Sell More When Your Self Storage Managers Practice

The better you are at converting callers to customers the fewer leads you need to reach your occupancy goals, and the less you have to spend on marketing. 

About two years ago I was desparate for my self storage store managers to be more effective on the phone.  I knew they had no training and telling them to "sell" and "get persuasive" wasn't going to help. So I created a written document to help them understand the sales process and included very specific guidance on what to say to get prospective customers to the store to rent storage spaces. 

It didn't help.

Then I did some conference calls to review the wtitten guidance.  I thought this way I would know for sure that they were exposed to the material and the calls would give them a chance to hear some examples and ask questions. 

That was even worse! 

The conference calls took a lot of my time and it was hard to be engaging to a group of people that I couldn't see and who couldn't see me.  Plus, my students were being interrupted with customers and potential customers who all took precedence over our phone call.  

My latest iteration (innovation) was to create a series of 5-7 minute audio segments covering everything from how to answer the phone, to how to ask effective questions, to how to talk about features and benefits, and how set an appointment. 

This last effort has really paid off.  The audio can be listened to over and over again without my involvement.  Since each segment is a bite-sized chunk, my people actually listen to it.  New employees don't have to wait until I'm available, but can get going on training right away.  

The audio training has really laid the foundation.  However, the real secret is practice.  Check out these DJ's from Daly City, CA.  (Go ahead and click, it is a fun video, and you'll learn something even if you only watch for one or two minutes).  These guys are phenomenal.  Listen to the first minute or so and you'll see why practice is the reason they are featured in this video (and you'll be entertained).  

Wouldn't selling skills also benefit from practice?  Of course our business is competitive, so there is ample motivation. The question then becomes, how can we get the right kind of practice?  

I highly recommend these two books.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his bestseller Outliers, shows through a series of facinating stories how successful people like professional hockey and baseball players, and virtuoso musicians, and people like Bill Gates got to where they are largely because their circumstances allowed them the opportunity to practice. 

In Talent Is Overrated, Geoff Colvin cites reams of scholarly research that concludes the same thing. Practice it the key to skill building and successful execution.  He biggest contribution is in showing us what it means to practice effectively. 

Once my on-site managers understood what they were supposed to do (because they listened to the audio training) they then had to actually develop the skills to do it.  It's the difference between watching a football game and knowing what the players are supposed to do on a given play and actually being able to do the right things to execute the play. 

My challenge to you is to create processes that ensure your self storage managers are practicing effectively, and you will see fantastic results.  Since we have created processes that ensure that practice is happening, our conversion rates have gone through the roof and our sales of add-on products have more than doubled.

In a future post, I'll outline how to set up processes that will ensure practice is happening.  subscribe to my blog via email in the upper left hand corner if you don't want to miss it.