The life’s blood of a self-storage property’s occupancy is the calls coming in from prospective customers. All of your marketing is contingent upon what happens when the phone rings. Yet too many storage owners cede control over their important conduit to the manager, without adequate safeguards. So how can a self-storage facility owner take control over that phone line?
The dream set up
In a perfect world you would be able to track every incoming phone number, and listen to every call that comes in. That perfect world is available to you today. You no longer have to rely on your manager for important information like how many calls came in and what happened with that traffic. The culmination of all of this call data has a simple name: control. And when you can control your calls, you can truly control your destiny.
How to get it
Here’s how the system works. You sign up with a company like Who’s Calling and then port your self-storage facility’s number through their system. When a customer calls then get a short message that their call is being recorded for quality control purposes, and their number is transcribed. Then, when the manager answers, the entire call is recorded for later playback and review. You can even see how many calls are missed by the manager by looking at the duration of the calls. It’s an amazing amount of visibility over your incoming customer calls.
Why you can’t succeed without it
It’s a very competitive world out there, and particularly in the self-storage arena. Many markets are battling it out for customers and it’s essential that you be at the top of your game. Without control over your calls you lack control over your occupancy and that’s far too important to cede control to your manager. If you do not do this, you will be letting your manager be your source of information on call volume and what’s holding you back from hitting your occupancy targets – how can you trust the manager to that degree? And with those in-coming numbers captured, you can even do exit interviews to find out why the customer did not rent from you, which can identify flaws in your pricing or salesperson’s skills.
Conclusion
Every self-storage facility owner should endeavor to take control over all in-coming call functions to maintain the level of scientific study that yields top-tier results in occupancy. If you are using the old-fashioned method of leaving the entire process up to the manager’s discretion, then you will be left behind those who take control.