry. We are definitely lucky to bring him on board; to date, we haven’t run into anyone like him here in the United States, or even elsewhere in the world. Preconceived notions may have you thinking that you first need to get leads before you hire a business development manager, however, that is not the case. In this interview and article, you will learn: 4 new lead sources a BDM can bring to your property management business. Common blockages BDMs uncover when it comes to leads. How to incentivize a salesperson or BDM to sell beyond their sales goals. The big mistake owners make when employing a property management business development manager. Listen to the interview above, or read the transcript below, and learn all that you need to know about Business Development Managers for your property management company.   When to Hire a BDM or Salesperson for Your Company Q: One question I get a lot is: when should I be ready to hire a business development person or a sales person to sell my property management service? Is it 100 units? 800 units? What’s the answer you usually give? A: Well, I usually ask, how serious are you about your growth? You can have a business development manager with no houses under management. Right now, I’m working with some people who are in Bali, trying to grow a rent roll in Australia. So, they will work remotely and hire a business development manager in Brisbane. He has zero houses under management right now. There’s no magic number really, it’s interesting to see what the goal is. Some people have started with six properties under management and the goal is to get to 38 or 40. It’s one of those questions that’s hard to answer because there are a lot of different variables to consider. How many properties can you manage? It depends on your backing and your assistance. So, there’s no real number to put on it. If you’re serious about growth, you need to be over-staffed to be prepared for that. Q: A salesperson, in my opinion, is an asset to the team. They bring in a lot more than they consume. So, what would be the trigger or the number of units with an average management fee of $125 per month that the salesperson needs to bring in every month to justify their existence? A: Well, this comes back to the average income that each unit is bringing your office. So, if you’re only averaging $1,500 per year in income, you’d want a minimum of 10 units/month to cover their wage. But again, it’s what your overhead is and what you can afford and who you can employ. Some companies will employ someone at a minimum wage and give a higher bonus. They are happy to wear the costs for 12 months. It’s a tricky question. Some people, if they get six new units a month, they are happy. I am preparing to train someone who is already leasing 28 units/month and they have employed me just to push them to 30. Background on Deniz Yusef Q: You had an interesting career path to get to where you are. Can you talk about your experience? You were the top business development manager in the nation. A: I had no education or training in sales. My background is in hospitality. I worked in restaurants and moved into fruits and vegetables. I was a fruit vendor. My wife and I thought about traveling to America for two years with our two children, and then we got pregnant with our third child, so we didn’t travel. That’s when I moved from fruits and veggies into real estate. I was the leasing agent and then I became the business development manager after nine months. My job was solely lease management and growing the business. In essence, I took on the attitude of doing it like fruit and veggies. I knew how I got new clients for fruit and veggies, and so that’s how I approached it in real estate. I listed just over 60 managements in my first year. Q: Just to convert to our US terminology, you basically sold 60 management contracts? A: Right. We call it listing and I think you guys call it ‘getting a door.’ So, I got 67 individual doors that were then converted for management. That was securing the management contract. I learned a lot from my mistakes. I didn’t know how to sell the property management part. I reduced the fees because I didn’t know what I was doing. So, in my second year I sold 191 doors. The next year, I was up to 237, and my goal was to beat what I did the year before. I had a white board with all my numbers. I went to 317 the year after that, and I was averaging 34.5 doors a month. I was tired. Q: You worked for another company? A: Yes, I made my bosses very rich. That was 926 units total in four years or 48 months. The KPIs – Key Performance Indicators – had specific targets to reach and tasks to do, including follow-ups and a contact management system. I know you have a great contact management system with LeadSimple. I would have loved to have LeadSimple when I was a business development manager, but we didn’t have that technology then. Q: As a property manager, how do I find the business development person who could have a relatively unsuccessful first year bringing in about 67 properties, and then boost that up to 317?  A: I’m fortunate to be training some of those freaks and I was lucky to be one of them. The biggest mistake I see people making is employing a property manager to be a business development manager. It’s a different mindset and those are two different positions and roles. I’m not saying a property manager can’t go out and lease properties, but if you want to be successful in bringing in a lot of management contracts, you need a person with a sales-mindset. One way to put it is like a car lot. You have mechanics and salespeople. The salespeople have a job to sell a vehicle. The mechanics look after the vehicle once it’s purchased. Those are two different mindsets. The salesperson won’t be good at the job of a mechanic. And I’m sure the mechanic is capable of talking about the car, but not as well. What are the Tasks for a Business Development Manager? Q: What are the major tasks of a business development manager?  A: It’s a combination of everything. I like the analogy of an octopus. There are all these different areas of where you’re generating leads in different ways. If you have a sales department in the office, that’s one way of getting leads. Each lead has tentacles on it. So, there are sales leads from a broker who is selling houses and dealing with investors all the time. You’ll want to create relationships with them. Q: So, building referral relationships with real estate sales shops is what you’re talking about. A: Yes. In America, you also have sales-only offices and property management-only offices. So regardless, you have to network with other salespeople because they may not be happy with their own property management division. You’re always networking and creating sales opportunities. Q: One value point here – I believe this particular revenue stream or lead source is exceptional, but you have to lead with value. People have to set up workshops, offer education, and do that for different real estate offices. They teach them for an hour, giving something for nothing. It’s an amazing opportunity. So, I like where you’re starting, by giving Realtor referrals around town. What’s the next lead source? A: You’ve also got to think about who the investors are dealing with before they even think about buying an investment property. It’s important that business development managers set relationships with: a mortgage broker and an accountant That helps you catch leads at the highest point that you can. Leads haven’t even talked to a real estate office yet, so if you can create a network and get your name in there and have an information night targeting those offices, it will help. We have conveyances over here when contracts are exchanged, so I would do a lot of network meetings with anyone dealing with real estate. In America, you have accountants, title companies, and you need to have the same meetings. Q: So, it sounds like once property management business owners understand this lead source, then they will need to put the right people in front of their business development manager and set expectations. A lot of people don’t understand that giving without expectations is a great way to get to the golden rule of reciprocation. So, allowing BDMs to spend a little money and time to teach, answer questions, and educate will help build the referral network. What’s next? A: Information Nights. These are meetings that you would have as part of your networking, with investors or potential investors. Seek the source directly. You will need to get some speakers. Good examples are: Sales agents Accountants Tax managers Various experts in their fields can come and speak, and feel free to be creative. If you know someone politically who has sway, invite that person too, because they bring a new crowd of people to something that is branded to your company. It gives you expertise. I was fortunate to be best friends with a mayor at one of our Information Nights, and it was hugely popular. We just had him speak for 15 minutes on the future development of our area, which was really good. Another thing we do is letterbox dropping, which I’m not sure you can do in America because of your laws. But if we just listed a property and we’re going to look for a tenant, we’ll have a flyer that says there’s a property available on your street, do you know anyone who is looking to move, or would you like an updated rental opinion on your property? I would put that in the letterbox. Q: We are doing something like a mailer, which is where we physically mail the postcard that says, ‘there’s a new property available; if you know anyone or if you’re interested in a free rental analysis…’ We just have to pay the post office because we cannot walk up to a mailbox and put something in it. A: When you share these mailers, you have to do it twice. You have to do it once you have secured a tenant as well. The level of branding in that little region in a short period of time makes a difference. Having a Call to Action on those mailings is important. When we walk around, I’ll stop a mom who is out for a walk with the stroller. I’ll start the network. There’s that one person who is always in the garden in every neighborhood. It doesn’t matter what country we’re in, there’s always that one person. So, you talk to her about who you are and what you’re doing, and the information spreads. Q: Very few people do what Deniz just discussed. There are three tasks that your business development person should be committing to: building referrals organizing investor meet-ups and doing the “For Rent” announcement in the neighborhood.  These things Deniz covered are not your everyday ‘bang-on-the-phones’ things. These are foundational and they speak to building the relationships and nurturing referrals. So, I want the audience to realize that without a professional salesperson or business development person committing to these tasks, there’s no way for a property manager or a business owner to get quality growth. Can you give us one more key area, or tasks for business development professionals? A: Everyone forgets about current managements. The clients you already have and the properties you’re already managing – have you asked them or called them to ask if there are any other properties that you can help with? Is there a brother or a sister or a colleague who might want to have the same experience? The process I use is to call people two weeks after we’ve secured a tenant for them and ask if they were happy with the process. Hopefully, they will say yes. If not, I would say thank you for the feedback, and I would fix it. But if they do say good things, I would ask if there is anyone else who would like to have an equally good experience with tenant placement. I might mention a special where you might give them a month of free management for every referral. Give them an incentive. We like to think that investors are like fish – they all stick together and they always know someone else who has investment properties. Another little trick; whenever a new staff person comes into the office, we always ask if they know anyone with investment properties. It might be a new person at the front desk. Put a referral system in your office. Pay bonuses. Those things we just talked about are just a couple of examples. A property manager’s job is to look after properties and it can be hard for them to want to grow the business, because it does create more work for them. We have done some studies that show when the initial phone call comes in from an owner who is thinking about renting a property out, there are 17 hours of work until you are actually collecting money for that owner. How to Incentivize Your BDM to Continue Selling Q: I can see why a property manager would hesitate. The payment is incremental and it’s hard to feel it. The property manager mindset is not that of a hunter. They’re farmers. They are great at farming. If you try to push them into hunting, the sales calls are not going to get answered.  A: Spot on. Most people who are in a position of business development are driven by money. So, it’s a different incentive. You were talking earlier about that magic number. It’s not about that one number to reach. There are increments so that bonuses grow the more they sell. You don’t want your business development person to achieve the 10 or 15 that you’ve required for the month and then save any additional business for the following month. Most offices I come to, I find that typically happens. Instead, you want to have a base bonus for the first five properties, but then give a higher percentage for the next five. Some offices pay on a percentage bonus depending on annual income because they don’t want the fees to be reduced in order to win the business. There are different ways of looking at it. The mindset is different because money is a driver for the business development manager. They aren’t thinking about the work that new business will create. If there’s one person bringing in doors and angry property managers doing all the work, a balance needs to be created. Q: I’ve been talking with my friend who has a big property management company and for six months we’ve been talking about why he should hire a business development person. He hasn’t yet. When I ask why, he tells me that he doesn’t have a lot of leads. There are only 10 leads a month coming in. A: But you hire a business development manager to create leads! Q: See? Exactly. Deniz just gave us four ways to have your business development person busy and creating leads. We have talked about solid ways that aren’t easy but very doable. A: One year I brought in 237 leads, but our office only grew by 108 doors. If I hadn’t been there with all the leads, the office would have gone backwards and lost 129 doors. You must have someone generating the leads. That friend of yours who is only bringing in 10 leads a month – how many are being converted? Probably only three or four. And, how many properties are they losing? You have to make up for that. Q: Yes, and one of the conversations we always have is about that they are staying even and plugging the leak. If the leak increases suddenly, they’ll fall behind. It’s the nature of recurring service. People sell properties and no longer need management. It’s a leaky bucket. If you aren’t growing, you’re dying. A: And I would say that more than 10 leads are coming in, they just haven’t identified them. So, my job as the business development person and coach would be to go into that office and identify the blockage that’s stopping the leads and figure out why they aren’t converting more than five out of ten leads. Q: Tell me more about that. What are some of the common blockages? A: One of the biggest blocks is not identifying the leads. A lot of times, if someone is thinking about selling or renting, it only goes to one department, the sales or the property management department. A perfect way to overcome that is, whoever answers the phone or the email needs to send it to both departments at the same time. The old system is it always goes to sales, and if it’s not going to be a house to sell, they’ll toss it over to the property management side. That lead is getting beaten up. It’s simple to lose a lead that way. Second, the property management department doesn’t have a contact management system. A spreadsheet or emails kept in a folder serve that purpose. Tracking leads is vital. An office I’m working in now uses a spreadsheet with 400 names on it. That’s their lead management system. It’s lead collection but not management. Conclusion Q: I think this was a good first discussion. I’d like to see what people have to say about what you’ve said. I’m sure it will be popular and I’d love to have you come back after the PM Grow Summit. You’re working with a lot of American companies now who are taking these concepts and using them here. I look forward to seeing how you progress here. A: Yes, I’ve been working with Steve Rozenberg for about a year and they are fantastic. I am training his business development managers on converting. I like to ask for business as soon as I’m in the door, and that’s what we’re talking about. The business development manager there is amazing and she’s now averaging 40 doors a month. Let’s not forget, they do investor workshops and radio shows and podcast. They are working. They blow up in terms of growth. So, if you are in the audience and you haven’t seen the effects of this explosive growth, consider talking to Deniz at bdmcoach.com.au. Thank you, Deniz, for joining us and I look forward to seeing you at the PM Grow Summit. Thanks for listening, and contact us at Fourandhalf if you have any questions. The post Deniz Yusef on What a Good Business Development Manager Will Do For Your Property Management Company appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.

Alex is coming to you from the 2016 Annual NARPM convention in Maui with: Jordan Muela as the co-host; CEO of LeadSimple. Michael Monteiro, the CEO of Buildium Andy Propst, CEO of HomeRiver and past national NARPM president Our topic is the state of the property management industry, and we want to talk about how small to mid-size entrepreneurs can compete in this space over the next five years. Subscribe to The Property Management Show on iTunes Today to Stay Up to Date on the Latest Episodes Outside Capital In the Property Management Industry Alex: Let’s start with a tough question: at this stage, there is a lot of outside capital flowing into the industry. How do you think this shift will affect the competitive abilities of the small to midsize entrepreneur? Michael Monteiro: I think the same way that smaller independent companies have competed with better-funded companies since the beginning of time. It’s important for the property management company to first figure out how they are going to be different in the market. What will they be better at than anyone else, and what will they be known for? I think that’s how property management companies will compete with larger, better-funded companies. It might mean specializing in a specific kind of rental management or providing outstanding customer service. They need to be clear on their ideal customer and deciding what they want to be known for. Andrew Propst: I agree with that, and having their own story will make a difference. With larger companies, the story gets lost. A smaller company can go out there and share their story about how they got to where they are. They have an opportunity to connect on a local level and be meaningful. That will help them stay ahead. And it’s a great question; a lot of this is happening. Finding an identity and getting the message out there is important. On Branding for Property Management Companies Jordan: Doubling down on niche and brand, I know you both run companies where branding is a priority. Was this important to you from day one, or did it grow over time? How did your evolution happen? Andrew Propst: For me, branding was a priority from day one, just because with my personality, I care what people think about me, and I couldn’t differentiate my brand from who I am personally. We looked at our mission statement and we wanted our brand to represent our mission. I wanted to have the same message throughout our brand. We don’t think of our brand as the logo or anything like that. It’s how the public perceives us and what we do. I want that to be a good message. The brand is important and has been since day one. Michael Monteiro: I’m not sure we thought about it as brand 12 years ago, but it was important for us from the beginning. We wanted to be clear on how we would be different. Our market is competitive, and we have larger and better funded competitors in our space. But we decided early on that we would be laser focused on one property management vertical. We decided we would be laser focused on small to medium sized property management firms. And, we decided to be laser focused on residential property management. So, I’m not sure we thought about it as branding back then, but it is something we thought about in the early days: “where will we stake our claim?” That has helped us succeed in a competitive market. Where Should a Small Property Management Business Invest Time? Alex: What specific things would you advise these smaller companies to invest their time in? If they want to zero in on the perfect customer and building a brand that makes the business as attractive as possible to these folks? Michael Monteiro: We call that the ideal customer profile. The better and clearer you can be on your ideal customer, the more successful you’ll be. In property management, we hear all the time that people will take on any clients willing to hire them. Be clear on your ideal customer, and resist taking on anyone who doesn’t fit that. Andrew Propst: There are a lot of rabbit holes in property management, too. It’s a great business, and it’s a tough business for an entrepreneur because it opens so many different opportunities and avenues. So, it’s important for people good at property management to decide where to serve. There’s commercial and multi-family and real estate, but the people who run the best property management companies have the ideal customer in mind and they focus on what they do best. Then, they can do a good job growing their business. Alex: So, having a clear focus and understanding the opportunity cost of having a squirrel mentality? Andrew: Yes, there are a lot of squirrel opportunities in this business. If you don’t believe me, walk down the trade room floor. You could leave this place with a thousand different opportunities. Most property management companies don’t go out of business, they die of too many opportunities, which causes problems. Situational Property Management Issue Jordan: You need to have the discipline to say no. Putting ourselves in the shoes of some of the companies who are experiencing pressure, how would you handle a scenario like this: You are running a 250-door property management shop, and over the last 12 months a couple of well-funded companies have entered your market to compete directly with you. They are advertising low fees and attractive service offerings. For the first year since opening, you have lost more properties than you’ve gained. So, you can’t float or go sideways; you’re going to have to get to the next level or really start to suffer. How would you handle that situation? Andrew Propst: This is a great question because it’s happening now. The real estate market has caused a bit of an issue in property management growth. All the properties going on the market for sale are selling, so there’s more of a challenge for managers to grow their business, unlike 2008 through 2010, where no one could sell, so everyone was handing over doors. You might have to take an opportunity to rebrand yourself. Look at what’s out there, because there are opportunities. In 2009, our company shifted. We saw that the market was going to end up like it is today, and we shifted to multi-family. The multi-family market is blowing up right now. So, if you’ve been specializing in single family properties, there’s no reason why you can’t make that shift. Those opportunities are out there, and I would strongly recommend not doing the same thing over and over again. I like to make big changes. For some people, smaller changes might be better. But it’s hard to control the market. Michael Monteiro: Diversification is one thing that you could do to continue growing. Not to sound repetitive, but it comes back to getting clear on what you’re going to do better than anyone else and staking that claim. Figure out what you can do that those larger companies cannot. Local knowledge comes into play, telling that compelling story is an opportunity. Look to answer these basic questions about your company: Why do you exist? What is your purpose? What do you value and believe? What’s the vision two to three years out? Answering those fundamental questions will help bring clarity to what you will do to compete. It’s one of those things that everyone understands but they aren’t always urgent things to address. This is an opportunity to work on your business. Andrew: It’s not because the business isn’t coming in. With 250 doors, property managers are so overwhelmed with the property management work that they don’t have time to focus on the business and growth. They don’t have systems in place, so they feel dug in. Statistics have told us that between 65 and 80 percent of rental properties are managed by self-managers, so there are opportunities out there. You can go get those opportunities, but it’s hard when you’re stuck inside your business. You have to get those systems in place and you have to get the right people on board. Once you can do that, growing your company is easy. Managing the growth is where you’re challenged. Michael: That’s true. I always say it’s easy to start a property management business; in many states you don’t even need a license. But, it’s hard to grow. Andy: What we’re doing at HomeRiver right now is finding people who are at this 250-500 door position. We can come in and help them with what’s dragging them down. We give them the resources to grow. We help them grow systems and not get stuck in the day to day, which is so easy to do in this business. Tasks for a CEO of a Property Management Company Alex: I spoke about this in my presentation for NARPM – “How to Convert More Leads in a Hyper Competitive Market.” Working on the business is foundational. It’s not a good idea to manage your own portfolio of properties so you can make more money yourself. Why spend 60 percent of your time managing your own portfolio when you have a business to grow? There’s a huge opportunity cost. If you’re making sure your owner statements go on time, there’s something wrong. That’s not a CEO job, that’s for the accounting manager to do. Andy: That’s true. But as you see here at these conferences, all these people are running off to send out those owner statements and manage stuff like that. We are all control freaks, and it’s hard to let that go. Alex: Speaking of branding, Michael’s shirt says “Ctrl freak.” He knows his clients. Andy: It’s something I say in my speeches – we’re all control freaks. It gets a big laugh every time. Michael: There’s a great book called E-Myth, which stands for Entrepreneurial Myth, and in that book, Michael Gerber talks about the trap that so many entrepreneurs fall into, where they don’t take the time to operationalize their business. So, they can’t think strategically about the business. They’re sending out statements and reconciling accounts and collecting rent because they didn’t think to take the time to put these business systems in place. Building Culture for Your Property Management Company Alex: E-Myth was a cornerstone for my business – I recommend it to the audience. It has a big following and there are coaches that follow the book. Here’s what most people get wrong: culture. We talk about the need to stop doing the day to day work and to focus on the big picture, but you can’t do that without a great culture. So, what are your specific pieces of advice for how to build your team? I know Andrew has lived it and Buildium has always been impressive with engaged employees… Andrew Propst: I could talk about culture all day long. It’s one of those things that is important and in my mind, it’s the only thing that matters. It comes from the word cult, which in religious terms is not a great word, but are you building something that will inspire people to follow you no matter where you go? If you can build a culture of trust in your organization, you can let those tasks go as an operator. Because the less you control, the more you can do. Get things off your plate so you can focus on the important and not the urgent. Show that you trust your employees without expecting trust back. That will free up your time and get your employees on a career path where you can understand their goals and priorities. You’ll find your loyal co-workers will break through a wall for your company. When we have a good month or a bad month, that’s great. But when you see an employee reach a dream, there’s nothing that feels better. That’s the joy of owning a business. Michael Monteiro: Culture is one of those mythical words that means so many different things to different people. Some people hear culture and they think of beer fridges and ping pong tables and free lunches. For me, to make it more tangible, it starts with thinking about the environment you want to create for your employees. At Buildium, we decided early on that we wanted to build a company that would stand the test of time. In 2012, eight years into our company history, we spent time describing what our employee experience was and what we wanted to create. That made it tangible. So, my advice is to figure out what your property management business looks like in the next three to five years. What does it look like in terms of: Revenue Ideal customer Employee experience you want to create Use words to describe it and be deliberate. That’s the other thing I would say; every company has a culture whether you’re deliberate about it or not. The best companies have founders that are deliberate about the culture you want. Otherwise, it will develop on its own, and then you can’t change it. Jordan: Would it be impossible to change culture once it’s developed on its own? Andy: I think so. A bunch of large changes are possible, but culture has a funny way of attaching itself to the least common denominator. You have to be able to get good people in there from the start because if you don’t, good culture doesn’t happen by accident. I felt like the culture that we built was from the ground up. We didn’t hand out mission statements. We all got together as a company to own it. The rank and file need to contribute to it and make it special. We read our mission statement and value statement every morning in our meetings. On Property Management Technology Jordan: What is your thought on the rate of change driven by technology in this industry? Are we seeing any plateaus? Is it accelerating? Michael: I think everything is speeding up. Look at the vendors here today versus three years ago. It’s dizzying. Every year, there are more tools and technologies and more opportunities to automate. In general, this industry has been slow to adopt new technology and yet the rate of change is increasing, so I don’t think that trend will slow. It’s incumbent upon property management firms to figure out how to leverage the technology that’s out there. If they don’t, it will be hard to compete. There will come a point where there is some consolidation. But, I don’t think it will slow down. Andy: I agree. A lot of these companies are betting big on technology, and they’re implementing it. The smaller companies will have to embrace that to keep up with the services. The good thing is, I’m not too concerned with developing an Uber for property management. We have a lot of regulation and the industry is fragmented, but I don’t think it will slow down. We’ll see even more of what we’ve seen. Alex: Thank you all for your time. We appreciate this insight, and we’ll see you next time. If you genuinely like the podcast, it would be a huge help if you subscribed and left a rating & review. It might seem insignificant, but it helps more than you might think. About the Companies: Fourandhalf – Internet Marketing Exclusively for Property Management Companies HomeRiver Group – Nationally Branded Property Management Platform Buildium – Software that allows Property Management Companies to Run their Business LeadSimple – Lead Tracking Software for Property Management Companies The post Disruptive Property Management Industry Trends in 2017 – Modernize, Grow, or Become Irrelevant appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.

Our guest today is Andrew Warner. He runs a very popular podcast for entrepreneurs called Mixergy. If you want to learn everything that you need to know when it comes to business, you listen to Mixergy. It’s not Andrew teaching the wisdom of his ways, it’s Andrew interviewing all the top names out there. Some of his interviewees are: Tim Ferriss of the Four Hour Work Week Barbara Corcoran from Shark Tank Jessica Livingston of Y Combinator Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia of Airbnb Gary Vaynerchuk Neil Patel and many others. There’s some significant wisdom locked in Andrew’s head that we’re going to try to unpack a little bit, specifically for our property management tribe. Below is a transcript of our conversation: Q: The concept out there is that 20 percent of the work brings 80 percent of the results. You said, and this is a quote: “when you build a start-up, the secret of success is to understand what that 20 percent is, and pay attention to it.” So, what is that 20 percent for you, Andrew? A: For me, the 20 percent is a handful of things. One of them is to talk to my customers and my audience a lot more. Anyone who is involved with or excited about what I’m doing is someone I need to talk to as much as possible. At first, I thought online research was enough, but I discovered it’s about finding ways to get people on the phone so I can talk to them and understand what they’re going through. I had been hearing that the founders of Airbnb went and lived in their customers’ homes and saw what it was like to list on the site. They wanted to understand the problems people might have. So they realized Airbnb shouldn’t be about just renting a room, but the whole house. They only discovered that when they got into a house. The thing is that it always seems so easy when you’re told to go talk to your customers. I tried doing this, but no one picks up the phone and no one wants to schedule a phone call. That creates more work for them. It took a lot of creativity to learn what my customers are going through. Q: What were some of the creative ways you learned your customers go through? A: Here’s one: I didn’t say I want to learn from you so I can improve my product. Instead, I emailed them and said thanks for being a part of my community, I want to give you a free coaching session. With free coaching, you’re going to find a struggle that they could use some help with. If they’re not going through something, they won’t take me up on it. But if they are going through something, they’re going to take me up on that offer. Once I get on a call with them, I can talk about what they want and why they signed up. They will always tell me about that one issue that they need help with and want to focus on with their free 15-minute coaching call. Then, I could understand the real problem and solve that problem or help them come up with their own solutions. More importantly, I could understand the problem better and build the solution into my interviews and everything we stand for at Mixergy. Q: That’s pretty brilliant. A: I know it won’t work for everyone, but it worked for us. The key that I’d like anyone to take away is that we want to learn from our customers what to create for them and how we can improve, but it’s a challenge to figure out how to get them on the phone. If we call them and they don’t pick up or we email them and they don’t respond, it’s not because this doesn’t work. We shouldn’t stop. Just spend some time figuring out the one thing that will work. When you figure it out, they will tell you what they need. When they tell you about the one desperate problem that they have, if you can address it even a little bit, they will be happy customers. Q: I spoke to Lisa Wise, who is running an incredible property management start-up in Washington D.C. called Nest and it’s transformational. She built her office inside a typical house that these guys manage. So the employees can touch everything that would be in a house. They know how the heater works and what happens when the air conditioner goes out. This build empathy for their customers. It accomplishes two things: It shows you how to build your product and where to go with it, and it also builds the empathy you need to transform your services.  A: That’s incredibly helpful. Can she get people into the actual homes? If they can get invited to dinner or in to repair something, it would be incredible.   Advice on Pricing Q: Sure. You could shadow your maintenance guy and see how tenants feel. There’s something to learn there. Within the last year, I’ve been fascinated with two things: pricing and unit economics, and how they impact the business. You recently spoke to Patrick Campbell with Price Intelligently. You mentioned something that might be useful for everyone here. You have used a tool to figure out your pricing and your revenue. Can you talk about that a little? A: Profit Well is one of his products, and I use it to get a sense of who is buying from me and what they are about. And then, I learn how long they stick around. We use a software called Stripe to collect payment. Stripe is really good for processing payments, giving refunds, and integrating everything. But, it’s not great for giving you a clean dashboard or for even telling you how much money you made last month. So I signed up for Profit Well because I want to understand how many people churn or leave. I’m obsessed with why people leave. People who try us out and paid us but then leave have been let down somehow. I want to know why we didn’t meet their expectations. Q: Do you have any advice for experimenting with pricing? I know some companies will help you do that. We are below that level but there must be some wisdom you’ve heard from other entrepreneurs. A: Yes, I learned it from a guy named Will Schroeder who runs a bunch of companies that he has bought like Zirtual for virtual assistants, Launch Rocket for landing pages, and other businesses. He said to de-couple the price from the offer. That means, don’t say “here’s my offer, click this button and pay this much to buy.” When you do that, you can’t tell if people are turned off by the price or the product. So, here’s what I do when I’m selling something brand new and I’m trying to figure out the price. I collect my audience’s emails. I email them about the new product, and ask them to click somewhere if they’re interested in it. I tag those clicks, and there’s a page that shows the offer. There’s a button that says “buy it.” I tag whoever buys the product. Then, on the next page, people can decide which level they want or if they want to pay at all. If they leave the page, and don’t pay, I know it. I also know if they decide to pay and how much it is worth to them. That gives me a way to go to someone who clicked the email and wanted to buy, but then didn’t. I can go back to them and say that I noticed they were interested, and I ask them to help me understand why they didn’t go through with it. This is critical. I want to know if it’s the price. They will tell me. Or, they might say that they weren’t looking for a course because they’re in a different time zone. So, then I go back to my sales page and clarify that the course does not have to be watched live. So don’t just measure the progress, track the people who drop off so you can follow up and find out why. Q: You need systems to be able to do something like that. A: Yes, you need to be a tinker. It’s not expensive or hard, however. Any email system you have will let you keep track of who is clicking on links. You want to set it up and they’ll do it for free. The forms you use will allow you to capture the email address so you can keep track of who is pressing the button. Call the customer service people at MailChimp, Infusion, or whatever system you’re using. Home grown systems will have it. They will show you how to do it. It’s built in and easy, but very few people take advantage of it. Q: So, pricing wise there’s some experimentation there and the tools we already have can help us with it. I have a story and a question. I just came back from a real estate conference and they had Darren Hardy speak, who is a super-coach motivational speaker and very knowledgeable. He told the audience that he coaches three CEOs from large companies and he was invited to play golf with them. He doesn’t play golf, so he didn’t want to go, but they insisted. So he goes to play golf and they get up and they’re about to tee off and he says here’s your first lesson: he tees off and it lands in the brush. Super-achievers suck at golf. He spends his time perfecting his skills to coach CEOs. He talked about his big Give-Up list. He gave up television, golfing, sports, and Facebook. So in your experience, I want to know: do people give up a lot of things to be that good at one thing, or do they balance? A: They do give up a lot. One example that comes to mind is the guy who runs Y Combinator, the best seed funding company out there. He gave up so many different foods when he was building his company and ate only ramen. He gave himself scurvy. He made himself sick because he was so committed and focused. I see that kind of thing a lot. They are super-focused. They aren’t playing golf. They are focused on their business. When a friend of yours is going through it, it might feel like they’re being jerks, but you have to understand it and be supportive. Q: I have two priorities: business and family. I cannot fit anything else into my schedule, or one of them will suffer. Do you give up for Mixergy? A: I give up a lot. It’s work and family and it’s also a little bit of me. By that, I mean that I need to go running four times a week. It’s really important that I get that done. I need downtime at the end of every day, which is sitting and reading. I fight for that, and it’s worth it to fight because I need those things to be a better person. And there’s not much time for anything else. Q: Do you listen to anything when you run, or is it music? A: I listen to a little bit of everything. My runs are long so even though I’m not lonely, it’s the one place I feel alone; when I run. So I listen to audiobooks and podcasts because they’re productive and interesting. Sometimes, I’ll make phone calls while I’m running. These aren’t business-related calls, but I’ll call a family member and catch up while I’m running.   Q: So this is a founder question. I feel like I don’t have alone time at all. Do we need that time? I like to go fishing, but even then I’m surrounded by friends. A: You may not. If you do need it, you might have to fight for it. But if you don’t need it, that’s fine. But I do think we need something outside of work and family. I was running a company that was doing a couple million dollars a month in sales. Then, we suddenly went down to half a million dollars a month and I felt like such a failure. Everything was going down. So my business was everything I had. If I had the sense going into the office that I was a failure, everyone around me would pick up on that and they would begin to wonder why they were working with me. I started to take up running and in the morning, I would run for a mile or two and I’d go into the office feeling like a victor, like I had done something meaningful. So I was doing something I didn’t think I could do. It helped me to think more clearly and I would walk in feeling like a winner. It would come across in the way I did business. We need something outside of work that we can be just incredible at. Moving our bodies is important, but it doesn’t have to be sports. Maybe it’s music and you’re playing a great set over the weekend. That next Monday, you’ll feel like a rock star and that will give you more authority and creativity in the office. Advice on Coaching Q: So to feel the satisfaction at work and with the business, you need to hit some milestones outside of work as well, whatever those might be. Let’s shift gears. Do you have a coach? A: No I don’t now, but I have at different times in my life. Q: Do you have any advice on finding a coach that matches you? A: The best coach I ever had was a guy who was an interview coach. He was really good at one thing. He had done it, and he was really good at it. Every week, I would get the transcripts of my previous week’s interviews and we would do a post-mortem. We talked about what we should do differently, I’d talk about problems and what was coming up, and we’d strategize about what to do and how to overcome the problems. This was really helpful. I don’t know about other people. For me, the best people are really good at one thing specifically. When I first got into cycling and I couldn’t even clip myself into a bike, I found someone who did long distance cycling with me. He biked next to me and told me how to deal with the gears, when to stand up, and what to do with hills. All these things don’t matter if you’re going to bike 5 or 10 miles, but if you’re going to do a 100-mile or a 200-mile bike ride like I did, you need to know these things. So to me the only coaches that really helped were really good at one thing, and they taught me that one thing. Q: So, I have never had a coach. I’m always worried about the cost. It costs so much money and I’m worried about getting the wrong one and hurting their feelings by firing them. A: I get that, or getting the wrong one and then you are locked in. One of the problems that coaches and therapists have is that you don’t really know what you’re getting until you’ve worked with them for at least three weeks. Even if you have someone that is a great coach, it might not be a great coach for you because everyone is different. I wish it was easier to understand their methodology before you sign up. For example, if I was going to choose a running coach, I don’t want just any running coach or the one who got other people to do their first marathon. I’d like to get a running coach who subscribes to the methodology I use and can help me with my process. It’s the same with business. I volunteered for Dale Carnegie & Associates for a while. He’s the one who wrote “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” I noticed that these executives would hire Dale Carnegie & Associates, and they knew what they were getting. They knew that there was a methodology that included listening to people and caring about them and making them feel important. So they knew what they were getting. That’s hard to do with a business coach. It’s difficult to know their methodology. Q: How do you find a coach that you synergize with? A: I think that if someone reads a book by a person they really respect or whose methodology works for them, hire a coach that the author trained. So if you are into Dale Carnegie’s book, go to Dale Carnegie & Associates to bring on one of their coaches. If you’re into getting things done, go to a coach that specializes in helping people get things done. That way you aren’t getting a brand new system, but they’re taking system that works for you and helping you implement it better. If you like the E-Myth system, you can hire a person to help you implement it. Q: There has to be a business out there for this. For the last two or three years, I haven’t spent money on coaching or improving myself because I worry about spending money on something that doesn’t work for me. A: It helps to say that “I only need two sessions” and see what they can get you in two. You can tell after a couple of meetings if someone is going to work for you. Challenging them to produce results within two meetings can be really helpful. The Next Steps for Mixergy Q: I’m curious about Mixergy and where you’re scaling. So where are you taking it? A: The vision behind Mixergy has always been to create a place where entrepreneurs can learn directly from other entrepreneurs. My preference is for long form audio, and I know there are other ways to reach people. There’s a group of people for whom audio just works. To be able to listen to the founders of Airbnb, for example, and about how the business was built, is helpful to other entrepreneurs. So I’m trying to run an online school and provide resources where people can learn from others. That’s been the model. The interviews I’ve done bring people into the fold. For example, Justin Kan has had a number of businesses and is the founder of Twitch, a place where you can go to play video games and have people watch you live. Amazon bought it for almost a billion dollars. He’s got a course on Mixergy where he teaches you how to build a product that people really want. He’s not giving you theories or stretching out a multi-month course. He’s saying that in one hour, he can share the best ideas and process. He’ll talk about what went wrong and what went right and he’s sharing specific examples and demonstrating his credibility. That’s what I’m trying to do. Q: Who sets up the course and how does the progression work? A: It works in different ways. We hired a producer who went through all of his written material and the stuff he’s done online and on Snapchat. We accumulated the most applicable ideas for us and we said – here’s what we think your methodology is, are we right? He talked about where we should change and adjust it and we brought him our process. Then, we worked with his specific ideas and broke it up so that instead of giving it to people in one long chunk, we had examples and then moved onto something else. That makes it easier for people to remember. He used our process and he taught it. It’s unusual to have access to someone like that in the first place, and then to have that person trust our process really helped us deliver for each other.   Q: So that’s really unique. Are you going to do a book? A: I’d like to at some point. I’m not working on it yet, but distilling all the interviews into a book is the goal. Advice on Leadership Q: There’s a lot there. The biggest problem in my industry and small business in general is that we aren’t that good at building a culture in our organizations. We lose employees, there’s a lot of turnover, and this is difficult for small business. What are some of the less radical practices that founders you speak with use to foster competence and care in their teams? A: Radical is a lot of work. With a big radical idea, you walk in and want to create a company culture and everyone knows you just read a book and want to start something new that will ultimately go away. Instead of that, pick one thing you stand for and do it in a small way so everyone knows this is the future. So if you want to establish that your company is going to be one that sends out gifts, create a culture where everyone in the company gives little gifts. So you start giving gifts to people and they will pass it on to others. If you want to create a culture where thank you notes are sent out, start sending them out to people who you work with as a way to start showing what it’s like. Then buy them note cards so it’s easy for them to incorporate it into their way of doing business. Find what you want to do, do it for your people, and then let them pass it on to others. That’s the best way to get started on culture. Q: So I’m hearing you should lead by example. Do this yourself, don’t necessarily just talk about it, but do it and encourage your people. A: Yes, otherwise people will give up on it. It’s not as easy as it seems. Then, it gets scrapped. If you do it yourself, you’ll feel the pain and pleasure and decide whether you want to continue it. Q: If you were to coach, what would you coach in? A: Meditation is effective and I use a process called true mind meditation. You don’t have to sit in a room; you can walk around as you’re meditating. You’re encouraged to listen to music, and the goal is to train your mind to focus despite all the things going on around you. It helps you deal with distractions. When we want to make a sale, it’s natural to think about all the reasons the sale won’t work out, and it’s natural to worry that the guy has heard it all before. Those thoughts are counter-mind thoughts and they distract us. By meditating and focusing on what we truly want and where we’re truly going, we learn that in the moment we can tune the distractions out and focus on what we want. That’s the most powerful thing, and I would love to teach everyone how to properly meditate. We are more active, so sitting in a calm room and meditating won’t work for us. Focus on the person you are – energized, determined, and looking to do something with your life. Thank you for your time, Andrew. I think everyone should go to Mixergy.com and begin their journey into the minds of entrepreneurs. Thank you for sharing some of what you know. If you need help with sales or marketing for property management companies, please contact us at Fourandhalf. Thank you for listening, and we’ll see you next time. Subscribe to the Property Management Show on iTunes to stay in the loop for future episodes. The post Entrepreneurial Wisdom From the Modern Day Napoleon Hill – Andrew Warner, Founder of Mixergy appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.

Subscribe to The Property Management Show on iTunes Today to Stay Up to Date on the Latest Episodes Our topic today is business process outsourcing for modern property management companies. My guest is Todd Breen, who has a wealth of experience in a couple of areas. He has been running his company –  Home Property Management – for 30 years, so he has the broker and business building experience from the perspective of a broker and property manager. His other venture is called VirtuallyinCredible, where he does video tours, training, and international speaking. He also does business process outsourcing. Q: So Todd has the applicable knowledge on how outsourcing helps grow property management companies. My first question is the hard one – in the realm of property management, how will people know they are good prospects for potentially outsourcing work and saving money? A: I get that question a lot. People always ask if they should outsource and what type of work should they outsource. The first thing I like to do is put up a scale. On one end are the control freaks who like to micromanage every process of their business. At the other end are the people who tend to fly by the seat of their pants and are trying to get the job done. They have no systems and no processes. So we help a company decide where they are on the spectrum. As soon that’s determined, I can provide some insight on what it will be like to outsource and how their needs can best be met. So if someone has a tightly run operation with lots of systems and process already in place, they will be able to pass everything that’s in place onto us. Those people can be good outsource candidates provided they devote a lot of time and attention to learning the cultural differences in the Philippines or India or any other place that we outsource. They have to adapt a little to that culture. Half the battle is done because you already have your system and your training in place. You’re just bringing someone in from across the world. It’s not a big deal and they work virtually. The people who have no systems or procedures should outsource after learning how much easier it is to let someone else do the work for you. They need an intermediary, and that’s where we come in. We establish those systems because the more systemized you are when hiring your virtual assistants, the less systemized you need to be when you outsource. Q: So this works for a tightly run business with systems and management practices, who can hire talent from overseas for a lot less money to complete the tasks. Then, their more expensive talent can spend more time on value-added tasks than the menial data entry things. And it works for the folks who have no system, because you work with them to systemize and execute. Is that right? A: Yes. It also depends on the size of the business. We know the larger the business, the more likely they are to have proven systems in place. When I see a company with 150 doors or fewer, I know that those are the entrepreneurial owners who are newer to the process and struggling to put together all their systems. Our best client at VirtuallyinCredible is the company with 250 units or less who is thankful for the affordable help in systemizing processes in their business that they didn’t know how to do.   Q: So Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) companies are everywhere. You can buy their services for any business. The advantage of working with a property management centric business like VirtuallyinCredible is that you get help with the actual data entry and PCR reports or whatever, but you also get help systemizing and doing things efficiently, securely, and with deliverables. You help them systemize and execute. A: That’s what happens. It’s such an “A-ha” moment when we do a presentation to a smaller business owner. They thought they were just getting labor help, but that comes with a built-in system, and it’s better than anything they’ve done. It works. As we go to 250-500 size companies, they have already struggled to create their own systems, and now it comes down to deciding which system is better – theirs or ours. Smaller businesses are grateful we’re here. Medium sized businesses require some communication. You have to fit well with the existing staff and handle turf battles with staff who may resist any changes. It’s a dynamic about bringing outsourcing to a medium sized business that is a bit artful. Not everyone is comfortable outsourcing. Q: There are definitely negative connotations to outsourcing work to other countries. I think people have pre-conceived notions without necessarily understanding what the true concept is. Let’s explore the ROI. You said that a higher end property management company has to learn about different cultures to build in the processes. What amount of outsourcing do they need to do to get a good return on their investment if they’re putting in the time to get to know new cultures and time zones? A: When I talk to someone with 700 or 1,000 doors, I’ll ask openly if we are a stepping stone or a permanent solution because at that level, companies can learn to outsource themselves if they want to. There are rules and laws to know. In the Philippines, you’re allowed to hire someone to work as an independent contractor for one year. After one year, if you don’t make them an employee, you are out of compliance with Philippine labor laws. So steps have to be taken to make a permanent outsourcing solution work. It’s important that you learn the labor laws and the taxation laws. When we were starting this, we had to learn what to do when paying a foreign worker in U.S. dollars. When you do that, you are required to do some withholding and make the foreign worker apply for a social security number. But if you pay in their local currency, that doesn’t apply. So you need to learn the tricks so you can do it yourself. If you’re a small or medium size business, it’s better to get other people to do it for you so you can focus on building your business. Then, you can take it over and increase your ROI. Q: Tell me more about Virtually Incredible. If I own a 700-unit company and I tell you I have processes and systems in place, what can I give you in terms of processes and what can I expect in terms of ROI by using your company? A: The ROI is dependent on property management business structure. The ROI can come in saving on overhead. You don’t need as much office space. There’s also ROI in your peace of mind. Staff will go on vacation and take sick days. If you have staff, you have problems. That’s just the nature of a business. The more staff you have, the more potential problems you have. ROI comes in clearing your mind and your calendar. You shouldn’t have to worry about those functions because another business is going to take care of those problems and staffing for you. Then there’s the obvious ROI which you know is important, being in California. What do you think is the average hourly price you’d have to pay someone to work in a management company? Q: In the bay area, like $22 per hour if you want to hire and retain someone. $45,000 a year minimum. A: Right. So when you look at what you pay US-based staff, the price adds up, especially when you include vacation and benefits. You can hire quality people in the Philippines for $3 an hour if you do it directly. They work from their homes. It’s a great starting point. We have close to 100 people working for us from their homes, which allows us to pass on a lower cost to our customers. We don’t have traditional overhead in the Philippines either.   With our leasing line services, we answer leasing lines. One customer in Phoenix, Arizona had a commission leasing agent quit. That employee was earning $5,000 a month. When they came to us, they had 30-35 listings any given month and it was costing them $5,000 to staff that position for 40 hours a week. With us, calls were answered 80 hours a week, and our bill to them is $1,500 to $2,000 a month. So, they get double the efficiency at half of the price. And one person can only handle one call at a time. When we took over, we could expand to answer the leasing line even if three calls were coming in at once. So their listings went from 35 a month to about 15 per month. We also began answering their email inquiries. That added $1,000 to their bill, but their vacancy list went down. That’s an ROI too. In addition to saving money they picked up an extra month’s rent through reduced vacancies. Q: So there are three main ROI areas: the delta between the cost of talent here and the cost of talent there. As you say, that can be 70 percent off. The second is the actual volume. Instead of replacing one person, you have a team of people. Third, the peace of mind ROI. Basically, you don’t have to worry about vacation, employees leaving, or taking sick days or making claims against the company. So the advantages are huge. Where do people fall down with this? A: There’s a do-it-yourself attitude that prevails among entrepreneurs. People think they can do it all themselves, but they get so busy, they don’t do it as well as they could. I call that the Penny Wise Dollar Foolish approach. If someone tries to hire a person from another country, they might get it wrong. I had to learn the hard way what to say and what not to say. The Asian culture is all about saving face. Here, we can tell employees when they screw up. If you criticize someone there, they might not show up the next day and you’d wonder what happened. You didn’t know that you embarrassed them. I have people who say they tried outsourcing, and it didn’t work out. If you try to do it yourself, you may stumble. Q: People tell me all the time that they’ve tried property management marketing or they’ve used Google Ads and it just doesn’t work. I always find that interesting because Google is a trillion-dollar company and 80 percent of their revenue comes from AdWords. If something isn’t working for you, there’s a reason. A: It’s no longer possible to be a jack of all trades and a master of none. That doesn’t work anymore. Q: I found myself growing up with the business. I wanted to touch everything and do everything. I’ve learned you have to trust vendors and establish good relationships. For the control freak that does it all, the opportunity cost is tremendous. You can be doing so much more with your time. The people who expect everything to happen for them are also making a mistake because they aren’t developing relationships. Those are the two biggest pitfalls for any business. What do you think? A: When we get the business owner that hires us and hands us a mess and wants us to do it all, I always wonder how well or how long we are going to work together. Because if they don’t have enough care and concern with how they turn things over to us, what else is happening at the business that I don’t know about? So I always make a point of reaching out to those companies and making sure we are working with them to bring down their outsourcing bill. We don’t want them to spend any more than they have to, so we work with them. Sometimes, the set-it-and-forget-it people lose an opportunity to shave 10 or 20 percent off their bill. Q: We use lots of vendors and we pay thousands of dollars to places like Reputation.com. It’s so tempting to just shift my focus elsewhere because that’s done and they’re taking care of it. If staff are responsible for those vendor relationships, great. But if you don’t pay attention, you can have price increases and changes that affect your customers that you’re not even aware of. That’s a problem. Maintaining relationships is part of building your business and I think vendor relationships are key building blocks of our company. A: I grew our company from zero doors when I was 21 years old. I’ve been doing this for a long time and when I look at people trying to grow a business now, I look at all the resources they have that we didn’t have, and I can’t believe the opportunities. A lot of people really leverage those opportunities, and that’s smart. You can get software as a service, you can get a website from an expert and you don’t have to figure that out yourself. There are lots of property management vendors available in the NARPM community. The one thing I’m surprised with is when I look at the amount of resources a company spends answering leasing calls. Usually, when I go into a business and tell them to look at the number of calls they get a month, 70 percent of calls to their business are leasing calls. So how do you grow a business when you’re doing this 70 percent of your time? Q: One of the biggest reasons our customers don’t succeed as much as they should is because they’re unable to get to the owner call. Guess what those are being mixed up with? The leasing calls. So I can relate to that. A: Outsourcing the leasing calls should be a number one priority. Out of the 700 calls that might come in a month, only five or seven new leases come from those. So, 1 out of 100 calls makes money. And 99 out of 100 didn’t come with any money, but those are still being answered. Most business owners will take an inbound call for new management prospect and answer questions but then never follow up with that prospect, even while they’re answering 700 calls a month about leasing. That imbalance keeps them where they are – disorganized. So outsourcing those leasing calls is one of the best thing you can do to focus on growing a business. Q: We include LeadSimple for all of our packages because leads are usually a perceived problem. There are enough leads, but they aren’t being followed up on or treated like the lifetime revenue value they are. Put these owners and leads on your pipeline and follow up. So, you’re right. You have to pick your battles as a small business but dealing with new business is the biggest problem I see. If they pick up the phone they will probably close the deal. If they don’t, the lead dies. A: But someone who follows up will close them. The same thing happens on the leasing line. We will mystery shop any company’s leasing line and the results are really eye-opening. We get people answering the phone and they’re busy and distracted and they don’t even want to answer questions or, we get voicemail 50 percent of the time. Voicemail does not rent houses. It’s very intriguing to see how businesses are running themselves. If I could tell any business anything, it would be to get rid of the things that are not making you money and focus on what does. Right now, a management company can be bought for $4,000 to $5,000 a unit. So the resale value of those units is amazing. That shouldn’t be the phone call you put on hold. Q: We are solving the same problem from a different angle. We have each identified and have a solution to increase the owner calls and pay more attention to them, while reducing the distraction and getting better quality leasing. You provide a better customer experience, and houses are rented faster. A: Yes, and sometimes people ask if we can answer their new management calls. No, we should never do that. That’s your job as a property management business owner. New prospects don’t want to talk to someone in the Philippines and no one outside of your business should answer those questions. So get rid of the other calls that aren’t going to make you any money and focus on doing a great job and working those leads like it’s your job. Grow your company ad you’ll have a valuable asset. With a resale value of $5,000 per unit, if you add 100 properties, your net worth went up half a million dollars. That’s a lot of money. Q: Yes, and for a 500-unit company, with proper marketing, it’s reasonable to grow by 100 doors a year. Being better at the sales process, you get even 20 or 30 more. That’s quite a paycheck. A: I made some choices with my business to take the biggest issues I didn’t like, and I outsourced them. A lot of processes I keep within my business. There are some companies that outsource individual processes like if you want your leases entered or your renewal notices sent out. You have other companies that answer repair lines. All those are great things. I focused on those 70 percent of phone calls. That’s been the fun part of helping people. We also do tenant screening. And that’s because you want peace of mind. You want to know there is compliance with federal regulations, conformity, and trust that every tenant who applies gets handled the same way. Q: Fair housing laws are pretty clear. Owners hire a property manager so they don’t have to deal with the headaches. But if you get sued, you’ll lose your business. A: No one can afford to even be checked twice for fair housing problems. We have all those systems in place. Systems keep you in compliance. If you have no systems, you have no routine compliance. Shortcuts will leave you open for risk with compliance. So those are the two major departments that I outsource at my company; leasing calls and screening. Then, anything we did successfully I scaled for other property managers. We would love to talk with you again. Thank you for your time. It was a pleasure, and I will see you at a conference soon, I hope. If you need help with sales or marketing for property management companies, or you’re interested in learning more about the PM Grow Summit, please contact us at Fourandhalf. Thank you for listening, and we’ll see you next time. The post Business Process Outsourcing for the Modern Property Management Company with Todd Breen of VirtuallyinCredible.com appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.

Our guest today is Lisa Wise, who is with a company called Nest DC. As we go through this show, you may want to visit nest-dc.com to get exposed to the actual website so you understand Lisa’s company and what they are all about. Subscribe to The Property Management Show on iTunes Today to Stay Up to Date on the Latest Episodes I came across Lisa’s website by accident while we were doing a property management webinar with LeadSimple. Her page was assigned to me for conversion optimization advice. As I was reviewing other websites, I stumbled upon Nest, and I got a great tour of that website. I liked how it looked from site aesthetics to their 6-minute promo video. I wanted to meet the person behind the company and talk to her about what it took to build Nest DC and where she’s going with it. Q: So on the last podcast I heard you on, which I think was Executive Leader Radio, you mentioned that you are at about 500 properties. That was about 10 months ago. Where are you right now? A: We’re in the same place right now with Nest DC, but we have spun out our portfolio and separated the residential management side of our work that falls under the umbrella of Nest DC. Our association management is no longer in that portfolio, and is now managed under Roost. So, we’re still growing and building out new opportunities for revenue streams. We’ve tightened up the portfolio so we can really focus on different specialties with the two different companies. Q: So Roost is also your company? A: Yes. Roost DC is an outgrowth of Nest. It’s a sister company. Nest has become a success because we’ve had an exceptional team. Without our staff, we don’t have anything to offer that’s out of the ordinary. I have put together a loyal, fun, sophisticated, and motivated team of people that have made this company thrive. So one of the things I wanted to do was to reward those team members with an ownership opportunity, to really feel like their stumbling upon Nest was a good, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Rather than splitting Nest up, which would have been logistically complicated and less prudent, we took the associations we were managing out of the portfolio and we spun that work out into a new company called Roost. Roost DC is an LLC with 11 owners. All of the Nest employees were invited to become shareholders. Eleven of them did, and we are not aware of any other employee-owned management company that is not a family. Q: Very impressive.  So I am a big proponent of making sure that employees are happy. Happy employees make happy customers, and that is the perfect world. What you guys did is pretty amazing. We have a standard and generic offer like most technology start-ups where we offer options to our employees, but you actually made a company for those committed to the cause. I have met thousands of property managers in my career and I’ve never seen anything like that. How is it working for you and how long have you been doing it? A: We’re approaching the end of our second year of business with Roost and it’s been one of the best professional decisions I’ve made. I’m proud of it. One of the great things about working with colleagues who are also co-owners is that you’re getting real buy-in and commitment. There’s a focus on high-quality customer service, attention to the brand, teamwork, and a level of focus that you won’t get from an hourly employee. You can reward them all you want, but when an ownership is at stake, it really lends itself to a different customer experience, and it’s been great for business. It’s been fun to work with team members who are co-owners and it’s created a different experience for our customers. One of our chief complaints we get in the association environment is that there’s a lot of turnover. And when you’re a team of co-owners, that variable goes away. Q: When you say turnover, you mean employee turnover, right? A: Exactly. Traditional portfolio management brings a lot of turnover, and some of the buildings we work with get frustrated if one to two different managers are their point of contact annually. It’s hard to maintain the institutional knowledge that you need to manage well. Q: I couldn’t agree more. The continuity and progression of a team is paramount in a service business. I model a lot of my back end organization after the most successful property management companies I work with. The team needs to be responsible for their portfolio of clients. A lot of things can be done on an assembly line, but when it comes to relationships, it’s not assembly line work. People need to be connected to individuals making customers happy. Before becoming a property manager, what did you do, and how did you get into the property management business? A: I was a policy consultant for a healthcare organization and then moved into senior leadership roles where I was the executive director for healthcare or environmental nonprofits. I segued into that after graduating with a degree in political economy and before that a film degree. I always joke that a film degree gets you from one end of town to the next. Those educational experiences prepped me for what I would do for 12 solid years. When I was living in Arizona, I bought an 1893 adobe duplex. It was cheaper to own something in grad school than it was to rent, so I bought it. I loved working with my hands and I liked giving my neighbor and tenant a great and unique living experience. I sort of kept that in the back of my brain and used that property to buy and manage other properties. I had a nice little portfolio on the side while I pursued my nonprofit work. When the great recession hit, I was really burned out from raising money in nonprofits, so I decided to pivot and start my own property management company. I did it really organically with our core philosophy, which has been the same since the day we started: we believe high-quality property attracts high-quality tenants. When people are happy where they live, they make better neighbors and you have a greater city. That philosophy has always shaped what we do. Here we are with a viable company eight years later. Q: What were the first and biggest challenges you had to overcome? How did you do it? What would be your constructive advice for anyone starting out? A: Billing. It’s really hard to ask people to pay you for your time and your work. It’s hard to place value on that, particularly when no one wants to pay you for property management. We wanted to make it something that people felt great about buying into, but that took a lot of time. So billing and justifying our rates and helping people understand that there is value in something that they may never actually need to leverage. At some point, property management is a great mixture of service and passive income. If you’re lucky, there’s not a lot to be done. You take care of emergencies and you can sail a little bit. So it’s hard to always justify your value. In the beginning, it was hard for me to figure out how to do the baseline contractual billing and to help owners understand that properties need to be maintained to a certain standard in order to manage them well. Then, I’d feel bad about approaching them with turnover costs or telling them they needed to have their windows replaced. It felt like because they were so put off by even having to pay for management at all, I had to be the bearer of more financial bad news and I’m still never comfortable with it. Q: We just had a conversation with Deniz Yusef, who is a Business Development Coach in Australia, and one of the first things he said is that clients are almost ashamed to charge for their services. I understand that it’s hard to justify your value to customers and to figure out a fair rate. So how did you overcome that, because it’s very common for business start-ups? What measures have you put in place to combat that and move forward? A: I think that when we could make the argument that by paying our fees and helping us ensure that the tenants have the best possible experience and the space is maintained and cared for, you’re really setting the relationship up for success. So if you have a great property, you’ll have tenants that care about it and respect it. So spending the money on us and on making sure you have a great product will save you money over the long term. I think that once we were able to make those arguments and actually anchor them in real life scenarios and examples, it was easier for owners to understand that. And being able to present the idea that you can pay $1,500 to get everything done right now or $3,000 over the course of a year, it’s really the right investment. It’s another sales technique and something we believed in. Q: How did you communicate that? You’re in a space where you had some really good case studies. I’m trying to fish out specific advice for people dealing with this. How do you tell customers this? A: Our proposals are very transparent with pricing. Be up front so no one has to ask you why you charge what you do. Be proactive and define the fee structure. People are concerned that they’ll get nickeled and dimed. Let them trust you. Be ready to answer their questions, but show them everything before they ask. Don’t be apologetic. We are experts and we have learned a lot of lessons the hard way. Offering free property management is easy to slip into if you’re not careful. Q: How do you feel about publishing pricing schedules on websites? A: We publish our rates, and happily so. If someone is price shopping and they see our rates our higher, then they skipped a phone call. There is no reason for us not to be upfront about our pricing. If competitors want to charge less, that’s fine. Our attitude is that there is plenty of business, so we want people to get the right fit. Publishing rates is transparent and it saves the customer time. Q: I think the most successful people I speak with agree. Everything should be detailed and laid out, and we like to connect growth goals with our prices. I want to communicate to potential customers, not competitors. We want to work with people who fit our criteria as much as they want to find a service provider who fits their needs. What do you think about offering two or three different plans instead of just one model? A: I have tried every version of pricing out there and the more straightforward and simplified we could make it, the more efficient it was. Different packages really didn’t work out for us. We had situations where we would offer a lease-only option and that equaled total disaster because the tenants didn’t want to deal with the owners, they wanted to deal with us, because that’s where their relationship started. Owners didn’t understand the complexity of being a landlord, so they were trying to save money, but weren’t prepared for what they had to do. So we don’t do different versions of management. We know what we are successful with, and we want the owners to understand the value of our work and let us do every part of it. People who want to slice and dice what we offer are generally the people who are going to question our value over and over again. So we just stopped doing that. We offer management of a condo or a house. The property management fee structure is different because one is more complicated to manage than the other. Q: You have tested and went through iterations of your business before you came to this decision. It’s all about trying different things. You’ll never know until you try different things. You could be a thousand-unit company if you had many different levels of service. But that’s not your goal, is it? You don’t want to be everything for everyone. You have a specific niche, and I respect that. A: We learned the hard way. Q: That’s what testing is all about. You want to fail so your fundamental setup is established. Do you sell yourself, or do you have someone doing that for you? A: I have several people. Most of my team is cross-trained to do that, which is good because everyone can represent the company. There are three people who will rotate with sales calls and leads and then follow up with a client and go all the way to the point where they start paying their leasing fees. Q: And you have 21 people in your company. So, that’s another distinction that I see between high growth and highly profitable entrepreneurs and companies that are just sort of there. It’s the effort to get new prospective clients and have sales people or people who care enough to sell and get the right client in the door every time the opportunity arises. I think that’s paramount. Investing money, effort, and training so sales people can represent your company and answer questions. What were some of the particulars that you can share, some methods for training and helping people get up to speed to be great sales people for your company? A: Empathy is the most important thing that any of our sales reps and staff can have when they get to work each day. I use the word pretty strongly. We need to understand where our tenants are coming from and the experiences they are having. We need to understand our clients and what they are going through. We’re dealing with people in highly emotional situations where they’re talking about moving their highest asset, which is their house, and they’re generally in a point of transition that can be very charged. Coming to those conversations, whether it’s a sales conversation or a maintenance conversation, with empathy helps us be our best. It helps us in our day to day work and it better represents the work we do for people who sign on with Nest or with Roost. So we talk a lot about what each experience means for our clients. What is it like to prepare a property for rent? We take for granted that it’s every day work for us, when for most of our owners, this is the first and last time they will hire a property manager. The strongest impression that they can get from a company is that we understand what they’re going through. I think that the empathy piece helps us anchor the conversation and keep our clients comfortable and trusting. You’ll have better luck bringing people on board who feel good about the management relationship they’ll have. So we spend a lot of time going over these scenarios so we can understand what it’s like to be moving or the stress around a bad tenant. We put ourselves in their shoes. From there, each of our staff members need to understand how houses and apartments work. That’s part of what we’re selling – that we know how they work. There are a lot of property management companies with people answering the phones who don’t know how to help. We spend a lot of time training our team to know how our property functions. The space we occupy actually is similar to some of the properties we manage. So we get to interface with our work and see what a living and breathing building is like. Q: Really innovative. One of the people I follow and listen to a lot is Gary V., and one of his key hiring principles that he uses to measure interviews is emotional intelligence. Empathy is a big part of it. Building that emotional bridge between you and a prospect is critical. I advise against just working off script. There’s space for the scripting, but once you have someone on the phone and you can connect, it makes a difference. One of the key principles is building an emotional bridge. That’s a huge differentiator between you and your competitors. This is critical and I’m happy to have found that your principles are so core to our human psychology. Very few people use this. Listening helps, and it’s what I teach. You have to care more than anyone else. We bring property management clients into our office and talk through their day. My team is immersed into their lives. You do that too; you even have a house that is similar to your clients’ homes. There are filters and heaters and toilets. Is there a specific way you teach empathy? How do you determine if someone has it? Besides giving them exposed to the challenges, are there specific things you do to build empathy? A: When we have staff that take frustrated clients really personally or when a situation starts to go south and people take it personally, those are the staff members to invest in. We talk about how intensely emotional this job is for everyone on our team. It seems like a drawback, like we should be able to leave our work at the end of the day and not care whether or not a refrigerator gets replaced. We stumble on that sometimes, and from an efficiency standpoint, it’s a losing battle. But from a caring perspective, it’s really what makes us special. If we didn’t care so much, we wouldn’t be good at what we do. Staff members who blow things off or displace blame or don’t see their own responsibility, those are not people ready to create a unique experience. That’s how we vet for empathy. Q: Have you had to fire people? A: Oh, yeah. Q: How do you do that? This is, I think, something we have to do. It’s difficult and I hate it. But for the welfare of our company, some decisions need to be made. It’s especially hard when they’re good at what they do, but they don’t fit. They don’t have that empathy. How do you do it? A: Sometimes, very well and sometimes very poorly. The moments when we have handled it well are when we quickly realize that a person isn’t a fit, and we let them go quickly. That’s better for everybody. It gets harder when you have a relationship with someone. They might get along with staff, but maybe they don’t have the skills to do the job well. And you’ll wonder if you can make things better. There’s a relationship, and we value culture and staff. If an essential staff member leaves, it’s hard on everyone else. But if you’re investing in someone who doesn’t add value to the whole team, it’s not fair to the others who are pulling their own weight. So, we try to position it as an opportunity to be somewhere where they are going to thrive. We try to keep people as part of the family even if they’re not part of the team. It’s the pits, but it’s also necessary. Do what’s best for the business so everyone thrives. Q: The hard ones to fire are already part of the group and they might be a good culture fit, but not a professional or business fit. I’ve always struggled with it. Are there any specific ways you interview new team members that may reveal some of that emotional intelligence, or empathy? How do you give them a chance to be a great team member from the start? Do you have any tricks?   A: It really depends on the position we are hiring for. Generally, we force them to spend a lot of time with us, and if they can hold their own with us, and all of our interesting and familial interactions, they have half the battle done. We aren’t ever interested in people with property management backgrounds. They tend to come with bad habits. We talk about approaches and customer service, but it depends on the position. We spend a lot of time with people and different teams of people interview. When people can get through that and they are still excited about the job, then they’ve passed half the test. Q: We do similar things. It’s almost a whole team interview that takes half a day. They might be able to trick one person, but they can’t trick 10 people. So we collaborate as a group, and we agree. So the advice is to immerse your whole team into the interview process. Let your people be the character judges with you. I agree that industry experience isn’t necessary. We’re looking for character and emotional intelligence. Property management and marketing are not rocket science. You need the right people and the skills can be acquired. A: I always make the argument that property management is very easy and relationship management is very hard. Q: Very true. One last question – being in the service business like me and all of our listeners, when do you know when to hire the next person? How do you make that decision? A: When people are crying at their desks. Q: Okay, projections are sometimes off. If you think one person can handle 100 accounts, but 20 clients are bringing in 30 percent of the revenue, and the rest don’t, then certain clients take more time. So anything beyond that? A: As an employee-owned company and a profit-sharing company, we now have our team that’s fairly motivated not to just add folks because we’re busy. We need to look at the season first. It’s cyclical. We might be breathlessly busy and begging for a new staff member, but two months later we know it will be slower. So we have to ask if we can get through the storm without committing to more payroll. We have managed to bridge those gaps and get past harder and high season periods. We hire temp help when necessary, and that has worked. College students have come in to do showings during the summer season. So, you have to be creative. We also take a look at what’s making us busy. We study why we think it’s time to hire. Is it because we are spending too much time on back and forth conversations or data entry or systems problems? If that’s the problem, then we are obligated to fix the system and then add staff second. We have gotten much better at doing that. Now we ask ourselves how we can grow as much as possible with the best customer experience inside and outside.  Our team members are customers, just like our clients. If people are happy and we know we’re delivering an exceptional service, then fine tuning the systems is the way to go. If we feel like we’re compromising our services, staffing is the way to go. Q: I like that distinction. A systems problem versus a staff problem. When you’re scaling and starting out, there are a lot of hats to wear and it’s hard to be disciplined to review and implement systems. A: Right. Every system is temporary. Your portfolio will collapse on your systems at some point, and you have to start over. If you’re not open minded about doing that, it can be destructive. You won’t be able to make up for the mistakes that are happening. Q: Two more short questions. What do you do as a CEO? What does your day and month look like? A: My in-office time is purely collaborative. I spend a lot of time available to my team to solve problems, and answer questions. There’s a lot of sales and project management involved. We do a lot of construction and project management in our company, and I like that. So I work with our contractors on large-scale projects in the field. And then growth projections and looking at how we’re going to increase the business over time. So there’s a lot of strategic planning and looking at our systems and investments. A lot of networking too. That’s generally how I spend my days. And then getting to the client interactions on nights and weekends. I invest the time to make sure I’m still offering a quality customer experience. I don’t want to sell something and not be able to deliver on it. Q: Let’s finish with this. If you and I talk in 12 months, where would you like to be? Are there any high level goals? A: I’d like to see 100 percent growth in Roost DC and 25 percent growth for Nest DC. I’d like to see 200 percent growth in our construction and turnover business, and I’d like to see us continue to win INC 5000 awards, the DC City Paper Best Places to Work, and make sure that if we are reaching out to the community they are telling us we’re doing our best work. I want to make sure we are having a strong and meaningful impact on the community. I want to point at what we’ve done for the Food Bank and the Humane Society and the Neighborhood Society. We are part of a community and we want to make it better every day. I appreciate your time, Lisa. Thank you for sharing some of this wisdom. Thank you to our sponsor, the Property Management Grow Summit, which is in January of 2017. We’ll essentially be pulling back the curtain on the greatest growth strategies in the industry. That agenda includes things like lead generation, strategic planning, sales, productivity, lead nurturing, financial models, etc. This conference is truly designed for the growth-minded property management entrepreneur who wants to step out of the norm, like Lisa. She will be speaking at the conference, and we’re really excited about that. If you haven’t seen the site yet, go to pmgrowsummit.com and check it out. Look at some speakers and check out some videos. If you need help with sales or marketing for property management companies, please contact us at Fourandhalf. Thank you for listening, and we’ll see you next time. The post Empathy’s Impact on Growing a Property Management Company – The Nest-DC story appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.

This talk was an interesting one as we were able to corral a long-term customer in Steve Rozenberg to join us for this interview. He’s a commercial pilot for United Airlines, and he also runs one of the fastest growing property management businesses in Empire Industries located in Houston, TX. He shares his story in how we grew Empire Industries into the power that it is today. Below is a transcription of the interview:  Q: Steve, welcome to the show. Can you give us a quick introduction of who you are and what you do? A: Thanks for having me. I live in Houston, Texas and I was sort of backwards in getting into what I’m doing now. I never wanted to be involved in real estate or thought about becoming an entrepreneur. I was thrust into the world because of a day that a lot of us remember, which was September 11th. I’m what people call a 9/11 entrepreneur, which means for me that day dramatically affected my life and my livelihood as an airline pilot. That safe, secure job that I thought I had as a pilot really ceased to exist on September 12th. Being an airline pilot is really specialized, and I didn’t want to find myself out of a job and on the street. I was luckily able to keep my career – I’m still an airline pilot. But hundreds of thousands of planes were grounded for the week after 9/11, and that was my “why” moment. I decided I wanted to start learning about real estate. I began buying single family homes and then apartment complexes.   Q: So you got that jolt to your life and your career, and you thought that real estate would be a good way to have your money in something physical; an asset that’s not likely to disappear. Did you use a property manager when you began buying properties? A: No. Q: Why not? A: I didn’t know a lot of the things then that I know now. It’s one of those things that you think you’re smart enough to figure out on your own. Real estate is a safe and secure investment, but as an investor, making the wrong acquisitions without the right business model can take away that security quickly. I bought some properties without the right property management structure in place, and if you don’t know what you’re doing, it can be a financial disaster. Q: So the question is, how do property managers convince people – a starting investor – to think along the lines of getting help right away to avoid losses and failures? A: It’s a matter of educating them. You don’t want to tell people how good you are at property management. They don’t care. What’s important is finding out what their goals are, what they want, and how you can help them realize what they don’t know while they’re achieving those goals. So many things can happen with tenant rights, fair housing, and discrimination. Landlords are often sued because they don’t treat their property like a business. I always tell investors: you are playing with people’s lives, and that makes you liable and responsible. The IRS and the Texas Property Code and the Fair Housing Act says you’re a business. Once they start seeing it that way, they know a property manager is a necessary part of the team. It’s my job to explain how we will get them to their goals. Q: Knowing what I know now, I will never get into an investment property without first consulting and working with a property manager on the acquisition, management, and eventual sale. You are right when you say education is what’s needed. Listeners, if you go to the Empire Industries website – empireindustriesllc.com, you’ll be amazed at how many videos and books are available. If you are looking for resources and answers, this website is it. This is why Steve wins all the business. It’s education. So let’s step back a bit, how did you end up as a property management company? A: I met my business partner in a real estate investment group in Houston and we partnered on an apartment complex. After we sold the apartment complex, we took the revenue and bought some houses. We bought 20 single family homes in about a year. We bought the wrong properties. Q: What was wrong with that portfolio? A: About 70 percent of the properties we bought were in low-income areas. They weren’t bad properties, just wrong for us and the business model we were using. Our cash on cash return was high on paper – around 60 percent. We bought the homes for $50,000 or $60,000, and rented them out for $900 or $1,000 per month. But with low-income properties, what we didn’t know and what a property management company would have told us, is that our average tenancy rate was eight months. Our turnover costs were three times our other turnovers. So the tenants didn’t stay and the maintenance costs were killing us. That sucked up all our revenue and we did not account for that. At that point, we tried to hand the properties over to a management company, but we couldn’t find one that would agree to work with us. That’s when we realized we did something wrong. This was in the middle of the 2008/2009 recession, and we were stuck with these homes. Instead of learning from our mistakes, we bought another 15 properties that were similar. I was fixated on proving that I could fix this. That was not the way to go. Q: So how did you get out of it? A: We decided we could either sell them and take a huge loss or come up with some kind of structure that would result in better management. So we put some processes and policies in place and decided to manage these homes until they began performing the way we wanted them to. It took us about six months to lay the foundation of turning these properties around.  We held ourselves accountable and put procedures into place. Then, our properties began to stabilize. We kicked out our deadbeat tenants and even though it cost us money, we saw it as a means to an end. It broke the cycle we were stuck in. Those properties never got to the point that they were making us a lot of money, but we weren’t losing it either. Other investors began to approach us and tell us about their problems. They asked us to manage their homes, and at first we said no. But then we realized that if we did it well, we could get discounts with vendors and real estate agents through economies of scale. That started our property management company in January of 2011. Q: Did you work full time during this period? A: Yes. I was still a full-time pilot and Pete was in charge of a big IT department. We did this while working full time. After about six months of taking on properties and looking at it from a business standpoint, we realized we could actually make some money. People were handing us their properties and we had no idea what we were doing. We began to educate ourselves on the property management industry. Q: How many properties did you have after six months? A: We had about 70 or 75 properties, and half of them were our own. We still weren’t smart enough to realize we needed help. In June of 2012, we got a business coach and set up the foundation and structure of our business. Pete went part time in his company because he knew this was going somewhere. Then, six months later he quit his job entirely. Q: How many properties did you have at that point? A: We had about 127 properties at that time, and we hired our first employee as well. We knew we couldn’t afford her, but we also couldn’t afford not to have her. She was a certified property manager with 20 years of experience, and she saw the vision of what we were building. Or maybe she felt sorry for us. Three months after joining us, she fired about 67 of our clients. She completely cleaned house and said she was dropping the people who would get us sued because they were bad owners. We didn’t know what was a good or bad owner. She came in with a lot of experience, and we let her run the show. It dropped us down to 67 properties, but at least those owners we had left were good owners. Then, things really took off. So if you flash forward to today, we now have over 550 properties. Our largest client has 43 doors, but he purchased them one by one. We didn’t buy any clients, we fought hard for every single one. We are always marketing as much as we can. Because it doesn’t matter what business you are in, you’re a marketing business. If you do not have inbound marketing, you are going out of business. You just don’t realize it yet. Q: How do you define inbound marketing? A: To me, it’s simply when someone comes to me and tells me that they found me through the Internet or through my eBook, educational blogs, or whatever, and they want to talk to me. They contact us. Q: Exactly. They ask, you answer. And when you can do this on the Internet, your reach multiplies on its own. People are looking for answers. If you are the one providing the answers, they will call you and demand you as the company they use because they are emotionally already connected. A: That’s true. Fourandhalf educated me on the importance of content marketing and video blogs. You said to start with 10, and I think we ended up with 50 in the first few months. Q: You tested it and it worked, so now you keep going. A: We took what you told us to do, and it’s not magic, we just do it consistently. We test and measure every single thing we do. We know what is working and what isn’t and what we have to tweak and adjust. It’s a learning process. Q: I’m impressed and proud because I keep telling clients that once we get to two years of content marketing, they will reduce their dependency on Pay-Per-Lead and other forms of paid marketing. They will get that needle out of their arm. You don’t rely on Google Ads as your single source of customers, right? A: Absolutely. That’s how you grow. We were on page 80 of Google when we first started. We did everything you suggested and had our YouTube videos and transcribe our blogs. We also paid attention to our reputation in property management. We have the most reviews on Google, and when people call us, they aren’t looking for the cheapest service, but the best service. Someone just told us he spent 10 hours watching our YouTube videos, and he was ready to start working with us. One of the best pieces of advice I got from Fourandhalf was about pain points. Now, when someone tells me about their pain point, I make sure I have a video and a blog I can send that shows them how to handle it.   Q: That is definitely no secret, and the next step after putting a sales process in place. One fear many people tell me about is that they don’t want to be the ones making the calls and sending the emails. But it doesn’t have to be the president of the company or the CEO that people talk to. A: That’s true. We started off as just Pete and me, so we were the only ones answering the phones. But now I have 19 people working for me. We have a marketing coordinator and a business development manager, and even though it’s my name on the emails people receive, when they’re talking to a sales person, nothing misses a beat. It’s not a hard transition. We are averaging 84 new business opportunities a month, and most of them are from our website or some other trigger. Those are all inbound because we don’t do any outbound marketing.   Q: Would you say the whole thing boils down to this single fact: that you need to become an authority in your space? People are looking for a thought leader. A: Yes. You have to grind and come out on top as the one who is the educator. You don’t have to be the smartest, just the one they see when questions are answered. People don’t’ like to be sold, they like to be educated. Q: We have had long conversations at NARPM events, and you have really grown over the years. You have done everything right. You always have great ideas that we discuss in detail. Then you go and implement those ideas. You don’t just talk. When did you crest? When did you feel that everything was on the right track? A: Last year is when we noticed that we were really getting some traction. We had about 976 inbound leads for the year. This year, we’re way over that and may even double it. But it was last year that we realized we were getting referrals from owners and agents, and these were not singular. We were getting multiple people coming to us, and we thought everything was working. In last year we also got to the top of Google and we are constantly on the front page. That has been a huge plus, but what our “aha” moment was involved real estate agents. We once went door to door every day to talk about our referral program with agents. Now, we only go once every few weeks because we have so much traction and people know us. We definitely have the momentum we need. Q: So to boil this podcast down to a single sentence, I would say: to compete on competence instead of price and still win, you need two things. You have to be a thought leader and you have to hustle. Hustling means falling on your face and failing once in a while. It’s engaging every partner you have, every vendor and friend. You need to ask questions and use the opportunity to glean new ideas and go and implement them. Does that sound about right? A: Absolutely. You have to be a grinder. You have to get up and make it happen. If you don’t, someone else will take your place. I always tell people we are looking to expand in other cities, and you probably don’t want to compete with us on marketing because we take big actions daily. If we come into a new city, we’ll take the same approach. If you’re sitting back and passive, you’ll get pushed away if not by us, then by another company. People are afraid to fail and they don’t want to look dumb. But some of the most famous people in the world fail. Henry Ford was considered illiterate. Michael Jordan didn’t make his high school basketball team. Einstein didn’t pass ninth grade algebra. All those people failed but they didn’t give up. We have failed so many times in so many ways but if we hadn’t then we wouldn’t have the business we have today. Q: Spoken like a true entrepreneur. We get people to Fourandhalf through education, and speaking of education, we are doing a conference with LeadSimple.com. If you want to come and hear Steve speak and talk more about his success story, come to the Property Management Grow Summit on January 26, 2017, in West Palm Beach, Florida. A: Very excited about that. As I’ve said, Fourandhalf gave us the foundation to build, and if I didn’t have the information you shared, I would not have known how to grow. There are so many great people to learn from, and that’s why I’m going; to mix with people who can teach me things. Q: Thank you for your time. How can people find you? A: Look us up at empireindustriesllc.com. We are also on Facebook, and you can always call us at the office: 888.866.6727. We love when property managers call us about business and questions. Feel free to call us because no one would give us those answers when we were growing. We had to figure it out by making mistakes, so I’m happy to talk to other property managers. This was helpful. Thanks for joining us, Steve. You’re a true entrepreneur and a good guy to know. If you need help with sales or marketing for property management companies, or you’re interested in learning more about the PM Grow Summit, please contact us at Fourandhalf. Thank you for listening, and we’ll see you next time. The post How One Houston, TX Property Management Company Failed into an Award-Winning Business: The Empire Industries Story appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.