Why MORE Leads Won’t Save You!

What if building a successful property management business is more like running an ultra-marathon than a sprint? Imagine the discipline, patience, and strategy it takes to steadily progress toward a 10-year vision. Join me, Tony Cline, with my co-host Mark, as we unravel the nuances of cultivating a business that thrives on solid foundations rather than fleeting victories. You’ll uncover why clarity in identifying your ideal clients and setting realistic goals can set you apart from competitors, and how focusing on incremental growth can align your business trajectory with long-term success.

In our conversation, we confront the widespread myth that more leads equal more success. Drawing from our own experiences, we reveal the importance of discovering personal strengths and how they can differentiate you in a crowded market. We discuss the pitfalls of saying yes to everything and how it can hinder instead of help. By targeting those “A clients” early on, you’ll learn to avoid the constraints that can bog down your resources and time, setting your business up for sustainable growth with a clear value proposition and strategic planning at its core.

Have you ever found yourself speaking to a potential client and realizing halfway through that they might not be the right fit? Through personal anecdotes and lessons learned, we highlight the art of effective sales scripting and qualifying prospects in property management. By controlling sales conversations through strategic questioning, we emphasize the importance of truly understanding client needs and expectations. This client-centric approach not only saves time but also enhances the relationship, setting the stage for successful collaboration. Tune in for insights on establishing authority while remaining open to feedback and always aiming for refinement in your sales techniques.

visit pmsuccess.com for more value packed property management related information or to hire Tony as your property management coach.

Podcast Episode Transcript

Mark Brower: 0:00

What are the most valuable compounding things that we can do to build lead volume? Okay, if we think of this, as sometimes when the answer to a problem isn’t clear, 10x the problem. So imagine for a moment that the goal is to build the optimal or the largest property management company in 10 years. Not, one year.

Mark Brower: 0:17

Because if we look at it as a 10-year problem, then we know that this year we’re doing a lot of foundational things and we’re not going to set an unrealistic goal that’s going to cause us to shortchange some of the discipline-focused foundational work we’re doing now.

Mark Brower: 0:31

That will provide the platform that we can spring off of and do this over 10 years. Because guess what? The hacks that we want to do this year to do more than we’re capable of will get us more doors in the hopper. But then we’re doing a straight line instead of an exponential. And so what we understand over time, after we do that long enough building our own businesses, we realize oh wow, the most successful companies were not an overnight success. They didn’t just get more leads, they didn’t just say yes to everything. They got super clear about who they want to work with and they all said yes to only those people, so they didn’t paint themselves in a corner and absolutely destroy their future self with low energy and zero time or staff that turns over because they’re completely overworked and underappreciated. Right, all of these things become necessary if we’re looking at building a legacy over 10 years, but we overlook them sometimes if we’re looking at a one-year timeframe.

Tony Cline: 1:23

Welcome to the Property Management Success Podcast, where we interview leaders in the industry to uncover the secrets to profitability, efficiency and achieving true freedom, whether it’s your time, money or lifestyle. I’m your host, Tony Cline, and I’m here to help you build a wildly successful property management business. Let’s get to it, hey, tony what’s up, hey Mark?

Mark Brower: 1:45

how are you doing? I’m doing great, thank you. I know we’ve been talking about this for weeks, maybe a few months, just getting together and having regular conversations to kind of share and give back to the property management industry and also learn. I learn best by teaching and by talking, so super honored to be on the call with you today.

Tony Cline: 2:10

Yeah, it’s been a while in the making, so I’m excited to actually get started get rolling. And it’s funny because we’ve had a lot of conversations where we haven’t recorded and we’ve had some really good aha moments that unfortunately, probably with the personalities that you and I have, they’re probably lost forever. So hopefully we’ll be able to circle back around and uncover some of those again.

Mark Brower: 2:38

Yeah, we’ll do it so well. I feel like we co-host this conversation but we, just before we started recording here, we just talked about, you know how we could add value, and you were sharing with me that. You were on a conversation earlier today about sales and about was it specifically about the sales script? Because that’s kind of what’s on my mind, but tell me what you guys were talking about and how it impacts property managers.

Tony Cline: 3:06

Well we were just talking about. Some companies will set a goal and they will say I want to grow 100 doors this year, I want to grow 200 doors this year, and they put it down on. I won’t even call it a goal sheet, because they don’t really have the systems or the steps of what it’ll take to get there. They just sort of say I want to do this, and then at the end of the year they look back. And they look back and say, well, oops, I guess I didn’t actually have the steps in place to get there. Or even halfway through the year they say, well, we’re behind. So now, instead of doing 10 doors a month now, we need to do 15 doors a month for the next six months. But they don’t really change what they’re doing in order to actually be able to get there. And so it was really more about and let’s see. I don’t know how far we made it in here yet, but I’m going to bring up ultra running, since that’s a topic of love.

Mark Brower: 4:02

First three minutes, that’s a topic of love.

Tony Cline: 4:04

First three minutes, yeah, first three minutes. But it’s kind of like saying I’m going to go out and learn how to run 100 miles without having actually put the work in to know that you can run 5K or five miles consistently, five miles at a time. And I think that’s where people need to look at not just the big picture, but what’s my very first step? And then what’s that look like, and what’s the next step look like, and how many times do I have to do that? Sometimes people want to get creative and change what they’re doing, when really it just comes down to if you want to run 100 miles, it’s the same two steps over and over. It’s the right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot. But people get bored with the basics in business and they try to do something for a little while and then change it up. And so I know, mark, you had mentioned that you have kind of some scripting that you follow in order to make those right foot, left foot, repeatable steps doable for most people.

Mark Brower: 5:04

Well, let’s talk about what I’m really great at is making mistakes. What are some of the mistakes I’ve made before I got to this script? And so that’s what. That’s what comes to mind first. Some of the mistakes I made was early in my business growth. I thought that it was all about getting more leads. My number of problems I just don’t have enough leads. If I had enough leads, everything would be different, everything would be great. I could close more deals if I had more leads, leads, leads.

Mark Brower: 5:30

I found out that that wasn’t the right place to put my focus. It’s important, but it wasn’t the only thing I should have been focusing on. And then the other. So what I didn’t fully appreciate at that time. When I was looking at hacks and tactics, you know, I just thought, well, there’s some silver bullet out there that you know that I got to figure out that’s going to give me more leads. That was my mindset. That was my focus.

Mark Brower: 5:55

When I started changing my focus over time, with the help of other smart entrepreneurs and business coaches and mentors, I realized that I hadn’t laid a really strong foundation, and part of that foundation and we could talk all day about this alone is understanding who I am and how I’m different than my competitors and who I want to work with. Of course, we all know that one of the classic mistakes of a small property manager who’s growing is they say yes to way more things than they should say yes to. You know, it’s just we’re so desperate for money. It’s like the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is food and shelters at the bottom, and man we need to pay the bills. So it’s yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, oh crap. What did I say yes to? So it’s yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, oh crap. What did I say yes to?

Mark Brower: 6:44

So once I got clear about who I am and how I can use my God-given gifts and talents, my unique abilities, in a different way than my competitors can, to affect maximum value in other people’s lives through property management, now I can understand who it is I’m looking for.

Mark Brower: 7:05

So I feel like the self-awareness and then being really deliberate and focused about who it is I want to serve and then understanding how to speak to them. You know, all of those come before an effective sales script. So if we’re going to go through a sales script today which I would really love to, it’s on my mind today and I think I’ve got a good one for me. Up to it’s on my mind today and I think I’ve got a good one for me. It’s important to understand that I don’t look at a sales script anymore as a as a hack, as a tool, as a gimmick to close more accounts. It really sprung out of this more careful, deliberate work and I’m an impatient person, so it was really painful for me to like spend some years and months and years to figure out who I am, how I’m different, who I’m looking to connect with and how I add more value to their lives.

Tony Cline: 7:53

Yeah, I think this takes me back to what you said. That a lot of people complain about and you and I have both done it too is we could just close more deals if we just had more leads. But one of the reasons why people most people don’t have more leads is they don’t actually know who they’re targeting, and so it’s not that they have a lead problem, it’s that they have a qualified lead problem, and the reason they have a qualified lead problem is because people don’t know that. The public doesn’t know what makes you different, what separates you from the other voices out there in the marketplace.

Tony Cline: 8:29

Why should I hire Mark? Why should I hire Tony? And by being really clear on the value that you bring to your market, to your industry, by really getting clear on that now, you can craft your message specifically to those people. And by crafting your message specifically to those people, it makes it sound like you’re talking right to that that person who is your a client, your target client, yeah, and let’s and let’s, let’s, let’s underscore a little bit the importance of finding and saying yes to your A client.

Mark Brower: 9:06

Only. What we don’t realize when we’re new and getting started and saying yes to everything, is we don’t understand that we’re painting ourselves into a corner of future capacity, future energy, future time, future chances of success, one of the most valuable compounding things that we can do to build lead volume. Okay, if we think of this you told me, tony, sometimes, when you know the answer to a problem isn’t clear 10x the problem. Okay. So imagine for a moment that the goal is to build the optimal or the largest property management company in 10 years, not one year, right? Because if we look at it as a 10-year problem, then we know that this year we’re doing a lot of foundational things and we’re not going to set an unrealistic goal that’s going to cause us to shortchange some of the discipline-focused foundational work we’re doing now. That will provide the platform that we can spring off of and do this over 10 years. Because guess what?

Mark Brower: 10:12

The hacks that we want to do this year, to do more than we’re capable of will get us more doors in the hopper. But then we’re doing a straight line instead of an exponential and so what we understand over time, after we do that long enough building our own businesses, we realize, oh wow, the most successful companies were not an overnight success. They didn’t just get more leads, they didn’t just say yes to everything. They got super clear about who they want to work with and they all said yes to only those people. So they didn’t paint themselves in a corner and absolutely destroy their future self with low energy and zero time or staff that turns over because they’re completely overworked and underappreciated. Right, all of these things become necessary for looking at building a legacy over 10 years, but we overlook them sometimes if we’re looking at a one-year time frame.

Tony Cline: 11:02

So two things that come to mind when you talk about that. It brings me back to when I first bought my company back in 2000. So this example. People would say, well, people don’t actually write checks anymore. But stay with me on the example. I remember we had a client that I really wanted to be in this neighborhood, in this building, and there was a prospect that said, well, I’ll let you manage the property, but I’m going to need you to deposit the check into my bank. And it happened to be the bank wasn’t too far away from our office. So I said, well, yeah, okay, I’ll go ahead and manage your property. And then, because we were a smaller company, I’ll go ahead and take on that extra responsibility of collecting the rent from the tenant and then waiting for the check to clear and then cutting you a check and then remembering to drive that over to your bank and putting that in your bank.

Tony Cline: 11:56

And when you’re small, you’re grabbing at whatever you can to try to get enough business to be able to meet that first level of hierarchy of needs.

Tony Cline: 12:05

And so you start taking all of these things on. But the problem with that is you’re not building something that is duplicatable, scalable, and you start doing all these little one-offs, thinking that you’re doing the right thing. But the problem with that is you’re building a system that, because it’s not standardized, you are going to fail at it. At some point You’re going to let them down and what I’ve learned just over time I think you probably learned the same lesson is that it’s better to say no up front to something that doesn’t fit your model and the way you do business than to say yes and wait to see how long it takes you to screw up and upset that customer or wait for that client to upset your team, just because they’re not a good fit. So the first one is really getting clear on that avatar and saying yes to the avatar, but the second thing is saying no to people who aren’t, because you’re going to turn them out the back end.

Mark Brower: 13:06

That is so hard to do when you don’t, when you feel like you have spare capacity available to make more money you want to, you run my. My thought process at the time was I ran it through the filter of can I do this, can I meet this person’s needs? And the answer often was yes. What I should have been thinking is once I have a staff of five people that I’m paying 20 to 30 dollars an hour to, how often are they going to be able to meet this expectation or exceed this expectation is, if I’m agreeing to what I can produce at my 100% capability, then I’m really messing up my future. I’m stealing my future company. I’m stealing the happiness, the joy, the money from my future team employees and myself. What I need to do right now, as hard as it is, is to say yes to only those things that I can fulfill at 70 to 80% of my ability, because that’s scalable. And when we say but it is so, so hard to say no. We get about 70 to 80 leads a month. Right now, we consider about 50 of those to be qualified leads. It’s so much easier for me now to say no to 20 to 30 people and refer them out, because I know that when I pick up one end of the stick, the other end comes up with it. I know the opportunity cost of saying yes to the wrong client.

Mark Brower: 14:39

It reminds me of a story, and then let’s get into the script, if we can. It reminds me of a story I heard of. This dental consultant would show up at these dental conventions. Guy would have a line. He was a vendor. He would have a line in front of his table every single time because he had a 100% success rate at quadrupling the profitability of any dental practice that he agreed to work with. And his secret was he only said yes to 3% of the people that wanted to work with them, because he knew exactly they had to have a certain level of revenue, they had to have infighting among the staff, they had to have like this issue, this issue, this issue. So he would say yes to 3% and no to 97%. And then the consequences he absolutely knocked it out of the park with every single person that he worked with and then he didn’t have to spend.

Mark Brower: 15:32

There’s a saying on I saw it on Twitter, I don’t know where the original source was you only spend money on marketing, you only spend money on sales because you don’t understand marketing and you only spend money on marketing because you don’t understand how to build product Like at its core. Each of us has the opportunity, I believe, and it’s the purest form, to create a property management company that adds so much value to the right people’s lives in the right way that everyone’s a raving fan and it can grow exponentially over time on its own with no marketing spend. I mean, that’s like the golden goose. That’s the ideal, but it’s actually possible. We haven’t done it perfectly, but we’re getting a lot closer to it now.

Mark Brower: 16:12

I think our main marketing spend is we do some content creation and we spend some money on Yelp because our Yelp profile is so amazing. So anyway, I don’t know if that’s an app. I really wanted to give kind of a disclaimer, like don’t take this script as like a hack that you’re going to be able to employ in your business, but I wanted to share it as an example of what’s helped me close me alone. When I filled in for business development manager, I closed 30 accounts in one month using this script with zero cancellations, so I thought it might be useful.

Tony Cline: 16:45

All right. So we kind of set up the tease a little bit of Mark’s got this amazing script. So let’s actually dive in and let’s sort of do what I call an autopsy. Let’s open it up and see what’s inside. So why don’t you share a little bit about how it gets started?

Mark Brower: 17:02

Absolutely. Maybe we’ll even post a link to the script. I’d be happy to share it Again. This works for me. So what’s the first thing we do with any sales script? We qualify the prospect, and this is something that I didn’t do early on.

Mark Brower: 17:20

I’ll contrast this a little bit. When I first started my management company, I just got on a phone call and I said, well, what do you need? And that’s important. But so often in this business I’ve found that a lot of the accidental landlord clients that we end up working with really don’t understand what they need. This is a brand new thing for them. Not only do they not understand how to be a landlord, they don’t understand how to own a business and think like a business owner. So instead of focusing a lot of time on what they feel like they need and trying to morph or become a chameleon to that, I spend a lot of time in the beginning of the call qualifying them. This does a couple of things. Not only does it help avoid me saying yes to the wrong thing, but I think it also not as a gimmick and not because I’m trying to manipulate people, but it significantly elevates my perceived value, right?

Tony Cline: 18:11

So I think I think I kind of do the same thing. When you start talking to somebody, tell them a little bit about the fact that you have a great system that works for a lot of people, but it doesn’t work for everybody, because you’re focused on a specific type of clientele. That’s it, and let’s just have a conversation and see if we’re a good fit for each other. I always say that because I know they’re qualifying me, but I want them to know right off the bat I’m trying to qualify them too, so I always throw that in there. Let’s just see if we’re a good fit for each other.

Mark Brower: 18:49

That’s perfect, that’s beautiful, those words are excellent. So let me back up a little bit. Right out of the gates it’s like a two-minute icebreaker connector, like shows them that I’m a human being and that I’m not going to just get right to business. Usually I start with a little question like hey, thanks so much, how did you find us? And hey, just curious, is this the first time you’ve rented your property out? Then give me a little background, because that also helps set the stage for how I talk to them for the rest of the call. If they’re brand new, I talk to them a little bit differently than if they’ve already been through three property managers and they’re fed up, right, okay. So build a little rapport, kind of find out how sophisticated they are and then get into the qualifying. So we do.

Mark Brower: 19:32

There’s two parts of my qualifying being really clear about the type of property we’ll manage and what conditions have to be present for us to take it on, and then be really clear about the standards of support I need from them. So I asked them a series of. So there’s two parts One hey, do you fit in our box? The property itself and the situation. And then the rest of my qualifying is. I’m actually qualifying them, but I’m doing it in a very respectful way. So bullet points for this phase one.

Mark Brower: 20:05

I say this statement and I one more explanation. I don’t trust myself not to go rogue off of my script. I actually have my script up in front of my face, I have it in my notes app on my iPhone and I have it on my desktop. So if I ever get a sales call and I’m not the BDM right now in my company but I do not trust myself not to have the script available so if you’re a really creative, verbose salesperson, you may benefit from having the script up in front of you. Here’s how it starts. We do long-term unfurnished property management for single family homes, condos and townhomes throughout the Phoenix area, renting for between $1,600 and $4,000 a month on small lots without flood irrigation, not in age-restricted communities, and we don’t manage manufactured homes. Is that a fit for your property? I don’t know Tony.

Mark Brower: 21:04

I think that’s like too much of a mouthful Like why did you roll all that together? But I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been on the phone for 30 minutes to find out it’s a manufactured home or it’s in an age restricted community, and maybe I’m just being overly jealous with my time. I’m not going to do that ever again.

Tony Cline: 21:20

No, I love it, so I want to. I’m going to share. You know, know how sometimes somebody, you’ll watch something on the internet and they’ll they’ll have somebody do a magic trick and then they have somebody kind of go behind the scenes and show you or tell you how it’s?

Tony Cline: 21:32

done so I I kind of want to do that, but I don’t know if I want to expose some of your magic early on or not, but I’m going to throw this one in here. Um, and some people may say, well, yes, of course, of course. But some people, I think this is going to be a big aha moment. One of the things I want to point out in your script is you are controlling the conversation by asking the questions.

Tony Cline: 21:58

One of the things that was taught a long time ago is that he who asks the questions controls the conversation. So it’s more about getting information from your prospect than you just doing a vomit of here’s everything we do and here’s our pricing and here’s when we can get you set up. You can still answer all of that, but you answer it by asking questions, getting them to lead you to where you can just drop that nugget on answering that specific question with a key thing that you have to say. But it’s at the right moment, as opposed to just reading an entire script of here’s our fees and here’s what we do. So I love how you start out with that framework of here’s what we, the type of property we, manage.

Tony Cline: 22:49

Is that you, as opposed to like you said, waiting 30 minutes and then finding that out, because I think we’ve all done that. We’ve all spent way too much time on the phone with prospects that turn out that they weren’t actually truly a prospect. They were just somebody on the other end of the phone.

Mark Brower: 23:05

A hundred percent. And let me add to that if I can. You’ll notice, and this script can be improved. You know, I’d love to hear from comments from people watching this how you think I can improve this. So I’m not, I don’t want to pretend like I’ve got all the answers. It’s worked really well so far, but we need to make it better. But here’s what I here’s, I think.

Mark Brower: 23:24

First of all, I am absolutely controlling the conversation and it’s kind of my personality. I’m a little bit more controlling and you know what I kind of owe it to the client to show them. I’m going to be kind of controlling when you hire me as your property manager and I’m going to do it my way and that’s all there is to it for this to be a win relationship for me. The other thing that you’ll notice in this script is it builds momentum. The other thing that you’ll notice in this script is it builds momentum.

Mark Brower: 23:53

There’s an emotional energy that builds until the apex of me telling about our value and I think there’s something really important about that. I’m taking someone on an emotional journey of getting to know me, with increasing confidence at every step of the way, and it builds Okay. So that’s important, and asking questions is a really important way of building that emotional energy, and I’m asking questions that they are saying yes to. I’m not doing this to manipulate, it’s not a gimmick. I sincerely want to know the answer to these questions. But when someone’s saying yes, yes, yes, oh my gosh, this guy has really high standards yes, holy cow, he requires a lot from me. Yes, yes, and then you get to the point where you’re talking about how you’re different than everybody else and you’re the only one that does it this way. There’s a lot of momentum that goes into that and it really helps, I think, build that trust.

Tony Cline: 24:46

Okay, so we’re in. So what’s the next?

Mark Brower: 24:47

step. Okay, so we’re in the first part, that’s qualifying whether their property is a good fit. So that the really long sentence I just asked and is that a fit for your property? Here’s the other bullet point. The property must be vacant of furniture and occupants for us to start the onboarding process. Does that also work for you? Boom, got that out of the way Because I don’t want somebody to sign on with me and be like great, I want the marketing to start tomorrow. By the way, I move out in a month and a half.

Tony Cline: 25:12

Yeah, okay, so I’m moving out in a month and a half.

Mark Brower: 25:18

Great, that sounds great. We’ve got it built into our process that you sign now. We make sure that we reserve time for that field inspection to be done as soon as you’re out, and, by the way, we’ll even take the effort to put a lockbox on your house in advance, so all you have to do is drop a key in there. We’ve got that all built in. But do you mind if I go back and ask a few more questions, just so that we make sure this is the right fit?

Tony Cline: 25:39

Sure.

Mark Brower: 25:42

See, because as soon as it starts, starts derailing. I got to bring it back because we’re building momentum. Yeah, okay, now we’re qualifying them. We’re going to do this in a in the right way. Right, because we don’t want to, we don’t want to be offensive like do you deserve to have my service?

Tony Cline: 25:59

do you deserve me so, but that’s frankly that that’s not what we want to say, but that’s actually the truth it is the truth a hundred percent.

Mark Brower: 26:08

And if you don’t have the confidence that that’s, frankly, that’s not what we want to say, but that’s actually the truth, it is the truth 100%. And if you don’t have the confidence that that’s what this conversation is about, get confident about it. But sometimes the confidence comes when you get the tools, which are the words to say, that make you feel confident about how to have that conversation, about how to have that conversation. So there’s four H’s. I’m gonna make this a little easier to remember. Four H’s in this part of the conversation high standards, hands-off, have the cash and heart. So let’s go through each one of these. Okay, I’m qualifying them. Remember we have high standards for the properties we manage because we wanna attract the highest quality residents for you. So we require your support on our property standards. For instance, if the home needs to be painted to attract a quality resident, we will be asking you to paint before we start marketing it for rent.

Mark Brower: 26:54

Next bullet point this is hands-off. We work best with clients wanting to be truly hands-off. We show you that we have the smart processes and great communication and total transparency, but then we ask you to support us to approach things our way. Is that what you want? Is that what you’re looking for? If it’s not, we sidetrack. We have a conversation, because that is a non-negotiable for me. Usually they say yes.

Mark Brower: 27:20

Here’s the next bullet point. This is have the cash. We need to know you have the cash reserves to cover unexpected repairs at the home if they become necessary, or that you can handle an unexpected eviction and vacancy. $10,000 per property is appropriate. You don’t have to send the money to us, but we need to know that you have that cash reserve to properly run this business. Finally, we don’t just work for the money. This is the heart. We want to give you our best and have you cheer us along as we go. So we actually it might sound weird, but we actually want your emotional support when things get stressful or when the issues we deal with. For the issues we deal with on your behalf, your emotional support means just as much or more than the management fee you pay us. So so far, are we aligned with your expectations? Does this seem like a good fit so far?

Tony Cline: 28:12

Yeah, I think so. I mean I’m not sure on the $10,000, like I mean, if I just have room on a credit card, is that good enough.

Mark Brower: 28:21

That’s totally fine. What we want to do and I’m about to highlight this that’s a great segue actually, tony. So let’s go into this Now. I’m going into the three features of the business. So if they ask a question like that, I’m going to roll it into the three features that set us aside from the competition, and one of those is that we think and act like a business manager. We are not your reactive tenants and toilets property manager. We’re a completely different category and this is vital. If you are a premium priced service, it is vital that you completely separate yourself from run-of-the-mill property management. Why? Because in that bloody red ocean, it’s all about fees. You have to completely create a new category where nobody can even be compared to you.

Tony Cline: 29:10

Well, mark.

Tony Cline: 29:11

I don’t want to derail you, but I really want to focus on that point In that bloody red ocean. It is all about fees, and the reason it’s all about fees is because normally, when a client calls to interview a property management company, a lot of them have never been managed before, so they don’t know what to expect. So they don’t actually know what we do, and so all they really know to ask is what are your fees? They want to compare your fees to somebody else’s published fees and then see who’s the cheapest, because that’s the only point of difference that they have between two management companies. So everything that you’ve done so far, mark, in this script, I love, because it’s setting you apart from everybody else that’s fighting in that bloody ocean. You have been, from the very first moment of this call, separating yourself from the crowd and removing yourself from the bloody ocean where you are the only person that they can choose if they want this level of service.

Mark Brower: 30:13

A hundred percent. You have to create a category of one, because then there’s no way it’s about fees and honestly, honestly, you are a category of one If you understand who you are and who you can benefit the most, and you’re only gonna say yes to that person. And I’ve already demonstrated that by being willing to say no to them. I’ve already showed them like six questions where I was willing to bow out or refer them to somebody else, and so they already know that I understand my value and that I understand who I can add unique value to and they feel privileged, potentially that they qualify. And now what is that value? What’s so different? And so when you asked that question about the $10,000 reserve, I instinctively wanted to roll it in to starting to build value on how I’m different and the way I was going to do that is. I have three bullet points on building value. Now, I’m not a typical property manager. I think and act like a business manager. Okay, that’s the main bullet point. There’s some talking under that. In addition to acting as your business manager, we also think and act like an asset manager. There’s no other property manager that really does this like we do, and I can talk about that more. And then number three, and this is unique to us because we spent 13 painstaking years doing this and building a four and a half star rating on Yelp. We can honestly say and we have, by the way, so far, we have never paid either an internal employee or an external client or resident for any reviews period. So I, I, I, I guess I don’t mean to be like holier than thou or judgmental about that, but I know that a lot of businesses engage in that, in that. So so I. So the third point is we have an industry, leading company, reputation and service that attracts better tenants, better vendors, and nobody can touch us on that and increasingly, tenants are looking at the level of service they’re going to get as important as the asset or the place that they want to live in, because they do have choice.

Mark Brower: 32:13

So I don’t know if you want to unpack those a little bit more, but the connection, the tie that I was going to make when you said, what about that $10,000? I’m going to say, well, that’s an excellent question. You do not have to send that money to us, it doesn’t have to be cash in your bank. But what we do, different than every other property manager is we think and act like a business manager. We think, well, this is your business. It’s the same as if you had hired me as an expert of running a KFC franchise and you were the owner of the KFC franchise. I really know what I’m doing, but what do I expect from you as the owner? I need to know that you have some cash reserves in case something goes wrong. I need to know you can support my process so that we can win together. Nice, yeah, so I can go into the.

Mark Brower: 32:58

We think and act like a business manager.

Mark Brower: 33:00

We think and act like an asset manager and the industry leading company reputation and service.

Mark Brower: 33:05

There’s a couple of bullet points under each one of those. Again, that’s my unique value proposition. I don’t expect that to translate to everybody else that watches this video, but keep in mind this emotional crescendo is building through the qualifying and then reaches its peak when I talk about how we’re different than anybody else, and then usually, if it’s a successful call, they never even ask about price Never, in fact. If price comes into the conversation before then, before I get to that point, it’s a red flag for me and I don’t honestly know if I want to work with them, why? It’s a red flag for me and I don’t honestly know if I want to work with them. Because why? Because I can tell they’re they’re so anxious to find out what this transaction involves that they’re not even allowing space in their mind to build value and understand the real value of a partnership with me it would be, it would be like somebody calling you and saying I want to buy a car from you.

Tony Cline: 34:02

How much is your car? Well, what are you getting? What do you want? What kind of a car are you talking about? Yeah, yeah.

Mark Brower: 34:12

With no requirements for make model year or anything else. I want to buy a car from you. How much do you charge? 50,000. Nope, yep.

Tony Cline: 34:20

Yeah. So, but by building that value of you know what your accessories are, what your trim packages are, you start building out this thing that they say, wow, that’s what I want, that’s what I want Now. It doesn’t matter that the guy down the street is selling something a car for $22,000.

Mark Brower: 34:40

That car is not what they want anymore. They want what you’re selling. Yeah, and you know what, Tony? Just a word about price. We charge more than our competitors do In fact, we’re probably on the higher end and we just raised prices but we expect to deliver the service and the quality and the impact and the value on people’s lives. I think it’s really important for us as business owners, as property managers, as a business development manager on a property management team, I think it is extremely important that they have high confidence in their price.

Mark Brower: 35:10

Some of the worst mistakes I made was assuming that I had to compete on price in order to get more leads and close more leads. That was some of the worst mistakes I made because, again, I was stealing, I was robbing from my future self and all of my other clients about giving my best, and so one way I’ll just give a really quick perspective on this. If we really can become like a business manager or an asset manager for our clients, think of it through this lens In my market you could average to make. Maybe rental property is, let’s say, $500,000. That’s a quality rental property. If you don’t afford those, it’s $2 million worth of assets If you hired a certified financial planner, someone that was a really sophisticated asset manager that helped watch over your assets for you.

Mark Brower: 36:00

They’re going to charge you 1% of assets under management. If we charged 1% of assets under management because we’re providing that level of service and that sophistication and that kind of perspective, we would be charging what’s 1% of 2 million $20,000 a year. Divide that by four how much per property? Five grand, that’s $400 per month in management fees. Guess what? We’re half that. And not only are we acting as your asset manager, we’re doing a heck of a lot of day-to-day work for you running the business.

Mark Brower: 36:31

Are you kidding me? This is a tremendous value. I get so excited and passionate about the impact we’re delivering in people’s lives and how underpriced we are. It’s a really tremendous thing. So first get like super confident about the value you’re delivering and then you can go through a script like this and build that momentum and price should absolutely be an afterthought Because if you’re not convinced of it, it’s going to bleed through the way you handle yourself on the call, the words you choose to use, your unwillingness to say no to somebody. That’s not the right fit. All of that. There has to be integrity behind it.

Tony Cline: 37:08

And I think the conversation you have when you first start talking with that client to bring them on, you have to think about how that conversation is going to go throughout the lifetime of that client working with your team. And so if you start focusing on answering their questions about price early on and you start adjusting and making exceptions for maybe not charging this fee or discounting this fee, you’ve now set the precedence that if they push hard enough, they’re going to get what they want. And so then when it goes to your operational team, if they push hard enough with your operational team, they’re going to get what they want. Now, obviously, we’re in business to serve our clients, but we’ve been doing this. We’ve served thousands of clients. They’ve managed the property for five years. One year 10, 20, doesn’t matter 20 years. For five years, one year 10, 20, doesn’t matter 20 years.

Tony Cline: 38:02

In 20 years they’ve probably had 10 different tenants, meaning they’ve processed 10 different applications or approved 10 different applications, and so we need to really set the tone of the relationship at this first initial conversation, at when we are signing them up to become a client, and then when we transition them over to onboarding, so that they understand, like you said, our system is designed for the hands-off landlord. Obviously, you can reach out to us, but our system is set up so that we can do this without you. You’ve authorized us to do everything we need to do to run your property on your behalf. Now you go to the beach.

Mark Brower: 38:41

Yeah, and they shouldn’t be surprised if they find themselves in the lowest 3% of the client base that annually gets divested. Because we do intentionally exit client relationships before they cancel every single year as a discipline to make sure that we’re preserving our energy, our time, our focus, our enthusiasm for everyone that deserves our business and not not to be rude that some people are undeserving, but it is the reality that if we’re committed to win, win, win property management, that that means we do not agree to any of those three parties losing the tenant doesn’t lose, the owner doesn’t lose and we don’t lose. And if any one of those goes to a lose, we have to back that up with the integrity that says we’re exiting the relationship. What else about this? Do you think so? Oh so, I wanted to share one more thing. So after? So I intentionally keep this conversation short. Why would you keep the conversation short, mark? You know you got the fish on the hook. You know it in well.

Mark Brower: 39:40

Part of the point of keeping this short is it shows confidence, and I know that there’s some follow-up that needs to be done and and there’s a, there’s a book that really inspired some of my approach or thinking about sales, and it’s they ask you answer, and, and they ask you answer they. They talk about taking the role as teacher. When you’re selling something, you’re the teacher. And what does a teacher do? A teacher doesn’t ask the student to teach them or tell you know, tell them. A teacher takes a position of authority, shares information, and then a teacher gives homework. Ok, so what do I do? I say you know what, I do allow some time, maybe five minutes, for Q&A, but if it starts getting long, I said you know what, you’re going to have more questions and I’d like to schedule a follow-up call now, two days from now, and I would like to ask you to do two things. For me, I’d like you to read the management agreement and then I’m going to send you an email with a few short videos of me talking a little bit more about some of the most commonly asked questions. I’m also going to give you a link to our website that gives FAQs. So I’ll give you these resources, but I’d like to. I know you need some time to process through these. You’re going to have some other questions for me. I’d like to schedule a follow-up call, maybe 15, 30 minutes, two days from now. I’d like to put it in the calendar now, if that’s all right with you, and make sure that you have time to look at these and then we’ll come back and see how you feel about moving forward.

Mark Brower: 41:05

Now I’ll put a caveat to that. If, by the time I build to the apex of the climax of the emotions and everything and they’re like all right, great, you know what? I’ve already talked to a lot of other companies. You’re night day different. Let’s sign up. I’m not going to say, well, I need to pump the brakes here. I got to give you some homework. We’re going to go two days. No, if they’re ready to sign, you shut your mouth and you give them a link to sign. You know that’s sales 101, right?

Tony Cline: 41:27

Yeah. So I know there’s a little bit of differing opinions on when you’re going to sign a management agreement and when you get the additional information that you need to actually manage the home, and I could argue either side of the coin. You have to pick a way to do it, and so I’ll tell you the way that we did it. But if you just sign the management agreement, one argument is you got to make it as easy as possible for people to say yes. So the moment they say yes, you get them something easy to sign and get it done. So that’s one way. The second way is I know that when they’re ready to work with me, that’s when I have the most attention that I’m probably going to get from them, and so I want them to fill out a landlord and property questionnaire that gives us the information about the HOA that their house might be in, attaching any HOA documents telling me anything about the property that might be unique, any security systems, anything that is in there that I would need to be able to properly prepare the paperwork for us to move the relationship forward. I can argue either side, but one of the things that we wound up doing was when we would get to that point in the conversation, mark. Obviously, if they said, yes, I’m ready to sign up, we’re sending them this link now. But, just like you, if I wanted to send a follow-up appointment, what I would do was I would do that same thing. I’m going to send you a copy of the management agreement. I’m going to send you some things to read. We didn’t have the videos, like you, but we had a FAQ to read. But I would also include the link that would say if in the meantime, you decide you’re ready to move forward, click this link. It’s going to ask you some questions about you and your property. It gives us the information to get the management agreement going for you. That would authorize us to manage the property, and so we would set a follow-up call.

Tony Cline: 43:19

But I would say, at least 50% of the time, people would go ahead and click that link anyways, sometime between now and the time that they were going to meet back up with me for the call, and then they would send that out and, as long as we had everything, I would say, hey, you’re still on my calendar, I’m still ready to have that conversation, but it looks like you’ve gone ahead and taken that next step. Is there anything that we need to further discuss? And a lot of times they’d say no, I’m good, when can you have the property on the market? And so just by adding that link at the bottom of what you’re sending out hey, we’re going to meet in two days, but just in case you’re ready to go before that, here’s the next step, people would take that next step 100%.

Mark Brower: 43:59

And there’s another. I mean we could go. There’s a few different veins we could talk about here. We probably should bring this to a close soon, just to keep it compact enough for people to have a chance to watch this whole video. But there’s another vein that kind of comes to my mind which is like well, hey, I’m just doing my due diligence, I don’t need to hire anybody for six weeks For those types. I try to close now. I try to say, hey, look, you know. Really honestly, I would suggest that we use you know with respect for your time. You’re doing the due diligence now. Everything’s fresh in your mind.

Mark Brower: 44:33

Now I would like to bring this to a close and if you’re the right, if we think we’re the right fit for each other, let’s sign you up, even though we know that we’ve got a month and a half. That way, you’re taking full advantage of the time that we’re investing together right now. But I’m also not a super hard closer. So if you really aren’t in a position to make a decision right now, please don’t be offended in advance. I’m going to start sending you some drip emails. That are templates, but I think they’ll be useful and I think you’ll enjoy them and if they get obnoxious just tell us to stop or whatever. But we want to stay top of mind for you and I just tell them that in advance so that they know.

Mark Brower: 45:09

You know I’m not going to keep harassing you and calling you twice a week right now. You know I was very much a hey. If this is the right fit and you’re willing to take action now, you’re going to get my attention out. If not, I’ve got some great information. I’m going to drip on you and re-engage with me when you’re ready, but I’m not going to keep. You know it almost lowers my value by begging them and chasing after them to hire me at that point.

Tony Cline: 45:33

I don’t know.

Mark Brower: 45:33

That’s been my experience.

Tony Cline: 45:35

Yeah, yeah, it’s almost that. It’s that takeaway close. You take away the opportunity. You don’t feel like you’re pressuring them, they don’t feel the pressure and they’re like well, wait a minute, am I? Am I, did I not meet the criteria that they went through in the beginning of the call? Maybe, maybe I should just go ahead and sign now and use that six weeks to be fully prepared, totally yeah well t it’s been great talking about this.

Mark Brower: 45:58

There are many more conversations to come. I’m glad that we have a recurring appointment so we can do some more of these. Hopefully this is some value to people and we can keep doing that.

Tony Cline: 46:09

Yeah, it’s been a lot of fun. I appreciate you dressing up for me.

Mark Brower: 46:14

Absolutely Only for you, tony. All right, buddy, all right.

Tony Cline: 46:20

Take care, have a good one. Thanks for tuning in to the Property Management Success Podcast. We’ll be back with another value-packed episode to help you level up your property management game. If you’ve got something valuable out of today’s episode, please share it with a friend or colleague, and don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review so you never miss out on future insights and strategies and tactics. Until next time, here’s to your success.