With agency growth under pressure in today’s market, property management businesses are encouraged to analyse the data already at their fingertips to protect rent rolls, strengthen owner relationships, and unlock new growth.
As the property market continues its downturn, agencies have been under pressure to protect their rent rolls while continuing to find new opportunities.
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According to Agile Market Intelligence director Michael Johnson, most agencies looking to grow already have the data they need in their CRMs, with the key being knowing what evidence to use.
From owner communication, satisfaction, referrals and marketing channels, Johnson said the data collected can reveal what is driving retention, where relationships may be weakening and where new business is coming from.
He said agencies could use a clear process to move from identifying a problem to testing what might solve it.
“You don’t need to guess. There may be some experimentation, but then you’ve got a process that is evidence-based," Johnson said on the PMX podcast.
Evidence over instinct
According to Johnson, agencies looking to become evidence-based first needed to set clear objectives before using their data to work out whether they were achieving them.
“The first thing you can do is write out what are the three key objectives you want to achieve as a business,” Johnson said.
He said the framework was built around four steps: objectives, results, drivers and initiatives, with each step helping agencies move from identifying a goal to understanding what was influencing the outcome.
For rent roll retention, Johnson said agencies should look at response times, communication frequency, service levels and owner satisfaction in a bid to identify the warning signs that may sit behind an owner leaving.
“Not everything’s a driver of someone leaving. We need to isolate what that is.”
Once agencies had identified the drivers affecting retention, Johnson said the next step was to measure them and use the results to determine which initiatives were worth pursuing.
“Let’s say it’s a KPI to say, okay, we’re going to return every email within a day. And then you go back after a couple of weeks or a month and say, okay, well, has that lead indicator moved?”
Johnson said the process involved some trial and error, with regular reviews helping agencies see what was working, what was not and where changes were needed.
Understanding your current rent roll
While growth was a goal for property management agencies, Johnson said increasing a rent roll started with understanding the owners already on it.
He said agencies needed to look at why owners chose the business in the first place, what they liked about the service, where the agency could be falling short and whether the customer base shared particular characteristics.
“Now the first step is we need to understand our strengths and weaknesses relative to the way they see us, and we now understand a little bit more of a persona of what they look like.”
To understand customers, Johnson said that surveys could help larger agencies measure satisfaction across the rent roll, while smaller businesses could speak directly with a sample of owners.
He said that combining the data with direct conversations gave agencies a clearer picture of how customers viewed the business and where its strengths and weaknesses sat.
Turn existing relationships into growth
Once agencies understood their customers, Johnson said the next step was working out how likely owners were to recommend the business.
He said a net promoter score (NPS) could help agencies measure how likely owners were to recommend the business and identify the promoters and detractors within the rent roll.
For customers already willing to recommend the business, he said that regular conversations could help agencies understand their personal and professional networks and where potential referrals might exist.
“It all comes back to advocacy. And this is something that’s not unique to real estate. This is every single business, every single brand in the world; they're all searching for "how do you get advocacy?”
He said that the focus was not simply on keeping existing owners but understanding which relationships could help bring the next owner through the door.
Build visibility based on evidence
Marketing was another area where Johnson said agencies could use evidence to understand where new business was coming from.
Instead of putting money into a channel without knowing whether it was reaching potential owners, he said that agencies could ask new customers how they heard about the business and track the responses.
“Do not put dollars behind something and be blind.”
The answers could point to a range of touchpoints, from Facebook advertising and market updates to sponsorships, signage and involvement in local community groups.
Johnson said agencies could then identify the places where potential customers were most likely to encounter the business and build familiarity through repeated exposure.
“What are the three different places that you can show up for a customer that all of a sudden you go from being, oh, yeah, I think I might have heard of those people to oh, yeah, I know Darren from Bob’s Realty.”
Once an agency understood which channels were reaching its target customers, Johnson said the evidence could be used to guide further investment.
“If we understand our customers. We understand why they come to us. We understand what marketing channels work and they’re effective and we’ve got evidence to support that.
“Now you just need to scale, essentially.”
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