The Two most important Aspects of your Job

     This last week, I was involved in a little exercise that was interesting. One of our auditors was speaking to a group of storage facility managers and their supervisors and support staff. He asked everyone to pull out a piece of paper and to write down anonymously what they thought were the 2 most important aspects of their jobs. There were several answers of various sorts. One of the most prevailing answer in some form or the other was "Customer Service".
     After everyone turned in their answers, less than 20%, had written down one of the two answers he was seeking. Customer service was not the answer... the most important aspect of any employee is to increase a facilities income. Increasing income to continue to cover the ever rising costs of operations is crucial to a facilities success. With a facility that is aging, there are continuing maintenance expenses that must continue to be paid for. Even if you are 95% occupied, there are opportunities to increase the facilities income through rate management and various ancillary income opportunities. Although renting space is your main source of income, it is those pennies and nickels from ancillary sources that can actually make a facility profitable. Truck rentals, selling boxes and packing supplies, storage insurance, carpet cleaning machine rentals and lottery sales are some of the most common profit centers. In smaller markets, you may want to do as a friend of mine has done at her location Coker Creek Storage in Tennessee. She lives in a small community, and her storage office also doubles as a Country Store and gift shop.
    The second most important aspect of a storage facility employee is to maintain and grow occupancy. During the recession, we found that loss of occupancy by holding our street rates steady affected our profit margins more than keeping a higher occupancy at discounted move in rates. Even though these discounts affected our immediate income, they were filling space that would normally be left empty and bringing in NO income. If you are using the leases that are available through your state self storage associations, there are clauses that provide for rate increases with proper notification. Using fair rate management guidelines, a customer will remain a loyal customer, as most find the cost of moving more expensive than a moderate increase. Especially, if their rate remains below the current asking street rates.
     As occupancies increase or decrease, rate management of available units as well as occupied units, are as important to increasing income, as well as maintaining occupancy. You must be continually gathering market data to remain competitive. At Watson & Taylor Self Storage we gather competitive information twice a month to stay competitive in all markets. Each attribute is looked at for every facility to best determine current rates.
     Now don't get me wrong.... to help maintain those occupancies and asking rates, customer service is an important element of our job. So remember.... Smile it is Contagious!