The biggest threats to lead conversion are unknown variables in your sales funnel that are unquantifiable and unmeasurable. As the Pete Drucker quote goes, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” You also can’t improve what you can’t manage.

So you work to eliminate the inconsistencies in your sales funnel and track results. Automated response platforms or drip email systems make part of your process more predictable and productive, but have you considered the people side of lead conversion? Are all your people (sales staff, leasing consultants, etc.) on the same page and accountable for their lead conversion activities?

Accountability is the key to a successful operation. When everyone on the team is accountable for executing their piece of the pipeline, you can identify, track and eliminate inconsistencies to improve your business all around.

How do you motivate, measure and manage your leasing consultants? Use our three-step model:

1. Sales (how you speak)
2. Operations (how you execute)
3. Accountability (how you measure)

1. Sales

The lead response and follow-up method is essential to engaging and starting a conversation with a lead. But how can you create consistency among your leasing consultants once they start a conversation? Simple: Standardize the sales conversation to achieve three goals:

1. Relay your property’s unique value proposition
2. Establish rapport with the renter
3. Qualify the renter for an appointment

Without identifying specific goals, standardizing the sales conversation can be a challenge; it requires knowing what factors will influence a lead to engage and do business with your company, then standardizing the method and training everyone on the talking points and philosophy.

Relay your unique value proposition

First make sure everyone on your sales staff understands your company’s unique value proposition (UVP). It’s essential to align your leasing consultants on your property’s differentiators, especially in a competitive rental market. Write down these differentiators, develop scripts for discussing each one with apartment shoppers and practice them with your sales staff.

Exercise

What do your properties offer that no one else does? Below is a template showing how to create a sample UVP for a property:

 

What is the unique value proposition for each of your properties? Follow the template using the table below.

 

Establish rapport with rental shoppers

Ask simple and consistent questions so your sales staff can learn more about a renter in that initial conversation. Once your staff understands a renter’s needs and interests, they can more effectively connect your property’s value proposition to them.

• What are their housing needs?
• Does their commute determine where they live?
• What do they like to do for fun?
• What are their goals for the future?

You can also use the information you receive to reengage a rental shopper at a later date if they weren’t ready to rent when the initial conversation took place.

Qualify the renter

Lead qualification is simple with the LPMA technique. Find out each rental shoppers’ basic preferences on:

• Location
• Price
• Motivation
• Appointment

Use your LPMA questions to naturally guide the conversation to get the critical information you need, and provide rental shoppers with the information they need. While the goal of the qualifying discussion is to schedule a face-to-face appointment, you should approach it like a conversation, working to further your rapport with the renter.

2. Operations

On the operations side, there are many tools and tactics that can help your leasing consultants be consistent and efficient in their efforts and behavior. Here’s a breakdown of three areas on which to focus your efforts.

CRM

A customer relationship management (CRM) system is the backbone of any marketing and lead generation strategy. A CRM automates several tasks and workflows that save you time and money, and provides rental shoppers with consistent interactions with you.

Adopting a CRM can be one of the most important and beneficial decisions you make, but choosing one can be daunting because there are many options. When you research which one is the right fit, remember that the best CRM is the one you use.

Segmentation

Why is lead segmentation important to your operations? It shows you where you should be spending your time and money for the biggest ROI. By identifying a renter’s motivation, you can better determine their timeline for leasing and then categorize them appropriately as an A, B, C or D lead. Plus, the organized data in your CRM allows you to predict renter behavior more accurately to streamline your operations.

Daily engagement

The benefit of building a predictable sales pipeline is only as valuable as the time you make available to nurture it. Training your sales staff to take a methodical approach to time management can help them achieve the objective of increasing their lead-to-appointment rate. For example: Have them take 30 minutes every morning to dissect the leasing sheet and the hottest leads.

3. Accountability

Creating a culture of accountability starts with establishing performance goals and a consistent schedule of quality control. Identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) and monitoring them on a regular basis helps you get the best and most consistent performance from your leasing consultants. Marketing without establishing and measuring KPIs creates risk in your lead-to-lease ratio.

Influencing KPIs

Look beyond lead generation conversion as your top KPI and establish two tiers of secondary KPIs that feed into the overall lead conversion ratio. Secondary KPIs create accountability and identify your all-star performers.
Tier 1: Pipeline development

• Lead-to-appointment ratio
• Appointment-to-close ratio

Tier 2: Effort benchmarks

• Average attempts-per-lead
• New appointments-per week
• Pipeline development

Use these KPIs as benchmarks for all your leasing consultants.

Quality-control cadence

As part of taking a methodical approach to increasing your lead conversion rate, you need an established schedule of review and evaluation for your sales staff. Put recurring reviews on your calendar, and keep a simple scorecard to track and view staff performance at a glance.

Example scorecard

 

The information from your evaluations and reviews gives you the most accurate measurement of your efforts so you can proceed on actual data versus gut feelings. Data-based decisions are more likely to improve sales and marketing strategies that increase occupancy rates and bottom-line ROI.

Summary

When it comes to helping renters find homes, nothing replaces the human touch. Standardizing the way your leasing consultants operate will help you manage them more efficiently, give you deeper transparency into your sales funnel and increase your lead-to-lease ratio.