There are several books that every property manager should read. One of the most important is The E-Myth by Michael Gerber.
The goal of the The E-Myth and this blog post is to help you as a business owner to shift from your business being entirely dependent upon your own personal skills to a business that is dependent upon a systematic process through which these skills can be transferred to anyone to whom you teach your system.
Why is this so important? Because the majority of small business owners and most property managers feel that they can’t take a break or go on vacation or ever leave their business because it is entirely dependent upon them and their skills.
If this is how you feel about your business, this book will help you start the process of shifting your thinking from skills to systems.
To understand how to shift your thinking from skills to systems, it is a good idea to first understand what a system is.
A system is defined as a set of things, actions, ideas and information that interact with each other, and in so doing, alter other systems. For example, if you do not have a system for selling, you are at the mercy of the property owner’s system for not buying and signing a property management contract with you.
What I have found is that most property managers don’t have a selling system. They wing it. They sell off the cuff. They react or respond to what the property owner or tenant says. They sell one way this week and another way two or three weeks from now. The best sellers in the property management business (or any successful business) have a system for how they sell. They have a scripted, practiced, presentation which they have memorized.
They know what points to cover and when to cover them as they approach the property owner, as they present their services as a property manager, and as they close the sale. In reality, it is an organized process that is set up so that the process of selling happens in the same way in the same order every single time.
Does this happen in your business? Do you and those you have hired handle objections the same way? Do you each handle all of the myriad of situations that come up as a property manager in the same way?
The thing I’ve realized over the years is that sales is a pretty predictable process. You are not going to have property owners give you objections tomorrow to concerns you’ve never heard before. The way you onboard a property can happen the same way every time.
If you are in any way wondering whether a sales system might be helpful in your property management business, I invite you to ask yourself this question: “What would happen if you overcame every objection and had the tools and resources to close the sale virtually every time?” Since this is the case, I have felt that it is best to train to anticipate objections that may come up.
If you can overcome the most common objections and those who work with you respond in the same ways, think about how much more powerful your sales efforts could be.
That is the power of an effective system. In the property management business, a system is a way of doing things to produce a marketing and a sales result. The system is the solution to get the results you want.
A great system has three characteristics:
- It leverages or magnifies people to the point at which they can produce extraordinary results consistently again and again (like the sales or property onboarding example I just mentioned).
- Every possible problem has been thought through and a solution is known and practiced by all who follow the system. For example, you have thought through, identified and have a solution for every maintenance issue that could come up in one of your properties and how you will handle it.
- Every part of the system is organized, has order, and every process is defined in detail. For example, when a property owner signs your property management agreement, everything that happens in the onboarding process, how you screen tenants, what happens when a tenant doesn’t pay the rent by the fifth, how you respond to any maintenance request, how you work with the owner to take care of maintenance and asset preservation for their property, how an owner is approached for referrals, etc. is all carefully defined and executed with a well-thought through and organized system. The goal of a great system is to give each property owner and tenant a consistent experience and value that meets and hopefully exceeds their expectations.
As a business owner in the property management industry, you should constantly be asking and thinking about this question: how can I improve my business so that it is systems dependent rather than people dependent?
We all like order. Order is the basis of having and executing a great system. When property owners first interact with you, they can sense how orderly you are by how you act. When they sense that your business is orderly and organized, their sense of risk disappears, and they feel they can trust you to manage their property.
This allows you to utilize your system of selling to help the owner find exactly what they are looking for and help them have an incredible experience as they interact and work with you and your systems.
When you refine operations to improve how the systems in your business work, you are working on your business, not just in it. The PMI franchise is designed to help you do just that. To schedule an appointment to see how a PMI franchise can benefit you, schedule an appointment here: https://calendly.com/pmifranchising
