In any self-storage sales program, the ability to build value and trust with the customer is essential to success. It’s critical that you speak with enthusiasm about your store, actively listen to customers’ needs, and provide a dynamic features-and-benefits presentation based on each individual to whom you speak. To do this, you must know your customers, your product and your competition.

Know Your Customers

The more you know about your customers, the better you will be in your sales effort. You want to understand the reasons why a customer is interested in storage, as this will give you insight to what’s important to him.

It’s imperative to have a strategy for evaluating customers: where they come from, how they find you, why they choose your location, etc. This information is powerful. Capture it during lease-up via a customer survey. The results will help you understand which of your sales efforts are working, allowing you to change and improve your sales program over time.

For example, you might find customers are choosing your store 44 percent of the time because of a nice and helpful manager. This indicates your manager is doing a good job of building value and trust through an impactful sales presentation.

A survey can also help you track the best forms of advertising and marketing by asking each customer how he found out about your store. Track this over time, as it will help you make future decisions about these expenditures. You can save thousands of dollars a year by having a sound program for measuring your marketing.

Know Your Product

In building value and trust with customers, you must also have comprehensive knowledge of your store’s operation, features and benefits―especially in relation to your competitors. Product knowledge is customer service!

If you’re doing nothing more than being friendly and answering questions with a prospect, you’ll have a hard time surviving in a competitive market. The average customer is much more knowledgeable about the storage experience and has more choices than in years past. He’s looking for someone who knows what he’s talking about, who can educate him on a facility’s features and how they will benefit him.

Know Your Competitors

To sell against competitors, you must know them better than they know themselves. This way you can easily overcome pricing objections and turn any self-storage prospect into a customer.

It’s also extremely important to build relationships with your competition. Make at least quarterly visits to competing stores. While at each location, observe how the staff handles phone and walk-in customers. Ask yourself:  

• Do they provide a features-and-benefits presentation?
• Do they provide any helpful hints about using self-storage?
• Do they ask for the appointment with phone customers?
• Do they take walk-in customers through the sales process in a positive way?  

Observe each facility’s features so you understand the unique advantages you provide to customers relative to this competitor. Make a lot of mental notes during your visit and write them down as soon as you can. The longer you delay in documenting your observations, the more likely it is that you’ll forget this valuable information.

Note: Don’t ever “bash” your competition when talking with customers. Instead find ways of selling your differential advantages. Remember, you must know your competitors to sell against them. Having this information will give you a great deal of confidence. 

Use the Knowledge

Now that you have information about your customers and competitors, make sure you have a strong program for following up with leads. Always ask the prospect for a name and phone number during the phone-sales presentation. If the caller isn’t ready to make an appointment, send him a brochure or coupon, and set a time to follow up with him.

This proactive approach tells the customer you care about him and want his business, and creates an appointment for a visit. Industry statistics show that when a prospect visits a facility, he rents a unit more than 85 percent of the time. If you become proficient in generating visits to your site, you’ll become successful in your self-storage operation.

Brad North is the founder of Advantage Consulting & Management, which specializes in facility management, feasibility, onsite sales, marketing and operational training to the self-storage industry. He’s a frequent contributor to various industry publications and a nationally recognized speaker and consultant. For more information, call 678.491.7984; visit www.advantageconsultingmanagement.com.

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Storage Asset Management Inc. (SAM), a new self-storage property-management and consulting company, was launched in May when its managing partners, Jay Hoke and Alyssa Quill, purchased 27 third-party management contracts from Investment Real Estate Management LLC (IREM). The purchase included ownership of Findmyselfstorage.com, an online self-storage directory and resource launched last month by IREM.
 
Hoke and Quill have been managing self-storage operations for investors since 1998. Their previous combined experience includes positions with Devon Self Storage, Extra Space Storage and Storage USA. Until recently, both served as vice presidents of investment at IREM for eight years. The new properties in their care are in the mid-Atlantic and northeast states.

SAM will provide its clients with manager sales training, technology, policies and procedures, and cost reduction through shared economies of scale.  Clients will also benefit from SAM’s continued relationship with IREM. Findmyselfstorage.com will continue to provide facility owners with affordable website design, hosting and management solutions.

IREM owner John H. Gilliland sold the management contracts for these properties in order to focus on self-storage facility brokerage and grow his Moove In Self Storage portfolio, which currently includes 12 Pennsylvania facilities.

Based in York, Pa., IREM offers brokerage and construction services throughout the mid-Atlantic and northeast regions.

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John Farb, senior vice president of operations for self-storage operator Storage Spot, passed away unexpectedly on May 26 after battling with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) for several years. A celebration-of-life service will be held June 13, 11:30 a.m., at Toale Brothers Funeral Home in Sarasota, Fla. 
 
John first exhibited symptoms of MS in August 2003 and was formally diagnosed in June 2004. On March 20, John and his family served as ambassadors during Walk MS Sarasota, a fundraising event. A fast infection struck John two months later.
 
Prior to his position with Storage Spot, from 1994 to 2001, John worked in the management and real estate departments of Public Storage Inc. His participation, influence and connections in the self-storage industry were long-reaching. He was known for his great sense of humor, business acumen and dedication to family. 
 
John is survived by his wife, Gail, and their children, Michael, Matthew and Lindsay.
 
The family requests that commemorations be made in the form of donations to the National MS Society. To donate, visit John’s memorial-fund Web page at http://main.nationalmssociety.org/goto/John.Farb.

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The city council in San Mateo, Calif., Monday approved the redevelopment of a 3.5-acre site that will include housing and a three-story self-storage facility.

The area to be redeveloped is the former headquarters of the San Mateo County Times. The 45,000-square-foot building housed the newspaper for 43 years until the operation was moved to a smaller office park in 2007.

The building will be demolished to make room for 60 three-story townhouses, 14 two-story single-family homes and a 30,000-square-foot self-storage facility.

The property owner, San Francisco-based Intracorp, faced opposition from nearby residents until the project developer proposed lowering the height of some of the buildings. Construction is expected to begin next spring.

Source:  Mercury News,  Residential Neighborhood Coming to Former San Mateo County Times Site 

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Self-Storage Talk: Breaking the News to the Neighbors

If you wanted to go into the self-storage business in South Africa 10 years ago, it would have been difficult because it was almost non-existent.

In the years to follow, however, a few agricultural-land owners began building 25 to 50 garages on their plots on city outskirts. They developed the properties in phases as they generated cash flow, building an average of 300 units per facility. These facilities enjoyed an average occupancy of 90 percent and a decent rental income.

Many were similar, as developers copied one another. They built brick garages with iron roofs, roller-shutter doors and brick-paved roads, all offering the same basic service, product, price, design and layout. The quality of the buildings was generally quite high, and the higher the quality, the higher the rental rates and occupancy.

Most of these businesses targeted the residential market, though they didn’t offer added services such as insurance or credit card payments to customers. Almost no promotions or advertising were used, other than Yellow Pages ads. The consumer was largely unaware of the industry’s existence.

There were no clouds on the horizon―for a while. But eventually, when the entrepreneurs woke up, South Africa was in the middle of a gigantic property boom and, in most cases, the high cost of land meant self-storage development opportunities were not viable. Those who were able to build new facilities were those who already owned suitable land to develop.

It was also extremely difficult to buy an existing facility as the original developers were getting excellent returns and had no motivation to sell. Nor were there any specialty self-storage property-management companies, or an association to welcome potential investors into the industry.
 
Building an Industry

Two years ago, having just sold a business―and having a real estate background as well as a passion for property development―I became fascinated with self-storage. This was just as the property market began to collapse. I saw the opportunity to purchase affordable land for storage development in prime areas, but there was no industry information readily available, no road map or industry leader to follow. Essentially, there were no local experts in the field.

My son, Dylan Wolpe, attended a self-storage conference and tradeshow in Las Vegas to learn about the industry and look at the latest trends from the U.S. perspective. It was an eye-opener! Soon after, we founded Storage Genie, South Africa’s first self-storage management and development company. Storage Genie then funded the establishment of the Self Storage Association of South Africa.

Our goal was to grow the South African storage business under the umbrella of an industry-leading brand. Through Storage Genie, we strive to generate public exposure for the industry and provide services otherwise unavailable locally, such as facility-manager training, a national call center, and franchise opportunities.

There are now roughly 70,000 self-storage units in South Africa, with an average occupancy of 80 percent, meaning 56,000 units are occupied at any given time. There are approximately 3.5 million taxpayers in South Africa. If we assume 60 percent of tax payers to be potential consumers for self-storage, we have a pool of 2.1 million customers. Taking all of this into consideration, we see the South African industry is under exposed, people are unaware of the concept, and we’ve only tapped into 2.6 percent of the potential market.
 
Moving Forward

As the self-storage industry grows in South Africa, it also evolves. Innovations have been introduced such as precast concrete building systems, which allow a 400-unit development to be completed in just six months at half the cost of brick buildings. Sectional title developments are also available for small investors, who can purchase and register any number of units in a facility, much like purchasing apartments in a complex.

Storage Genie is in the process of finalizing deals with American steel-building suppliers to import buildings based on a unique joint-venture strategy. The idea is the buildings are supplied on a rent-to-buy basis. Storage Genie provides the land and management, and the building supplier shares the revenue and future profit from resale.

The prospects for the South African self-storage industry look very bright, and we’re looking forward to an exciting future.

Herbert Wolpe is a founding member, CEO and team leader at Storage Genie, a self-storage property-management and development company catering to the South Africa market. To reach him, e-mail [email protected].

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Self-Storage Talk: International

Hide-Away Storage based in Manatee County, Fla., is finding ways to reduce operational expenses and increase revenue, incorporating self-storage kiosks into its facilities and “going green” to save money on energy costs.
 
Owner Steve Wilson, who, like many self-storage operators, has had to downsize his staff in recent years, is installing self-serve kiosks at each of his 10 facilities. Next month, he opens a new facility in Sarasota, Fla., that will be solely operated via kiosk. The ATM-like units have already been installed at his Bradenton and Ellenton, Fla., locations. Those facilities still have a manager on site during regular business hours.
 
In the past three years, Wilson’s staff has been minimized from about 70 to 45 employees, Wilson told the Bradenton Herald. From 2008 to 2009, revenue declined $1.1 million, but Hide-Away saved $1.4 million in operation expenses.
 
In addition to using kiosks, which minimize the need for onsite staff and allow tenants to rent units at any hour of the day, Wilson is converting his facilities’ exterior lighting from metal halide bulbs to compact fluorescent lights. He estimates the change will save about $40 per bulb per year. With about 40 bulbs at each Hide-Away facility, that will mean a savings of about 75 percent on lighting costs.
 
Hide-Away will also participate in a Florida Power & Light program that involves applying a heat-reflecting coating on the roofs of air-conditioned buildings. Wilson hopes to save approximately 20 percent on annual air-conditioning costs this way.
 
Source: Bradenton Herald, Manatee storage owner learning to run a 'smarter' business

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Shepherd Self Storage of Boardman, Ohio, will host a “Junk in Your Trunk” sale on July 18 to benefit For the Dogs, a local rescue group that saves dogs from the Pound. Local businesses and vendors are invited to sell garage-sale items, crafts and miscellaneous items from the trunks of their cars. A parking space can be reserved for $20; two spaces can be rented for $35. The event will take place from noon to 4 p.m. Reservations are being accepted until July 10. Additional information can be found at Forthedogspetfinder.com.
 
Shepherd Self Storage offers traditional and vehicle storage. The facility is next to and associated with the Shepherd Event Center, which can be rented for indoor or outdoor exhibits, tradeshows and fundraisers. The 40,000-square-foot facility offers heated and cooled indoor space with parking for more than 400 cars.
 
Sources: Youngstown Vindicator, Vendors Invited to Trunk Sale

Shepherd Events Center
 
Shepherd Self Storage

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Store It All Self Storage in Pittston, Wyo., recently donated money to West Pittston Hose Company No. 1.

Storage It All Self Storage's owner Bob Trusavage receives 50 calls a week for donations from a variety of charities. In the past, Trusavage donated to several charities, but recently decided to donate to just one local cause and chose West Pittston Hose Company No. 1. In the past few months the fire crews fought three fires in West Pittston.

Source:  The Dispatch,Store It All Self Storage Keeps Donations Local

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From Mel Gibson’s starring role in What Women Want to Dr. John Gray’s book, Men are From Mars, Women are from Venus, the messages have been out there for a long time. Communicating effectively with women is an art, and it will do two things for your business. First, women customers will follow your recommendations and buy from you. More important, they’ll be the best marketing tool you could ever implement. Remember this phrase: “What women buy, they sell!” Treat these customers exceptionally well and you’ll earn their loyalty and referrals.

Connecting with your female customers may be more important now than in the past. Economic hardship has changed the way consumers are spending their dollars. Those businesses that have not had to constantly worry about marketing or sales before are finding themselves in a new world.

Fact: Women control the majority of spending in their households. They purchase the majority of new cars, computers and home electronics. With $2 trillion dollars of earnings and $3 trillion dollars of spending, you need to consider your female client.

How is your female customer different in the decision-making process than a male? Both are looking for a combination of knowledge and trust, yet men and women develop trust in different ways. Men make decisions based on few facts and tend to take action independently. Women need more information up front and tend to be slower to make a decision. They need to process the information and feel like they’ve been listened to. Women will ask friends and family for opinions.

If you want to increase your sales among female buyers, consider the following five aspects.

1. Listening Skills

Women are much more sensitive to your tone of voice than male customers. If you’re stressed and tense, your words can unknowingly become clipped, curt and short. Your female client will tune into your tone and judge your business negatively because of the way you talk to your employees or other customers. This is called “anti-marketing.”

Women are more sensitive to eye contact, body language and gestures. Women need sustained eye contact more than men; usually 20 to 30 seconds at least to feel you’re listening.

Focus on your customer during your presentation. Listen with your eyes, body language and tone of voice. Listen to her story. If you’re busy looking at paperwork, she will feel you’re not listening and will not give you her trust. Direct your conversation toward her, but be sure to ask her spouse or significant other about any other concerns. As she tells her story, she gives you clues to her concerns, wants, goals and desires.

Answer all her questions, no matter how trivial they seem. When she’s done asking questions, she may need to think things over and call you back, or come back in to ask more questions. It’s important she not sense you’re stressed for time.

When you present your information, don’t use a canned presentation. Customize the sale to her needs and communicate with her how she would like to be communicated with. If she needs a lot of information, give it to her. If she wants few facts, deliver your answers to her questions and wait for more.

2. Image Is Everything

Women are detailed-oriented. From the first phone call, the female customer needs to connect and feel special. You cannot ever undo a bad first impression. The front office area needs to be warm, inviting, clean and neat. Your team needs to wear professional clothing. Women notice details! Look at the women’s restroom: The appearance should be not only neat and clean, but up-to-date and decorated with a woman in mind.

3. Don’t Knock the Competition

When communicating with women, it’s important to remain neutral when discussing your competitors. Never speak badly about another business. Instead, talk about the benefits of your products with a positive focus on how they will meet the needs of the customer and her family. How will your product save her family money? Keep them safer? Protect the environment?

4. Emphasize the Benefits

The female customer looks for the perfect answer. It’s in her nature―she wants to be certain she’s making the right decision. Help her make it by discussing why it’s best she move on this decision right now.

Respect her time and don’t keep her waiting. Remember the phrase, “People count up the faults of those who keep them waiting.” This is especially true for women, who are multi-taskers. If you keep a woman waiting, she’ll be thinking of all the other things she needs to do and will be more stressed than the majority of your male clients. 

Another phrase to remember, “People shop up.” Most people want the best treatment they can afford. Women especially like to buy the best they can for their family’s needs. Provide the customer with options, but tell her what you feel is the best for her situation. Remember she may be slower to make her decision than your male client, as she wants to gather information and make that right decision. You might facilitate acceptance sooner with a complimentary added-value service.

5. Expect to Follow-Up

Many times, sales are lost with female customers because of a lack of follow-up. When men say, “I’ll think about it,” it usually means they’re not interested. When women say, “I’ll think about it,” it means they really will!

Ask permission to follow up within a week and answer any questions the customer may have. From there, she’ll direct you to what she wants. She’ll either need more time, more information, want to buy from you, or decide on another product.  Demanding, insistent salespeople will often lose the sale to the female client. She doesn’t want to “be sold.”

If you focus your business on the needs of the female customer, you will have her loyalty, trust and referrals. If you don’t meet her needs, she’ll leave you. If you just meet her needs, she’ll stay.  If you exceed her needs, she will refer her friends, family and colleagues.

Rhonda Savage is an internationally acclaimed speaker and CEO for a well-known practice management and consulting business. As past president of the Washington State Dental Association, she is active in organized dentistry and has been in private practice for more than 16 years. For more information, e-mail [email protected]; visit www.dentalmanagementu.com.

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