I have some valuable advice if you're looking for ways to supercharge your leasing team's phone call performance. It's all about setting standards and leading by example – a winning formula for success!

The Golden Rule: Lead from the Front

When defining expectations for your leasing team, there's one golden rule: you must be ready to walk the talk. It's as simple as that! Setting an expectation and consistently meeting it creates a powerful precedent your team can follow. Think of it this way: imagine you frequently show up late for work as a manager. Your team notices, and when they start showing up late, it's an issue that must be addressed.
If they say, "You're late every day!" you can't respond with, "Well, I'm the boss; I can do that!" That's not how we build a culture of accountability and excellence.

Lead by Example: Show Them How It's Done

During my time on-site, I realized that I didn't need my property manager to take excellent phone calls for me to aim for excellence - I was going to be #1, and nothing was going to stop me. I did, however, hear my Sales Manager, now a Senior Operations Vice President, hang up the phone and yell, "Boom! That's a 100% call!" I remember being a new Leasing Agent and thinking, "I want a BOOM call!" I remember my Area Director, who rose to Executive Vice President and Entrepreneur, taking leasing calls during site visits and scoring 100%. I had an initial example, but I wanted to be better than that!

The Leasing Agents and I had a common goal: to be the top-ranking individuals. By doing that, we would easily be the top-ranked team. We genuinely cared about delivering exceptional service, which a leasing call is designed to do. It is a disservice to have a prospect show up needing a 3-bedroom by occupancy standards, but we only offer studios, ones, and twos. It is a disservice to have a prospect show up and you are just guessing on the fly what will work best for the next year or more of their life!

Make Your Competitors Wish You Would Move To Antarctica

A 100% score is just a number. Scoring 100% was just a baseline for me and my team. That score just meant we covered our bases, but we were working on hitting home runs! There are other goals beyond a 100% score, and that's where we lived!

We put 100% effort into all our calls because we wanted a prospect to show up and not waste time; we wanted to get their IDs and say, "I'm so excited to show you what we discussed on the phone!" If they even needed to show up! As an analytics nerd, I can tell you that as my phone call performance improved beyond the 100% line, my closing ratio dropped. What? How is that possible? Our lead software could not calculate closes without appointments. A topic for another day: How I Closed 39% of Callers without Appointment in 1-Year

We wanted our comps to know when they secret-shopped us that there were some monsters in their backyard, and every prospect they talked to would also have to talk to us! Game over! Oh, the memories of prospects completing their application while telling us how our comps were bashing us. That was such a compliment every time it happened! Hey, I get it! When I first met my wife, I prayed she didn't run into Channing Tatum.
We saw phone calls as an opportunity to free up our property manager so they could excel in their role. We took pride in executing our responsibilities at the highest level. We were determined to be #1 as a team, and phone calls were just one piece of the puzzle. We strived to excel in every aspect, making life easier for our operations and facilities teams and enhancing the overall performance of our community. As a Leasing Manager, I thought my standards were normal; it wasn't until I got to corporate that I saw why I was promoted.

Leading the Way and Addressing Challenges
If your leasing team lacks self-motivation or doesn't have a super-strong Leasing Manager, the responsibility falls on your shoulders as Property Manager. When your team witnesses your effort on phone calls, and you dish out ready-to-close appointments with meticulous notes, it becomes much easier to address performance issues head-on. You can ask questions like, "What's going on? How can I support you in reaching the next level?"
You have to remember that your new Leasing Agents look up to you! They might compare their year one performance to your year eight. You can build their confidence by saying: "Look, if I can do it, I have no doubt you can too. With your talent, I believe you'll be better than me in no time!"
But how inspiring is that to them when they hear you butchering sales calls? They may be new Leasing Agents, but they're not dumb!

"Better than you? I sure hope so!"

Digging Deeper for Solutions

As a Property Manager, your phone call performance scores should average above 90%. If your team continues to struggle despite your leading example, guidance, and support, underlying issues may be at play. It's possible that some of them don't enjoy their job, and this negatively affects their performance. Spend time to figure out the root cause.

Until you figure that out, take the words from Al Pachino's character in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross as advice:
"You wanna know the first rule, you'd know if you ever spent a day in your life. You never open your mouth til you know what the shot is." - From the Movie Glengary Glen Ross

When a prospect complains about the price in sales, it often means you haven't presented the right product to them yet. Similarly, your Leasing Agents may have taken the job out of necessity, but their true passions lie elsewhere. To tackle this challenge, you must explore alternative approaches to motivate and engage your team. Anybody can fire; few can inspire!

Seeking Support and Collaboration

If you face challenges, remember that reaching out for help is a sign of strength, not weakness. Don't hesitate to connect with others who have faced similar situations or are subject matter experts.

I'm not just an advocate for extreme excellence in leasing telephone performance. For half a decade on site, I was the best, and I trained the best. For the next five years, thousands of people went through my training, and many of them are out there right now, possibly in your submarket, striking fear into the hearts of the new hires you just assigned to secret-shop them! They might even lease them an apartment!

Luckily for you, I just launched a new service for phone call improvement, and I'm excited to help charge up your leasing agents so they can focus more on owning their competition and less on the example you're setting on leasing calls.