» Highlights

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When you buy a link on Want2Store and get your free web site, this is what you get…

Look at www.justestuff.com and see an example.

Here you go:

Possible Pages include:
Email list page
Driving direction page
Calendar page
Event page
Online form
List form (to build marketing lists)
Bulletin board
Document page
Price page
Picture page
Frequently asked question
List documents
Benefits include:

Professional Templates
You can choose over 100 professionally designed and customizable templates to create your websites!

No Software to download!
The administration/publishing interface is web browser-based, so it can be accessed from anywhere in the world at anytime.

Navigation Bar / Buttons / Menus
Site Express allows you to create customizable / professional looking navigation menus and buttons.

WYSIWYG browser based editor
Interactive editor that allows you to style your html contents without knowing html codes or any other programming language. This editor is very similar to MS. FrontPage/Dreamweaver and it’s web based!

Real Time Integrated Shopping Cart
There is an integrated Shopping Cart that can be added VERY quickly. The shopping cart has real-time UPS shipping integration, 3rd party credit card processor integration, and a fully customizable administration utility.

List Manager
Build-in list manager that will allow your visitors to subscribe their email address to your site. You can then broadcast your advertisement or information to your subscribers as easy as 1-2-3!

Real Time Stats
Real time webstats that will display traffic and visitor information of your website. This will help you manage your growth and marketing directions!

Page Colors
Select from over 1000’s of background colors, text colors and link colors for that unique look.
Background Images

Most templates allow you to choose from over 100’s of background images for your page. The background images are optional. You can even upload your own!

Image Library
Select from over 1200 images in the image library.

Icon Library
Some of our templates use an Icon for the upper left of the page. You can select from our library or upload your own Icon.

File Up-Loads
File up-loads through the browser, both images and HTML files.

File Management
Complete file management through the browser. Eliminating all need for FTP. You can Up-Load Files, Rename Files, or Delete Files.

Advanced Page Editor
The HTML code for your pages can be edited at any time. You may add javascript or enhance your pages in any way.

Manage Pages:
Add, Remove, Or Delete a Main Page or a Sub-Page.
Add/Edit content on pages, change the PageType, or change the name of a page. You can also “Change Page Order” or “Pages Per Line” in the manage pages section.

Site Options:
Change your header text, graphics, or colors. Change your websites lefthand graphic or your footer information. From the Site Options section you can also change your : Theme, Buttons, Metatags, or Site and Text Colors.

Manage Images:
View / Delete images that are currently available to your website. You can also upload new images to be available for content on your websites pages, or for product images.

Company Information:
Change your company information, footer information, administration password, or register a domain for your website.

WebSite Marketing:
Register your site on Search Engines, or do an email marketing campaign with all emails in you email list.

E-Commerce Options:
Activate and setup your e-commerce catalog on your website. You can add products that you want to sell, setup your shipping methods, setup a real-time credit card processor, or view orders that have been placed on your website. You can also view full website visitor statistics from this section.

Manage Categories Section:
This section allows you to add, edit, and delete categories from your catalog (place on your web site where your products are sold). Categories group up products so that customers can quickly find what they are looking for. If you delete a category, all the products under that category are not deleted, but you will have to assign them to a different category under the “Edit Products” section in order to have them visible in the catalog.

Manage Products Section:
This section allows you to add, edit, or delete products from your catalog. If you delete a product it is gone for good, but if you set a product’s status to “Inactive” then the product will not be seen from the website, but it will not be deleted from your catalog. To set a product to “Inactive” edit the product, and under the “Active Product:” section, set the drop-down to “No”.

View Orders Section:
This section allows you to view orders that have been placed on your website. You can view them by date ordered, by amount of the order, or all of the orders at once. Once you have the orders listed, you will see all the collected information about the order, and will have the option to delete the order (which is permanent) or you can bring up the printable version, which creates a order that is print formated.

Shipping and Tax Section:
This allows you to set shipping and tax options that are appropriate to your needs. The tax is figured out based on your state, and a percentage that you set. The shipping is more complex, and can be setup to fit almost any need. See the Help under the shipping section for a more detailed explaination.

Real-Time Processors Section:
This section allows you to select which real-time credit card processor you want to use. You will need to have an account setup with these processors in order to use them. Or there is the “Regular SSL” option that doesn’t use a 3rd party processor, but collects all the information from the customer locally.

Terms and Conditions Section:
The terms and conditions are displayed for the customer just before the final checkout is completed. It can be last minute details about the order, or simply the terms you have layed out for the order.

Check Statistics Section:
This section give full statistics about the visitors to your website. It gives visitors, page views, by date, and also tells ip and connection information. There is even a graphical representation of the hits to your website.

Turn E-Commerce Off Section:
Toggles the E-commerce on your website. You can turn it on and off without loosing any product or sale information, but it isn’t recomened to click this button unless you are serious about turning the e-commerce off so that customers can’t make purchases on your website.

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Have you every tried to buy something at a store and the person behind the counter told you to see the salesperson? Have you ever had someone in a retail shop tell you, “I don’t handle that, I’m not the sales person”. How does that make you feel? It doesn’t make you want to reach for your wallet and start buying.

How many of you have store management teams where one person is the sales person and the other person is certainly not? Is this really a good situation? Customers and prospects like to think that everyone working for you is capable of answering their questions, qualifying their needs and taking care of them.

If we were selling a complicated technical product, it would make sense if some people knew more about the technical aspects than others. But most users of self-storage don’t think it is a terribly complicated service, which is one reason why lots of people like to use self-storage. They have certain expectations of your staff. The expectations seem reasonable. So the next question is, “How do you get people who don’t see themselves as sales people to sell like they are?”

Usually people who don’t want to be seen as sales people don’t like sales people because they have dealt with high pressure or poorly trained sales people and did not like the experience. So try a different approach. Consider yourself a customer service pro. You do what is best for the customer. You have seen how hectic people can be on moving day. You know what a great service self-storage is. If someone on your staff doesn’t believe self-storage is a great service, they need to be let go immediately. If you have a tenant, the best thing for that person’s peace of mind is to keep the storage unit so they can stay organized and manage their seasonal items without stressing out and without cluttering up the house. Once you get a tenant, that tenant should enjoy the experience enough to find it is better to keep the unit and pay the rent than to move out. So if you don’t like to be a sales person, be a good customer service person and help tenants have a great experience, so they stay.

If you are talking to a prospective renter, you should believe that your store is one of the best values for the money in your area. This gives you the power to do the people a favor and rent them a unit. Don’t let people walk out without renting. Don’t let people hang up the phone without reserving a unit or making an appointment to come in. If you are concerned with the person, you know they are interested in storage or they would not have contacted you. You know everyone is busy running around trying to get caught up. So do the person a favor and rent him a unit. All you have to do is master a few qualifying questions and a good closing question or two. “Would you like to do the paper work now, it will only take a minute? Do you think the 10×10 would fit you or is the 10×15 better? I can get you moved in this afternoon or tomorrow, whichever is better for you.”

The only other thing that is required to turn an anti-sales person into a great customer service rep that moves a lot of people into your facility is a great smile and a can-do attitude. Couple that with a few good closing questions and your occupancy will climb. One big advantage we have in self-storage is that people have fairly low expectations of sales skills and service skills when they walk in the door. When we greet them with a smile and good sales skills, the prospects will decide that we want their business and have a good offering: a dynamite combination.

Let your non-selling people know how important it is to give the great customer service. Let them know what a difference it will make in your numbers. After-all your staff should care that your numbers look good. It should be a matter of pride to know they are doing a good job. Asking good closing questions with a smile and a can-do attitude improves the numbers. If you showed your staff another way you improve the numbers, wouldn’t they adopt it? Isn’t that why you have a coat of fresh paint and a flower bed in front of your store? Good sales skills are no different than any other operational procedure.

It is not good operational procedure to tell a customer or a potential customer that you cannot help them, or are unwilling to help them. Everyone in your operation should be able to sell a space, resolve a customer complaint, move someone in and take a payment…with a smile. “Sure I can help you with that”, should be the standard response to all the inquiries you get.

I know it takes some training and some adjustment to get everyone in the organization selling. But you can make it fun and you can make it easy. Have a little competition to see how many times a day your staff uses a good alternate choice close. Do a smile check. If you catch someone smiling, give them a little prize. If you catch someone frowning, tell them a silly joke to get them to smile. You will see your numbers improve.

Are all your property people selling all the time?

Good luck and good selling.

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Welcome to the property management blog, where we keep our eye on the property management business.

The Rule of Thirds in selling rental space.

Are you familiar with the “rule of thirds”? It is a rule in selling rule that assumes a third of the people who call will rent from you in any case, as long as you don’t do something to drive them off. They have already pretty much decided on renting at the property they called and are really calling to see if there is any reason they shouldn’t rent there.

Anyone who answers the phone or greets the potential renter in person in a friendly and inviting manner will rent to these people even if all they do is answer questions in a friendly and knowledgeable manner without using any selling skill.

Another third of callers are not going to rent any time soon, no matter how well you work the call or how well you use your sales tools because their situation will change, the timing won’t be right for them or they will become distracted by a competitor.

But the middle third could go either way. This is where your ability to catch a rapport with the prospect and your skill in selling makes all the difference in the world. These are the people that increase your occupancy and contribute to your bottom line.

A person who is friendly and knowledgeable without selling tools will not rent to these people in the middle third, because you have to work at these rentals. However, someone who carefully, patiently and sweetly takes control of the selling situation can help these people to talk themselves into renting now.

Any one who is at least a little bit friendly can manage not to drive off the easy third. You don’t have to be a great sales person.

If you are very good, you will at least give the impossible third a good experience and they will rent from you at some point in the future, should they ever need waht you offer.

If you are not very good, the impossible third will slip away and rent somewhere else, and the middle third will, too.

Even if you use a selling system, you can loose the middle third. You can’t just ask them once for the sale. You have to understand why they are not ready to decide “Yes” now and you have to help them realize that renting with you is the best option. You have to ask for the sale a second, third or even fourth time. Of course it needs to be done skillfully with patience and professionalism.

But this is why building good sales skills and hiring a call center like ours that practices a sales culture are worth doing. The extra rentals you pick up by not giving up on the difficult middle third is well worth the effort and expense. The payback is in a higher conversion rate of potential renters and a longer average length of stay from current renters.

You can use the rule of thirds to help you work a telephone inquiry. If the caller is in the easy third, make sure he or she doesn’t slip away. Assure the caller that it was a good decision to call you and get that person in your door.

If the caller is in the impossible third, give the caller a good experience and hope you rent to him or her next time.

If the caller is in the middle third and could go either way, you’ll need to pull every sales tool you have out of your sales kit and put it to work. The reward will be immediate. You’ll rent more units.

Good luck and good selling!

Tron

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Welcome to the property management blog, PhoneSmart’s diary of of our experience in rental properties.

I was looking in Business 2.0 today and saw a piece about a new inititative The Gap is trying. They plan to have separate entrances for men and women, so men can get straight to what they want and the women can explore the store. I would love this. If I go shopping, I generally know what I want and go right to it. When my wife goes shopping, she knows what she wants, but first she wants to see the whole store. So now we will both be happy.

If you are managing retail spaces, maybe you should start thinking about how you can make the difference between the genders work for you. How will this impact design and construction?

Do you know your customers so well that you can design an experience that will suit the different desires of your male and female tenants and your older and younger tenants?

You put a lot of thought into how you present your property and how you set up the office and show units. But are you helping both genders have a good experience, or are you assuming if the female likes it, then the male will agree? Why not help them both like the space?

bye for now,
Tron

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Welcome to the property management blog. Today I want to talk about how a call center can impact the rental activity at your property.

The question often asked is
“When am I missing calls?”

Most properties miss rental inquiries in the hour or two before the office opens and in the hour or two after the office closes. Most potential renters are “working” longer hours that your office and leasing staff.

Potential commercial tenants are often looking at property before or after their regular business duties. Apartment renters are often making calls before or after tehy are at work.

One other time you miss calls is during the unusual spikes in activity that your staff experiences. There are often times in the property when the phones are quiet. But then you get a wave of phone calls and walk-ins. During these waves, callers get a busy signal, or get an answer from someone who is juggling too many customers at once and cannot concentrate fully on the caller.

You also miss calls the moment your staff people step out to see a customer, show a space, run an errand or go to lunch. If you want the phones to ring on a slow day, step out of the office and it will ring.

You don’t need to spend big money hiring additional staff to catch the phone calls that come in durng these times I have mentioned. You have PhoneSmart for that.

bye for now, Tron

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Welcome to the property management blog, our diary of apartment, retail and commercial real eastate.

A Look at Customer Service

We hear the term “Customer Service” all the time. We think we know what it means. We think we even practice it well in our businesses. Let’s step back a minute and look at the different ways companies view the concept of customer service and the different ways they put it into play. This may help you see a little more clearly how you use customer service strategies…and how you don’t.

Here are the major ways that I see companies using “customer service”.

1- as sales support
2- as customer advocacy
3- to create add-on and up-selling opportunities
4- for customer retention
5- to determine customer habits and preferences
6- to run interference for “Gotcha” tactics

Sales Support:
Most businesses have someone helping to get new customers through the initial phases of the business relationship to ensure that the sale happens and the order is fulfilled. I ordered a new postage meter for our business the other day from the local sales rep and the next day I got a call from the customer service center. The customer service rep asked me a few questions, confirmed some details of the order and thanked me for doing business with Pitney–Bowes.

The whole process of “checking in” a new renter is full of opportunities to help the renter feel good about his or her decision. The process of educating someone how to use your complex and the services you offer can make a big difference. I don’t know if anyone has ever done the study, but I’d bet you could increase your average length of stay by many months, just by giving a thorough and friendly “check in” experience to each new renter.

Customer Advocacy:
Hopefully your business takes up for your customers when they have been done wrong by your system. Hey, stuff happens. The most common example of this type of approach has happened to all of us. We order a meal at a restaurant and when our plate arrives, we take a taste and go “Yuck”. We call the waiter over and before you even ask for a remedy, you have a different dish served to you on the house with a free dessert. Any good waiter is going to fight for your right to have a great dinning experience.

Who sticks up for your customers when they feel like they have gotten poor service? Does your company have a mechanism for making sure that the mistake your system made to disappoint the customer doesn’t happen again?

There have been plenty of studies that show customers who had a problem which the supplier solved have a greater frequency of repeat business than all other customer type categories, including “happy” customers who had no service issues.

There are some businesses that intentionally create service issues in order to show a swift and caring response. I’m not suggesting you lock your customers out of the gate, just so your manager can pop up out of nowhere to save the day by getting the gate open. But maybe it’s not such a bad idea.

Add-ons and Up-selling:
Many times a new credit card has to be activated. In order to activate the card, you, as the new cardholder, have to call a toll free customer service line. What you find out is that the purpose of making this call was so the rep on the other end of the phone could offer you credit protection, a special rate on balance transfers and an interest paying checking account. These strategies must be quite effective, or the credit card companies could never afford to keep as many reps on the phone as they do.

What sort of add-ons and up-selling do you do? Cable tv, internet access and tenant insurance should be staples in our industry. What other related services would work for you?

Customer retention:
I used to manage a Culligan bottled water dealership. We ran routes delivering five gallon bottles of water to homes and businesses. We learned that if a customer forgot to set the empty bottles out for us to swap for full bottles three route days in a row, that customer had a 70% probability of quitting our service. They learned to live without us. So we looked for the early warning signs. Anyone who did not set bottles out on their route day got a phone call the night before the next route day to be sure they’d set their bottles out. This was expensive and time consuming, but proved to be very effective in decreasing the customer turnover rates.

What plans do you have to help customers stay? Offering auto-pay options such as checking account electronic fund withdrawals and automatic credit card charges make it easy to pay. This alone, probably increases your average length. Attractive landscaping and a clean property also make it hard to leave. Your tenants can’t use the excuse that the place isn’t clean and nice.

Determining customer habits:
If we knew the five things people did before they move their home, we’d know how to maximize our marketing dollars in the storage business. Someone discovered not too many years ago that people bought boxes before going to rent a storage unit. So now how many storage stores do not carry boxes? Many businesses track buyers’ habits to find more ways of providing services. How many times have you been asked to take a survey or fill out a comment card? You probably have some sort of any exit survey you do with your customers.

Does your exit survey tell you about their behaviors before renting? Ask what five places your renter shopped at before coming to your complex. Maybe a co-promotion with the local paint store will put your name in front of people who are getting ready to make a decision about an apartment?

What about the habits of customers who are getting ready to move out? If you knew the warning sings that told you a renter was about to move, couldn’t you step in with an offer or additional service add-on that might help that renter?

Running interference for Gotcha tactics:

We all know the importance of reading the fine print. This is why we usually have several places for new renters to initial and sign on self-storage leases. Most people in our industry have reasonable late fees and penalties built in. Businesses that have unreasonable and unconscionable policies have banks of phone reps whose job it is to wear out the complaining caller so the caller gives up the complaint and settles for the “Gotcha” tactic.

I wouldn’t call a ten-dollar late fee a “Gotcha” tactic. Most leases have a place for new renters to initial the late fee paragraph. The actual costs of getting a late payer caught up are probably higher than the late fees. However, I’m sure that at least one of your renters has thought the late fee was a “Gotcha” tactic and you had to find a way to hold the line. It may be that showing the renter where he or she had initialed the late fee paragraph might be all you need to do? You might want to take away the ability of late payers to complain, or you might prefer that your clients see your store manager as a “nice” guy, so your policy is to waive the late fee the first time and apply it strictly after that.

I’ll tell you what I think a “Gotcha” tactic is. This fall I spent quite a bit of time travelling. I stayed a night at a Days Inn, because it was central to the little “route” of client visits and conferences I had planned. I had made a reservation to return to this Days Inn two days later after my initial stay.

The first night was miserable. Normally a Days Inn is not a bad value. Like most small businessmen, I try to protect my P&L by trying to save some money on the road. The heater in this room was as noisy as a freight train. The room smelled bad. The housekeeping crew did not clean the bathroom very well at all.

I had arrived after midnight and the last thing I wanted to do was spend another hour awake fussing at the night clerk and changing rooms. When I went to check out in the morning there was no one at the front desk. I had done the video checkout, so I just left. I called the customer service line later that morning to complain about the room and cancel my reservation for the day after the next. The first thing I was

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So you want your own call center for your properties?

There are a few things most rental property operators would like in a call center. Most would like a First Class Operation staffed by the best most experienced people available with the flexibility to change approaches and offers. Most would also like to get the best conversion rates possible, control the flow of demand and start work orders for tenants. I would say that PhoneSmart already satisfies all these requirements, so you should just use us. Here is my reasoning.

First class operation…above and beyond other property management call centers. It is our goal, too, to be a first class call center second to none. Although one must always look at cost/benefit considerations and maintain a profitable operation. One can be first rate without going overboard and without breaking the bank. That is what we do.

Best people…I think we have them. I would pit any of our experienced reps against anyone anywhere in a leasing contest. Our new reps get up to speed quickly. We use innovative training, monitoring, secret shopping and incentive programs to keep our people improving. Yes we have the experience…thousands and thousands of rental leads generated.

Flexibility. We have some flexibility in how we present a property as long as it doesn’t conflict with our basic selling program. And our basic selling program is proven and effective. You don’t have to try to re-invent the wheel. You can let us do the driving.

Conversion rates. If you use us then you can concentrate on closing. Closing is the key.. You probably won’t get better close rates if you do it yourself. We can do follow up calls for you, too. We do this with great effectiveness for some clients now. If you let us do the follow up calls then you can concentrate on moving people in, not on managing your lead flow.

One huge factor in using us is that you can concentrate on buying, building, converting, operations and marketing. You don’t need to worry about your call center and lead management activities. Your management team is probably stretched thin anyway. Using us allows you to do what you do best.

Control demand…We can make notes on screens and push demand from one of your properties to another. We do this of for other clients. When one property is full, we move the leads to a neighboring store of the same company.

Work orders. We can do those for you, too. We can manage the urgency of maintenance calls and generate work orders when needed. This will help you manage your staff more effectively and keep your tenants longer.

Cost…real estate and labor are high in most areas. Our Mid Missouri area is still experiencing lower costs in every category, which makes us a cost effective solution as well. We are a lot less expensive than doing it yourself and require no sunk costs and no purchase of assets and equipment.

So maybe, you should just let us do it.

Bye for now,
Tron.

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