The Role of On-Site Sales Associates

Think about the experience last time you bought a new car.  It seems to me that nobody enjoys the experience of sitting across the desk from a salesperson while they complete their process.  The buyer needs little more than a validating test-drive and to agree on a price (and in many cases, the latter is no longer an issue as dealerships move to fixed pricing).  Yet the transaction drags on far longer than we’d like it to. 

I’m concerned that many of the sales models in multi-family housing feel much more like car sales than one in which the prospect feels empowered and in control. This fear struck me while I was at the Apartment Innovation and Marketing (AIM) conference last week where one of the clearly popular topics was self-showing. Not only did we get great feedback from our session on “after the lead” tactics that included lessons on self-showing from a single-family rental company that has successfully implemented it, but we also heard about self-showing in at least three other sessions.

I’ve talked (and blogged) about how I believe that self-showing is an example of a place where multifamily housing should catch up with single-family rentals.

Rather than talk again about why self-showing is important, I thought I’d put the practice in the context of the overall tipping point we identified in our recent white paper 20 for 20: 20 conversations with senior multifamily executives about the outlook for 2020 and beyond.

When combined with other technology developments like artificial intelligence used during the leasing process and improved prospect and marketing technology overall, I believe we are facing a crossroad in the role of on-site sales associates.

In the “old days,” leasing associates were the critical cog in the wheel of leasing. They were central to everything as:

• Prospects couldn’t get information about the property, understand pricing, tour the community or lease without interacting with a leasing associate.
• Operators couldn’t communicate with prospects, “show” the features and amenities of the property and get feedback and insights about what was on the minds of those visiting their properties.

Leasing associates were part salesperson, part service provider and part clerical worker.

That situation is very different today. Think about the following:

• Today a prospect typically learns about a community and pricing, schedule a tour and sometimes even conducts that tour - all online, before the first touch with a person.
• Bot technologies have already started to handle chat and even telephone conversations. Additionally, some companies on the leading edge are experimenting with AI-driven leasing applications handling more complex leasing conversations
• At AIM, one operator noted that “sight unseen” leases (i.e. leases with preceding tours) more than doubled in the past year
• Data analyzing single-family rental experiences with self-showing has shown that self-shows have the same or higher closing rates as those led by a leasing associate indicating that the latter does appear to add (and in some cases may subtract from) value in that portion of the process.

The Role of Leasing Associate Must Change

As more and more of the basics of leasing are handled by technology, this radically changes the role of the leasing associate; in turn, operational leaders need to alter what they look for in new hires and how they train those new hires in the leasing process. That’s why we have built our InSite Sales^TM Performance Improvement program with the following in mind:

• The very nature of “selling” is changing. Leasing agents will have fewer touchpoints with an increasingly tech-enabled prospect. 
• If you are teaching your leasing agents how to follow a sales process, you are probably focusing on the wrong thing.
• Selling today is about helping people make good decisions. Your prospects of today know so much more than prospects used to (they often more than your leasing associates know), so old school manipulative processes don’t work well anymore.
• You need to hire and develop associates with the right soft skills, favoring those who genuinely care about others. As agents fill the emotional content and context that computer-driven communications struggle with, empathy and the ability to ask questions trump product knowledge in the leasing agent of tomorrow.
• The Initial Discovery phase for any leasing associate is almost always about quickly catching up with where the prospect is in their search. Prospects don’t want the hassle of going through things they’ve already done, so we must place a premium on how to catch up quickly
• Following up and advancing, rather than merely continuing, the conversation is a skill that differentiates the high performing, contemporary salesperson. With less influence over the early part of a prospect’s journey, the leasing associates needs to assert herself more strongly in the latter half of the decision process

A good way to think about our current situation is to go back to the car buying experience I started with. Pause for a moment and think about how the leasing process is implemented in your communities. Is it radically different than the frustration so many experience when buying a car? If the answer isn’t an emphatic “YES!” then changes to that approach may well improve operational, financial and customer satisfaction metrics.