A fire last Thursday at Verns Self Storage in Laramie, Wyo., destroyed one building and all its contents. The other buildings were not damaged. The Laramie Fire Department is investigating the cause of the fire.

Another fire, this one at a vacant home in Indianapolis, threatened a nearby self-storage facility. Firefighters responded to the blaze around 3:30 a.m. Monday. The smoke was so heavy it set off the alarms in the building next door, alerting the fire department. Firefighters gained control of the blaze before it spread to nearby Arlington Self Storage.

Two firefighters had minor injuries and were treated at the scene. The vacant house is owned by a realtor, who was getting it ready to sell. No one was living in the home. Investigators are still trying to determine the cause of the fire.

Most self-storage markets are more competitive than they were even a few years ago. According to the Self Storage Associations third-quarter 2010 Facts and Trends Report, the supply of self-storage in the United States has doubled over the past decade. In an environment where every rental counts, converting your hard-won leads into customers has taken on new urgency. Sales and persuasion skills are the ingredients necessary to increase your conversion rates, but theyre not built by manager incentives alone.

The problem with relying heavily (or solely) on an incentive program is youre trying to solve a skill problem with an enticement. Its like trying to tape feathers to your arms so you can fly. At first glance, it looks promising; but in the end, it doesnt work.

To illustrate my point, lets take the concept of incentive to the extreme to see how quickly it falls short. Lets assume youre as rich as Bill Gates and can afford to give incentives that are beyond most peoples dreams. Unfortunately, youre diagnosed with a brain tumor, and youll die without an operation. Would you grab your co-worker and say, Ill give you $50 million dollars to operate on my brain. I really want to make sure you do the best job possible? Of course not. No amount of motivation can endow your co-worker with the skills to operate on you. Motivation may increase his effort, but without the prerequisite skills, he cant take the correct steps.  

Rather than fretting over motivation, accept that the vast majority of people you hire already want to do a good job. They want to be successful. They want to please you and the customer. As an alternative to focusing on motivation, help your property managers build or enhance their skills through training and practice.

Training Becomes its Own Motivator

When you invest in training, you send managers a strong message that you care about them as people as well as their success. When they see you care about them, the natural reaction is to reciprocate and care more about you and your business. Another reason you get motivation mileage when you train employees to sell more effectively is that winning is inherently motivating, and by investing in training, youre helping staff win more frequently.

After Michael Phelps won his seventh gold medal in the 2008 Olympic Games, can you imagine him saying, Gosh, thats enough for me. I think Im going to sit the next one out? Doesnt that sound laughable? His world-record performance while obtaining his eighth medal makes it clear he was highly motivated to race again.

Youve heard the adage that winners never quit. One reason its true is because winners dont feel like quitting. Winners want to keep going. They want to keep getting better. They crave the next success.  

Look at Who Youre Hiring

The skill level and past experience of your employees is another reason why you need to move beyond raw incentives and adopt a training program. You may not be hiring trained sales professionals to work at your property. If this is the case, you have a gap between what you want your employees to do and what they can deliver. If they werent trained by someone elseand not trained by youhow do you expect them to be effective at sales?

Although you may get lucky and find someone with a very high aptitude for selling and persuading, youll have more consistent success when you have a system in place to build your managers skills. A training system will ensure your average employees get better and your gifted employees become phenomenal.

Training Gives You the Advantage

You have an opportunity to create a differential advantage when you invest in areas your competition isnt. Even if you already do some sort of sales training in your organization, take a close look at how much time, energy and money youre investing in your managers. Is it significantly more than your competitors?

Many self-storage operators arent investing heavily in sales training, and theyre not taking their employees sales effectiveness seriously. This is a weakness ripe for exploitation.   

Make Room for Practice

Building sales effectiveness is not easy. A training program usually helps a person to understand conceptually what he should be doing and why he should be doing it. Although having a conceptual understanding is a good first step, its not sufficient. Too often, property managers are like armchair quarterbacks with a conceptual knowledge of the game, but no real physical skill. They know whats supposed to happen, but find their unpracticed bodies are unable to do whats successful.

Practice is the key to closing the gap between knowing and doing. You can help your managers scheduling practice time into their daily routine. If your location is busy and interruptions are frequent, consider authorizing your managers to come in 30 minutes early or stay 30 minutes after closing so they can have some continuous practice time.

A training program and practice regimen helps property managers develop the skills they need to sell and persuade. Investing in them sends a message that you care about them and their success. Mastering skills is motivating because it leads to more frequent success in renting storage spaces. Finally, providing a professional sales-training program and making room for your managers to practice sets you up to have a competitive advantage and win in your market.  

Kenny Pratt is president of Crescendo Properties Inc., which acquires and operates self-storage properties in the western United States. He blogs about self-storage sales and persuasion at www.sellingstorage.com . To reach him, call 916.849.1199; e-mail [email protected] .

Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Services Inc. has released a series of Self-Storage Market Updates covering 25 major industry markets. Available to company clients, the reports provide key supply/demand analyses at the market-wide and regional levels. They are intended to help self-storage investors set strategies for the final months of 2010 and into early next year.

Marcus & Millichap provides research reports through the Research Services page of MarcusMillichap.com. Information on a particular self-storage market is available by contacting a local office.

Founded in 1971, Marcus & Millichap now has more than 1,200 brokers providing investment real estate brokerage services in markets throughout the United States. Last year the company closed 3,441 investment transactions for private and institutional investors. Included in these transactions were shopping centers, office and industrial buildings, apartment properties, single-tenant net-lease properties, hotels/motels, senior-housing facilities, manufactured home communities, self-storage and land.

Amsdell Storage Ventures I LLC has acquired its third self-storage facility in the Detroit metro area. Built in 2002 and previously operated as Premium Self Storage, the Madison Heights, Mich., facility has 75,075 rentable square feet of storage space in 664 units. The site will now be operated by Compass Self Storage LLC, a member of the Amsdell family of companies. The address is 32000 John R. Road.

Amsdell Storage Ventures plans to expand further in the Detroit area, looking to add to its portfolio in the market, according to company President Todd Amsdell. The company also recently purchased self-storage facilities in Rochester Hills and Novi, Mich.

The Amsdell family of companies is headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. It draws its roots from the family-owned construction company founded in 1928, and has since been active in several billions of dollars worth of real estate ventures, with a primary focus on self-storage. The Amsdell team has more than 80 year of experience in property acquisition, construction and property management.

Access Self Storage in Twickenham, England, is hosting a business expo Nov. 3 at its facility on Rugby Road. The Access Business Expo is designed to encourage area businesses to network. 

More than 70 exhibitors are expected to participate in the expo, which begins at 7:30 a.m. Seminars will be led by finalists from BBC TVs The Apprentice, the ambassador for Youth Enterprise, Claire Young, and honorary president of rugby charity Wooden Spoon Garth Chilcott.

There will be a drawing for two corporate hospitality tickets for the upcoming England v. Australia rugby match, in addition to other special offers and discounts.

Throughout the day we will be giving our attendees the chance to learn from our respected speakers experiences and journeys in building their successful businesses, said Stuart Hillman, manager, Access Self Storage.

Storage Pros Management LLC has acquired a portfolio of four class-A self-storage facilities, all in Michigan, in the cities of Flint, Grand Rapids, Saline and Wixom. 

The properties, built between 2003 and 2005, total more than 2,500 units and 286,000 rentable square feet.  All are on main roads with street presence.  The properties were purchased out of a court-appointed receivership.

The acquisition brings Storage Pros holdings to 17 properties totaling more than 1 million rentable square feet, including more than 10,000 storage units and outdoor parking spaces.

We will continue our disciplined growth by adding properties within our core markets to further enhance operational synergies and provide for medium- to long-term capital appreciation, said David Levenfeld, president of Storage Pros

The properties will be rebranded Storage Pros Self Storage, and operated by Storage Pros Management LLC, which now manages 12 properties in Michigan as well as eight in New England. 

Brenda Atilano has joined Landvest Corp. as regional manager for the companys southern division. Atilano will lead the site operations and management for the 23 locations in New Mexico and Texas. She has more than 15 years of operational and management experience, primarily in the apartment industry. 

Landvest Corp. is a Wichita, Kan.-based self-storage management company.

By Brian Maguire

Lets face it: Youre not the only game in town. There are self-storage facilities all over; they may even be right next door. So why should a prospective tenant pick you? Its your job to ensure everything possible is done to capture that future tenant before your competition does.

Lets say you do all the right marketing. Your facility looks its best. You train your staff to look and act professionally. You train them on phone etiquette and how to give a tour. Then you wait for the phone and e-mail leads as well as the walk-ins to come in. Then what?

What happens once a prospect does reach out to you? Are your leads handled as aggressively as they should be? Looking at industry statistics, operators dont appear to turn as many prospects into customers as they could. The valuable leads youre paying dearly for are probably not being handled in the best way possible.

The Missing Link

So is it a staffing problem? Are you under staffed or not hiring the right people? Or is it something else entirely?

The typical self-storage manager must handle every call, e-mail and visitor to the facility in addition to many other responsibilities. In a down economy, staff reductions made in an effort to cut costs make the managers job that much more demanding. Managers need to accurately record all customer information from phone, Internet, e-mail and live interactions. In todays busy marketplace with intense competition, this info becomes one of the operators most important sales tools. But with fewer staff members to handle leads, some will fall through the cracks.

Unfortunately, the manager is often focused on other things and not maintaining accurate records. Historically, less than 40 percent of all customer contacts ever get recorded by hand, and even fewer make it into your management software. Of the ones that do make it, only a third accurately identify the ad source and contact info.

Just as important as accurate data is proper follow-up. It starts with getting precise and key prospect information into your management software so its tools can be used.

Technology Tools

If youre serious about improving your lead-management skills and maximizing the potential of your staff, you need the help of automation. Your facility most likely doesnt need more leads; you just need to do a better job of maximizing the ones it already has. To effectively capture and convert traffic to leases, self-storage operators have to take advantage of available technology.

Here's where concepts like customer relationship management and online lead tracking become significant to managers and owners. Taking the lead tracking and management process out of the hands of your staff and automating it is key. With todays technology, its a reality.

Internet-driven technology can consolidate the lead-collection process, creating valuable information that will increase occupancy and revenue. Productivity-wise, this consolidation will do for the self-storage business what the assembly line did for automobile manufacturing. If implemented wisely, the cost of the technology is recovered quickly by the resulting synergy, savings and revenue.

The self-storage industry now has follow-the-lead technology programs with tools to automate, track, integrate, manage and evolve prospect and tenant communications quickly and cost-effectively. All marketing calls and e-mailseven if a call is missed­can be auto-populated into a digital prospect card for managers. The card includes the name of the person contacting the facility, the phone number or e-mail address used, and the advertising source, all at a managers fingertips in real-time.

Lead-management programs can also act as a guide for call-center agents, allowing you to maximize their potential. Of course, all of this wouldnt be complete without seamless integration with your management software, which is included.

The Internet and advancing technology offer extraordinary instruments for knowledge, right down to the last penny. Self-storage owners can maximize employee performance and get accurate data by using innovative tools, which will provide a beneficial map to marketing and employee success.

Brian Maguire is the vice president of sales and marketing for Lead Tracking Solutions, which offers management lead-tracking software with a suite of fully automated and integrated products. For more information, call 866.209.1700, ext. 104; e-mail [email protected] ; visit www.ltsolutions.com .