A race car sponsored by Leesport Self Storage was one of more than 100 race cars on display at the Fairgrounds Square Mall in Berks-Mont, Pa., last week to promote the upcoming racing season.

The car is owned by Dave and Carlotte Eyrich and driven by Brian Shuey.

Source:  Berks-Mont News,  Annual Racing Reunion at Fairgrounds Square Mall 

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Noah’s Ark Development will build its newest Noah’s Ark Self Storage & RV Parking facility near the intersection of FM 1516 and IH 10 in San Antonio. Construction will begin in the second quarter of the year. This is one of several projects the company has planned for the Colorado, Florida, Louisiana and Texas markets.
 
The new property will include traditional and climate-control units as well as open, canopied and fully enclosed RV/boat spaces. Other amenities will include electrical hook-ups, a battery-recharge area and a waste-disposal station. The property will be completely fenced with coded entry/exit control and monitored surveillance system. Climate-controlled buildings will employ intercoms to the office and motion-sensitive lighting. Noah’s Ark will also provide dollies and loading carts for customers’ use and a selection of locks, boxes, and packing and storage materials for purchase.
 
NDS Construction will assist in the facility design and act as the general contractor. Joshua Management will provide facility administration.
 
Noah’s Ark, NDS and Joshua Management, all based in San Antonio, are part of the Parham Group of companies. Noah’s Ark has developed more than 50 self-storage facilities since 1990. Since 1983, NDS has designed or built more than 200 self-storage complexes nationwide.

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On-site auction company Schur Success Auction Services set a personal record by auctioning more than 1,500 self-storage units in 2009. Formerly known as Ray Fenter & Associates, the company has been providing auction services to self-storage facilities for more than 25 years and really targeted that niche during the past six years. The company now serves more than 100 self-storage locations with auction services as well as lock-cutting and inventory services.
 
 “In 2009, we experienced more than 16 percent growth in storage auctions over 2008,” said Rich Schur, chief operating officer. “Although the growth was somewhat less than projected, it does mark five consecutive years of double-digit growth.”
 
Rich is the 2010 Colorado State Champion Auctioneer and serves as the second vice president of the Colorado Auctioneers Association. He is a Certified Benefit Auctioneer Specialist.
 
Founded in Arvada, Colo., nearly 30 years ago by Ray Fenter, Schur Success is the exclusive auctioneer for the city and county of Denver. Schur conducts more than 200 auctions each year. The company is a member of the Colorado Auctioneers Association, the National Auctioneer Association, the Southern Colorado Better Business Bureau and the Colorado Self Storage Association.

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The number of self-storage facilities offering wine storage is on the rise to meet a growing consumer demand. According to the Wine Institute, U.S. wine sales topped $30 billion in 2007. Self-storage facilities specializing in wine storage offer wine lovers temperature-controlled settings and a safe place to store their wines. Wine should be store in the dark in 55- to 58-degree temperature.

Some self-storage facilities will accept shipments directly from wineries or wine sellers, and even offer cataloging. The level of security, units or locker sizes, and other amenities will vary at each facility.

Store Wine Storage, in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., for example, offers a private tasting room, large lockers and a can arrange for messenger-style delivery of wines from the facility to a customer’s home.

Source:  The Wall Street Journal,  Just BYOB to These Wine-Storage Facilities

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Queen City Self Storage and Cincinnati Pet Food Pantry will give donated pet food to families in need Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon at the self-storage facility, 4775 Red Bank Road in Madisonville, Ohio. The group will also accept donations of food and litter during that time. People hoping to receive donated items will need to show a picture ID, register and compose a letter explaining their financial hardship.

Shannon DeBra, founder of Recycled Doggies, created the Cincinnati Pet Food Pantry after hearing about other pantries on Twitter.

Source:  WCPO,  Pet Food Pantry Helps Owners in Need

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When an industry is in growth mode, the emphasis is on increasing capacity, margins and market share. But when demand fades, the emphasis must turn to creating more efficient management processes and tools. This is where we are in the self-storage industry right now. Every owner is looking for ways to manage his business more efficiently, effectively and creatively without sacrificing quality.

This changing game means your managers are no longer just writing leases, taking payments, answering phone calls and sweeping out units. They need to be able to use all sorts of new management tools, including software, which is now more intricate and in-depth.

Many companies use lead-management systems to track and follow up on lead activity. Some use call centers and call-auditing services for ad tracking and call quality. Others have internal systems for tracking expenses and revenue. Still others are using Web-based lead-generation tools that need daily massaging. All these tools require being able to use software and Web tools to manage, understand and report on interactions.

This is just the beginning. In the years to come there will be more management tools arriving on the scene. Some will interact with each other seamlessly. Others will require standalone platforms. All will help store managers run a more efficient shop. The caveat is people will have to learn to use them.
 
Training Styles

How do you train managers to use new tools so they find success? First, you have to employ people who want to learn new things and adopt new and useful ways of doing them. Plus, you should hire people who want to work at making the business successful.

Before you invest time and money in training, ask yourself if your team meets these standards. Then ask each team member if he thinks he can meet them. Be prepared to replace a few people who are either unwilling or unable to answer an unqualified “yes” to this question.

Trainers should understand how to use the new tools effectively before teaching staff. You cannot just deliver a new management tool, give the employee a quick run-through and expect anything good to happen.

The next step is to identify each staff member’s individual learning style. People tend to fall into one of four main styles of learning: hear, see, do and read. People who learn from hearing only need to be told what to do before they understand the activity. People who learn from seeing and watching can observe an activity and duplicate it. People who learn from doing need to practice something a few times before they can repeat it. Readers can view a set of instructions and then do the activity.

When training, be sure to approach the activity from all four areas, but emphasize those in which your staff is dominant. People who are weak at hearing but strong on doing can be told 50 times how to use a new tool. But until you walk them through the process and let them try it a few times on their own, they won’t understand or retain what you’re trying to teach.

Also, explain the “why” and “how” of the new management tool. Employees are used to being assigned busy work, or having superiors who sometimes create processes and tasks that make no sense and create no value.

Often, an employee’s first reaction to a new tool can be skepticism. You need to sell the employee on why this tool is helpful, profitable and will improve business. Then you need to show how it will make his life easier, better and more productive. Buy-in is absolutely essential. If employees are not sold on the how and the why, your implementation will fail.
 
Design a Training Program

When introducing a new tool, you need a training program, something that will guide you and your staff through the process. Many service providers have tutorials, webinars and user guides that will make it easy for you to create the training program. But not all vendors will have training programs, so you made need to create one of your own.

For example, let’s say you want to train your staff on a new lead-tracking tool that resides on your facility’s website. Explain how and why this will better track leads, create superior reports to evaluate sales activity, and make the manager’s life easier. Have a set of instructions the employee can read and keep for reference.

Next, visit the website and work through several leads while the employee watches you go through the steps. Talk your way through the process. Then let the employee try a few practice leads. Talk him through it the first few times, and then let him do it independently. He might make some errors. Correct the mistakes only if he cannot yet self-correct.

Repetition is another essential part of training, so you may need to replicate the training exercise many times before it becomes automatic.
 
The Value of Role-Playing

Role-playing is another important part of any employee-training system. This should not be confused with practice, where you rehearse and repeat an activity on your own until you master it. Role-playing is when you recreate the situation with a training helper. One of you can pose as the customer, the other as the manager.

For example, let’s say you’re implementing a new move-in process to cut down on the time spent on the lease and better capture customer-tracking information. The owner can pose as a customer while the manager walks through the leasing process. He can practice doing the procedure until he knows it inside and out.

Role-playing will uncover all kinds of uncomfortable moments, hiccups in the process and unanticipated questions. It will help you resolve any issues before interacting with a real customer. The last thing you want is for a new process or tool to cause discomfort for customer—or embarrassment for the manager. When a manager sees a customer squirming because a new process is still clunky and sloppy, he will become shy of it, lose belief in it and avoid doing it. Teach, practice and role-play thoroughly when implementing any new tools.
 
Choosing Management Tools

Choose management tools that are effective and reliable and do what you say they’re going to do. You can tell if your training is correct by how your staff reports problems with the tool.

If they tell you it’s junk, doesn’t work right or causes more trouble than it’s worth, you’ve likely failed in your training and created an avoidance reaction. If, on the other hand, they to you with specific problems such as “When you click the button that says ‘box sales,’ the system opens up a screen with error message No. 12389,” you know they understand the tool and how to use it. In that case, they’re simply reacting to specific problems or bugs in the system.

No management tool is perfect. There will be a few glitches and hiccups. There will be elements that don’t match perfectly with your method of doing business. You’ll have to adapt to things you cannot change; but your vendor will generally be open to adjusting things that can be changed. Plus, you may find new ways of doing things that will work well for your facility.

Above all, work closely with your vendor to get the training and knowledge you need so you can pass it on to employees. Your best success when adopting new tools will come when you create a solid training program, understand your employees’ learning style and gain employee buy-in. Practice and role-playing will ensure implementation, and your results will meet and exceed expectations.
 
Tron Jordheim is the director of PhoneSmart Call Center, an offsite sales force that helps storage owners rent to more people through its call center, secret-shopping service, sales-training and Internet lead-generation services. For more information, call 866.682.8272; e-mail [email protected]; visit www.phone-smart.info.

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Euro Mini Storage opened this week in Budapest, Hungary. The facility is the first of its kind in the city.

The units range in size from 1 to 27 square meters. Monthly rental rates range from $31 to $354. The company invested $9.5 million to develop the property, and expects the occupancy to reach 85 percent within three to four years as the self-storage market matures.

The self-storage company plans to open four more facilities in Budapest in the next three years.

Source:  Budapest Business Journal,  Self Storage Facility Opened in Budapest

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The self-storage industry has the ability to attract and retain some excellent property managers. They love the autonomy, great hours and responsibility provided to them while running a multi-million-dollar business almost on their own. Luckily, most of the great managers we find stick around.

However, we’ve all heard the horror stories—and many of us have experienced them—about the self-storage owner who completely trusted his employee only to discover the manager had been stealing from the company. Ouch! Employee dishonesty hurts. But it does happen, and it’s one of the reasons completing frequent audits of your facility is important.

It’s not the only reason, though. We’ve all read articles about the self-storage facility that sold the goods of a paying customer by mistake because it had them listed in the computer as renting a different unit number. Honest mistakes, misunderstandings, poor training, tunnel vision, software bugs, and normal wear and tear can cause issues to arise at a storage facility. Without completing property audits, those issues can fester for months and become costly. Here’s a recommended list of items to include in your facility audit, and why they’re important. 

Handling Cash

Here’s one example of mishandling cash: You have an incredibly honest property manager, but he’s not great at giving people the right amount of change. He’s been pulling money out of the petty-cash drawer at the end of the day to fill the shortfalls in the change drawer. An honest mistake, but it can add up if not addressed quickly.

Another scenario could be one in which a property manager is short in her own bank account. She spends most of her time alone at your facility—with access to your cash. She’s a good person, but behind on her bills. She promises herself she’ll pay back the money she borrowed from the cash drawer as soon as she gets her next paycheck. Then, nobody notices. She tries again, and nobody notices. It’s almost too easy—a no-interest loan or paycheck advance.

To avoid these situations, audit your facility’s cash drawers monthly—or, at the very least, quarterly—against your daily transaction reports and petty-cash receipts. If there’s any discrepancy, there had better be a good explanation. If you’ve given your manager a form or tool to balance the cash at the end of each day, look at the past several weeks to make sure it’s being used. 

Lock Audits

Every week, self-storage managers should conduct detailed lock checks, comparing the locks on every unit to a list generated by your facility’s management software. The purpose is to make sure units that are supposed to be vacant are in fact empty, units that are supposed to be rented have a tenant’s lock on them, and units that are past-due are handled appropriately.

Managers should walk through the facility a couple times a day, checking locks and ensuring the facility is maintaining a clean, safe, well-lit appearance. Any unit without a lock should be addressed immediately. Overlocks should be placed for past-due tenants.

During your facility audit, a complete, detailed lock check should be conducted, and owners or supervisors should ensure the manager is doing weekly and daily walk-throughs and addressing any maintenance issues. Also make sure managers are moving tenants out of the computer system when they actually leave the property and not inflating your occupancy or rental income, which you’ll just have to write off later (after dealing with an angry customer who’s still being billed months after he’s moved out). 

Tenant Files

Owners should review several new leases (those signed during the last two months) and older leases, too. Any critical information missing from tenants’ files could be a major liability for you in the future if anything goes wrong or you need to auction the unit. Things to look for include: 

• Complete and accurate data on the lease, including unit number, price, name, address, military status, emergency contacts and signatures
• A copy of the tenant’s identification card
• Completed and signed insurance forms, if you offer tenant insurance
• Signed autopay forms, if you offer automatic credit card charging
• Signed hold-harmless agreements, if you have access to the tenant’s unit
• Proof of any special discounts given (referrals, for example) 

Other Office Activity

This is a great opportunity to follow up on your manager’s activities regarding lead follow-up and marketing. Check to make sure a good system is in place to track and follow up with potential customers. Discuss the marketing plan and make sure the necessary marketing tools are available. Double check your website to ensure it’s up-to-date and accurate.

You probably already have written procedures in case the computer goes down, and you need to audit those as well. Any manual receipt books should be analyzed during a property audit. Make sure you compare every manual receipt created since your last audit to the records in the digital and paper tenant files. You may want to call a few of the tenants who received manual receipts to verify their transactions.

Some owners have found managers using manual receipts for customers paying with cash, but then applying promotions in the computer and pocketing some of the cash. A quick call to the customer will bring those situations to light. If your software allows managers to make negative billings or delete billings, you’ll want to review all those transactions as well to ensure they occurred for legitimate reasons.

A good facility audit should also address manager reporting, including timesheets. Do the hours on the timesheet reflect the actual hours worked by the manager? Comparing timesheets to security-system logs, transaction times in the computer, or video surveillance will alleviate any problems.

If you sell locks, boxes, tape, etc., a facility audit is a great time to verify and track your inventory and check your pricing. Make any revisions to your display that might help you increase sales. 

Facility Inspection

Self-storage managers look at the same things every day, and sometimes it’s hard to see the property’s faults. A facility audit is a great time to come in and look at everything with a fresh perspective, through a customer’s eyes, or even through a potential buyer. Here’s a short checklist: 

• How is your curb appeal? Clean, inviting, well-groomed?
• Are employees well-groomed and professionally dressed?
• Is the office clean and free of dust, fingerprints and clutter?
• Are the keypads clean and in good working condition?
• Are the elevators clean and in good working order? Do the emergency phones work?
• Is the lot clean and free of debris? Are parking spaces clearly marked?
• Are interior and exterior lights working, including exit signs and emergency lights? Are timers correctly set?
• Are climate-controlled temperature settings appropriate? Are the HVAC units being maintained?
• Do the gutters need to be cleaned?
• Are the unit doors and hasps clean and in good condition?
• Is the signage inside and around the property clear, professional and in good condition?
• Are interior hallways clean and bright?
• Are vacant units ready to rent?
• Are all required licenses and inspections up to date (fire, elevator, business, alarm)?
• Is the security system working at full capacity (including door alarms if you have them)?
• If there is an apartment onsite, is it in good condition? 

Spending a full day every couple of months on the items listed above has proven to be well worth the time for any owner. Make a day of it, get to know the manager better, and take the time to train him when issues arise. If you don’t have the time to do it yourself, hire a consultant to do it for you. Following up on the items addressed in proactive facility audits will help you increase revenue, decrease expenses, reduce your liability and grow the value of your facility. 

Alyssa Quill is vice president of Investment Real Estate Management in York, Pa. She has worked in the self-storage industry for nine years in finance and operations roles. Investment Real Estate LLC provides self-storage brokerage, construction and management services to owners and investors in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States. For more information, call 717.779.0804; visit www.irellc.com.

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U-Store-It Trust announced its operating results for the three months and year ended Dec. 31, 2009.

"We are very pleased with our capital raising efforts during 2009," said CEO Dean Jernigan. "Our primary focus in 2010 will be to maximize the internal growth opportunities we have within our existing portfolio.”

Key metrics for the fourth quarter include:

• Funds from operations (FFO) were $0.13 per share for the three months ended Dec. 31, 2009, compared to $0.24 per share reported in the same period of the previous year. FFO of $0.73 per share for the year ended Dec. 31, 2009, compared to $0.97 per share reported in 2008.
• Weighted average shares and units outstanding were 98.5 million and 62.7 million for the fourth quarter of 2009 and 2008, respectively. Weighted average shares and units outstanding were 
  76.6 million and 62.8 million in 2009 and 2008, respectively.
• Same-store revenue (360 same-store facilities) in the fourth quarter decreased 5.9 percent from the fourth quarter of 2008.
• Same-store property operating expenses decreased 5.1 percent when compared to the fourth quarter of 2008.

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