The Fifth Rule of Thumb – Managing your property – Manager Incentives

Manager incentives are a great way to keep your manager excited and working hard to keep your self-storage facility full. If you don’t already have incentives in place, you should consider adding them. You want your manager to work hard to keep your units filled.

When you are hiring your manager, talk to them about a bonus structure where they can get a small bonus for each unit that they fill. Don’t put a limit on the number of units that they can get a bonus on. They may get a huge paycheck but that means that you have a lot of rented units.

However, once you are fully occupied, then you may want to switch them to a salary plus a percentage of the revenue goal. This keeps them motivated to keep the units filled, upsell customers, collect rents and late fees as well as gradually raising rents on a regular basis. As they are able to achieve your revenue goals, you will both benefit.

You want to put a system in place that helps you improve your bottom line every month. No matter how you run your self-storage facility, you want to make sure that you are setting reasonable goals for your manager. You don’t want them to cut corners, change numbers, or pad results just so they can make a few extra dollars.

Have a system of checks and balances so that you can review what your manager is giving to you to verify that it is completely accurate. This will prevent them from being tempted to cheat.

The more incentives you provide to your manager, the more likely they are to keep your facility performing at maximum capacity. The more they make, the more you make. As always, happy investing.