Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, apartment operators everywhere have had to adjust their leasing process by adding solutions like self-guided tours and live video tours to their offerings.
This is a good thing. However, to maximize their leasing success both now and in a post-pandemic world, many communities need to do more than simply expand the kinds of tours prospects can take. They need to comprehensively rethink how they organize the lead-management efforts of their leasing teams.
Embracing CRMs
To truly optimize their leasing process, operators should implement a strong customer relationship management (CRM) system and a well-designed playbook for using that system. While many property management companies have a CRM in place, they are not harnessing the power of its full potential.
A CRM is a tool that allows multifamily operators to organize and manage interactions with prospects and current residents across communication channels. The playbook is a comprehensive plan devised by the operator to guide a leasing team’s use of the CRM.
Designing an effective playbook is not a quick-and-easy task, but it will pay big dividends. It starts with a whiteboard. Map out the journey of your customer, and then ask yourself, “If I were this renter with these specific desires, what would be the best communication cycle to satisfy my needs?”
Think about the renter moving this weekend versus the one moving two months from now. Think about someone who hasn’t decided to tour yet versus someone who has. Think about someone who had a very positive tour versus someone who had a “so-so” tour.
After thinking through these scenarios, you can create a playbook that tells your associates how to interact with leads in certain situations (email, text, phone, etc.) and when to interact with them. This makes sure they are doing the most critical thing in lead management: taking the right action with the right customer at the right time.
The most important thing to keep in mind when designing a CRM playbook is that a playbook is always evolving. The most effective playbooks are the result of ongoing modifications made as operators learn more about their customers and continue to analyze data.
Strong Performance—Even in a Pandemic
While there are many CRM options for the industry, at Sequoia, we use the Anyone Home CRM, and our use of that CRM is guided by a playbook that we spent a lot of time and energy building with the help of our partner.
We have long been convinced of the wisdom of using these tools, but our portfolio’s performance since the start of the coronavirus pandemic—in a time when many operators are struggling to get leases—is yet more proof of the power of these solutions. In light of the pandemic, we have made some adjustments to our CRM playbook to help drive conversions.
For example, we added additional triggers for self-guided tour prospects before and after their tours to build value, to compensate for the fact that our leasing teams aren’t getting a chance to talk with them in person.
We have also built more automation into our playbook since office teams were inundated with additional tasks related to office reopenings and pandemic precautions. Specifically, we added automated emails and texts that invite prospects to click a link and schedule their own tour. Previously, leasing consultants would manually reach out to prospects via phone, email, or text to try and convert leads into a tour. Since implementing this automation, self-bookings have increased fourfold, which tells us that our prospects like having the ability to book their own tours. This also has reduced our team members’ workload during a stressful period and given them more time to focus on other tasks.
Consider the following Sequoia portfolio stats, which cover the period from April to August:
- Conversion ratio (lead to tour): 34%
- Gross closing ratio (tour to lease): 44.3%
- Net closing ratio (gross leases minus cancels and denials): 31%
- Lead-to-lease ratio: 15.1%
- Lead-to-move-in ratio: 10.6%
- Average availability: <4.5%
- Average occupancy: 94.8%
- Average in-place rents: +4%
It doesn’t appear that national averages are compiled for many of these metrics, but, based on our conversations with those in the industry, we believe that Sequoia’s performance in these areas compares favorably with other portfolios.
Moving Forward
The right CRM can boost your leasing efforts in multiple ways. First, if you design an effective CRM playbook, your leasing teams won’t be fumbling around with prospects, randomly completing tasks without a thought to what makes the most strategic sense at a given moment. Playbooks will make sure that your leasing teams are taking the right steps with the right prospects at the right time, and will allow you to build in triggers to improve efficiencies. And, in the end, a well-designed playbook is a powerful tool for finding what’s important to your prospects and delivering on that—and that’s what leasing is all about.
