As a landlord in a competitive market, your goal is to rule the industry. But like many things in life, being a leader doesn’t happen without paying attention to small details.

For you, one of these small details is how you handle phone calls. In this industry, call lead conversions are crucial for establishing a relationship, setting up a showing and ultimately, getting your units filled with good tenants. We’ve analyzed over 300 tracked phone calls to identify an industry standard, and what you can do to improve your phone calls, get those leases signed and lead the industry with call lead conversions. 

Know Your Times

First things first, know when to expect a call. On average, 34% of phone calls to landlords do not connect. This number might not sound high, but when 94% of phone call leads occur during business hours, it’s a bit high.

A good way to handle this problem is to understand the most common times students or parents are going to be calling you. The highest call volumes we saw were between 11 AM and 2 PM. So what does this mean for you? Simple: Take your lunch at noon and be back before your 1 PM phone calls start rolling in. Students are not likely to leave a voicemail, so if you can answer your phone on lunch, answer it.

Get Their Name

Now that we have the call time down, let’s think about the way a phone call should go. Ideally, the first thing you should do on a call is get the caller’s name. We know that seems like a pretty obvious step, but to our surprise, approximately 46% of calls analyzed did not get the caller’s name, and these calls only lasted roughly 2 minutes. If you’re not getting a name, then you can’t follow up with the caller, which will lead them to sign a lease with someone else.

The 54% of landlords that do manage to get the caller’s name are ahead of the game. On average, these landlords are talking to potential tenants for roughly 5 minutes, whether a showing is set up or not. This means these landlords are establishing relationships with these potential tenants, which is ideal. As a landlord, you should be aware of how long a conversation revolving around finding a unit takes and what you can do to begin to build a relationship with your potential tenants – a great first step is being able to call them by their name.

Understand Your Caller

Have you thought about what you can do to build relationships with your tenants or even your callers? Being prepared to talk to everyone and anyone is a great strategy to give you a competitive advantage. Industry patterns show that parents are more inclined to ask questions than students. As a landlord, you should be well-versed in what your property has to offer anyway, but it might be helpful to think about what you would want to hear if your kid was moving into their first apartment or house. On average, conversations with parents took about 5 minutes compared to the rough 3-minute average for students. Despite this time gap, parents and students’ covert for a showing at the same rate.

So to break it down: Know when students and parents are going to call you, get the caller’s name, and be aware of your caller and know what message they want to hear. These might seem like minor details, but with a low industry bar to set it shouldn’t be too difficult to take the lead with call conversions and fill your available units sooner rather than later.

To reach out and generate more leads and leases for your properties, fill out the form below!

2024-04-19 09:32:37 Dominic Anzalone