The Property Management Show

Fourandhalf’s Marie Tepman, Interviewed by Marc Cunningham on the PM Build Property Management Business Podcast Marc Cunningham, from Grace Property Management and PM Build, invited Marie onto his podcast to talk about artificial intelligence (AI) and its role in property management marketing. Specifically, the discussion revolved around getting more owner leads for property managers. In an environment where budgets are shrinking and a lot of property managers are still unsure about AI, this discussion provides some clarity. Here’s what was discussed. Property Management Marketing and Gaining Owner Leads One of the biggest challenges all property management companies deal with is bringing new owner client leads into the company. How do you drive more leads into your company? The big catchphrase now is AI. Should property management companies use AI? How can these tools be used? It’s a big umbrella in property management marketing, but first, let’s talk about the simple fact of how to get more owner leads. What’s the big picture? Leads are online. So, property management companies need a good presence online. This starts with a website. And while some companies build business through referrals, online marketing is the next step. To really get started attracting owner leads to your property management company, you need a website and you need content. Marc remembers saying “no thanks” to a company that tried to sell them on a website in the early 1990s. He though as long as he had his Yellow Pages ad, he’d be fine. Things have changed. A property management company’s website and content serve reputation. Reputation is important because you want people to vouch for you. Before buying a product or service, consumers are going to look at reviews. They’re going to want to see how many stars are on your Google rating. If you don’t have any testimonials or reviews, people might think that’s suss (suspicious, for the over-45 crowd). If a prospective owner finds your website but no one online is talking about you, there may be hesitation. You have to show that you’re trustworthy. After you have established your website and your reputation, you need content. Content and Property Management Marketing for Owner Leads The literal meaning of content is anything with words on your website. At Fourandhalf, we’re more interested in quality content. When someone who has just inherited a home needs help renting that home out, they’re not going to go online and search for a property management company. A lot of them might not even know that property management is a service that’s provided professionally. Instead, they’re going to go online and search how to find a tenant or how much rent to charge. Property management content is not selling your business. It’s not telling anyone how long you’ve been in business, and it’s not bragging about how great you are. It’s showing prospective owners that you can be trusted. It’s showing value. Any company can say they’re great. It doesn’t mean anything to your prospect. They have a problem and they want to solve it. When you’re a problem solver, you’re providing quality content. The hero of the story is the always the customer. When you show up to offer solutions, you want to make it obvious to the owner that this is why your service can help. That allows the owner to remain the hero. As the property management expert, you’re the helper getting them what they need. Don’t be the hero. Be the helper. That’s a big concept that needs to be adopted when it comes to content. Serve, don’t show off. When an owner clicks on the how-to content, they’ll find it helpful. It’s educational. So, when they get to the end of what they’ve read or watched, they’ll see who provided the content. Trust is established. Should You Just Use AI to Create Content? Maybe property managers don’t have time to create content. Is this where AI can be helpful? Can you ask AI to write a blog on how to collect rent and then throw it on your website? You can. And this is why generative AI is so deceptively awesome. When Marie first discovered ChatGPT and what it did, she feared the end of marketing had arrived. It seemed like original content would no longer be necessary. But, the more she dug into what this tool is, the more she realized its limitations as well as its uses. The technology goes to its library of what’s already been written. If you want to use content that’s completely AI-created, you’ll end up with just an okay blog. But, we are no longer in the year 2000. Having a website is not special because everyone has one. Creating content is also not special; more and more property managers are doing it. So, if you want to put your property management company’s name on a machine-generated blog that lacks originality and authenticity, you can. But don’t expect great results. If you want to do better than a mediocre blog that could have been written by anyone, the human touch is still required. How to Use AI as a Marketing Tool Use AI as a sounding board or a starting off point. In trying to write content, people fail to realize it’s not about the words on the page or how many times property management was mentioned. It’s about placing the seed of an idea in your reader. Remember that people are looking for solutions. An AI-generated blog may provide information, but it does not provide any credibility. You want to make an impression with quality, professional content. When you add the personal stories and your own expertise to the writing, you gain trust and credibility. AI tools cannot give you the credibility or the authenticity. They can give you words. AI can be used when you feel like you’ve run out of ideas or when you’re not sure how to cover a topic in a new way. As a property manager, maybe you’ve written about rent control a hundred times and you just don’t know what a new angle might be. Put your thoughts into AI and see what you get. It won’t be a blog, but it may be a phrase or a sentence that sets something off in your mind and sends you down the path towards new content around a subject you know well. AI can help you get to your own ideas faster. When Marie tells the generative system that she’s looking for a fresh idea around a topic, she shares all the ideas she has. It suggests a lot of things, and 95 percent is not usable. It’s up to her, as the human, to find that grain of inspiration. Sometimes it’s a full idea that she’s able to pull out. Sometimes it’s just a phrase. Here’s an example Marie shared: When she was scheduled to speak at NARPM National 2023, she wanted to talk about marketing and attracting owner leads. It’s a tried and true topic that she had discussed many times, and she didn’t want to bore an audience who had likely heard her speak about this before. She had a post-it note on her desk that she’d had for years which reads: It doesn’t matter how good you are, because if you don’t get discovered, no one will ever know you existed in the first place. She put that into ChatGPT as part of a bunch of other ideas she also fed to the system. It suggested, somewhere, talking about how property managers start off invisible. Marie leaned into that, and many edits later, she had a talk that started with the phrase: “From Invisible to Irresistible.” She didn’t let AI write her speech. And she might have come up with that title on her own eventually. But, this is a good example of how AI can be a useful tool but not an author. Think of it as a collaborator and a companion. Think of it as a tool. Just like any tool, you have to know how to use it. Keeping Content Personal If you’re not doing any content creation, and you’re happy just to have a website and that’s all you want to do, then AI can create posts for your site. But recognize that it’s not going to be the best quality. It’s not going to be personal. Most importantly: it won’t give you the owner leads you want. AI is not scary, and it sets a very low bar. It takes what everyone else thinks and puts it out there. Your job when marketing for owner leads is to decide how can you be different? You can give your professional opinion in original, high-quality content. AI won’t give an opinion. It can’t because it’s not a property manager. AI cannot bring wisdom to the table. It cannot compete with professionalism or offer professional opinions. Property managers need to remember that. Your content is your professional opinion. Google’s Thoughts on AI and SEO Another big question Marie gets a lot is whether using AI will provide an edge SEO-wise. The answer is no. Google’s algorithm updates all the time, and it basically says that their algorithm prioritizes helpful content and useful, authentic content. Their stance on AI is that they don’t care. Let’s think of it like a cake. If you’re asked to bring a cake to a potluck, maybe you’ll spend a full day making everything from scratch. Or, maybe you’ll buy a cake from a store. When you show up to the potluck, people will be very excited about the homemade cake. They might judge the store-bought cake. But it really comes down to taste. How does the cake taste? Google doesn’t care if it’s homemade or store-bought. They care if it tastes good. If you’re a property manager thinking about marketing for owner leads, maybe you’ll find a middle ground. You’ll buy a cake mix from the store but then add your own flavors and personal touches to that mix, creating an original cake that tastes great. Don’t focus on the how. Focus on the what. Action Items for Property Managers If you’re not doing any content, here’s what you should do tomorrow: Go through emails and online chats and see what owners are asking. What questions do they ask and what problems do they have? Make a list. With that list of topics, start thinking about whether you have personal stories and professional opinions related to these topics. Create content providing solutions to that

Can vendor bidding solutions like RoDevia Brigham’s Proposabid create more transparency and detect fraud? That’s where we left off during Part 1 of this discussion on The Property Management Show. Let’s pick up the conversation about how the bidding process is broken, and how property managers can avoid wasting time and money. Here’s Part 2. How has Proposabid Contributed to Fraud Detection? When RoDevia was talking with her partner, they discussed how a lot of vendors would inflate pricing or maybe there would be work that was needed but didn’t really have to be done in the particular way that a vendor believed, or at a higher price point. There are a couple of specific cases that she was able to detect, and she cautions owners and property managers that things like this could be happening without them knowing about it: On-site staff may claim that work is necessary, or they’ll be billing you for work that may not be completed or required. If you’re an owner in Arizona with properties in Tennessee, you may not know that what you’re being told isn’t true. If your manager is overstretched and has 76 different properties to manage, she may not know that 34 doors need to be replaced in a specific way at one property. There could also be a conflict of interest or some self-dealing going on. Staff or property managers may use companies they own. In San Francisco, we had a cleaning company that got a $15,000 per month contract at one property for 150 doors. It was on-site staff that was registered and had an EIN. Family members worked at this company, and they managed to claim contracts across other properties for almost $500,000 over three years without the owner knowing. There was no bidding process at all. If you have a third party that doesn’t have a dog in the fight and can source bids for you in timely fashion and has comparables for you, the process is fully transparent. Proposabid also posts their bids online so other vendors can compare. Any number of issues can crop up when a company is just assigning someone to source bids who isn’t qualified to do it or is too busy to give it the necessary attention. Challenges for Property Managers in Analyzing and Comparing Bids Let’s say a property manager does manage to get some bids. Now it’s time to analyze and compare them. What are some of the challenges and issues would a company face at that point in time? First, RoDevia would be wondering if you have enough bids. When you do, you have to ask if the bids have expired to the point where they’re no longer viable. One of the main things she has noticed is that property managers won’t necessarily know what the vendor does not offer. For example, there was a hazmat fentanyl situation at a property, and the building had to be closed down. Police were involved. To get bids for the cleaning, you also have to think about what the vendors are not offering in those bids. Proposabid needed to analyze that particular piece. What all five vendors didn’t offer was to post drug testing. Can you post it once it’s clean? Also, what about repairs and renovations after the cleaning. It might be necessary to tear into a wall. Asbestos and lead testing might be necessary depending on what’s found when you do open up the wall. Always consider whether you know what you need beyond the bids themselves. This is the most challenging part. Another challenge can be the number of hands in the pot. If you have a board or an HOA, there could be some extra time needed. One HOA client had three good bids, but they wanted more. That’s fine, but the three best bids are still going to be the three best bids. So, who is making the decision? Can you get in touch with the right people at the right time? The person receiving the bid probably cannot sign off on the awarding of that bid. Often, staff does not know what they’re looking at or what the next move is. Another example: RoDevia had a client with seven roofs. Four had allegedly been replaced and three more needed to be replaced. But as she gathered the bids from roofers, all of them pointed out that one of the four actually had not been replaced by the original vendor. Because of her RFP process, all the vendors bidding went out to have a look, and they all reported that four roofs actually needed replacing, not three. So, is there a lawsuit with the previous vendor, and how do we prove this? It’s proven with the bids. Multiple roofers confirmed it. So now the owner has to decide whether to pay for three roofs or four. The challenges are everywhere. What you want is someone who will strive to get you in line to make the next decision and help you narrow down the options so you can make educated decisions. Property Managers or Owners: Who Is Making Decisions? Even after good bids have been gathered and all of the information makes sense, someone has to make a decision. Marie asked RoDevia in her experience, who should bear the brunt of making the decision? Each relationship is different, and in the property management world, it can play out any way. The property manager is representing the property and has the authority as outlined in their operating agreement. Many owners want their manager to handle it for the purposes of efficiency and expertise. They’re just not there and they just don’t know. And, if the property manager has relationships established and the expertise that’s needed, it’s an easy call. But, there are a lot of owners who want to make the final decision, especially if it is financially impactful. So in this case, a property manager would gather bids and present them. The owner gives the final approval. In a mom-and-dad situation or with independent owners, it’s whoever has the resources and the bandwidth to make the decision. It’s also how did the vendor make them feel. That gut feel aspect along with the warranty and the expertise and quality assurance and safety record and insurance all counts. Bidding and Documentation Documentation is always your friend, so document the bidding process. The problem is that over the last few years, RoDevia has noticed that documentation is all over the place. It’s in emails. It’s in a text. It’s in a voicemail. There’s no real solid database where all parties will go to find the same information, and that’s something Proposabid has built in for clients. Here’s how Proposabid works at a high level: They get to the property and do an intake. They create an RFP. That RFP is marketed out to their vendors. They gather those bids and aggregate them. Those bids are submitted to the property and the property makes a decision. The process is completed in 15 business days or less. This works for a $15,000 bid or a $3.5 million bid. It covers office remodels, concrete, and whatever needs to be done. Looking to the Future for Property Management and Vendor Bidding What do you need to know about future trends? RoDevia shares lessons from the field: Cash for Bids. This is starting to happen more and more, and it will be devastating for property management companies. Vendors are looking for cash deposits and payments up front to secure the bid. Those payments can be several thousands of dollars. And that’s just to get the bid. Some of these things have to do with reduced risk of nonpayment. (It’s highly recommended to pay your vendors on time). This will probably not become a gold standard. Some vendors may adopt it, but overall it shouldn’t be normalized because of client pushback. Rising Costs. When projects are delayed or bids are incomplete, costs rise, and that is a huge burden on the budget. More so than it was five years ago. For commercial buildings, the average increase is 5 to 8 percent per year on labor expenses and materials. There are also continued supply chain challenges. For multifamily buildings, that rate of increase is 6 to 10 percent annually. Inflation pressure is outrageous. A project costing $90,000 four years ago would be $124,000 now. Get your properties in order. Get your bids organized. One big recommendation RoDevia has is to be honest with your vendors. This will protect your reputation. When you’re sourcing your bids, be honest if you’re just shopping for bids. We always let our vendors know when we’re just budgeting only. A client may simply need some numbers. So you’ll just get the quote not the full breakdown. If you just go fishing and then never award bids, your reputation is damaged. Mitigate around that and be honest about your intentions once you do have bids. Each estimate costs about a hundred dollars an hour, so most vendors will give a bid even if they know they won’t necessarily win the award. They know up front that they might not get any work from it, but there’s still a bid in place that may be honored later. It actually lowers costs for the client. If any of our listeners want to learn more about the bidding process or what to look out for, visit Proposabid.com. And if you have property management marketing or reputation questions, contact us at Fourandhalf. LinkedInThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.First Name(Required)Last Name(Required)Email(Required) Phone(Required)Company NameComments or QuestionsThis field is hidden when viewing the formDate MM slash DD slash YYYY <> The post PART 2: Why the Vendor Bidding Process Is Broken (and What It’s Costing Property Managers) appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.

It’s been a long time since we put out an episode of The Property Management Show and today we’re excited to talk with RoDevia Brigham, the founder and CEO of Proposabid. The vendor bidding process is an entire industry on its own, and this is a topic we have not covered before on the podcast. Introducing RoDevia and Proposabid Proposabid does bids and estimations for properties and repairs across US. Their niche client base is property management companies, real estate investors, and mom-and-pop investors. They work with people who do not know how to go about sourcing bids for work. The idea for this company came from a shower moment. RoDevia’s background is in computer science and IT, specifically cyber security. She has an approach to her work that follows an “if this, then that” process. She’s always thinking about how to automate things. While in the shower, she asked her partner an important question: What could she automate if she could automate anything in her day as a property manager? The answer was: bidding. She said if she could just get good bids that reflected apples for apples, and those bids came in on time, and vendors would pick up the phone and submit things relevant to the work that needs to be done, then she could submit those to her property owners who could make financially responsible decisions. That, she said, would be great. RoDevia took all of that seriously, knowing it was an everyday problem for her partner’s clients. Four years later, Proposabid is doing the work that needs to be done. Property Management’s Vendor Bidding Problem The vendor bidding process in property management is essentially broken RoDevia believes. While it seems like most property managers know their vendors and have good relationships in place, why would bidding be necessary at all? RoDevia and her company focus on projects that need three bids, minimum. The process at a high level looks like this: A property manager has to contact the three companies Three different prices are submitted Proposals have to be gathered The lowest bidder is selected But in that process, there are some key items that a property management company’s staff might not be familiar with or cannot do. The phone calls and the emails go back and forth. Then, there’s the hurry up and wait while those bids come in. This can be immediate, but usually it takes a couple of weeks. Sometimes, you won’t get the bids in at all. When those do bids come in, you have to compare them: Are they apples for apples? Do they come with the right warranty? Are they offering considerations or concessions? Is scope of work correct for the price? Are the vendors even qualified? Are they in a database for licensing and insurance? Then, you may need to make corrections to the bid, and that could include going back to the phone calls and the emails. Bids are re-submitted and reconsidered. Once you have something everyone agrees on, a property manager will go ahead and submit those bids to your property owner or the landlord, and together you might decide on the vendor. That process alone can take a couple of weeks or months or in some cases, it may not even get done. Someone has to be responsible for this process. It could be a director or an asset manager or an office manager. Maybe you have in-house maintenance folks who are taking all of these bids and working on the information. This can add up to 10 hours a week, which might cost 400 to 520 hours per year. All of that labor comes with no guarantee that those bids are even getting done, and those are hours that can be utilized elsewhere in your business. Financially, the costs of a broken bidding process can be $30,000 to $40,000 lost purely on bid management. When you’re considering the roofers, the asphalt, the mold remediation, building codes, and things like that, you have to consider how the vendor bidding process looks across multiple owners. Property management staff is busy collecting rent and going to court and dealing with residents. They may not have the time to deal with this process across all the properties you manage. Standardization is necessary but not always present when it comes to RFPs and bidding. If you don’t have a consistent and standard Request for Proposal (RFP), how do you attract the right vendors? You need to understand project requirements and have direct comparables, otherwise staff will have trouble closing on those bids. There’s also the problem of limited reach. Vendors may not be responding to calls or emails, and time is wasted. Owners might find themselves facing fines and penalties because inspections and permits are expiring. You might choose the first bid that comes along out of desperation, which might not be the right one. There’s sometimes a lack of transparency. If you don’t have the right vendors in place and the right RFPs in place, you don’t have the transparency you need. You’re getting the only bids that you can and that’s not the best thing to do. Proposabid has two clients: the vendors and the property owners. The business is run anticipating what they each need. That’s the part that’s broken, RoDevia says. Taking responsibility off the plates of the property managers and handing it over to a third party who can take the time to make this process work is the way to fix it. This is all they do at Proposabid; her team can allocate time and resources to some of the most important aspects of property management. Project Management for the Bidding Process The bidding process requires a lot of project management and knowledge. Bidding happens for bigger ticket items. Maintenance coordinators within a property management company may be in charge of communicating with vendors over day-to-day preventative maintenance and immediate repairs that are needed at a rental property. Larger projects are anything that requires three bids or more. These might be insurance claims or capital improvements. They’re often projects that will cost between $50,000 and several millions of dollars. If you have to lay asphalt or concrete or you need a new roof or you’re installing adjustable arms for your parking garage, you need to source out those bids. Property managers may have on-site staff that can do the sourcing, but it’s going to depend on the property and the project. RoDevia offered a couple of statistics that show why time can be wasted and inefficiencies can be present in this part of the property management process. Thirty (30) percent of vendors will actually submit a proposal when asked. Why is it that when properties are calling vendors, they’re not responsive? Part of it has to do with there not being an RFP, or the RFP is too vague. If a vendor has no information to work with, they’re not going to submit bids. It may be resource constraints, and vendors don’t have time to respond to those bids. Or, they’re focused on other bids that have a higher dollar amount, or are found in better neighborhoods. Vendors also tend not to submit to properties with a poor reputation. Let’s say you had a roofing project you needed done two years ago and you sourced and collected bids but never awarded anyone a contract. Four years later you’re re-asking for bids from these same folks, but they’re not going to trust that you’re actually going to award a bid. There’s a lack of trust. Some bids may vary by as much as 150 percent. How can this be? It may have to do with contractor overhead, or it could be the market conditions or the bidding strategy. Insurance costs are going up, for example. There’s office space and labor to pay for. If a contractor has high administrative costs, their bid can be 30 to 50 percent higher than others. When we talk about market conditions impacting the bidding process, there might be a scarcity of materials and labor shortages. There’s inflation. Bidding is also seasonal. A roofing bid in Wisconsin during November will be much lower than it might be in the spring. Bidding strategies depend on the company. Larger and established firms may have a 20 to 40 percent buffer while smaller and newer companies might be more competitive. The Importance of the RFP and Scope of Work Marie thought she had a roof issue, but it turned out to be a mold issue. Looking for roofers took time, and there were drastically different bids from two roofers. The mold problem had to be addressed immediately, so by working with Proposabid, seven or eight bids came in within a few days. There was a discrepancy with pricing. With RoDevia’s help, Marie could create a matrix to compare how much each company was actually charging for the inspection and all the add-ons and testing fees. After reviewing the matrix, it turned out that the vendor who seemed most expensive was actually cheaper because the quote was all-inclusive. There was time and effort requirement for one home. For a property manager sourcing bids for an apartment complex, it can be difficult to understand what you’re looking at when you have all these bids with up to a 150 percent variance in pricing. How do you choose? RoDevia says it depends on who is spending the money and what that person values. The RFP is the dog whistle that gets the clear information to attract the right vendors. Maybe the client values expertise. Or certifications. Communication might be most important when choosing a vendor. Customer service. By sourcing at least five to seven bids, there’s a better chance of finding a vendor that will provide what’s needed and valued. It requires the right RFP. A strong RFP and the sequential cadence on contacting vendors and giving them what they need will make a big difference. Maybe it’s floor plans or drawings or blueprints or recommendations from state or city. When you receive those bids, take your top four bids with the good pricing, the right warranties, appropriate itemization, and an understanding of what they do and won’t do. It depends on what does the client valu

Welcome back to The Property Management Show. On today’s episode, we’re talking to an expert on mergers and acquisitions, who has specific experience in property management. We’re talking to Scott Duke, of OpnRoad. He’s talking about the things that make a difference in the sale of a property management company. Your buyer and your profit will depend a lot on your contracts, your efficiency, and your team. Introducing Scott Duke Scott and his wife bought and ran a property management company in Revenstoke, Canada. They grew their company for seven years and then sold it for 10 times the amount of what they bought it for. The company was sold to Western Trust, a private equity company out of Utah. Before that, he worked at a property management company in Ontario. He has experience working with three-person companies and those that have a staff of 25. His story of buying and selling that Canadian property management company is a bit of a cautionary tale. When they bought the company, there were 30 properties under management. Out of those 30 properties, only six had proper contracts with the owners. It wasn’t a sellable asset when they took it over. But, what they really wanted to buy were the brand and the website, and otherwise it felt like they were starting from scratch. It was not a massive acquisition. Scott realized that he thought property management meant taking care of people’s properties, but really, he was managing finances. It’s a cash in – cash out business model, and he had to make sure his owners had the money they needed for their mortgage payments. One specific event triggered his desire to sell that company. It was Christmas Day in 2016 or 2017, and he was under a trailer, defrosting pipes so the family living there could have water on Christmas. That’s when he realized he didn’t want to own the company anymore. When the owner is under a trailer with frozen pipes, you know that the company relies too heavily on that owner. So, he spent three years making it an acquirable asset. Scott wanted the company to be something that someone would want to buy. The starting point? Making the business less dependent on Scott. Making a Property Management Company Less Owner-Dependent Scott says it’s all mindset. At OpnRoad, Scott and his team sell businesses. They work within all industries, but a lot of businesses they sell are property management companies. They all have to get to a certain size before they can be sold. So, he’s talking about owner dependency all the time. How do you remove yourself from that dependency? Scott says you will be trapped in your business until the business cracks through the million or two million revenue mark. Until that point, there’s just not enough cash in the business to pay to replace yourself. You are buying your time and you’re buying your freedom. You want to focus on yourself as a business owner, not a business operator. A lot of owners get hung up on the idea that no one can do what they do as well as they do it. Scott tells entrepreneurs to embrace that. It’s true. But, it won’t be that way forever. The person you hire isn’t going to be as good as you on Day One. The training and the investment into that person makes them as good as you. His slogan is this: Every Day a Step Away. You’re getting a further step away from operating your business every single day. How to Avoid Hiring Bad Apples A lot of business owners worry about investing time and training into someone who may not work out. Having hired across 11 companies with a total of more than 200 staff, Scott understands that bad apples do get into the bunch once in a while. He has a specific model: Be a good leader: Make yourself better. The people you attract to your company will be 70 percent as good as you are. Humans only want to work with people who are further along than them and achieving more. They want to grow to your level. So, to get good people, you need to be a better person. Invest in your education. Become a leader locally through volunteer work. Grow personally and develop professionally. Have a good marketing package: You want to attract good people to your business. You’re posting a job into a competitive labor market. Stand out with marketing materials that will attract better people to your job and your company. Otherwise, you’re recruiting from other companies to find good talent. Retain those good people: You want to keep your best employees by having consistent operations and good training within your business. You want a solid and positive company culture full of people who are happy to be there. All of this stuff is hard, he cautions. But, the drudgery for the rest of your life is worse. How do you avoid the employees you don’t want to work with? Scott has two ideas: Run them through psychometric testing. You can use different models like PSIU or Myers Briggs. This will ensure you have the right person for the job. If you’ve never done this type of testing before, go into that rabbit hole. You need to know personality traits. The type of person who excels at bookkeeping is different from the person who excels at leasing and showings. And, a lot of people don’t know themselves. Test to find out what they don’t know. Get them to do some work before you formally hire them. Offer trial work, for which they will be paid, and see how they do before you make an official offer. When you get the A player, your life changes. So does your company. What Property Management Owners Need to Know about Selling Scott says the most important thing you can remember if you want to sell your company is that you’re selling contracts. You’re selling future cash flow streams that come through contractual agreements. If your contracts aren’t in good shape, you don’t have a saleable company. Contract quality matters. Recently, a sale was delayed by over 4 months because a property management company’s contracts were outdated, expired, or not even signed. Term and contract length is the value of your business. You need a good staff. You need a good reputation. But, your buyers will look at your contracts before they make an offer. Scott also reminds company owners that you cannot sell to someone smaller than you. That won’t maximize your value. When you’re selling to a company that’s bigger, they’re probably more sophisticated and organized. If you don’t have everything in place, those companies won’t want to acquire you. What about the team? Buyers are acquiring teams of people as well as contracts. This is especially important now, when finding good talent is so difficult. Good operators of companies are hard to find. People will buy companies just to get management teams and technicians. But, here’s the truth: company buyers are only going to care about bringing on the good team members. They probably already have good team. They won’t want your mediocre people. Efficiency is important, too. When your profit margin is above average, you’ll earn above average on the sale. You’re showing that you’re more efficient and your buyer will know that they get to keep more of the money that the company makes. That’s attractive. Is technology the answer to efficiency? Technology is a big part of the efficiency bullet, especially when you’re looking at your profit and loss statement. Most property management companies can see that people are their biggest expenditure. Property management is a service business, and humans are delivering that service. So, while technology can help you be more efficient and profitable, you need to have people in place who can leverage that technology. Otherwise, you’re just spending money on new software and systems and it’s not improving anything. If your people aren’t being as efficient as they should be, they need to be trained better. Scott put everything on iPads so the team could take photos and notes and keep everything in the same place. Leases were digitized. He has nine people running a business that should require 20 employees. This is possible because they’re more efficient and they know how to use technology. Preparing to Sell Your Property Management Business: Your Timeline Once deciding to sell a business, an owner can sometimes just check out, feeling done with it all. But, it should be the other way around. If you decide to sell and you want to maximize the value of your company, put in the work. Scott says it depends on the timeline, and also acknowledges that most people don’t want to do the work. Property management companies are in high demand right now. So even if your business isn’t in the best shape, you’ll be able to sell it. Clean up your contracts and get the financials in order, and you can sell. If you’re planning to sell within a year, just get the basics taken care of. If you’re planning to sell in three to five years, it’s worth the effort to build that business into something even better. Then, sell it for more. You’ll make more money now, and as your business begins to work better, you’ll have more free time. You can really move the dial if you have a few years to work on this. A million dollar company can increase their valuation by $200,000. If you’re a five million dollar company, expect to move that dial by $1.5 million or even $2 million. A 10 million dollar company might move the dial by $5 million. Exit Strategies: Who Will Buy You? Scott has a guide that breaks down who the likely buyers are for your company. He offers earnings thresholds as an easy way to understand what’s possible. If you’ve got $250,000 in earnings, you’re probably selling to an individual owner/operator. If you have earnings that hit $500,000 to $1 million, you could sell to private equity firms as well as strategic buyers. Anything over $2 million in earnings, and you can sell to anyone. You unlock different buyer classes as your company grows. These buyers are not that different under the hood, but the way you earn money will be a bit different. A strategic buyer w

Amy Harrison is a sales and marketing copywriter from the U.K. and an expert in storytelling. After hearing her speak at a marketing conference and finding the information invaluable, we invited her onto The Property Management Show to talk about the evolution of marketing content and copywriting and how AI can help with persuasive copy, as long as you’re finessing the message with the information that only you have. Amy Harrison’s Background Amy thought she wanted to be a screenwriter for film and television, but quickly burned out at a young age and decided to pursue other things for a while. Then, she found her way back to writing and began working for a private investment firm that bought and sold online businesses. She describes it as flipping businesses, and that’s what brought her back into content writing and copywriting. When she discovered the psychology around sales copywriting, she knew she wanted to help businesses tell stories and build credibility. Amy says that her training as a screenwriter helped with her sales copywriting because it’s always important to write for the reader. If someone does not want to keep reading, you’ve lost them. You need to make sure they’ll read beyond the headline. Tracking the Evolution of Sales and Marketing Copywriting Amy remembers the early days of copywriting, when everything was very SEO-driven and it seemed like her job was to cram every page full of keywords. The idea was to reach people and to provide as much information as possible. It was more of a transactional exchange. People found there were better ways to have a sales conversation, and the content improved. Businesses have realized that not all content needs to sound like sales and marketing content. There’s a lot more awareness of what marketing and copywriting can do. The struggle, though, has not evolved much. Amy says that large companies with million dollar marketing budgets have the same desire as the freelance photographer with no marketing budget: to sell themselves and to stand out. The process has evolved, but the problem sales copywriters are trying to solve is the same. Umbrella Terms versus Storytelling with Copy and Content How is it done well? While trying to talk about what makes them different, a lot of companies will end up sounding like every other business. They’ll use generic words, and they’ll try to talk about everything they do all at once. Amy calls those umbrella terms, and she advises companies to be bold and to expand their comfort zones outside of those same words and phrases that are always used. The fear factor will sometime set in. You want to stand apart from your competition, but do you really want to be different? Storytelling can be powerful, but it’s harder to write a story than it is to create a list of benefits. You have to earn the right to get someone’s attention. How do you do that? Amy asks us to think about it from the first piece of content – whether it’s a headline or the first few seconds of your video or the introduction in your email. Speak directly to the person you’re trying to reach. Think of yourself in a crowded room at a party. You’ll hear lots of conversations, and you’re not tuned into any of them. But if you hear your name, that will immediately get your attention. You cannot call your customers by their name in your content, but you can work harder to make the content more relevant. You want them to feel like you’re talking directly to them. Think about how to write the conversation that your customer is having in their mind right now. What are they thinking about in that moment as they approach your blog or your email? Here are a couple of examples: If you’re trying to attract a client who is moving, your headline might be “Should You Sell Or Rent Your Home?” It’s not a dramatic title, but it is a title that will speak directly to someone who is trying to answer that very question for themselves. You’re sparking an awareness that they need you. If you’re trying to attract people who are displeased with their current management company, your headline might be “Does Your Heart Sink When Your Property Manager Calls You?” Someone out there does experience that feeling when their manager calls. They’re going to read your blog. Think about audience when you begin to tell your story. Are they new to renting out homes? Are they very frustrated? What’s already on their mind? Get their attention and pull them along. This is like calling their name out in a crowd. A story is only boring when it’s irrelevant, so think about what’s pressing and relevant to the people you’re trying to reach. You can also use symptoms of the problem. What are some warning lights that your audience can see? You can suggest that there’s a problem they might not be aware of yet, and your copywriting can indicate that the problem is bigger than they think. That will get their attention, too. Your prospective clients might not know what the problem is, but they’ll recognize the symptoms. A good headline might be: “Is Poor Maintenance Making You Liable?” Artificial Intelligence and Copywriting When asked about AI, Amy says it’s a fantastic tool that’s interesting. It can save time and spit out generic content. It cannot reach your audience like a person who understands the audience can. AI can help people go from zero content to some content. But, when you read something generated by AI, there’s always that feeling that it’s not quite right. What it lacks is personal nuance. AI will not help you write exceptional copy. And, it’s not thinking about your customer. Think about how quickly you can recognize tone in a customer’s email. Your response has to have the context that matches that tone. As humans, we can do that in a second. All that nuance and understanding of psychology and how to apply it does not exist with AI. You know your customer, your brand, your style, and your tone. Your content should sound like that. AI is a good tool for getting started, but it’s similar to those umbrella terms. You’re not going to get anything original, and you’re not going to stand out if you use it on its own. There’s a rhythm to human language that’s different from that of AI-generated language. Amy says it sounds to her like a 15-year-old is trying to write something formal and impressive. Usually try to get AI to simplify things. If I had spent 10 minutes to simplify myself, better email. Use AI to save time by gathering notes into a summary. But, when you’re building your messaging, don’t sacrifice that personal nuance that only you know. You need to hear the language that is used. The summary that AI provides is often a good starting point. It’s better than looking at a blank page. If you can go ahead and rewrite what’s been provided, you can publish something that’s original and well-crafted. You need your own brain in order to complete good copy. You can ask AI to give you 10 benefits of property management. Some of it won’t be quite right. Some of it won’t be applicable. But, you can build off of that into something that’s a meaningful message for a potential client. Writing Persuasive Copy without Over-Selling Amy reminds us that you can have quality content even if your purpose is not to persuade. Sometimes, content is just entertaining. It’s simply informational. The goal of persuasive content is to help someone feel, think, and ultimately do something. There’s an output you want. Every piece of content we put out has to be quality, and it can also help to persuade. Answering a question is not necessarily persuasive copywriting, but it can give a customer confidence in you, which ultimately leads to them hiring you. You don’t have to convince someone to do something in every piece of content. But, you do want all of your messaging to reinforce that you can be trusted. This will help them feel more at ease with you. Always be driven by your customer’s needs. And don’t be too sales-driven. Think of yourself at a party. When someone talks about themselves for a full hour, do you want to talk to them again? Probably not. When someone asks you a few questions about yourself and then drops a recommendation or two, do you want to talk to them again? Probably yes. You can have the same effect in marketing and content. Whether you’re writing an email or FAQs, you need to ask what your customer needs to know in this moment in time. What do they need? If they’re about to sign a management contract, they need transparency and confidence. AI can’t provide that. This comes from the research. From talking to customers. Companies that are brave enough to actively seek feedback will have better growth. Their marketing will sound different and speak to those customers. This comes from listening. Amy reads the freeform text from customer surveys and reviews and she lifts actual words from those reviews when she’s writing copy for customers. Those are huge insights. Amy calls it looking under rocks, and she said AI will always miss those golden moments and major message points. This makes the difference in your marketing. Reaching Multiple Audiences with Content Property managers are using their messaging to reach multiple audiences, and Amy says that the best way to reach those unique groups of customers is to keep things simple. When they arrive on the home page of your website, make sure they know which adventure to choose. Then, create different content for each different need. The pain points will be different. The goals will be different. Someone renting out their first home will need different stories than someone growing a portfolio. Think about it like this: If this person was standing in front of you, how would you speak? You’d be more reassuring with the first-time landlord. You’d be prepared with facts and figures for an investor with a growing portfolio. Show that your company has range. Then, offer the specifics. Provide stories that are relevant to each customer. This takes extra

PJ Clay, the Director of Client and Partner Services at Rental Beast, joins us on The Property Management Show to discuss the company’s role as the rental MLS, and how they provide back-end technology to MLS associations across the United States and Canada. We also discussed whether this type of technology can help or hurt property managers. PJ says it helps. Introducing Rental Beast Rental Beast calls itself the rental MLS. It provides back-end technology to MLS associations in certain markets throughout the U.S. and Canada. The Multiple Listing Service (MLS) is highly customizable, but also built for the For Sale side of the real estate industry. Rental Beast knows that rentals are different. The process of renting is different from the process of buying and selling. So, they built the technology that can integrate rental listings. MLS members can add or search for rental listings. The second piece of this technology is a productivity suite of tools making it easier for property managers and real estate agents to access lead generation, lead qualification, and rental applications. At the core of this technology is a very large database of rental listings. Members of Rental Beast have access to 12 million active listings in the U.S. and Canada at any given time. Putting all the rental listings into one database is the central part of our technology. Members can get as close as possible to reaching 100 percent of their market. Accessing Reliable Data and Listings for Rental Markets Rental Beast is currently working with MLS associations in cities like Boston, where they’re based, Chicago, Raleigh, Miami, Colorado Springs, Toronto, and other markets. They’re actively growing, too, because the demand for this platform has increased. With home sales still out of reach and unaffordable for so much of the market, people are renting. Having the technology for real estate professionals to make the rental process easier has driven that growth. So, where does the data come from? Where do they gather their listings? The rental market is fragmented. On the general MLS, you have 80 or 90 percent of available homes for sale on that site. Not all rental listings go onto the MLS, however. Some cities will include rentals on the MLS, but even then you’re only getting about 40 percent of the rental market listed. Rentals come onto the database from a lot of different sources. The Rental Beast database integrates with property management software. So, platforms like Appfolio, Yardi, RentTech, and Buildium can use Rental Beast as a syndication destination. Any listings on those software sites can be shared with Rental Beast. The other piece is more difficult and labor intensive. These are rental listings that aren’t found on the MLS or on any property management software sites. Staff at Rental Beast must find the listings and then make actual phone calls to owners and property managers to verify them. PJ says it took 10 years to build the process the right way. They’re calling any listing that doesn’t come from the MLS or property management software. It’s a huge undertaking, but it’s necessary to avoid scams. There are also a lot of details that are confirmed for those listings; they ask if there’s an agent compensation fee, what the showing instructions are, and how a tenant can access an application. These listings have to be updated every week or two, depending on the location. If they cannot get a verbal confirmation that the listing is active, it gets dropped from the database. Are These Listings Professionally Managed? The majority of listings on Rental Beast are not managed by professional managers or real estate professionals. They’re managed by the property owners themselves. PJ believes this is hyper-local. He says that in Boston, property management firms aren’t as recognized or understood as they are in other markets. If a real estate investor owns a few properties, they might hire leasing agents to market the home and get the property rented, but then they take care of the day-to-day management. Even the National Association of Residential Property Managers (NARPM) has a limited presence in the northeast. Recently, they established a local chapter in Philadelphia, but that has only been in the last years. Compare this to Arizona or other markets in the southwest U.S., he says, and things are different. There’s a larger percentage of listings that are professionally managed. The estimate is that around 40 percent of the listings on Rental Beast are managed by small, mom-and-pop operations. We’re not talking about large, professional property management companies. It could also be a terminology issue, PJ says. There may be someone who owns 100 doors, but they don’t see themselves as a professional property manager because they own those units. Proximity can also be part of the difference. In markets like Texas and Atlanta, it can take an hour to get from one end of the city to another. There’s a concept called leasing and locating where real estate agents will get paid for showing a property without being there physically. The metro area is too spread out. Is Rental Beast a Threat to Property Management as an Industry? With all these For Rent By Owner (FRBO) properties in the Rental Beast database and tools that make it easier for those owners to rent out a home, is Rental Beast dangerous to property managers who are trying to grow their business? It’s great to have a single source of data that’s potentially more complete, but there are also solutions being offered to an owner who may self-manage instead of hiring a professional. PJ is quick to point out that Rental Beast is not trying to be a property management software tool. They understand that a lot of real estate agents hesitate before getting into property management because it’s so much work. Their platform, he says, is more about ease in listing a rental. No one could manage a property only using Rental Beast. Realtors and agents on the For Sale side have been struggling to sell recently, and so they’re getting into rentals a little bit so they can preserve the relationship with their clients who might be ready to buy in a year or two. Plus, they know they can potentially list some rentals, so it’s a natural shift. According to PJ, Rental Beast is not looking to replace property managers. They want to complement your work and make your business more efficient, especially in terms of listings. You can get access to a lot of listings, and you have an easier time listing the properties you’re renting out. You get extra syndication, and that drives more showings. Recently, they worked with a property manager who listed 20 properties on the Rental Beast MLS in half an hour. That’s not something you’d be able to do manually. This is technology that was built for property managers in order to make listings more efficient and easy. Rental Beast 2023 Market Report What does the market look like? PJ suggests you check out the Rental Beast 2023 Market Report. He shared a few highlights: Rental prices will seemingly increase slightly. This depends on the market, and there’s really no consensus on what’s going to happen with rental values. The data and predictions Rental Beast has gathered say that there will be slight increases, generally. Supply is a big variable. There are additional multifamily units coming onto the market in 2024. Supply and demand will impact pricing. The sales side of real estate will remain unaffordable for most people, keeping the demand for rental housing strong. There’s also a Sentiment Report, which reflects what people are feeling about the market and what might happen. They’ve found that 75 percent of the people surveyed believe rents will remain unchanged. Twenty-six of those surveyed believe applications for rental homes will decrease because fewer leads are coming through. Concessions are also something to consider. Will you have to motivate renters to apply for your property? The national median for concessions is around 18 percent. But, in some markets, 30 to 40 percent of active listings include some kind of concession. That’s artificially creating demand because it means nearly half the listings are offering some kind of concession. But, that’s not nationwide. For example, in Boston, only 8 percent of the active listings offer concessions. For Rent by Owner Listings: Is This a Blue Ocean? As we discussed earlier, a lot of active listings are not professionally managed. Could this be a blue ocean situation, where property managers can target these owners who are not using professional services right now? Ten years ago, property managers chasing FRBO business would have to pull ads from Craigslist or similar sites to get owner information. Or, you could buy databases from PMLeads. If Rental Beast can capture so many self-managed listings, however, is there an opportunity for property managers to market themselves? PJ says property managers are already using the platform to grab leads because of these advantages: They get as close as they can to 100 percent of a market’s listings. They’re typically at 70 or 80 percent of all active listings. All those listings are verifiable. Property managers can access owner information and get a sense of what type of property they’re renting out. Listings are updated regularly. Maybe you specialize in one part of your city. The listings in the Rental Beast database can be sorted according to neighborhood. You can also set up alerts in the system so you know when a listing that meets your criteria shows up. Closing Piece of Advice: Watch Your Price PJ says that based on the data he’s seen, the most important thing property managers can do now when renting out their properties is to be careful about where the rental value lands. He sees wildly fluctuating prices in a lot of markets. Remember that you’re competing with an entire market. So use as much data as you can. If you’re interested in check

Two guests are joining The Property Management Show today, and they are Scott Brady and Garrett Brady from Progressive Property Management in southern California. Scott has been on the show before, and tends to talk about forward-looking topics that involve challenging the status quo. Garrett is his son, and a big part of the company’s future. The topic today is legacy planning, which can be rather difficult for property management companies. Scott and Garrett are sharing their journey and where they are. Progressive Property Management Then and Now Scott has a story that’s similar to many property management company owners. He began as a real estate agent and had a brokerage business. The recession arrived in 2010, and he wanted to be prepared for the next recession. So, he started Progressive Property Management in 2012. It became incorporated in 2015. The company grew organically through marketing and relationships. Over the last 12 years, they’ve grown to about 1,000 doors under management. Garrett joined the residential side in 2018. The business model is unique. It’s a virtual company that hires real estate agents to be property managers. Three years ago, they began an association management department, and now manage around 130 associations with about 7,000 owners, total. They use the same business model; people are hired to be off-site property managers for these communities. The team at Progressive takes care of all back office operations. About three years ago, Scott was diagnosed with cancer, and he realized the company was not prepared to be sold or handed off. Decisions were made, and a choice had to be made: did Scott want to prepare the company to be sold, did he want to hire someone to run it while he lived off the cash flow, or did he want someone in the family to take it over? He’s made a decision, and he and Garrett have been busy structuring their legacy plan over the last three years. Garrett says the company – and the entire industry – was old school in 2018. There wasn’t a lot of technology, and everything was very regional. He’s been able to see the industry move from the stone ages to embracing modern technology. It’s a more appealing industry to join. So while it was a family business that he was happy to join, he now sees the value of real estate and how it interacts with so many other business sectors. Legacy Planning: Starting the Discussion The diagnosis spurred the discussion around legacy planning. Scott hired a consultant outside of the property management industry and the first thing he recommended was to have Garrett go to graduate school. This did not make sense at first, but it was pretty transformative. He earned his position with his education and his experience, not because of nepotism. The next step was to invite Garrett to earn some controlling interest in the company. Every year that he’s worked for the company, he’s earned 2.5 percent ownership in that company. By now, he’s up to 15 percent. The idea was to have Scott maintain the controlling interest, but to give Garrett a path towards more ownership. Garrett has skills that Scott doesn’t have, and they both recognize that. Scott excels at sales and marketing while Garrett is all operations. Scott said he knew the future was in the company’s operations. With 130 associations under management, they need good systems. Garrett does all the hiring of remote team members and he trains them, too. The company now has 13 remote team members and 13 full-time employees. The future isn’t expanding full-time payroll, but in hiring remote contractors. Understanding his own skill set allowed Scott to bring Garrett in, and together they sit down and look for the next opportunities while ensuring everything is running properly. Marc Cunningham mentioned to Garrett that he had to do a buy-in for his ownership in the family business, and so it made sense to Garrett that he would buy ownership over time with his time and with his commitment to the business. He says he gets more value out of learning how to run a business, deal with staff, and handle operations and corporate accounting. He’s happy to have that security for the long term, especially as the business grows. It’s never a good idea to arbitrarily give ownership of your property management business to someone just because they’re family. Garrett is qualified, and that’s important. Scott says he’s the most qualified person to run the residential side of the business and manage the remote team members. He’s learning more about the association management side, and will eventually be comfortably with full ownership of the company. Finding the Fit with Legacy Planning It’s a perfect fit, with Scott on top of the sales and marketing and Garrett taking care of the operations. That doesn’t mean that Garrett isn’t prepared for marketing the business. As a high school student and as an undergraduate, he took care of the direct mail for his father’s company and for other real estate businesses and brokers. He’s also looking at other potential income streams. Maintenance, for example, is a big passion for Garrett. He’s looking towards the future and thinking about a point in which the company can introduce their own maintenance service. Garrett knew that to create value, he had to do what his father could not do or would not do. He and Scott complement each other, and that’s what makes them successful. Identifying Opportunities While Planning Ahead Both Scott and Garrett see opportunities not in hiring people but in bringing on remote workers. Most property managers don’t see community associations with 8 to 20 owners as being a huge profit center. Progressive Property Management has found a way to do it. Scott says that residential management is touch-and-go right now. No one is buying investment properties and there have been only a few sales. Association management is where new opportunities and potential earnings can be found. Garrett appreciates that his father is willing to focus on long term goals. They’re saying within the company goes like this: Everyone has to be on the bus. Everyone has to be in the right seat on the bus. The bus needs to be going in the right direction. Garrett sees Scott as sometimes driving the bus at 100 mph. His job is to pick up the pieces that are sometimes flying off at such a high speed, and put them into place. One of Scott’s favorite sayings is that the best times in business are when you’re uncomfortable. If you’re uncomfortable, it means you’re growing. Balancing Growth with Core Values Both Scott and Garrett have some big ideas about ancillary companies, additional income streams, and creating new departments. How to balance innovation with the success of current operations? It comes down to the team, Garrett says. Team members are paid well. Team members get the flexibility to do their jobs. Management is very hands-off. Bad clients who take up too much time and bring in too much liability have been weeded out of the company’s portfolio. As they progress and grow, it all seems to works out. They’re comfortable with slow growth, and that’s important considering their business model is not traditional. Scott believes in managing processes rather than people. Formal and Informal Legacy Planning It’s one thing to bring the person who will take over into the company and put them on a payroll and give them a position. But, how do you document the plan for succession? For Progressive Property Management, there’s an informal and a formal plan in place. The formal plan includes Garrett’s 2.5 percent ownership every year. That’s well-documented. Informally, there have been many discussions about how things are meant to happen. If something terrible happened to Scott today, Garrett would be prepared to keep things moving the way they planned. Nothing is in writing, but everyone understands what will happen. Garrett won’t have controlling interest for a while, but he’s naturally progressing in making more decisions. He says looking at things objectively helps. They know they’re not the only ones in this position. A lot of property management companies are wondering what will happen to their businesses. The choices are to have a good process or deal with a messy situation. No one is going to last forever. Innovation and Property Management Garrett is looking forward to eventually not only exploring maintenance services but also commercial real estate. You might have heard the adage that commercial real estate a dollar business. Residential management is the dime business. And, association management is a penny business. It’s okay to collect the pennies and dimes while everyone else is going after the dollars. Scott says he’s always saddened by the industry and how little innovation there is. People follow the herd, and the herd moves towards residential management only. Legacy Plan Challenges Not a lot of challenges have popped up, but Scott and Garrett do believe in complete transparency. Everyone knows that Garrett will take over. There’s no doubt about the company’s future, and the team members recognize that Garrett is good at what he does. They also know he’s dedicated. The company still has an emergency line that’s kept in-house. This is where they shine, according to Scott, and so they don’t outsource it. Garrett still has that phone on the weekends. He’ll take an average of five or six calls every day about water leaks and other emergencies. That shows his dedication and everyone knows he has that phone. Garrett says he appreciates being able to spend time with his father while working and growing the business. That’s a perk that’s hard to quantify and it’s not an opportunity that most people get. Scott acknowledges that he has always hated having business partners. But, he doesn’t mind now. Both he and Garrett know when to step in and when to step out. Family can be emotional, but Scott and Garrett are both on the same page and in the right

Marc Cunningham is a property management consultant and he’s also the President of Grace Property Management in Colorado. He’s joining The Property Management Show today not only because he’s a prominent figure in property management, but also because he’s one of the first property management professionals who embraced video marketing. Marc is still promoting video marketing, and he believes it’s the most effective way to bring new business into your company. A Bit of Background: Marc Cunningham When Marc started his property management career as a child going to the office with his dad, things were incredibly different. It was the 1970s and buying their first copy machine was the most technology they had. The phone with an answering machine was fancy. Ledger cards were used to manually record when rent was collected, and checks were written to owners once a month. His father recognized that technology was a great tool, and they not only got a computer before anyone else, but they also even hired a programmer out of California to write a custom property management program for them. In the property management industry, there’s a big scare every couple of years. The narrative goes, if you don’t do X, you’ll be left behind. Right now, it’s AI. If you’re not using AI, you’ll be left behind. Marc says this is not always true. Provide good customer service to owners and tenants, and you’ll be okay even without the latest tool. You won’t wake up one day and be left behind. It’s the shiny thing syndrome. If there’s something that everyone seems to be doing, you feel like you should be doing it, too. It’s easy to chase the next big thing because everybody is talking about how cool it is. Marc doesn’t chase the newest thing. Technology is something to leverage in order to improve your property management business. After graduating from college with a degree in finance and real estate, Marc worked in the industry but not for his father. This helped him when it was time to go to work for his father. He brought a different perspective and a different set of skills to the family business. He always tells people in a family business to send the young people out to work outside of the business for a few years. It generates better ideas and higher level thinking. Marc arrived at his father’s company with more of a business mindset. His father was very good at property management, and Marc found he was very good at business management. Pioneering Video and Property Management Marketing Marc is one of the first property management professionals to begin marketing his company with video. He still believes this is the best marketing tool for property managers. Here’s how it happened. He was at a conference, and on the way home from that conference, he began thinking about how much time he spent talking to potential owner clients. They all ask the same questions and he found himself having the same conversation over and over again. Wouldn’t it be great, he thought, if, instead of answering those common questions over and over again, he could put those answers in a video and have it on his website. Then, potential owner clients could watch the video and decide if they wanted to know more. Marc thought that if a video could save him multiple five-minute conversations, it would really add up to getting some serious time back. He’s action-oriented and he doesn’t over-think. So, when he got home, he had his then-11-year-old son stand on his desk with an iPhone and take a video of Marc talking about common property management expenses. It was a three-minute video that included no script, no special lighting, and no microphone. The point was not quality. The point was to get it done. This has worked better than any other marketing, Marc says, because prospective owner clients will call, and they’ve already seen the videos. That puts them at about a 7 out of 10 in terms of likelihood that they’ll come on board as a client. Those owners feel like they already know Marc and the company. Marc says he’s not afraid to tell people to use video more because he knows they won’t do it. His competitors don’t. The reason this works for Marc, he says, is because he’s not a perfectionist. The Power of Action vs. Perfection If you believe in the power of action, you’ll get the videos done, and you’ll let the results fall where they may. Video marketing has been successful by keeping the acquisition costs for each client down. There’s no need to spend a lot on marketing when you have a YouTube channel full of great video content. The video version of Marc is available 24/7, and that means that the real life Marc has time to focus on other parts of his business. One video could be equal to 20 conversations he didn’t have to have in real life. Even if the video results in zero leads, he didn’t have to have all those chats with people who would not hire his company anyway. The willingness to make videos creates a filter. No property manager is designed to serve every owner. The training Marc does with his property managers internally is called We Don’t Sell. When a lead comes in, he doesn’t want the goal to be closing the lead. The goal is to get to know the prospect and to decide if they’re a good client to do business with. There’s no starting with a sales mentality. Videos will: Attract new potential clients. Filter out the clients you may not want to work with anyway. Answer common questions. Video also snowballs for marketing and SEO purposes. The more times those videos get watched; the more Google promotes the videos. When they’re promoted, they’re watched more. And on and on. Remember that this is a public space. You don’t have to make perfect videos, but you also don’t want to insult anyone. Marc made a video called “Five Things to Never Say to Your Tenant.” He’s not an anti-tenant property manager, but he must have said something in that video to upset someone, because it went viral in tenant groups and he started getting really hateful messages and comments. So, he took that video down. It’s a fine line to walk. You want to be cautious, but you also want your personality to show through. A video won’t be as effective if it’s scripted. If you want to do some bullet points for yourself before you talk on camera, do it. But don’t read a script or generate something from your computer. Talk the way you’d talk to a client. It can be intimidating, but it’s effective. It’s effective, but people don’t do it. Most property managers don’t use this effective and untapped marketing tool because they’re too obsessed with making the perfect video and they can’t, or because it’s easier to run ads and pay Google. What Makes a Video Educational? Marc has two distinct categories of video. One is educational and one is an FAQ that outlines how he does things. They’re separate. Under the educational content umbrella is the content marketing that appeals to both prospective owner clients and current owners. It works to market for new business and retain current business. Here’s a soft rule he says to remember: When you make a video, decide if you can show it to both audiences – the prospective clients and the current clients. If the answer is ever no, then it’s not providing enough education. When you have this rule in mind, you’ll keep your video from being too sales-focused. You won’t say “call us for a free consultation” because why would say that to current owners? When you can say yes, it applies to both current and prospective clients because you’re talking about tenant screening or maintenance costs, then you know it’s an educational video. Marc believes content matters. His videos won’t be about how great his company is or how many degrees he has. Nobody cares. He maintained one massive email group of all current clients, all previous clients, and all prospective clients. Anyone who has ever provided an email address is in the group. It doesn’t matter if they’re working with a competitor or self-managing or if they’ve been with the company for years. These videos educate everyone. People want to be educated. They’re not going to call you because of your great technology. They’re going to call you because you posted a video with some information on a new law that matters to them. Marc doesn’t invest a lot of time in making videos. He began doing two videos a month and he’d record them both at the same time, and they’d end up being seven or eight minutes each. It’s not a production. There’s a simple backdrop. There are some good lights. There’s a tripod and a microphone. There’s usually one take. If he stumbles over a word, he reps going. It does not have to be perfect, and that’s why it doesn’t take too long. Slight imperfections keep the video conversational. If you can pretend you’re recording for a potential client, you’ll have an easy time talking to them. Now, there’s only one a month that needs to be recorded because quite a library has been created. One hour every month is the time investment that’s required, and the video keeps working as soon as you put it out there. Marc says this is the only true evergreen marketing there is. Blogs and videos go on websites. They get shared on social media. Videos are converted to blogs, but Marc says the video should come first. When someone reads a blog, they don’t necessary get a sense of who you are. Video shows them. And it doesn’t take much time if you’re not a perfectionist. Sometimes, people will give up too fast. They’ll hate their hair. They’ll hate their voice. They’ll want to re-record over and over again. Marc says get over that. You’re not auditioning for Hollywood. You’re trying to attract a new client, and it gets easier the more you do it. Advice to Property Managers Not Loving the Video Marketing Idea Marc has some advice for when you’re making your video, and he even has some advice if you’re not feeling like you want to make videos at all. Be more energetic in your video than you think you

Welcome back to The Property Management Show. In our previous episode, we spoke with SEO and marketing guru Rand Fishkin about the shifting tides in digital marketing and the sources of influence that are important today. On the second part of our podcast with this guest, we’re talking about money keywords, vanity metrics, and generative AI. We’re also talking about how to make those immeasurable marketing channels a little bit more measurable. Here’s Part Two of our interview. Money Keywords: Where Everyone Wants to Rank Every business or industry has a set of money keywords that represents where and for what everyone in that industry wants to rank. That’s the bottom of the funnel. If you’re ranking high for property management and your city, you know that people searching for you are very close to choosing a property management company. That’s a good lead. But, why go to the battlefield and fight with every other management company that wants the same keywords? There are other marketing strategies that can be leveraged. Remember the blue ocean strategy. Go for those keywords that others aren’t paying attention to. Then, you won’t have to fight as hard and you’ll still draw in traffic from relevant searches. It makes sense. However, people are so drawn to that battlefield. Rand says this is how entrepreneurs are socialized and trained. It’s a cultural battle that’s hard to overcome. To really improve website traffic and gain more leads, results, and profitability, you can rank for more than property management plus geography. When everyone else is chasing one thing, you can beat them all by doing something that none of them are doing. Vanity Metrics: Measuring Lift vs. Attribution Are you getting more subscribers and followers or engagement and not necessarily conversion? In 2017, there was an article in the Harvard Business Review that talked about the actual value of a Facebook like for a business. Marketing researchers did a study to figure out whether it really contributes to a business in any meaningful way. They found that a Facebook like doesn’t necessarily reflect a change in consumer behavior or an increase in spending. Consumers who like a brand on social media, specifically Facebook, are simply expressing a pre-existing preference. If they see the brand, they like it. They were going to buy from you anyway, so of course they’ll like you on Facebook. It’s much harder to convince someone who has never heard of you to like your page and then buy from you. Rand points out that hidden in that study is that the measurement can be used to find out how many people are predisposed to buying from you, and who they are. The Facebook like did not influence 300 new people to buy from you if they weren’t already planning to buy from you. So, it’s a vanity metric. It does not change behavior. But, it helps you measure. By knowing that 300 new people liked your Facebook page in a month, you can measure the size of the pool of people who may buy from you. This can be useful in a campaign. You can measure what you’re doing that’s having a positive or negative impact. Measure those likes if you want a campaign that grows your brand’s likeability, awareness, and trust. Getting a Facebook like won’t get you more buyers. But, doing things that will encourage more buyers will result in a lift on social media. That’s notable. This makes an otherwise unmeasurable marketing investment more measurable. You can measure lift. If you see that traffic went up and conversion went up and the Facebook likes went up, that campaign worked, and you know that similar investments on other networks might be worth the effort. Or, when what you did last month did not work well, you’ll know to try something else. That’s where the value comes from. Instead of disproving the value of the metric, that study suggests there’s a lot of value. If you’re focused on ranking number one on Google, that’s a problem because you want that metric to go up at all cost. But, if you instead treat the metric as a way to measure the effect of what you’re doing, that’s going to give you some value. Branded Search Volume on Google Rand suggests that branded search volume is the better place for small businesses to focus right now. Instead of Hayward Property Management, he suggests working hard to rank for Marie and Brittany Property Management. When people are looking for your brand name, it means you are doing something right in terms of brand reach. More people are looking not for a generic term, but for you in particular. Rand says he’d take one new searcher for his brand name over a hundred searches for the generic keyword combo. That’s the bottom of the funnel and the closest you’ll get to conversion. If he searches for a Google Pixel Phone 6, that’s more valuable to the brand than a search for best new android phone 2024. One of those search terms suggests that the buyer has already made their decision. He knows what he’s looking for. That’s the most valuable kind of marketing you can do. Get people to know, like, trust, prefer your brand over others. Be present in the places they pay attention with a message that resonates with them at the right time. That’s not going to be property management Orlando, Florida. Remember: Measuring is different from attribution. Attribution is what caused this person to convert. Rand believes that it’s nearly impossible to know what causes a person to convert and buy, and that’s why he doesn’t worry too much about attribution. He returns to his basic message: Be present in the right place with the right message at the right time. To know if you’re doing that, you can look at your vanity metrics and look for the lift that should come before the rising conversions arrive. Follow, Don’t Lead: Marketing’s Future and Generative AI Rand believes that marketing is a field in which you should follow crowds and not try to lead them. What he means by that is until your audience is present and having relevant conversations in a place, you don’t need to try and reach them in that place. Why spend time there if your audience isn’t there? In 2010, everyone thought they had to have a mobile app. They didn’t Most companies are just fine with a mobile-friendly website. The same thing happened more recently with NFTs and blockchain. Marketers were sure they had to be using blockchain somehow but they couldn’t explain why. Does it make your customers happier or give them a better experience? If not, you don’t need it. Now, we’re looking at the ease with which anyone can use generative AI. Generative AI can solve some problems. If you have a database of 100,000 rental properties all over the country and you want to classify them quickly, you might want to hand-classify 100 of them, and then have ChapGPT do the rest of it based on your rules. But, why would that be on your website? We all know that when it comes to content, generative AI is the very bottom of the floor. It’s the worst content out there. Some humans can produce worse things, but anyone can make generative AI content for no money, so it’s the worst you can have. Your goal, when it comes to content, must be to ensure everything you produce is better than that. What’s wonderful for people who invest in marketing is that the more people who make their content with generative AI, the easier it for everyone who doesn’t to stand out. When you’re relying on generative AI to craft your message, you’re essentially taking yourself out of the game. You’ll be outranked and out-marketed. You’ll be the crappy competition that no one has to worry about. Using generative AI for programming assistance or to understand a concept makes sense. It can tell you what words are likely to come after other words on the internet. It can analyze data. But, to write copy that you would expect someone to read while considering a new property management company? No. AI looks for tokens coming after other tokens. It does that predictively. What they told you is what their suggestions told them, and it’s essentially a spicy auto complete. It will never be unique, and the whole point of marketing your company is to be unique. And that is all we have for our Part Two episode of the Property Management Show with Rand Fishkin. If you aren’t already a subscriber, please become one and give us a like. If you have any questions, go ahead and contact us at Fourandhalf. InstagramThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.First Name(Required)Last Name(Required)Email(Required) Phone(Required)Company NameComments or QuestionsThis field is hidden when viewing the formDate MM slash DD slash YYYY <> The post Shifting Tides in Digital Marketing with Rand Fishkin Part 2 appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.

Marie Tepman and Brittany Jones are on The Property Management Show, interviewing Rand Fishkin, co-founder of Moz and founder of SparkToro, about the changing landscape of digital marketing. This is only Part 1 of our discussion, which includes a look at the shift from SEO-centric strategies to a more diverse approach, the distinction between platforms of influence and entertainment, and the challenges of marketing attribution. Introducing Rand Fishkin Rand Fishkin is a name that’s synonymous with the world of SEO and digital marketing. He founded Moz, which revolutionized SEO tools and education for marketers. He wrote a book called Lost and Founder, an honest take on what it’s like to be part of the start-up world and follows the journey of a founder. Recently, he’s been making waves with his new venture, SparkToro, which is changing the way marketers like us understand and target different kinds of audiences. A Changing SEO Landscape For the longest time, Rand was a prominent voice in SEO and content marketing. He was known to say that everything starts with keywords and data. Recently, there’s been a pivot to the opposite sort of thinking. We asked him to explain his pivot and his new view on digital marketing. When you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. In the world of digital marketing, there are hundreds of channels and opportunities to reach an audience and build a brand and show off. Because he was addicted to and grew up in the SEO world, his focus was on: Target keywords Building links Making website accessible to search engines Optimizing everything It was all viewed through the SEO lens when it came to marketing. Two things happened to cause a pivot in the way he approaches digital marketing: Over the last six seven years, and especially since the pandemic, almost everyone is doing decent SEO. There was a big opportunity from 2000 to 2015. It was remarkable what you could do if you had any kind of savvy around SEO. You could be in the bottom 40 percent of SEO skills and still get a lot of traffic. Google was growing. There was more competition. Now, every smart business owner in every region and ever industry knows what they’re doing with basic SEO. It’s not the competitive advantage it once was. Demand is not growing. Google has acquired every human with an internet connection. There’s not a lot of growth left for them. They have 91 percent of the market share in the U.S. and about 95 percent of the market share globally. With no room for growth, Google has had to change the game. Now, we’re seeing Zero-click searches where people get information without even having to click on a link. Google provides it right there in the search results. That’s great for consumers, but frustrating if you’re a business owner looking for traffic. Google is using your own content and taking clicks and traffic away from you. These forces combined to mean that SEO is not the golden opportunity it once was. If you’re creative and entrepreneurial, you look for other opportunities. That’s what Rand has done. Distinguishing Online Platforms: Influence vs. Entertainment Let’s talk about TikTok. This has been a rising trend, and there are also reels on Instagram and shorts on YouTube that are popular. These are not sources of influence for businesses; they’re very particularly focused on entertainment. The content there is not similar to the content that you might see if you are doing SEO things or business to business marketing or even participating in other platforms like Reddit or LinkedIn or YouTube or Threads, which is more like the old version of Twitter. Unlike entertainment platforms like TikTok, those other platforms are serving niche functions. You might find botanists in U.K. clustering around a few account on Threads and some YouTube channels and some SubReddits. They’re all following the same sources, and all of the conversations are focused in that field. That’s not what happens on TikTok. There, you’re looking for distraction for 7 to 70 seconds. You see a series of videos to distract and entertain. The botanists don’t cluster there. They’re on TikTok, maybe, but they’re like the rest of us, watching a chipmunk dance with a squirrel. On YouTube or on a SubReddit, you’re subscribing to get specific and curated content. TikTok is prioritizing not what you necessarily want to see, but what will guarantee that you stay on the site and scroll to the next video. TikTok followership is the lowest value of any social network that has existed yet. That’s the entertainment mindset that drives people there. It’s not going to help a property management company find new owners. When we talk about entertainment networks versus networks that are a source of influence, you have to think about the places where you’re having relevant conversations. If you’re a marketer in property management, you care less about reaching the broadest possible audience for a few seconds. You want to be present in a highly relevant space where important conversations are going on. If you’re trying to attract property owners to your rental management company, Rand would put TikTok lower on the list of platforms where you want to appear. Try LinkedIn or Reddit or YouTube. Start an email newsletter and get on podcasts. Service businesses have a specific market, so if you’re putting all of your effort into a platform like TikTok, do you really think those TikTok followers going to work with you? Trends like TikTok do a great job of creating a psychological panic among marketers. They think they have to chase trends. You don’t. Remember this: Marketing is fundamentally about going to the right places with the right message at the right time to reach the right audience. So, you can wait. Just because it’s popular doesn’t mean it’s for you. Attribution Challenges in Marketing Marketing attribution is a complex problem, according to Rand, and relying solely on attribution dashboards can be misleading. Channels that have an incentive from the platform or network to show you attribution with always be overweighed. Google or Meta advertising will show you fantastic data in the dashboard about every ad you buy. They’ll tell you who saw it, who visited your site, who converted. The tracking pixel shows you all that. Those channels look like they contribute a ton of new business to you. BUT, here’s the thing. You would have earned a lot of that business anyway. Rand says that if you s hut off that marketing spend for a month, you’ll likely get 91 percent of the conversions that you were seeing with the spend. These companies are good at knowing what the customer journey looks like. They have data about where people go and what they do. So, they can do a great job of making sure your advertisement is seen. But, they’re taking credit for sales that were already going to happen. These online advertising platforms do create a wider potential audience for you. But not as large an audience as they claim. Choose relevant marketing channels and focus on lift-based measurement rather than relying solely on attribution dashboards. This attribution problem has always been a challenge. What actually changed a consumer or business owner and got them to buy? You can do all the sophisticated measurements you want, but Rand says he believes it often sounds like pseudo-science. If you’re investing hundreds of millions of dollars a year in an advertising spend, you can make reasonable estimates. But the models are not compelling if you’re a small or medium-size business. So, you don’t have to prove every attribution. We know marketing works. You know it too, even if it’s hard to prove. There’s a great Wanamaker quote that goes: “I know that I’m wasting half my advertising spend, but I don’t know which half.” Rand encourages you to waste half and not worry about which half is being wasted. Put it into channels that you think will reach your audience. Occasionally shut things off to see what happens. This is the only way to truly and logically invest. Turn off any given advertising channel for 60 to 90 days in a business to business service world. See what happens. Forget Keyword Ranking Instead of obsessing over ranking for money keywords, focus on generating leads and increasing brand strength through diverse marketing strategies. Everyone wants to rank for the money keyword. For our industry, maybe it’s property management in San Francisco or Austin property management. There’s an obsession with ranking at number one. It doesn’t matter what you’re ranking. What matters is the business you’re generating. Focus on that. That’s a far superior strategy. Get more leads and you don’t have to show your competitors that you’re ranking for the vanity terms that everyone is chasing. That’s the strongest position to be in. You’re not only competing with other property managers, now. You’re competing with the zero click search or AI-generated results or the paid searches that always go above any organic ranking. The obsession with being ranked at the first spot is vanity, and that’s a powerful psychology. Stop trying to look good and work harder at providing the best services. That was a lot of information. So, we’ll pause. There’s a lot more to discuss with Rand. We’ll continue our discussion on money keywords, vanity metrics, and AI. We’ll also talk about how to make the immeasurable – measurable. If you have any questions about this podcast or you need help with your property management marketing, please contact us at Fourandhalf. 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Welcome back to The Property Management Show podcast, your go-to source for all things property management, entrepreneurship, and marketing. This podcast is proudly brought to you by Fourandhalf, a leading digital marketing agency specializing in property management. Fourandhalf has been instrumental in helping residential property managers generate more leads and attract quality property owners since 2012. Our hosts Marie Tepman and Brittany Jones recently welcomed Courtney Wolf, founder of RentWise Property Management in Idaho, to their show to discuss Courtney’s journey to successfully creating a hands-off business. Courtney runs a thriving property management company in Boise that she has gotten to a point of running itself. When asked to expand on the steps she took to make this dream a reality, Courtney shared that it started with big dreams that were broken down into “biteable, doable, and reachable goals.” She explains that her process involved getting an excellent business coach to hold her accountable and provide guidance, as well as buying in critical team members like her operations manager Carly. Together, they methodically worked backwards from their vision to establish micro-goals that they could tackle over the years to get RentWise to where it is today. Starting Out Overwhelmed and Doing Everything Running a property management company is an extremely demanding job. You have to coordinate maintenance, place lockboxes, do showings, answer all phone calls…the list goes on. It’s not uncommon for property managers to experience total overwhelm trying to juggle it all. Courtney knows exactly what this feels like. When her Idaho-based company first launched, Courtney was a basically one-woman show doing absolutely everything needed to keep things running. Courtney knew something had to change for the business to be sustainable and for her to have any sort of work-life balance. The Genesis: A Small Business Handling Every Task Courtney started RentWise property management as the sole employee, handling all aspects completely on her own: Placing lockboxes Conducting showings Checking on maintenance issues At the same time, her eventual Operations Manager, Carly, would work at the office answering all calls and managing day-to-day relations. The lean team worked hard but constantly felt overwhelmed and overburdened trying to self-manage everything. The Catalyst: Facing Employee Burnout Courtney shares the catalyst for taking her business virtual was Carly approaching her, feeling completely burnt out and ready to quit. Carly felt she had no freedom or work-life balance between her full-time job and demands at home. Facing losing her right-hand employee, Courtney realized if she wanted to retain top talent long-term, she needed to rethink how she structured her business. Working Backwards to Make the “Hands-Off” Vision a Reality Courtney’s first step was engaging an experienced business coach. She needed someone who could hold her accountable to goals and break down her big-picture virtual vision into smaller, tactical steps. Together they mapped out: The Big Goals Create a 100% virtual property management company Design systems and processes for complete freedom from day-to-day operations The Path to Make it Happen Determine company values to guide decisions Build the right in-house and outsourced team Map all processes in extreme detail Utilize technology for efficiency Setting this strategic foundation with her coach gave Courtney clarity and confidence to systematically build her virtual model. Assembling the Right Team A key component enabling Courtney’s shift to virtual was curating the right staff across her organization, specifically: Leadership Buy-In Getting complete support and dedication from her operations manager Carly was essential. Courtney focused on aligning their individual visions for the business and what lifestyle they wished to create. Outsourced Support Courtney offloaded tasks like property inspections and maintenance via her side company Taskmasters. Being able to outsource redundant or specialized work freed her core team to focus on high-level management. Systemizing Everything Through Detailed Processes Courtney credits clearly defined processes as central to her eventual hands-off role. Here are the key benefits she experienced from comprehensive documentation: Enables Delegation By detailing procedures to a “five-year-old” level of simplicity, Courtney could easily hand off tasks to virtual assistants and Taskmaster employees without extensive training. Creates Consistency Highly specific checklists and protocols allowed both in-house and outsourced staff to seamlessly meet expectations and performance standards. Identifies Improvements Steps that created bottlenecks or redundancy jumped out clearly when every facet was scripted. Courtney could then refine or automate these areas to fill gaps. Sets Team Up for Success With all guidelines compiled in one place, Courtney’s staff always knew the exact requirements for any task or scenario, letting them operate confidently. Provides Leverage Once all critical activities were documented, Courtney could remove herself completely from day-to-day operations. Her priorities shifted fully to growth vs putting out fires. While tedious, Courtney made writing full standard operating procedures foundational before looking to outsource or automate. Adopting Emerging Technology In addition to systems and staffing, Courtney credits technology as the third component allowing her to go virtual. When launching RentWise, solutions like self-showing lockboxes and inspection apps were just hitting market. Being open to trying these emerging platforms (even when they seemed a “hard sell”) meant Courtney’s systems integrated cutting-edge tools from day one for maximum efficiency. Spawning a Side Business with Taskmasters In addition to RentWise Property Management, Courtney founded a complementary business called Taskmasters. Taskmasters offers outsourced property management support services tailored to assist busy property managers. Humble Beginnings Taskmasters began organically when Courtney realized performing routine site visits herself was an ineffective use of her time and capacity. She started training her existing handyman to conduct inspections to her exact specifications. Once the handyman demonstrated consistent success inspecting based on Courtney’s guidelines, she considered turning this outsourcing solution into an actual business venture. Gradual Growth Fueled by Industry Shifts Initially Courtney deliberately kept Taskmasters small, serving just her inner circle of property manager connections. However, over time as more property management companies embraced outsourcing for supplementary services, interest in Taskmasters picked up. Seeing tangible results from delegating tedious property visits gave Courtney inspiration that formally offering these type of outsourced field services could benefit numerous property managers facing similar capacity issues that she once did. While still focused on gradual, organic growth for now, Courtney has bold plans to eventually scale and franchise the Taskmasters model into new markets nationally. Her first-hand experience identifying gaps as a property manager owner enables her to craft solutions uniquely tailored to this industry’s needs. The Power of Community Connections At multiple points in the interview, Courtney emphasizes the importance of building strong networks and surrounding yourself with the right community to accelerate success. Specifically regarding the property management industry, Courtney highlights NARPM as an invaluable network that has facilitated much of her growth and enrichment over the years. Overcoming Challenges Through Shared Wisdom Courtney shares that initially she struggled for three years trying to “do things the hard way” before discovering NARPM. Connecting with this network helped her identify solutions already in existence rather than attempting to reinvent wheels. Having a community to tap into for guidance supports overcoming recurring pitfalls through shared wisdom. Cross-Pollinating Innovation Courtney also notes the power of brainstorming ideas within a mastermind of peers familiar with industry-specific pain points. By coming together to explore common problems from different angles, new concepts and technology often emerge organically. As an engaged member early on, Courtney was able to ride a wave of innovation as property management platforms rapidly advanced over recent years. In summarizing key catalysts behind her success, Courtney firmly lists surrounding herself with collaborative groups like NARPM as instrumental. The intersecting perspectives within these communities consistently sparked breakthroughs to progress her business. Foundational Blocks Enabled the “Hands Off” Vision Courtney summarizes the key building blocks central to her eventual self-managed enterprise included: Coaching for accountability: Held Courtney responsible for forward progress Aligned, invested team: Leadership and staff bought into central vision Outsourcing: Leveraged external teams to capture redundant tasks Systems: Comprehensive SOPs enabled freedom and leverage Technology: Early adoption of automation & emerging solutions With these pillars serving as foundation, Courtney successfully shifted RentWise’s operations completely off her plate, freeing 100% of her capacity towards growth efforts. Use Courtney’s blueprint to examine your own business processes and team dynamics assess what components need addressed to construct your own “hands-off” property management company. Key Takeaways: Systems and Support Are Key Courtney Wolfe’s journey shows that with the right systems and support team in place, property managers can transform into CEOs of streamlined, scalable companies. By identifying areas of overload and redundancy, Courtney was able to break d

Hello and welcome to The Property Management Show podcast, your go-to destination for exploring the dynamic world of property management, entrepreneurship, and marketing. Brought to you by Fourandhalf Marketing Agency, a leader in the industry since 2012. Fourandhalf helps residential property managers get more owner leads and improve their online presence through website design and development, SEO, online reputation management, video and blog content, social media, and targeted advertising. Recap of Part 1: Establishing the Foundation of Mid-Term Rentals In Part 1 – Maximizing Profits with Mid-Term Rentals: Property Management Blue Ocean Strategy, our guest speakers Jessica Schirmeister and Jason Zimmerman from Trend Property Management in Texas discussed the growing trend of mid-term rentals. These types of rentals, also known as furnished rentals, have become increasingly popular in recent years. That episode highlighted the unique niche that mid-term rentals occupy, situated between short-term and long-term rentals. Key focus areas included the demand for these types of properties, their profitability potential, and the evolving rental market trends influenced by remote work and lifestyle changes. The episode provided foundational insights into the benefits, challenges, and operational dynamics of managing mid-term rentals. In this episode (Part 2), we’ll delve deeper into the operational challenges and strategies for managing mid-term rentals. We’ll discuss finances and the subtle art of balancing tenant rights with property management objectives. Evaluating Investment in Mid-Term Rentals Part 2 starts with a discussion about the financial feasibility of investing in mid-term rentals and ensuring a reasonable return on investment (ROI). Jessica shared an example of how a month-long tenant could provide up to four times the revenue compared to a traditional annual lease. However, she also emphasized the necessity of factoring in additional costs such as furnishing, utilities, and cleaning fees when evaluating the profitability of mid-term rentals. Jason stressed that property managers should be strategic in their investment, considering the demand and market conditions. It’s important to understand potential risks and always have a backup plan in case the rental doesn’t succeed as expected. Financial Considerations and Return on Investment Investing in mid-term rentals is an intriguing proposition, blending the stability of long-term rentals with the higher earning potential typical of short-term stays. For property managers and investors, understanding the financial landscape is key. This involves assessing the initial investment costs against the potential returns. Mid-term rentals often demand a higher rental rate, reflecting their furnished status and flexibility. This can be an attractive proposition for tenants looking to avoid long-term commitments. Cost-Benefit Analysis: Investing in Furnishings and Amenities While discussing the financial aspects of investing in mid-term rentals, Jessica and Jason also shed light on the pros and cons of furnishing a property. Furnishings can attract more tenants: Mid-term renters are often looking for fully furnished properties to make their stay comfortable and convenient. Furnishings can add value to the rental experience and justify higher rent prices. In a competitive market, furnished properties may stand out and attract more tenants. Furnishings can also come with additional costs: Investing in quality furniture can be expensive upfront. Managing and maintaining furnishings requires time and effort. There is always the risk of damage or wear-and-tear from tenants, which may require replacements or repairs. To get an initial understanding of whether furnishing a rental makes sense, evaluate if the property in question can generate an additional $4,000 or more each month. Jason says that after evaluating over 50 deals, this seems to be a key threshold for justifying the investment in furnished rentals. Here are some other key financial aspects that were discussed during the interview: 1.) Fixed Costs vs. Property Value: It was noted that the fixed costs associated with a property do not necessarily decrease with a less expensive property. These fixed costs can erode the benefits of furnishing a property if the additional revenue generated doesn’t sufficiently cover these expenses. 2.) Revenue Threshold for Profitability: Looking at the big picture, furnishing a property starts to make even more financial sense when it can generate significant additional revenue – in the range of $50,000 to $70,000 a year. This extra gross revenue is needed to cover all additional expenses such as utilities and other costs associated with furnished rentals. 3.) Increasing Rental Value Without Increasing Taxes or Insurance: One of the strategic financial advantages discussed was the ability to significantly increase the rental value of a property through furnishing without correspondingly increasing the property tax base or insurance expenses. Most property improvements and upgrades can translate to higher insurance or property taxes, and this puts furnishing in a unique spot. This aspect is particularly important as it implies that furnishing a property can lead to higher income without proportionally higher ongoing costs. What are the Goals of the Property Owner? In addition to financial considerations, you should also think about the long-term goals of the property owners. Key points from this part of the conversation include: 1.) Owner’s Net Profit Goals: The decision to convert a property into a furnished rental is often influenced by the owner’s specific financial objectives. For some, an increase in net profit of around $5,000 a year is a benchmark that makes the investment worthwhile. However, this threshold can vary among different property owners, depending on their individual financial goals and circumstances. 2.) Long-Term Strategic Planning: Another critical factor in this decision-making process is the owner’s long-term strategic plan for the property. If an owner intends to keep the property in excellent condition for an extended period, such as for inheritance purposes, they might be more inclined to furnish it. The rationale is that a furnished property can be maintained at a much higher level, ensuring its longevity and preservation over the years. These considerations highlight the importance of aligning the decision to furnish a rental property with the owner’s long-term financial and strategic objectives. It’s not just about the immediate returns but also about how this decision fits into the broader picture of their property management and investment goals. Having explored the financial considerations and owner’s objectives in detail, it becomes clear that the decision to venture into mid-term rentals is multifaceted. Now let’s dive into the nitty gritty of what types of furniture will and will not work for a furnished rental property. The Art of Furnishing Rental Properties When it comes to furnishing rental properties, it’s a delicate balancing act between expense and attractiveness. Quality furnishings and amenities can significantly increase a property’s appeal and rental value. The key is in finding the sweet spot – investing enough to make the property desirable and competitive, while ensuring that these costs are recouped through higher rental income and occupancy rates. This strategic approach to investing can lead to enhanced long-term profitability. Can I Use Old Furniture in the Rental Property? We know the thought of using old furniture may have crossed your mind, or at least the property owner’s mind. We don’t blame you. Jessica shared that it’s common for property owners to consider using their existing furniture to save costs. However, several important points were raised about the potential drawbacks of this approach: 1.) Quality and Aesthetics: It was emphasized that for rentals charging higher rates (e.g., $4,000 and above), tenants expect a certain level of quality and aesthetics. Using old furniture with visible wear, like stains or damage, could lead to negative reviews and dissatisfaction among tenants. 2.) Why Does the Owner Want to Part With It? The conversation also underscored the importance of effectively communicating with property owners about the standards expected in furnished rentals. It’s crucial to explain why old furniture might not be suitable and how it could impact the tenant’s experience and the property’s appeal. Our guests suggest asking a very simple question “Why don’t you want to use this in your own home?” This straightforward query can help property owners understand why it may not be suitable for a rental. 3.) Cost of Replacement or Repairs: It’s also essential to consider the potential costs of maintaining and repairing old furniture if it breaks down during a tenant’s stay. These expenses could add up over time, making it more cost-effective to invest in newer, higher-quality furnishings. The speakers discussed the possibility of using some of the owner’s existing furnishings, but not all. The selection process involves assessing each item to ensure it meets the required standard for the rental market. The Best Furniture for Rental Properties Part of the property manager’s job is guiding owners through the process of updating their furnishings, including providing them with estimates for new furniture. This helps owners understand the financial implications and the value added by investing in quality furnishings. Here are several tips and tricks to help identify the best furniture options for mid-term rental: Durability is Key: Mid-term rentals are subject to more wear and tear than traditional long-term rentals, making durability a top priority when selecting furnishings. Investing in quality pieces that can withstand heavy use can save money in the long run, as they will require fewer repairs and re

Welcome to The Property Management Show podcast, where we delve into the ever-evolving landscape of property management, entrepreneurship, and marketing. This show is presented by Fourandhalf Marketing Agency. Since 2012, Fourandhalf has been helping residential property managers get more owner leads by helping with their website, SEO, online reputation, video and blog content, social media, and paid ads. For this podcast episode, we were fortunate to have Jessica Schirmeister and Jason Zimmerman from Trend Property Management in Texas join us for this discussion. With their extensive experience in the field, they brought a wealth of knowledge, particularly in managing and optimizing mid-term rental properties. Their insights are especially relevant for real estate investors and property managers looking to expand their portfolios and increase profitability. As you can imagine, there was a lot of information to unpack which is why we divided the interview into two episodes. This is Part 1, where we explore the rising trend of mid-term rentals and their advantages over traditional rental models. Understanding Mid-Term Rentals With economic and regulatory factors pushing both short-term and long-term rental property owners and managers to panic, it makes sense to start looking for more lucrative and sustainable alternatives in the market. This is where mid-term rentals come into play, offering a sweet spot between short-term and long-term rental properties. But what exactly makes a rental, well, mid-term? What is a Mid-Term Rental Property? Traditionally, short-term rentals are fully furnished properties renting for less than 30 days, whereas long-term rental properties are typically unfurnished and covered by a 12-month lease. Mid-term rentals are those that fit somewhere in the middle — fully furnished properties that can be rented for 30 days up to a year. If you’re a bit confused, you are not alone. I (Marie) was confused as well. You see, the label “mid-term” makes it seem like the term or the length of the lease defines what category the rental property belongs to. But if a mid-term rental can be rented for up to a year, then doesn’t it fall under the long-term rental category? According to our guests, that is a “no”. As it turns out, even they don’t like using the label “mid-term rentals”. Instead, they prefer the label “furnished rentals”. This is because lease duration can easily be shifted, but renting a property as furnished vs. unfurnished offers a clearer way to categorize them. Now you might be thinking, who would want to rent a furnished house anyway? Don’t people typically have their own stuff to fill a house with? Let’s dive deeper into this. Who Typically Rents Furnished Rental Properties? In the world of furnished rental properties, the tenant pool is as diverse as their reasons for renting. From this podcast interview, we learned that furnished rentals are a hit among various groups — and despite what you may have heard before, it’s not just for travel nurses anymore! Here’s a rundown of who these tenants are and why they choose furnished rentals: Traveling Professionals: Often on temporary assignments, these individuals prefer furnished rentals for their convenience and home-like feel compared to hotels. Yes, travel nurses fall into this category. But so do film crew, actors, and even digital nomads. Individuals in Transition: People relocating or in transitional life stages choose furnished rentals for their flexibility and the ease of not having to move furniture. Patients and Medical Visitors: In areas like Rochester, MN near medical facilities such as the Mayo Clinic, patients and their families opt for furnished rentals for the duration of medical treatments and even as they are recovering. Some people prefer not to travel right after a major medical procedure, and may seek comfortable accommodations near the medical facility. Typically, areas that have sought after medical services or facilities would attract a similar kind of group. Corporate Groups: Companies often find it more economical and comfortable to house employees in furnished rentals for projects or training programs. People Affected by Insurance Claims: Those undergoing home repairs due to insurance claims may need temporary housing, making furnished rentals an ideal solution. Families: Larger furnished rentals are attractive to large families visiting extended family members and may need space and amenities that mimic a home environment. College Students: Jason also mentioned an increasing interest among college students in furnished rentals. This introduced additional ease and convenience in college housing, where furnishings are often included or can be added at a minimal cost. This trend is planting the seeds for future rental preferences, with students getting accustomed to the idea of not having to acquire their own furnishings for their living spaces. The implication is that this experience in college is influencing their future housing choices, making them more inclined towards furnished rentals even after college. Each group’s unique needs make furnished rentals a versatile choice in the housing market. Short-Term vs. Mid-Term vs. Long-Term Rental Properties So now that you know who typically rents furnished rental properties, let’s explore how these types of rental properties compare with more traditional ones. The landscape of property management has witnessed significant shifts, and understanding these comparative dynamics can empower property owners, property management businesses, and real estate investors to make informed decisions. The table below offers an easy way to compare the mid-term rental properties against short-term and long-term properties: Criteria Short-Term Rentals Mid-Term Rentals Long-Term Rentals Duration Typically <1 month 1 month to <1 year 1 year or more Income Potential High with premium nightly rates Moderate stable monthly income Lower but stable and predictable Turnover Costs High due to frequent guest changes Moderate fewer turnovers Low least frequent turnovers Wear and Tear Higher due to frequent turnovers Lower than short-term higher than long-term Lowest due to stability of tenants Regulatory Challenges Often stringent with zoning and hospitality taxes Generally fewer than short-term Typically minimal regulations Tenant Base Tourists short-term travelers Professionals students transitional phases Families long-term residents Pricing Flexibility High adjustable for demand and season Moderate set for the lease duration Fixed set for the lease term Market Dependency Dependent on tourist flow and events Varies based on local demand and conditions Steady less influenced by short-term market changes Operational Demands Intensive due to guest management Moderate occasional tenant interactions Least mainly maintenance and renewals Seasonal Variability High with peak and off-peak periods Moderate less influenced by seasonality Low typically unaffected by seasons Community Impact Potential resistance from local communities Usually well-accepted Generally accepted and stable Now that you have a better understanding of these three categories of rental properties, let’s talk about why property managers should consider managing mid-term rentals. Should Property Managers Consider Mid-Term Rentals? Mid-term rentals present a ‘blue ocean strategy’ for property managers. They fill a unique market gap, catering to clients like traveling professionals, medical patients, and people in transitional life phases. This market is less saturated compared to short-term and long-term rentals, offering new avenues for growth in the property management business. Moreover, mid-term rentals offer higher profitability potential compared to long-term rentals. Property managers can charge a premium for fully furnished and flexible living options while avoiding the high turnover and maintenance costs associated with short-term stays. Here is a list of reasons why venturing into mid-term rentals (aka furnished rentals) is a good idea for residential property management companies: Filling a Market Gap: Mid-term rentals cater to a diverse tenant base, bridging the gap between short-term and long-term rentals. These rentals offer a more economical option than hotels, especially for longer stays, appealing to both individual tenants and corporate groups. Reduced Wear and Tear: They experience less wear and tear compared to short-term rentals, leading to lower maintenance costs. Regulatory Benefits: Mid-term rentals often face fewer regulatory challenges than short-term rentals. Improved Neighbor Relations: Longer rental periods result in fewer neighbor issues due to less frequent turnovers and less disruptive behavior. Diverse Tenant Base: Attracts a broad range of clients, not limited to traveling nurses, but also including professionals, families, and individuals in transitional phases. Increased Demand Post-COVID-19: The rise of remote work has boosted the demand for flexible, mid-term living arrangements. Improved Lifestyle for Tenants: Provides a more comfortable and homely living experience compared to extended hotel stays. Profitability and Simplicity: While they may not generate as much monthly income as short-term rentals, mid-term rentals offer a more straightforward, profitable model in the long run due to minimized vacancies and reduced maintenance. Getting Started in Mid-Term Rental Management Mid-term rentals offer a more profitable alternative to traditional long-term rentals by charging higher rates and reducing vacancies. But is it all smooth sailing? Like any business venture, there are several factors to consider before diving into mid-term rentals. Understand Your Local Market for Furnished Rentals Effective property management strategies require an in-depth understanding of the local housing market, tenant demands, and supply trends. These factors play a crucial rol

Welcome back to ‘The Property Management Show,’ where we deep-dive into the world of property management, marketing, and entrepreneurship. Your hosts are Marie Tepman and Brittany Jones from Fourandhalf Marketing Agency. Since 2012, Fourandhalf has helped hundreds of property managers get more owner leads through digital marketing. Whether you need help with your website, SEO, online reputation, content, video, social media, or even advertising campaigns – we can do it all. Our guest today is Jordan Bennett, who is the Senior Director of Network Risk Management at Nacha, and a former Risk Analyst at the Federal Reserve. We are discussing ACH fees and payment fraud, and to put the entire discussion into better context, we asked Jordan to explain what his job entails. Management Payment Risks Nacha is the rule-making body and trade association for ACH payments. They are always promoting ACH, and Jordan’s job is thinking about how to prevent risk. He wants to keep people’s money in their accounts, and he wants to stop the schemes that can rob them of that money. Not only does he want to make payments safe, but he also wants to educate consumers on the fact that ACH is one of the safest payment methods they can choose in the U.S. He works with banks and companies to decide how to utilize it and better manage any risks that may be present. ACH Transaction Fees For the longest time, ACH has been popular because it’s free. It’s always been the free option versus credit cards, where consumers have to pay transaction fee. Some companies, however, are beginning to charge transaction fees for ACH payments. Why is this shift happening? Jordan reminds us that there has always been a cost to run an ACH system. It’s a low cost because it’s a batch system, so it doesn’t cost as much as credit cards, which operate on an interchange system. With ACH, there’s a lower cost to the financial institution and the property manager who is accepting the payment, but there is still a cost to running the network. So, it makes sense that a property manager and their financial institution may want to recoup these fees. A lot of systems and anti-fraud tools and infrastructure needs to be maintained with ACH. It’s never been free (even though the customers see it as free). Nacha cannot suggest or encourage or discourage fees. With antitrust laws what they are, Nacha cannot tell an industry whether they should or should not charge a fee. However, it’s important to remember that this process does not automatically happen. People get paid to do their jobs, and it takes jobs to keep these payments safe. What we don’t want to do is set a precedent where it’s preferable to pay with a check to avoid the ACH fee. Consumers who do not want their information available and want the convenience of an ACH transfer will continue to use this method and not return to the days of using checks. Even from a management company or HOA perspective, accepting checks means you physically have to open an envelope and process the payment every time it’s made. If you have hundreds of rent checks coming in, that’s going to take time and require personnel. There will be a transaction cost regardless of how the payments come in. Your check fees may be higher from the bank than the ACH transfer fee. Property managers should not encourage checks. When a check is paid, the consumer knows they have money in their account, but they may forget. And, if that check takes a few days to get through the mail and be deposited, the consumer might have forgotten about the rent check that was written and they’ll spend the money that’s in the account. Everything could bounce. That’s an unnecessary risk that landlords and property managers don’t have to take. ACH can be a regular recurring payment that comes out every month on the same day. It takes a few minutes to set up, but once it’s there – it’s there. Unlike checks, there’s not another entire process every month. Checks have routing and account information printed right on them. It’s an opportunity for fraud. When an employee is processing an ACH payment, however, there’s no visible access to the routing or accounting numbers. Online Payment Fraud and How to Prevent It Nacha has put out a framework for risk management in order to fight fraud. There are several fraudulent scenarios that are addressed. Debit fraud causes most of the problems. Usually, the fraud begins when someone debits an account from the information found on a paper check. Or a consumer continues to be charged for a subscription that they let go. Rules have changed on the ACH network in order to get those bad actors off the network. The banks have also been enlisted to help fight this type of fraud. Previously, banks said they were not responsible for those originator issues. But, if someone is debiting without authorization, it’s a problem that comes with consequences. There will always be debit fraud, but Nacha has worked hard to minimize this problem. A lot of check fraud can also be found in the industry. Don’t use checks. Fraudsters are conning businesses and consumers into sending them money. They aren’t creating a debit with a routing or account number; instead, they’re convincing an employee to pay them by pretending to be a vendor. Let’s say your company does a trade show, and the cost to rent space at the trade show is hundreds of thousands of dollars. If someone dishonest knows that you’re planning this, they can call and represent themselves as working for that venue. They might tell you that they’ve changed their account number, and when you think you’re paying the convention center, you’re actually paying the fraudster. Tenants and landlords can get scammed this way too. Tenants can be fooled into believing a landlord has changed their account number, and then all that money goes to someone else instead of their landlord. Accounts takeover fraud is when someone accesses an account within your company system and authorizes payments. This is preventable with education, proper policies, and dual controls. These schemes are out there, and they’re targeting everyone. Prevention is better than the cure. Sometimes there’s insurance, but not always. If a vendor calls and says they’ve changed their account number, the process should be that you call them back at the number you have on file. Communicate in a known way. Put together a policy and a procedure. Business emails can be compromised. Email addresses can be compromised in subtle ways so that you don’t notice the difference in the person who is corresponding with you. Fraudsters can log into an inactive account that once belonged to a former employee. If you’re not checking that inbox or if you have not disabled the account, it’s easy for them to hack in. Make sure all of your employees are educated. They should know that the CEO is not going to reach out and tell them to pay an invoice. An employee’s emails and accounts should be inactivated when they leave. There must be dual controls – even for a small company. You don’t want just one person creating and paying invoices and accessing the bank accounts. The Nacha website has a lot of detailed accounts on schemes and how to prevent them. How Are Property Managers Setting Up Payment Controls? Be consistent with all of your protocols and payment controls. If you only allow your employees to set up an ACH transfer up to $10,000, why would you allow them to send a $100,000 wire? If two people need to approve a payment, why would only one person be able to sign a check? Be consistent across all payment methods. Most fraudsters always act with a sense of urgency. If there are two business partners with dual controls, and one of them sends a text saying that a typo was made and a payment needs to be sent to a different account, you want the business partner to call the other party immediately after receiving the text. There’s always a sense of urgency with fraudsters, but no payment needs to be made immediately. Fraudsters look for opportunity. They look for businesses without good controls. They want to target businesses that aren’t paying attention. They’re looking for CEOs who are on vacation and things are out of the ordinary. It’s important that all of your business policies are written down. Recourse for Victims of Fraud What happens if they get you? Jordan says it’s not helpless or hopeless. Nacha has been working to help the industry recover from fraud events, and it’s not always a total loss. Work with your financial institution and remember that the faster you respond to a fraud event, the more likely you are to recover what you’ve lost. So, don’t wait. Recovering your funds is less likely if you wait, because fraudsters are working as quickly as they can. As soon as they have your money, they’ll move it somewhere else. Here’s a scenario that may affect property managers. Let’s say a tenant has paid rent for six months or a year, and then they dispute the charges with their bank, claiming they were not authorized. Who will the bank favor in such a dispute? Jordan says this is more common with credit cards, but ACH payments can be disputed. In a situation like this, banks are more likely to be consumer friendly. If a renter claims their withdrawal was unauthorized, the money will probably be returned to them. In low value cases, the financial institution or the merchant losing the money won’t choose to go after them. But they can take the matter to court. They can file a claim and fight to get the money back. Landlords and merchants can also go to the policy if this type of fraud occurs. Jordan wishes there was a better way to stop consumer fraud of this kind, but the rules are generally there to protect the network as a whole. If a consumer claims there’s fraud, a statement has to be signed saying that a charge was unauthorized. They’re signing off on their own fraud, and there could be repercussions for that. This isn’t a common scenario. Plenty o

Welcome to the latest episode of the Property Management Show, presented by Fourandhalf Marketing Agency. Since 2012, Fourandhalf has been helping residential property managers get more owner leads by helping with their website, SEO, online reputation, video and blog content, social media, and paid ads. In this episode, we’re excited to host Jennifer Merritt, the Chief Operating Officer at RentScale. RentScale is a pioneering sales coaching company that specifically caters to the property management industry, and Jennifer’s expertise is a treasure trove for anyone looking to improve their company’s sales function. With the property management industry being highly competitive, staying ahead of the game when it comes to owner lead generation is critical. In this podcast, Jennifer shares her insights on all-bound lead generation and how businesses can adopt this comprehensive approach to sales and marketing in the property management sector. All-Bound Owner Lead Generation for Property Managers This week, we discuss the innovative concept of “all-bound owner lead generation,” a comprehensive strategy that transcends traditional lead generation methods. This approach is particularly crucial for business development managers and broker/owners striving to grow their residential property management business. The all-bound strategy is a tri-fold model: 1 – Inbound Lead Generation: These are owner leads generated through various digital marketing efforts, including a mixture of organic and paid marketing channels. Examples of organic channels include search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, social media engagement, and email marketing. Paid channels, on the other hand, include tactics such as Google Ads, Social Media Ads, and Pay-per-Lead such as All Property Management (APM). Each of these avenues brings unique opportunities to attract and convert property management leads into clients. Jennifer emphasized the importance of a strong online presence to attract owner leads naturally. 2 – Outbound Lead Generation: Outbound lead generation involves proactive strategies such as direct calling to rent-by-owners and engaging with secondary homeowners. This type of lead generation allows property managers to reach out to potential owner clients directly and pitch their services. Outbound lead generation requires a strong understanding of the target market, personalized messaging, and a consistent follow-up process. Jennifer highlighted the significance of being proactive in reaching out to potential clients. 3 – Next Bound Lead Generation: A novel term introduced by RentScale, the next-bound lead generation is focused on generating leads through referrals and building a robust network for future business prospects. This aspect underscores the importance of relationships in the property management industry. Jennifer explained that successful owner lead generation in property management requires a blend of these three strategies. It’s not about relying on one magic solution but consistently working across different channels. Redefining ‘Junk Leads’ in Property Management A pivotal moment in our podcast discussion focused on the often misunderstood concept of ‘junk leads’ in the property management industry. Jennifer brought her team’s perspective to this topic, challenging the traditional notion that some leads are simply not worth pursuing. She argued that the term ‘junk leads’ is often a misnomer, and these leads should instead be viewed as untapped opportunities. The conversation brought forth the idea that leads commonly considered ‘junk’ are those that don’t immediately align with the ideal client profile or seem less likely to convert at first glance. However, she emphasized that every lead holds potential value. For instance, a lead without a current property to manage could evolve into a future investor or become a source of referrals. The key is to engage with these leads in a way that fosters relationships and trust, even if the payoff isn’t immediate. Moreover, a strategic approach was suggested for handling such leads. Rather than dismissing them outright, nurturing these leads over time could be more beneficial. This might involve providing valuable information, keeping them updated with newsletters, or maintaining periodic contact. Keeping communication channels open is crucial, as circumstances can change, transforming today’s ‘junk lead’ into tomorrow’s valuable client. This part of the conversation shed light on the nuanced understanding of lead dynamics in property management and the importance of innovative approaches to sales and client relationships. It underscored the idea that in the property management business, the longevity and strength of relationships are key drivers of success. By rethinking our approach to leads deemed as ‘junk,’ we open doors to hidden opportunities and potential long-term growth for property management businesses. If you want a more in depth discussion about how to distinguish good leads vs bad leads in property management, we covered this in detail with Jeremy Pound back in 2020. Shifting Dynamics in Sales and Marketing for Property Managers Our conversation then pivoted to the evolving nature of sales and marketing in the property management realm. Jennifer shared insights into the shifting consumer behavior, advocating for a shift from traditional aggressive sales tactics to a more consultative, value-driven approach. This change is vital in aligning with the contemporary consumer’s expectations and needs. For property management leads, Jennifer suggested that new property managers should start with more budget-friendly lead generation methods, like social media advertising, and gradually escalate to more comprehensive strategies. The key is to align these strategies with the company’s resources and growth goals. Advice for Property Managers Just Starting Out Jennifer’s advice to new entrants in the property management business is to start small and scale gradually. She recommended beginning with cost-effective lead generation strategies and progressively moving towards more extensive methods. Building a strong referral network and targeting the right clientele is crucial for long-term growth and sustainability in the property management business. Navigating the Owner’s Buying Journey Our discussion also dove into the importance of understanding and respecting the buyer’s journey in property management. This journey, the process a potential client undergoes from becoming aware of a need to making a decision, is crucial in tailoring the approach to each lead. Recognizing that not every lead is at the same stage of readiness to commit to property management services was a key insight. The conversation highlighted that the buyer’s journey is not a linear process but a complex journey with various touchpoints and emotional considerations. It was emphasized that property managers need to be adept at identifying the stage at which a potential client is and adjust their sales and marketing strategies accordingly. For instance, a lead at the awareness stage requires different handling and information compared to someone at the decision-making stage. The importance of nurturing leads throughout their journey was also a focal point. This nurturing involves providing relevant information, building trust, and establishing credibility. Rushing a lead through this journey or applying pressure could be counterproductive, potentially leading to lost opportunities. Instead, a patient, informed approach, where the property manager guides and supports the lead through their journey, was advocated. This part of the interview underscored the significance of the buyer’s journey in converting leads into clients in the property management industry. It highlighted the need for property managers to be sensitive to the nuances of each potential client’s journey, adapting their tactics to meet leads where they are, and gently guiding them towards a decision. Understanding and respecting the buyer’s journey is vital in building strong, lasting relationships with clients and achieving long-term success in the competitive world of property management. Balancing Lead Quantity and Closing Ratio in Property Management During our insightful discussion, we also tackled whether the number of leads is more important than closing ratio. We agreed that while having a high volume of leads is often perceived as a marker of success, the true measure of effectiveness lies in the closing ratio. This perspective challenges the common emphasis on lead quantity and shifts the focus toward the quality and conversion of leads. An abundance of leads doesn’t guarantee business growth if the leads are not effectively converted into clients.  A smaller pool of well-qualified leads, nurtured properly, could yield better results than a larger pool of less qualified leads. It was also highlighted that focusing excessively on lead generation without a robust strategy for lead conversion can lead to missed opportunities and inefficiencies. The importance of aligning sales strategies with the capability to manage and convert leads was underscored. It was suggested that property management businesses should invest in training their teams on sales techniques, understanding client needs, and tailoring services to those needs to improve their closing ratios. This part of the interview shed light on the strategic importance of balancing lead quantity with the ability to close deals effectively. It served as a reminder that in the property management industry, the ultimate goal is not just to attract leads but to convert them into long-term, profitable client relationships. This balance is key to sustainable business growth and success in the competitive world of property management. Tailoring Lead Generation Strategies to Your Business Model An important takeaway from Jennifer’s insights is the need to tailor lead generation