If someone says to you, “Gosh, we’re moving out. It’s been so swell. Thank you.” You do not know if they are being sincere or not unless you ask them more questions about their experiences with you. Otherwise you have no way of knowing if they’re driving out or your parking lot, thinking, “That SOB, it’s the last time he’ll see me!”

You have done that to people, haven’t you? Sure you have; we all do that. We say, “Thank you. It’s been nice dealing with you,” and then we mumble our true feelings under our breath when we have turned our back to walk away.

 So be aware that some percentage of people are moving out because something happened that was a pain to them and you’re completely unaware of what that pain was. If you’d only known what this pain was, you would have fixed it. So if you want to know how your customers are answering the question, “Should I rent or should I not rent?”, you’ve got to listen to your customers. If they’re giving you feedback, you’ve got to ask them a few more questions. And you’ve got to anticipate the concerns that people are going to have because most people have the same concerns I have been writing about for the last several sections. The concerns that new renters have should be posted on the screen in your mind’s eye. Don’t you get many of the same questions all day long? Yes, sometimes you get some interesting, off-the-wall ones, but it’s usually the same questions. You know what people’s concerns are, so do things to anticipate those concerns and show people that you’ve got “it” covered. We know what people are looking for. We know what bothers people. We know what they’re trying to avoid. We know what they like in storage. Let your customers know that you know all these things and they will feel much better about choosing you.

 

Submitted by: Tron Jordheim – Your business speaker

 

Brought to you by: Self Storage Podcast