Witness the Start of a Leasing Revolution - what a tool!

Live from the AIM Conference, the visionaries at Realty DataTrust have done it again - they’ve developed a product that any smart salesperson will lust after, and any smart company will quickly implement to gain a competitive advantage over their competition. Gather round...gather round...this concept is so fresh, it isn’t even available, but you’ll definitely want to be in line to snap it up as soon as it is.

By now, you have all heard about or seen the new IPad. Pretty cool concept. Tablet size. Multifunctional. Read the paper without squinting, you get my drift. Mike Mueller, apartment visionary that he is, saw the IPad, and its potential as a leasing tool, and created a Leasing Tablet specifically for the device. My head about exploded when I saw it. Where do I begin? Let’s say you’re in an apartment and the client says, “Is the school nearby?” You pull out your leasing tablet, hit Maps and take a look at the school (and the distance from),in whatever format (street, satellite, whatever) you would like. Then, you hit Floor plans to share the slight variance in the apartment layout your client will be getting. And that is just the beginning. Take your typical Saturday afternoon. You’re really busy and people are waiting. Instead of sending them away, or making them stare at the walls for 30 minutes, you hand them an IPad and say, “Please enjoy - surf the web, read the Wall Street Journal or hit Leasing Tablet and take a look at floor plan and pricing options.” You may find that by the time you get back, they’ve gone ahead and leased an apartment. It’s that cool.

Now, for the staunch curmudgeons out there thinking, ‘’Good idea, except they will all walk out the door”, they’re working on that - which is one of the reasons it’s not available yet. This application is going to seriously change the way we lease apartments. You’ve been hearing me pontificate for the last few years that we need to make it about the client, not about us, and so many times, people come in further along in the buying cycle than we feel comfortable with, yet we make them go back to square one, because that’s just the way we do it. (Plus, if we don’t hit all the bases we might get a bad shopping report, and then we could lose our jobs.) This changes all of that. I find it profound. I want one and I want to lease apartments with it. It’s a leasing notebook, 3.0 style. Fabulous. I can’t wait to see it in action. Get your lawn chair and get in line now.

Get Results By Keeping It Simple

The Marketing Profs newsletter reported this week on a recent Neuromarketing blog regarding typeface and likelihood of customers to provide the information you seek. In the blog, Roger Dooley writes, “you will be more successful if you describe the task in a simple, easy to read typeface.” he reasons that when something can be completed in a shorter amount of time, people are more likely to comply with the request - and less complex fonts create the impression that it will go more quickly.

Dooley cites research by Hyunjin Song and Norbert Schwarz, who asked two groups to estimate the amount of time required for identical exercise regimens. The first group read instructions in Arial—a simple, streamlined font:



The second group viewed a more complex, brush font:



Guess which group estimated the regimen would take longer? Winner, winner chicken dinner to those who guessed the second - 15.1 minutes vs. 8.2 minutes for the first regimen.

The moral of the story, of course, is to keep it simple. Not just in what you say, but in the way you say it. Complicated fonts mean complicated process to the consumer. The less time they perceive they need to spend, the more likely you will be to get them to sign up.

Sales Guy Extraordinaire Strikes Again

For the masses that regularly read my posts, you’ll remember that I have dubbed my dad Sales Guy Extraordinaire, and once again, he has lived up to the expectation.

During a recent visit, Dad took a phone call from a woman he later explained was a former customer who had purchased carpet some years back, when he worked for a company that was no longer in business. Seems the woman had a problem with her carpet, didn’t know who to talk to about it, so tracked Dad down and called him. He told her he would stop by and take a look.

Wha-wha-what? Really? Dad didn’t own the former company, and he most likely couldn’t provide much more than a little guidance and direction. Likely, the carpet would not need to be replaced. so his visit wouldn’t generate a sale. He could easily have referred her to another specialist, or explained that he couldn’t really help her. But that’s not what a sales guy extraordinaire would do, and that’s not what Dad did. When I asked him why, he looked a little sheepish and tried to play it down, saying, “She’s an older woman, and it will only take a few minutes to take a look. If I can help her out, that will be enough.”

When is the last time you simply helped somebody out, no strings attached? If you have a client and have nothing to lease, do you simply wave them off with a, “You might want to try down the street”, or do you make the call yourself, and get involved in the solution, rather than dismissing the problem? You know what Sales Guy Extraordinaire would do. He would get busy and actively find an answer.

The best salespeople are in it, not just for the money, but for the people they can help. By assisting in finding the solution, they build trust and referrals, and go home every day confident they have made a difference. Zig Ziglar used to say, “Help enough people get what they want, and you’ll get everything you want.”

That’s being extraordinary.

Ready, AIM, Strategize!

I know income streams aren’t exactly what they used to be, but the AIM Conference (Apartment Internet Marketing) is just around the corner, and if you market apartments at any level, it’s time you made your plans to attend.

There’s not a whole lot of fluff and fanfare at this conference, just quality, high level information that is about as forward-thinking as it gets. If you are involved with, or want to know about what is coming next in the world of Internet apartment marketing, this is the conference for you. Great minds attend this conference for insight - minds I know and respect, and often turn to for advice. You won’t be sorry. Plus it’s in Huntington Beach, for Pete’s sake. I can’t think of a better place to hold a conference.

Need a deal sweetener? I have finagled a discount for you. Book by April 20th, use the code aim2010snider, and get $50 off your registration.

Get going and get registered. I’ll see you there.

A Wolf in Consultant's Clothing -- 7 Myths of Apartment Blogs

The "every apartment community has to have a blog" hysteria rages on. As more apartment blogs launch, twice their number lay barren, the echoes of their month's old posts ringing on deaf eyes. Unfortunately our industry is being overrun by "social media consultants" who insist you must have a blog to gain a leg up in the market, and claim you must blog to open communication with residents and prospective renters.

Before you buy in, consider the contrarian perspective.

Myth #1 Residents want to read my blog.
No they don't. Residents want you to make it easy to pay rent and give them good and quick customer service when their thermostat stops working. Sure you may get a single digit percent of your resident pool who agree to subscribe after you bludgeon them with requests, but TMZ.com and dooce.com are way more fun.

Myth #2 I have to have a blog to rank high in search engines.
Any SEO or web marketing professional worth three clicks can increase your rankings on search engines with a smart web site and a strategically crafted pay-per-click campaign. With few exceptions, this is a crock. We have sites on the first page of Google in many markets, and it's because we put the right text in the right place on the site, not because blog postings with the winner of this month's cutest pet contest.

Myth #3 I can just have my leasing team update my blog.
Quality blogging is an art and science; the art in the selecting topics and crafting engaging posts, the science in the ability to actually write and the time management skills to keep up with a blog. Unless you're willing to provide support via training, and willing to shift other responsibilities to make room for blogging, this is a recipe for disaster that will surly result in an amateur finished product.

Myth #4 If I build it, they will come.
There are many tens of thousands of personal blogs and company blogs and industry blogs and mommy blogs out there, each with a proud and committed writer who have posted every single day for months on end. And only a small percentage of blogs get the kind of traffic needed to create a marketing platform. Increasing your readership takes a long time and many hours of effort. And most of all, it requires fresh and relevant content. (see Myth #6)

Myth #5 A blog will pay itself off with new leads and eventually new leases.
Other than very rare examples where a blog can be seamlessly integrated into a community web site, this is a complete fallacy. When a blog-proponent claims this to be the case, raise your right eyebrow and say, "prove it."

Myth #6 There are plenty of sources of fee content to add to my blog.
To be authentic, your blog content must be original, and come from sources connected to your community or your property management company. Just borrowing generic content about the importance of recycling and recycled news is just aggregated data, a trend that died in the late 1990s.

Myth #7 There is plenty of data that shows an ROI on multifamily blogging.
Other than business to business (vendors interacting with PM companies and each other), there is no empirical data about any sort of scalable ROI on apartment blogs. There are certainly some successes out there in specific demographics, but trends are measured by trend patterns over large areas, not by one offs.


And for those communities out there with talented, dedicated, on site bloggers who are afforded the time it takes to launch a truly successful online presence, and have the organizational support to make it work, good luck. You're doing it the right, and only way.

Now go fire your social media consultant.