LeadSimple Blog
So, you want to grow your property management company in 2024. What do you need to do to make that happen? How can you increase your lead closing rate in 2024 to increase your ROI per marketing dollar spent? Find out in today's article!
So, you want to grow your property management company in 2024. What do you need to do to make that happen?
The simplest answer is that you need to gain new owners and close more doors.
(Another related goal is to churn fewer doors, which involves improving your client experience. Learn more about how to do that here.)
Do you have a goal set for the number of doors you want to have by the end of next year? If not, you need to start there.
The next question is how to achieve that goal. There are two (again, obvious) steps:
Getting leads is your marketing strategy. You need the contact info of property owners who are looking for a management company. You can get leads through marketing campaigns, website SEO, pay-per-lead or pay-per-click lead generation services, and organic referrals.
Converting those leads to paying clients is your sales strategy.
You need BOTH of these things to achieve your growth goals. Without leads you can’t convert them; without converting the leads you have you can’t close any doors.
Unfortunately oftentimes business owners focus most (if not all) their time, money, and effort on the first step: getting new leads. However, when they don’t focus on perfecting their sales tactics, most of these leads never convert to paying clients.
They then label the leads as “bad leads”, and go on to spend more money on more leads, which then don’t convert. It becomes a vicious cycle.
To break this cycle and close more doors, you need to focus on the second half of marketing & sales: increasing your closing rate.
Take a moment to consider the math. Take the number of leads you receive, multiply it by your closing rate, and you get the number of doors you will close.
(# of leads) x (closing rate) = (# of closed doors)
Note that you have two levers here: leads and closing rate. Which one is the most powerful lever of growth?
Let’s consider a couple scenarios:
In order to achieve our goal of 50 new doors, we need 500 leads.
In this scenario, in order to achieve our goal of 50 new doors, we need 250 leads.
We just halved our marketing spend by doubling our closing rate.
This time, let’s say we do have 500 leads, but this time our closing rate is 50%.
Now we’re spending the same on marketing, but we’re getting 5x the return - we’ll close 250 doors.
So what do we learn from this? That by doubling your closing rate, you can either:
Either way, you’re getting exponentially more ROI on every marketing dollar you invest. Every lead lost represents not only the money you spent on marketing to gain that lead, but also the additional ROI you would have received from that account.
Your closing rate isn’t a static reality you have to live with. It’s time to improve it.
So how do you go about increasing your closing rate?
The first step is sales training: learning how to guide the conversation, how to handle objections, and how to get to the root problem the prospect is looking to solve. (See RentScale for sales training and craft your sales playbook!)
The second step is to utilize your CRM fully. There are five main things to focus on in lead management:
LeadSimple’s CRM is designed specifically to help property managers do these five things (and more).
Let’s get into it.
Speed to lead is one of the most effective strategies to increase your closing rate.
70% of people work with the first company they talk to. Every minute that you let pass from when a lead reaches out to when you contact them is a minute where they might be talking to someone else.
Instead of letting your leads sit, target the first 5 minutes after a lead reaches out. This is your golden window of opportunity to give them a wow experience, even if you don’t get a hold of them and just leave a voicemail. (Calling within 5 minutes is 21x more effective than calling after 30 minutes! (source))
Most property management companies think that they respond to leads within the hour. However, the average is actually 39 hours. (Find the study where we collected this data here).
Stand out by reaching out immediately and catch your leads while you are still top of mind. You’ll be shocked by the impact it has on your closing rate.
LeadSimple helps property managers achieve speed to lead by calling you immediately when a new lead is added to the system from your lead sources. Simply pick up the phone and press a number to call the lead immediately, wherever you are.
This way, you can get back to the lead within the first 60 seconds, just by picking up the phone.
The next step is to follow up with the lead. But not just once; over and over until you get a response.
The trick here is to have a consistent process in place. Create an actual sales process - you don’t have to reinvent the wheel with every new prospect. Consistency is key. Find what works and stick to it.
Utilize automation in your sales process. Start with an automatic email response that goes out to the lead immediately. Build out a workflow of follow up tasks with email templates, create email drip campaigns, and utilize texting in your sales process.
A consistent sales process will save you time and effort and enable your sales team to scale (it's easy to train new team members on the process!). It will also keep you from giving up on leads too quickly because the process is already in place to follow up with them. If they reached out to you or you spent money on them, it is worth your time to continue touching them until you get a response.
LeadSimple has robust sales process features, allowing you to build out your sales process and automate it. It also includes sales templates for owner leads, with email drip campaigns and much much more.
Cold and lost leads are a huge lost opportunity in most property management companies. Leads that are unresponsive or have chosen a different route often get neglected.
However, there is still a lot of opportunity there, and it doesn’t have to take a lot of time to nurture them.
Create lead nurturing campaigns, crafted for each reason why a lead goes cold.
Be sure that your nurturing campaigns include tasteful, educational content that interests the prospect and positions you as an expert in the field rather than feeling “sales-y.”
Timing is important as well. A great example from LeadSimple’s templates is this email from the “Lost - Hired Competitor” stage. This is an automated email that goes out 9 months after they enter this stage. (Note the timing - shortly before they renew their management contract with your competitor.)
Keep an accurate record in one place for all your leads! This saves you an incredible amount of brain space and time so you can focus on actually selling. This is also incredibly important for team collaboration.
Track all communication in one place
You need to have all communication with a lead at your fingertips and easy to find. In LeadSimple, you can connect your email account to LeadSimple to track all your communications with them in one place. Calls also can be tracked and recorded right in the lead’s activity.
Use notes and track all other details
Use notes to track any other information about a lead or the conversations you have with them. Come back to those notes at any time to pick up the conversation right where you left off.
Use tasks to track what’s upcoming
Use tasks and task due dates to track what’s coming up for a lead. These can come from your sales process or be quick one-off tasks for a lead.
Finally, you need to know your lead numbers to forecast your growth accurately and make informed changes to your marketing and sales strategies.
LeadSimple has a plethora of sales and lead reports to help you track these numbers and many more, as well as the ability to create custom dashboard views and reports.
It is also important to note that you may not want to close every lead you receive. Some owners are simply not a good fit for your company and you need to track that accurately as well.
If they are not a good fit for your company, due to location, expectations, or other factors, add them to an invalid stage in LeadSimple so they do not affect your closing rate.
After you’ve closed a new deal, what’s next?
Now it’s time to onboard that owner effectively, giving them an awesome first impression and getting them excited about working with your company.
This is where it’s time to build your onboarding process in LeadSimple Operations, so you can seamlessly hand off the lead from your salesperson to your operations team, keep to a tight timeline, and make sure no important steps fall through the cracks.
Don’t yet have a CRM or don’t have your operational processes in place in a streamlined, automated software? LeadSimple is rated the #1 CRM for property managers. Book a discovery call with LeadSimple today!
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Aimee is the Content and Customer Education Manager at LeadSimple. She creates training, educational, and other content to help clients achieve success in sales, operations, and the health of their business. When she isn't working, she enjoys the outdoors, crafting, family time, and learning new skills.
Sales doesn't have to be an afterthought, and your processes should be automated. With LeadSimple, you will have a seamless handoff between sales and service teams, and help you turn cold prospects into raving fans by delivering a great customer experience.
