It is my belief that you absolutely cannot teach personality. This is something that is developed from childhood and becomes engrained over the years making it impossible to professionally teach or re-engineer. So, if you find someone with a great personality who easily relates to others during conversation, you are 50% there.
It is also my belief, that if you find someone who accepts and follows direction ... you can teach them ANYTHING! When employees stray, I typically find a supervisor that is not providing them with adequate direction or a supervisor that is not holding them accountable for implementing and maintaining that direction.
So, I pose this question to supervisors, "Have you provided your Leasing Sales Professionals with the 7 vital steps to increasing their sales"?
And I pose this question to the sales people, "Have you maintained and consistently implemented the 7 vital steps to increasing sales"?
And you all answer back, "No, but as soon as I read this article I certainly will"! Good-4-U!
STEP 1 - PROSPECT
We must first start with identifying our target and sub-target prospects that we want to attract. This identification process starts by reviewing our product. If our community is in a great school system and the bulk of our apartments are 2 & 3 bedroom floor plans, then most likely families will become our target prospect. Conversely, if we are in an urban area and the bulk of our apartments are studios and 1 bedrooms, then students or singles may be our target market. (As a Fair Housing side note, all we are identifying is who is most likely to take advantage of the floor plans we have to offer. I am not suggesting that if a married couple comes to our urban nest that we do not accept them since they are not single or a student). Now that we have identified our target market, we can more effectively execute our marketing plans.
The community with the 2 & 3 bedrooms might want to adjust their model to have one of the bedrooms display bunk beds reflecting a children's room. They may want to realign their outreach programs to include county fairs. They may want to redirect social contributions toward sponsoring elementary schools athletic teams. They may want to place print ads for the first time in the children's section of the newspaper coloring page (also reflected online) that will prominently be displayed on refrigerators by budding artists. And of course they will want to reorganize their amenity listings on .com sites to give priority to things such as playgrounds, monthly resident events, children's community activity programming, etc.
The community with the studio and 1 bedrooms might want to adjust their model to reflect more of the student or single lifestyle by replacing the traditional couch with an elaborate futon, by replacing the traditional dining room table with a pub table bar stool set or by replacing the traditional bed with a platform bed. They may want to realign their outreach programs to include college job fairs. They may want to redirect their social contributions to walks/runs/marathons for social awareness causes. They may want to place print ads in lifestyle or entertainment sections of newspapers (also reflected online). And of course they will want to reorganize their amenity listings on .com sites to give priority to such things as location, neighborhood social amenities, social programming, etc.
STEP 2 - APPROACH
Your approach during first communications are detrimental to your success. A unique sincere energetic approach will always earn you a home run on the sales field with prospective residents. Change your stereotypical greeting of, "Good morning thank you for calling", to something that is welcoming and unique, like "I'm glad you've called today". Divorce yourself from overused industry greeting rhetoric, such as "It's a great day". Same goes for your auto response email, replace the Dear Jane with, Jane, we are thrilled you contacted us today!
STEP 3 - INTERVIEW
This is where the true sales professional shines! It is our job to interview the prospective resident, without them knowing we are interviewing them. The trick is to do it in a very conversational manner, not necessarily by asking them direct questions, like "How many bedrooms do you need", but instead by asking them open ended discussion questions, like, "Describe to me your apartment home needs". Any question that begins with, describe to me, tell me about, share with me, talk about, let's discuss, etc. puts you and the client in a give and take conversation mode. Your goal is to find out their priorities as well as the potential objections they my voice regarding your product. Document these and be prepared during the tour to point out how you met their priorities, and be prepared to overcome the objections you predicted may arise.
STEP 4 - PROPOSAL
During the tour prior to arriving to the apartment home, be sure to propose lifestyle situations they might consider. For example, point out the unique pool cabana and ask them if they can picture themselves relaxing beneath it after a refreshing swim on a warm summer day. Point out the onsite car care center and ask them if they can picture themselves utilizing the car vacuum after accidentally spilling a potted plant during their move. Point up to the apartment balconies and ask them if they can picture themselves relaxing with a glass of wine after a long days work. This proposal process can ultimately be carried into the apartment home tour, but the give and take format needs to be established prior to seeing the apartment home itself.
STEP 5 - DEMONSTRATION
I believe our industry professionals as a whole are weak in this area. I believe that they depend on the product to impress the prospective resident, and therefore offer weak verbal descriptions and limit their effort toward pointing out worthy features. We say useless things like, "As you can see we have granite counter tops and stainless steal appliances". Unless you are touring Helen Keller, this is a complete waste of sales energy. Instead you should be saying, "Take notice of your 18 linear feet of counter top space, as well as your 16 cabinets and 4 utility drawers". This is also the key time to get them to mentally arrange their furniture. The old real estate saying of, "If you can get them to decorate, you can get them to buy", works exactly the same in our industry, just substitute buy with rent. I also love the "Interaction with Reward" concept. Ask them to open the refrigerator and have cans of soda as their reward. Then ask them to open the cabinet and have koozies with your logo and phone number printed on them as their reward.
STEP 6 - NEGOTIATE
Ok, some of you already have your "Fair Housing Bristles" standing up on the back of your neck after reading this step.
Negotiate does not solely refer to price, it refers to "Negotiate Customer Considerations". This means, get them to consider that you provided them 13 of the 14 things on their priority list, they need to consider this apartment home as a viable option. Get them to consider that though you were unable to provide them with reserved parking, your community is 18 miles closer to their work than the community that was able to provide reserved parking. Get them to consider that they will save close to 45 minutes a day to work as well as gas, which might be worth walking a few additional feet for.
This can also stand for "Landlord Considerations". This means, be sure to dig deep and find out what is preventing them from filling out the application and putting down a deposit. Sometimes it is something as simple as replacing towel bars or adding a ceiling fan ... and this might be worth considering pending on the occupancy of that specific floor plan. Others may be more costly like replacement of carpet, however, if it has sat vacant for 4 months, this may be a viable consideration in exchange for occupancy.
STEP 7 - SUPPORT
Customers want to know they are making the right decision. It is imperative that we resale to them once they have decided that we are their preferred new home. You need to support their decisions by reminding them of the 13 priorities we fulfilled. You need to remind them of the additional features that they expressed approval for and plans to utilize. This is also a great time to draw upon your market survey knowledge to support that they are making an outstanding investment decision and have selected the best value from within your market.
I am sure that many of these steps were not new to you. But the real questions is, do you consistently utilize these 7 sales steps collectively? Missing one step can compromise the success of the sales process. Sales is a psychology. It is a pattern that helps the buyer to feel confident in their decision, allowing them to walk away feeling comfortable with their investment. Most importantly, preventing them from having second thoughts that motivate them to continue shopping, later leading to a rental cancellation.
So, One Two a few more steps to do, Three Four show them some more, Five Six break out those final leasing tricks and Happy Seven, welcome to commission heaven.
