Property management businesses chasing growth without the right systems risk losing existing clients, with one industry coach warning that sustainable expansion starts with protecting retention and building visibility.
While growth remains a key goal for property managers, coach and trainer Lauren Robinson warned that chasing a bigger rent roll without the right systems in place could cost businesses existing clients.
Speaking at the recent Property Management Excellence Conference in Sydney, Robinson said businesses needed to create achievable processes they could replicate daily to grow sustainably.
“Do you understand what creates growth in your business well enough in order to repeat it and protect it?” Robinson said.
“Growth does not start with a lead; it starts with how a business is designed,” Robinson said.
While growth was a consistent target for many property management businesses, Robinson said that they needed to ensure they were prepared to handle the additional workload.
“If the team are at capacity and you’re not currently doing well in terms of service delivery, this can just compound, because if you add 100 or 200 new managements to an already struggling business, then it is just going to churn through your clients.”
“They’re not going to feel like they want to stay with that business.”
To strengthen their business, Robinson said PMs should understand how they approach growth and how social media can boost their visibility in the market.
Developing a system for growth
She said that whether an agency had 10 properties under management or 1,000, only three outcomes could occur: relationships with owners could either be improved, retained, or lost.
Robinson said PMs needed to understand how each outcome would impact their business.
She said it was important to track all three outcomes to see where issues may arise and to develop a proper understanding of the business's movements.
“Because when we measure everything in the one bucket, we lose the opportunity to learn,” she said.
“If we are looking at improving the value of the relationship with the client and the asset, how can we ensure that we are getting the best return for that client to improve the relationship so they stay loyal?” she said.
By prioritising retention, Robinson said PMs can protect the business’ revenue stream while freeing up time to focus on assisting their clients.
“If we can protect recurring revenue in the business, the team don’t have to continually run around trying to put out spot fires when we have an owner potentially looking at leaving the business.”
“If we’re constantly losing properties, then we’re having to regenerate or replace business consistently, so we will lose owners naturally through attrition.”
Robinson said that when a property manager was losing PUM and chasing new ones, it could detract from their other responsibilities.
Visibility: The next step to grow
When chasing growth, Robinson said property managers should be visible and use social media to grow their brand awareness.
She said property managers should create content centred on three key principles: teach, show, and proof.
When it comes to educating investors, Robinson said that PMs should create content focusing on landlords’ most commonly asked questions
“Perhaps it is ‘can I change property management company while I have a tenant in place? Or how far in advance do I need to be speaking to the tenants?’”
“Whatever our clients are asking us on a regular basis, we should be writing that down, documenting it and teaching that.”
Similarly, Robinson said PMs should show the behind-the-scenes of the business, with social media posts around their operations, their team going through typical processes, and use their own imagery and videos rather than stock images.
She said it was important to include team members in content so that prospective clients could put a face to the business.
“Perhaps you could document the inspection process or how you go about finding a tenant. It could even be something that you do every day.”
Additionally, Robinson said businesses should prove their prior successes through reviews and testimonials.
She suggested PMs build social proof through client reviews and case studies, and that strong visibility through a digital presence creates another avenue for new clients to find the business.
“We want to ensure that once we have one owner, we’re able to multiply that, and there needs to be a direct growth system to do that.”
Robinson said she had seen enhanced visibility work firsthand, with clients coming to her having seen her online content.
“All of a sudden, that visibility was starting to pay off. Then several months later, that owner started referring other clients to us.”
“So one property turned into multiple, and that’s the power of visibility,” Robinson said.
Want to see more stories from trusted news sources?Make Real Estate Business a preferred news source on Google.
