If you are a manager of Kansas City storage units and are finding it hard to cope with the increasing challenges posed to the warehouse industry, then this article will help you.
We all know that sub-prime crisis has affected the economy. As a result the storehouses are facing several challenges with the most common being competitive pricing, rent collection, and decreasing occupancy. We will discuss here how to overcome each of these challenges.
Pricing
There is less liquidity in the markets and therefore people are spending less. Because of this, it has become difficult to bring in the customers to the storehouse. In an attempt to keep the store units occupied, several Kansas City storage units are offering big discounts. Therefore keeping in step with the current prices has become difficult for some storehouses. Reduction in the rentals of the store units affects the profitability of the company. In some cases storehouses are even finding it difficult to manage their expenses.
One thing you should learn is that you cannot change the economic situation and so you have to prepare yourself to live with this problem for time being. You have to offer Kansas City storage units at reduced rates. All you can do to keep your margins healthy is to increase the efficiency. This means making the best use of all the available resources in order to improve the productivity of your organization. These resources could be anything, manpower, space, equipment, and so forth. For example, let us suppose, you have some space available and it is possible to make small units at those locations. If you can set up low cost modular units, then it would help you to increase your revenue and profit.
Collection
Almost every storehouse faces the problem of defaults in payments. This problem has increased in the past few years. Non-payment of rentals means non-yielding store units that affect the profitability of the companies.
For coping with this problem, the staff of the warehouse should become active. Reminding the customers about rent payment through phone calls and e-mails would help. You can also set up an automatic system for reminding customers about rent payments of Kansas City storage units . After the due date of rent has passed, emails should be sent to customers who have defaulted on payments. Giving an extended due date to such customers to help them avoid paying late fee also helps. If you make your staff accountable for the collections, you will see a marked improvement in this problem area.
Occupancy
When occupancy is low, you have to find alternative ways to market your store units. This means marketing the store units in such a manner that people find leasing the units a good proposition. You could market it to people living on lease as low cost alternative to renting big homes or market it to people who want to sell their homes fast. Giving high discounts to long terms users of store units also helps in increasing occupancy. You should also focus on quality customers, the ones that would pay rent on time. Increasing occupancy as well as delinquencies is not profitable and will only add to your woes. To increase your occupancy, you should introduce reward scheme for your employees. This boosts the morale of the employees and they perform better. Overall, this will help your Kansas City storage units yield good profit.