Effective Follow Up Is A Free Pass To Sell Again And Again
Are you hoping an offer to meet or beat prices will give you another chance at the sale?
One mistake I see a lot of self storage owners make is acting as though offering to meet or beat competitor’s prices means they have an effective follow up process in place.
Even though offering to meet or beat competitor prices sounds like a good strategy it is probably not working very well.
The problem is that it is too much work for your prospective customer. Making them work means that many of them won’t call you back.
To really appreciate the customer’s situation, pretend for a moment that you are moving.
- You spend days preparing your home by boxing up your whole life.
- You have been cleaning parts of your home that have been neglected for years, like the tracks in your window panes.
- Most of this work is done at night and on the weekend, because you can’t afford to take the time off work.
- Although you know some stuff is going to go into storage temporarily, arranging for storing is just one more task on a list that already seems too long.
So now you are calling around to self storage facilities and the second place you call seems to have pretty good prices, but you’ve got two others on your list you want to check with.
Just as you are about to hang up, the manager tells you to keep in mind that they will meet or beat the competition’s prices.
The afternoon wears on and now you have called four different locations and you like the fourth place well enough. Their price and special is as good as the others. It seems “good enough” and you are tired.
Now here’s the critical question: Are you really going to go through the extra effort of calling back that second place that offered to match or beat prices?
Consider your outrageous expectations
- You are expecting them to remember your offer to meet or beat.
- You are expecting them to not confuse you with a competitor.
- You are assuming that you are the only store that will make the meet or beat offer.
- You are assuming that they will have the energy or motivation to call you back after shopping around.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against meeting or beating competitor’s prices.
If you have been sitting on vacancy in the size the prospective customer is looking for then you are better off getting it rented at a discount than not renting it at all.
What I am saying is that an offer to meet or beat competitor’s prices is not a follow up strategy. It can be a component part, but on its own it is is much too passive. Create a follow up process, train your property managers, and you’ll earn a free pass to sell to your prospective customers a second and third time.
In early January 2011 I’ll be releasing a workshop that helps property managers effectively follow up with prospective customers in ways that result in more rentals and more income – and when done right, it’s pretty darn easy.
Are you relying on an offer to meet or beat competitors prices? If so, how can you strengthen your follow up process?
This is the second post in a series about follow up. If you missed the first post that outlines three cases when follow up is really helpful, you can check it out here.
