New Ring of Your Next Lease

“There it goes again, the phone just keeps ringing. I’m certain we have already had 100 calls today. Who is going to answer the phone because I’m not going to pick it up? I don’t think I can get to it because I was just on my way to make some chocolate chip cookies. Well, no one answered it. Oh well, they’ll call back.”

Does this conversation send chills up your spine? Will that potential customer really call back? Ordinarily after the third ring, we start to feel a slight sense of panic if no one has picked up the phone. We have been taught over the year to not let this happen. If a Regional Manager or Training Director heard you mutter the above comment, serious repercussions would probably follow. Consequently we often have to interrupt our conversations with customers and co-workers so that we can answer the phone. After all that call is paramount, because it might be your next lease.

This is an example of how we have grown to make the phone a resource for leasing appointments. Our companies offer training classes focused merely on telephone skills. Now the time has come to give the same time, attention and passion to another important resource for leasing appointments: Internet Leads!

It’s three o’clock in the afternoon, do you know if your team has followed up with their Internet inquires yet today? I can tell you that 40% of Internet leads are never followed up on. Let’s compare that to the telephone. What if 49% of all the calls coming into a Leasing Office are never answered? Would you be able to maintain your occupancy above 90% and enjoy healthy rent increases? We all know the answer is no. The property would simply not survive, yet we let almost half of the leads sent to our communities fall into the trash can.

Often the Internet customer provides a better opportunity for new leases than the telephone customer. When someone shops for an apartment on the Internet, they have prices, photos, floor plans, deposits and qualifications all at their fingertips. The person using the telephone to shop for an apartment is at severe disadvantage. An Internet customer can gather a great deal of information simply by clicking their mouse. Much of this information is only accessible to the telephone customer by an on-site visit.

This is why I feel the Internet customer is a more qualified lead than any other source of traffic. In addition to this, diligently pursuing your Internet leads will provide you with a much higher closing ratio. Here is an example to consider. I recently finished serving as a Marketing Consultant on a new construction, lease-up project. As part of our sales strategy we positioned one consultant to handle all Internet leads. This person understood the value of checking e-mail several times a day, and responding to inquiries within hours if not minutes. Soon this person had the highest number of leases on the team, and others were begging to take part in this project. Now all the leads are distributed evenly, and the leasing team understands the Internet lead may very well be their next lease.

Recently, I was consulting for a client who desperately needed to improve the effort of his sales staff. While working on a number of areas to establish improvement, I discovered there were six to ten leads a week being faxed to the community via the Internet. I was disappointed, upon checking the computer, to find that these guests had not been entered as traffic. When I asked the Leasing Consultant why this was happening, they informed me that they did not have e-mail and could not respond back to the customer. If you do not have e-mail available at your properties, this will become a recurrent problem. In addition to this, many Internet apartment shoppers will only provide their e-mail address to avoid receiving phone calls. And finally, we also need to remember that if our competition has e-mail capability at their properties, chances are pretty good that they are responding to many leads faster than you are.

As I travel around the country, I am in a unique position to see the latest trends. Beyond the sparkles and bows of a newly built apartment community, savvy sales and marketing are the hottest trend. The Net Mystery Shopper^SM’s agree that Dallas and Los Angeles are two of the best cities for responding to Internet leads. It is time to give your team the tools they need to excel at digital marketing. After all, we gave them a phone, now give them a mouse!

About the Author: Kate Good, is a Professional Speaker and Marketing Consultant and provides you with the tools you need to increase your traffic through Internet leads. If you would like to have Kate Good bring her ideas and sales techniques to your company or association, visit www.kategood.com.