Building for scale by designing a flexible foundation that can grow with you

"To really scale you have to have a technology platform that allows things to be handed off cleanly and allows you good oversight from management."

Clay Lehman, Owner Resolute Property Management

About Clay and Resolute Property Management

Clay owns Resolute Property Management, and property management company located in Ocala Florida. They manage largely single family homes, many of which are in 55+ communities. Currently they manage 180 doors but are constantly looking to grow as long as they can consistently provide good service to their clients.

The Problem

They couldn't scale

"I'm highly focused on the ability to scale my business... I knew that if we didn’t have clearly documented processes we weren’t going to be able to grow the business the way we needed to."

"I didn’t feel comfortable as we grew that our processes were clean enough. They were documented, but there wasn’t a way to track them."

"We definitely had the processes documented, but as I dug into how we were actually doing things, there was a gap. They weren’t really documented accurately... Because we didn't have a tracking mechanism, we weren't doing your processes the way we intended to."

Too many options

"There were so many options out there to explore. I had false starts with Trello and Asana and there was almost too much flexibility to choose from."

"I detest paper. I think it provides opportunities for error and it can easily get lost or destroyed. It also costs money to print it out."

Getting the team to buy-in

"When there is something that is inefficient and doesn’t make sense, team buy-in goes down the toilet."

"I had a team of 5 people who were comfortable with paper checklists, but not crazy about technology and software."

"I invested the most time and energy into ClickUp... but I hadn’t done a good enough job of building it out so the buy-in from the team was low... The team didn’t see the cost-benefit clearly enough because I didn’t do a good job of painting what the other side looked like."

The Solution

What attracted Clay to LeadSimple?

Clay and his business development manager had used LeadSimple to manage their sales and growth process previously, so they had some familiarity with the system.

"We had used LeadSimple for a while for the business development process. I liked that we had some level of familiarity starting out."

But it was really important to Clay that they would get the support they needed to get the team up to speed.

"We also knew the team at LeadSimple and there was a level of trust that we would be able to get the support we needed to implement it. Because there was familiarity with some of LeadSimple’s team, that helped eliminate the fear of something new for my team."

Ultimately, Clay felt that LeadSimple's features and team would enable him to document and automate his processes in a way that allowed his business to grow and scale without sacrificing the quality of their customer service.

Some things Clay liked about LeadSimple

Features aren't the only thing that made LeadSimple an obvious choice for Resolute Property Management, but they were certainly a big part of it! Here are some the things Clay especially liked about the system.

  • Zapier Integration: "I love that LeadSimple has an integration with Zapier... that's been a game changer for us. It automatically generates documents, puts them in Google Drive and then updates LeadSimple with a note!"
  • Email/Text Templates: Templates save Clay's team the trouble of writing the same email over and over again. They also create consistent messaging across their team and add a personal touch to their communications.
  • Email/Text Automation: Automating emails and texts is really helpful especially in time-sensitive processes, where communication HAS to be made on time.
  • Conditional Logic: We manage some 55+ communities... conditional logic will stop an Application process from continuing if the applicant doesn't meet the age requirement... it prevents us from doing the whole process and only then realizing that we can't complete it."
  • Texting: "We utilize a lot of texting, it’s a great feature. People are much more prone to read and answer texts." Text messages have a 300% higher open rate than email and a 600% higher response rate, which makes it a huge time save in communicating with clients!
  • Tracking the Team: "We keep a close eye on our timelines to see if something is falling out of the timeline. It’s great to come into LeadSimple and look at the process and review the notes [from our team]... LeadSimple helps us know if our intended process is actually being followed or not."

How hard was it to build out their processes?

LeadSimple supported Clay and his team from the start as they built out their processes in the system.

"I focused on having the process “100% complete” first... I developed the Applications process with LeadSimple’s help from beginning to end and tested it extensively... When I did the first processes, Zach spent lots of time on the phone and on screenshares while I got my feet under me... but it helped us a lot."

Clay says, "I wanted to make sure my first process worked [before showing it to my team], so I ran through 100+ test applications to test every logic tree. That really helped when I showed my property manager that it was a fully working product. It was much easier to get the team’s buy in when they saw that."

LeadSimple is built off of the problems property managers face so customer feedback is CRUCIAL to our product development and design process. Clay experienced this first-hand on multiple occasions as he found ways that the LeadSimple software could be improved.

"When I would reach out to ask, 'is it possible to do X, Y, or Z?', I either got the directions on how to do it, or the LeadSimple team would tell me something like ‘I can definitely see how that could be useful. We don’t do it yet, but we'll definitely discuss this and find ways to improve in that area!’"

We take our client's feedback very seriously and build new features or improvements based on it. LeadSimple actually listens.

The Outcome

"Every application we’ve done since building out that process in LeadSimple has been so much faster!"

“You automate the ordinary so that you can excel in the extraordinary... People don’t need to type up emails over and over. That’s where I’m going as we get better and better at automating the ordinary things that we do... Automation is bad when it de-personalizes your business. But repeating tasks should be automated whenever it makes sense."

Before Clay started using LeadSimple for Operations, they were struggling to scale. They just couldn't grow their business unless their processes were documented and automated in a system that made it easy to track what was going on. Now Resolute Property Management can:

  • Consolidate their systems: LeadSimple combines their CRM/sales process with their process management system AND it integrates with Appfolio to pull in data and tracks all their calls, texts and emails with customers.
  • Track what's going on: Since their processes aren't on paper any more, managers and team members alike can see what's going on and catch processes that are off track or overdue before it becomes a problem.
  • Automate more of their business: Using LeadSimple's many built-in automations and pairing it with tools like Zapier enables them to make their processes flow smoothly, eliminate data entry and focus on the extraordinary tasks, not the ordinary ones.
"LeadSimple’s help has made a huge difference in our business!"

Interested in getting these results for your business?

We would love to have the opportunity to help you experience the success that Clay and his team are. If you're interested schedule a free consultation here to get the conversation started!

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