» Highlights

Written by: Sarah Little, Secret Shopping Director

PhoneSmart Your Source for Lead Generation

Secret Shopping Blog Your inside peek

Self Storage Blog A diary of the self storage industry

Tweet This Post 

Written by Sarah Little, blogging champ

Don’t make this your property management trend.

PhoneSmart Your Offsite Sales Solution

Secret Shopping Blog Your inside peak

Self Storage Blog A diary of the self storage industry

Tweet This Post 

FOR Immediate Release:

Free seminars for Self Storage Property Professionals.

PhoneSmart a sales solution provider for the Self storage industry is holding a series of free seminars and user forums this spring and summer. This is a great opportunity to learn the PhoneSmart self storage selling system and use it as a competitive edge.

Tron Jordheim, the PhoneSmart director said, “We have so many clients around the country that have not had a chance to learn our system, we thought it was time to take the system to them. We still meet many people who think we are just a call center. This is a great way to showcase all of our sales solutions.”

FREE “Sales 101 for Self Storage” Seminar

And FREE PhoneSmart user forum

Coming to a location near you!

To register, email tron@phone-smart.net or call 1.866.639.1715

Program:
9 AM to 11 AM

9:00 to 9:45 “Sales 101 for Self Storage”.
We will share the PhoneSmart selling system so you can turn more of your rental inquiries into customers.

9:45 to 11:00 PhoneSmart User Forum.
Get the latest updates on PhoneSmart services. Share best practices. Get answers to all your questions. Find out how to make even more profit from your PhoneSmart services.

March and April Schedule…

March 28th Tuesday in downtown Chicago, IL

April 7th Friday in White Plains, Westchester, NY

April 18th Tuesday in downtown San Francisco, CA

April 20th Thursday in Los Angeles near LAX, CA

May 9th Tuesday, Manhattan, NY, NY

May23rd Tuesday in Phoenix/Tempe, AZ

June 15th Thursday in Bluffton/Hilton Head, SC

Tweet This Post 

Welcome to the property management blog, our window into the property management business.

We often talk about setting up the workplace so our employees and our ventures are successful. I saw this piece form a Montessori teacher, I thought it was relevant.

February 18, 2006

The Three C’s of Motivation

”The manager’s job, then, is not to motivate people to get them to achieve; instead, the manager should provide opportunities for people to achieve, so they will become motivated.”
~Frederick Herzberg

Charlie walked over with the teaching clock. ”I’ve learned to tell time. Do any time, and I can tell you.”

Five-year-old Charlie sat down with me, and I proceeded to move the hands of the clock to test him.

”Six o’clock. Twelve-thirty. Two-fifteen. Ten-forty-nine,” Charlie responded, always with the correct time.

”Charlie, you really know how to read a clock. Did your mom or dad work with you?”

”Oh, no. I learned it at school.”

”How?” I wondered out loud, since I had never given Charlie a lesson.

”Mike taught me, and I watched you with Sarah,” Charlie grinned.

Charlie gave me my first ”ah-hah” moment that not every child needs every lesson. As a new teacher, I had faith in my Montessori training and followed as best I could the guidelines for allowing freedom of choice, freedom of movement, freedom to choose where and with whom to work in the classroom and freedom to talk. I believe these freedoms aided Charlie in learning to tell time.

Years later, I read in Alfie Kohn’s book, Punished by Rewards, about creating conditions for authentic motivation, which he called the three C’s of motivation: collaboration that defines the context of work, content of the tasks and the choices people have about the work they do and how they do it. Kohn’s ”three C’s” were the elements that had allowed Charlie to learn to tell time without a teacher.

Collaboration. Our classroom provided for collaboration, as children were free to observe each other at work, free to ask questions and free to move around. The children also knew they were at school to learn to do new things and be with their friends. The children were given basic rules of behavior on how to treat each other and the materials in the classroom and the consequences for not following those rules. Children understood they were at school to learn and work together.

Content. Our school environment also provided the content of the tasks that the children could do by having a three-year progression of lessons for the three-to six-year old displayed on low shelves. The work at school was meaningful to the children with practical activities such as sweeping, buttoning, cutting an apple, as well as learning letter sounds and shapes, reading, writing, spelling, number work, geography, music and more. Kohn quotes Herzberg, ”’If you want people to do a good job, give them a good job to do.”’ The classroom content was full of interesting and challenging work.

Choice. The element of choice in the classroom was a critical factor in creating an environment of achievement, thus leading to the children’s motivation to learn and challenge themselves. The children knew they were free to choose activities a teacher had presented. The children recognized they could work with their chosen activity all day if desired, without being interrupted or told to ‘’share” the activity with another child. Children were also allowed to ask for a new or challenging lesson. Kohn cites 47 studies that show the higher the level of decision-making, the higher productivity and job satisfaction in a work environment. Choice created powerful learning in our classroom.

Collaboration, content and choice–the three C’s of motivation–emerged when I applied the pedagogical principles I trusted. Use the three C’s to create a place where all can work together while choosing to do meaningful work, thus creating a satisfying and productive life at home and beyond.

Next week: Attention Deficit to Attention Abundance

Kids Talk™ is a column dealing with early childhood development issues written by Maren Stark Schmidt. Mrs. Schmidt founded a Montessori school and holds a Masters of Education from Loyola College in Maryland.

She has over 20 years experience working with young children and holds teaching credentials from the Association Montessori Internationale. She is also Creative Director for a video-based reading series for children ages three to six, The Shining Light Reading Series. Contact her via e-mail at maren@shininglightreading.com.

Complete Collection of the Shining Light Reading Series Now Available on DVD
Visit www.shininglightreading.com for more information.

Ask your local newspaper to carry Kids Talk. Call, write or e-mail your local newspaper editor and recommend Kids Talk.

Would you like to send Kids Talk to friends and family or receive Kids Talk e-mail updates in your own inbox? Sign up for FREE here:
Click here for a free subscription.

©2006 KIDS TALK™
25877 East Bright Avenue
Welches, OR 97067
503.550.3143
maren@kidstalknews.com

Tweet This Post 

Welcome to the property management blog, our blog for the property management business.

We all strive to have good sales skills. But could we sell ice up north?

Ice to the Eskimos

By Tron Jordheim

You’ve heard it said about a sales person. “He can sell ice to Eskimos”. Usually we take this to mean the sales person was so good at persuasion and so hypnotically dazzling that he could sell people something they don’t need. There is the suggestion that the sales person cheated the Eskimos because they have plenty of free ice in a good winter. We usually mean this quote as an insult and a compliment at the same time.

I’d like to take a different look at this saying. If you were trying to build a business selling a product or service, wouldn’t you want customers that knew the value of what they were buying? Wouldn’t you seek out the people who knew the most about your business and try to find a way to satisfy their requirements? Wouldn’t those people become your biggest users and biggest fans if you served them well?

One would think that Eskimos know a lot about ice. I would bet their languages have many ways of describing ice. Some live in ice houses part of the year, hunt on ice during hunting season, kayak around ice flows and put ice cubes in their Coca Cola. If you knew about the different uses they had for ice and how ice needs to be for each of their uses, you could build a very nice business selling ice to Eskimos. If you could get the right consistency and coldness of pre-cut blocks, shaped especially for walls, ceilings and tunnels, you could sell pre-cut igloos to Eskimo families who are too busy to select and cut their own ice blocks. Eskimos have busy, demanding modern lives that don’t always leave them enough time to savor the traditional enjoyments. Buying prefab igloo ice would allow them more time to enjoy the great outdoors.

If you knew the kind of ice that was required to keep seals preserved for processing after a hunt, you might be able to sell “Hunter Ice” as well. With the changes global warming is bringing to the arctic, the right kind of ice may not be available to hunters at the times they need it. I can only imagine the disappointment in taking a big seal for your family only to have it spoil before you can get it home and processed.

There are probably kayak races that are held each year in areas that used to have consistent ice flows. I can imagine that some kayakers would be very disappointed to run a race with no ice flow obstacles. If a company could overcome the transportation issues, it could probably sell a lot of ice to the big races with big purses to attract the best competitors and the best sponsors. A “Kayak Ice” line might not sell to many events, but those transactions would generate a lot of revenue for the ice company and the race organizers.

Certainly your ice company would want the exclusive in the concession booths that offered cold soft drinks to the audience. Knowing that the same company that can provide the best quality “Igloo Ice”, “Hunter Ice” and “Kayak Ice” is putting its best “Drinking Ice” in the soft drink machines would allow the concession stands to charge a little more per cup and they’d probably sell more drinks.

What about selling refrigerators to Eskimos. Have any of you seen the Larsen “Far Side” cartoon of the sales man floating away on his boat, waving good-bye to the Eskimos who are standing beside their new refrigerators? What do you think when you see the cartoon? Do you think, “Wow that guy must be some kind of B.S. artist.”? Do you think, “Those Eskimos are suckers.”? Maybe there is a lot more going on there. If you look at the expressions on the characters faces, you see that they are going to miss each other.

Just because it is cold in the arctic, doesn’t mean the temperature is always right for all the things you want to chill. Have you ever seen what happens to a nice head of lettuce if it is kept too cold? Or what happens to apples if your humidity levels are off? What about the seal meat from the hunt? Keep your game refrigerated at the wrong temperature and your family might go hungry. Many newer refrigerators have cool amenities like crushed or cubed ice from the door and filtered drinking water from the door. If the company that provided the best ice for outdoor use, also sold its own brand of refrigerators with crushed and cubed ice available with a touch of your finger, it could develop brand loyalty that would create years of profitable growth and many happy customers.

If your business was ice or refrigerators, would the Eskimos do business with you? Do you know enough about what your customers need and like? When someone who knows a little something about storage looks at your place, do they say, “Yes, this is good.”? Try thinking of yourself as the ice sales person who has just been awarded all the lands north of the Artic Circle as your new sales territory. Do you think you could develop a good business?

Tweet This Post 

I thought I’d take a minute to give a plug to PhoneSmart.

Apartment seekers know what they want
They want your attention, they want it fast, they want it NOW! So when a potential tenant calls for pricing, availability or even a rental, you’d better answer the phone. Because if you don’t, he’s off to the next apartment complex on his list. And you’ve lost the opportunity for a rental.

That’s where the PhoneSmart Call Center comes in
We answer the calls you can’t. So when your leasing agents are tied up with another call or have to step away for any reason, you won’t miss a single rental opportunity… all calls will forward to us within four rings.

We answer the phone just like you would
We’ll know your rates, availability, policies and procedures. Best of all, we’ll do our best to close the sale. Then, quick as a flash, we’ll send every important detail to you.

We give your callers a pleasant first experience with your community and turn your missed calls into opportunities

You’ve already paid for the advertising and marketing that makes your phone ring.

Why let a rental inquiry pass you by?

Tweet This Post 

I went to the bank today to do a few transactions. that is unusual because I like to do as much work on-line as possible. It had just snowed and I thought I’d step into the branch office to warm up a minutte while I did my business.

I noticed the bank had heaters under the sidewalk. The snow was melting in a nice pattern and the sidewalk was clearing itself. Nice idea. I wonder what it cost them to tear out the old sidewalk and install the system. I wonder how much money they will save on salt cost and labor cost, since they won’t have to bother clearing their sidewalk any longer. I wonder how much longer their sidewalk will last, now that it won’t be subjected to the freeze/thaw cycles nor will it suffer from salt erosion.

I’d like that feature at my house. If you look around you, you will see all sorts of neat solutions that solve a range of problems.

What are you developing?

Tweet This Post 

Welcome to the property management blog.

I’ve been in Miami the last few days. I have noticed there are more cranes putting up buildings than ever. I also noticed that all new financing for condo projects has stopped. I also saw that the median cost of a new home in SE Florida has started declining for the first time in a very long time.

Did the hurricane season destroy the housing and condo market here? This is a question that is even on newspaper headlines. Developers are concerned the new condos on the market may not be absorbed as quickly as they would like. Real estate agents are nervous.

It is likely that this is only a temporary scare that is a natural respite after two storms walloped the area this year. Miami has momentum in its property markets. It is unlikely that that will come to a sudden halt. It is more likely that this is a timeout in the game and the action will continue after the Florida storm insurance guidelines and safety nets are revamped again.

What do your contacts tell you about Miami?

Tweet This Post 

Welcome to the property management blog, where we watch the world of property management.

Sometimes people complain that American cities are starting to all look alike. The malls and big box retail areas are all set up alike. They are all constructed alike. All the national brands are in every corner of the country. But places do have their own flavor. I have recently been to Kansas City, St. Louis and Miami. There is no mistaking where you are I any of these three cities. Now it is true that the newer retail areas do look alike. Nut once you venture into the heart of these places, you know where you are.

How do you promote that unique feeling of places in your new and existing projects? One can easily incorporate ornamental elements that pay tribute to the local flavor of the building styles. One can try to find original design elements that can be revived. You see examples of this as you move around these cities. It would be nice to see more.

Bye for now, Tron

Tweet This Post 

Welcome to the property management blog.

I was talking to one of our clients the other day about their record storage and management business. It takes considerable real estate and property management skills to efficiently run a records management business. It takes a lot of real estate and an efficiently set up property.

In many ways such a company makes an ideal tenant or an ideal client if you are a land or building broker. They use a lot of space and if they run their business well, will need to expand many times over a ten year period.

Records management is also good for all of us. Many people in the path of this years’ natural disasters lost all their business records. How much of a liability would it create for you if you lost all your records? The cost would likely be immeasurable.

Real estate and property companies create a lot of records. I would bet there is someone in your office whose joy and privileged it is to manage your records, and who is looking for a better solution.

Our client, Pouch Records management in the Orange County, L.A. County, California area, offers a range of services that would help any records intensive business sort, track, store, retrieve and e-archive records. When records are old enough to destroy, they can shred and recycle them for you. If you are not operating a careful and deliberate records management strategy now, you should take a serious look at making a change.

Even if you are not in southern California, take a look at

www.pouchrecords.com

and see what you can learn.

Tron

Tweet This Post