Don’t Get Stagnant With Your Self-Storage!

You don’t want to get comfortable with your self-storage property. This could end up costing you money. When you have a property that is performing well and others that are not, you may find that your attention is naturally focused on the problem properties. However, you don’t want to let your top producer slide into the position of problem property out of neglect.

One way that you can keep your properties running at the top of their potential is your manager. Your manager is the face of your company. They are the ones who are ultimately going to make your business work or not work based on their performance. Don’t hire someone who can’t take care of your asset at least as well as you would.

There are a lot of really competitive potential managers available on the market. Take the time to find someone who is a good fit for your property. Take the time to train them to run your property exactly the way you would if you were there. You should have Standard Operating Procedures set up for each task that your manager does. If you don’t already have them, start making them. It is time consuming to write down everything that you are doing, but it is worth it in the end.

No matter what property your manager is running anywhere in the country, they should be running it exactly the same way as another manager. The only way that this is going to happen is if you train them to do it the same way. You should have a step by step process on how to close a rental deal, how to take a phone call, how to set up a lease, how to check someone into their unit, how to check someone out of their unit, how to collect late fees, how to do lock outs and ultimately, how to auction a property. If they don’t know what is expected of them, then how can you measure how well they are or are not performing. The reason that this matters, is that you are going to offer manager incentives. These incentives will keep your managers performing at the best of their abilities and keep your properties running at peak performance.

Set up some kind of an incentive system so that the manager gets a bonus when they fill a unit. Don’t put a cap on the number of bonuses they can get each month. Why would they fill more units than that? Once your property is running at capacity, then you need to switch the bonuses. You want them to get focused on increasing revenue by increasing rents. Do this by setting goals and offering bonuses or percentage of revenue increase incentives. Keep them motivated to keep your property profitable.

Make sure that you don’t let your manager become complacent because there is no incentive for them to improve your bottom line each month. Set goals that are attainable and measurable so that they can achieve them. You want to be paying them a bonus because it means that you are making more money. Find a way to keep your properties running at the highest level possible and as always, happy investing.