You’ve Been B-BACK’ed! 5 Ways to Turn Your B-Backs Into Leases!

You’ve been there – your prospect apartment tour is going well, you are excited, your prospects are talking about where they are going to place their furniture, and then they utter the dread words:

We’re going to take a look at a few more places and we’ll BE BACK.

You just got B-BACK’ed! How do you turn those B-Backs into leases?

Here are 5 ways to get them BACK, and turn those B-BACKS into leases!

1. FOLLOW-UP! While you are in the apartment tour, take your camera, and anything that your prospects say they like, take a picture of that. (i.e. “oh honey, look at the size of the closet!” -SNAP picture here. “oh honey, look at the pool!” SNAP picture here. Let them know you’ll email them the pics of all their favorite parts of the apartment tour.) I’m going to assume you’ve done some due diligence and have taken down their email address and phone number for follow-ups. After they leave, load the pictures onto a Flickr.com account, and email them the SHARE link. (Some email servers may have limits for attachments, and you want to make ensure that you don’t attach a bunch of pics that gets your email automatically moved into the spam folder.) Make sure in your follow-up email, you put something personal and friendly. (i.e. “Here’s a link to the pictures I took for you. You mentioned the size of the closet – I measured it and it’s 8×7. We’d love to have you live here!”
2. FOLLOW-UP! Ask them when is the best time to contact them – WRITE THAT DOWN, and contact them during their most convenient times. Many times, we are following up with our prospects when its convenient for us. We should call them when its convenient for them – and increase our chances of having a “live” conversation as well as another opportunity for positive interaction with your apartment community.
3. FOLLOW-UP! There is no 3 day rule to making a follow-up call when you’re trying to win business. If you want them to sign a lease, you’ll have to earn it. My rule of thumb: call immediately, call often. If you took my recommendation and took pictures (#1 above), call them after you send the pictures just to let them know to look for it in their email. No pressure, no salesy talk. Just a friendly call. THEN, call them the VERY next day and ask them how the rest of their apartment tours went, and offer to answer any questions they may still have. Call them a couple of days later to see if they have a decision and offer to show them another apartment that just “happened” to open up, etc.

You get the idea: find ways to have positive points of contact with your prospects – don’t just call them to CALL THEM.

4. FOLLOW-UP! When calling your prospects, always let them know how glad you are that they came in, or how happy you are that they came by. At the end of each call, either ask for their business or ask them to come back in.
5. FOLLOW-UP! If you have an upcoming community event, call your prospects to invite them to attend. Having a breakfast for residents this weekend? Ask your prospects to attend. Have a football game showing in the community room? Invite them to join!

All 5 of my tips have to do with follow-up calls. It seems like a no-brainer, but I’m constantly amazed at how little follow-up there actually is out there. In recent “shops” that we performed, we only got a 20% rate of follow-up. We’ve been on the hunt for some office space – granted office space is a little different market than apartments, but we were FLOORED to find that the follow-up rate was even lower! (Maybe 10%!) We ended up leasing space from the person who cared the most by addressing all of our concerns, followed up with us the most, and fought to get our business. Your prospects aren’t any different. Studies show that the more positive interactions we have, the more we are likely to buy a product. Start making more positive interactions and increase your chances of closing on that lease!

Do you have any additional tips to add? Please leave a comment and add to the list!

Don’t GET IT? RENT SODA! GET IT!

-Daisy Nguyen in Minneapolis, Minnesota MN

CEO/President

Offering Apartment Marketing, Apartment Business & Operations Consulting & Apartment Industry Training

Web: RentSoda.com Email: Daisy {at} RentSoda(.)com

Become a fan of RENTSODA on facebook.  Connect with RENTSODA on LinkedIn!

Follow RENTSODA on Twitter!

Be the first to like.

Like

Unlike

Related posts:

1. “I’m So Glad You Called Today” – 4 Phone Tips to Turn a Call into an Apartment Tour
2. Being Shy About Business Won’t Win Leases – How to Take Your Competition OUT!
3. TOP 10 TIPS to Get the MOST Out of CRAIGSLIST Apartment Ads
4. Foursquare vs. Facebook Places – Which is Better for Marketing Your Apartment Community?
5. Got VACANCY? Apartment Models – Is it a DO or DON’t or CAN’t Afford It?