On this episode, Ben Smith of BrightReach Sales and Tim Wehner of LendingOne join Andrew Smallwood to talk about what broker/owners need to know about building a business development function and winning business.
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Season 6 Episode 4 features Ben Smith, Founder of BrightReach Sales, and Tim Wehner, Director of Partnerships, Property Management at LendingOne.
The Triple Win Property Management Podcast is produced and distributed by Second Nature.
Andrew Smallwood
Ben and Tim, great to see you. I'm going to do a brief introduction for people who haven't had a chance to meet you and aren't as familiar with you. And I'll start with Tim who is the director of partnerships for property management at LendingOne. Many of you may know Tim, a former NARPM president out of Richmond, Virginia, worked with Dodson Properties, running and building a property management division there, which had incredible scale, ultimately led to a great merger acquisition as a part of Evernest. And seventeen years, Tim, in property management, is that right?
Tim Wehner
Yeah. I forgot to put the Just For Men gel in my beard before we started because that's showing my age here. But, yeah, seventeen years split up a little bit in that property management space, like you said, between Dodson and Evernets. But yeah. So I've got some interesting experience on that side before I jumped over here onto the vendor side, on the lending side.
Andrew Smallwood
LendingOne is, you know, a leading real estate investor lending platform. And so I think you bring this kind of unique combination of having well over a decade plus of operator experience, like, building the business to a very high level while also having a great perspective on investor financing. And so I think that's really great of hearing your perspective, which I'll have to share on what investors want from property managers.
So appreciate it. Yeah, great.
Tim Wehner
Thanks. Thanks for having me.
Absolutely. Okay. Ben Smith, who is the founder of BrightReach Sales. Some of you may know Ben from his time at Second Nature by the way, and he's been a couple different places in the industry. Ben, many years in the property management industry? I'm trying to think. Was it twenty eighteen, nineteen?
Ben Smith
Yeah. I started at Filter Easy in2018.
Andrew Smallwood
I also don't want to sell short. Again, Ben's a great friend personally to many folks on the call, but BrightReach Sales is a sales training and consulting firm who's focused exclusively on the property management industry. And he's been helping property managers build, right, a business development system that helps them attract and keep great investor clients. I had a chance to go to the rescheduled kickoff that was in Nashville, and it was a phenomenal first event.
No surprise to see anything Ben's involved with was really first class.
And anyway, I'm sure we'll get some links, Laura, of LendingOne and BrightReach you know, we can put those in the chat so people can scope that out on their own time and learn more about it. But we're going to dive right in. So let's talk about, like, what you guys are seeing today that investors are looking for from their property managers. You know, feel free to give any context on how that might be shifting or changing or how it's not changing and, like, what people can really bank on there and a little bit of, like, how you think about positioning your company and communicating that. I know that's, like, a lot for an opening question, but just going to kind of open it up.
And Tim, we'll start with you of what investors want and how you can position and communicate that.
Tim Wehner
Yeah. Well, I think what you said there at the end is really important, Andrew. That's actually kind of how this day came about. I was chatting with Ben and Laura at a conference recently, and we were talking about the shifting landscape that property managers are seeing.
Right? We kind of went through these iterations, at least from my time in the industry, in two thousand eight, nine, ten, eleven, where it was kind of a lot of mom and pops, and it was all realtor referrals and guerrilla marketing and BNI groups and those sorts of things. And again, anything I say, it's not that those things aren't great now, but it's going through these different arcs, right? Then we started getting great websites.
We had SEO partners that were helping us grow, where we were getting inbound leads left and right. And it was kind of like shooting fish in a barrel, right? You had people just calling up and saying, here's my price.
If you don't like my price, go down the street. And then I love the first answer we had coming out of breakouts, which was selling based on our core values, right? Building trust with your potential prospect is huge, and that is awesome. I think we've started to shift now, though, a little bit, and it's kind of the what else, right?
What else can we be to our potential investor partners, or how else can we build trust with our one off owners, accidental landlords, right? Most of us have websites. Most of us talk about our core values. Most of us want, have a great property management agreement that we can sell on.
What is the next thing that we can be to our clients? And I think the fun term right now that's out there right now, and I'd love to get Ben to chime in on this, is being an asset manager as well. And so I might kick it over to Ben real quick and have him talk about his feelings on that. But I just want us to focus in on, like, what this arc looks like.
And I think the what else question is really what we want to attack today.
Ben Smith
Yeah. That's really good, Tim.
Yeah. I think one of the interesting things that's happening, Andrew, is just the access to information that people have and Matt Spear over at propertymanagement.com talked about this at our event in Nashville. But I think in some ways people's search habits are changing a little bit in terms of the way that they look for service. So if you imagine a world, I'm here in Raleigh, North Carolina and I'm going to rent my house out. I might go to Google and type in Raleigh property management companies and get a list, right? Everybody, to Tim's point about SEO like gotta be on the first page of Google, gotta have good Google reviews. Like I think that stuff is definitely still important.
Now you imagine a world where maybe instead of going to Google typing in Raleigh property management, I'm going to go to chat GPT and ask, how do I rent out my house in Raleigh, North Carolina? Right?
So, a question that I may yeah, Claude.
Claude.
The way that people are looking for information is changing a little bit. And I think that the other piece too is that there's just a lot of technology out there for people to self manage in a way that there wasn't ten years ago.
There are a lot of tools that people can get access to. And so, I think that leads to some of what a lot of my clients are seeing right now which is a decrease in inbound leads that are coming through the website. And so, to Tim's point, it's like, okay, well, what do we do with that? And to me, I think especially as it relates to investors, I think that means getting really clear on the type of owner you are looking to serve and really understanding what are the challenges that they're facing. What are the types of things that they would be even asking ChatGPT or asking any large language model? So I think getting really clear on those things is more important than ever and it not only affects your marketing, affects your website and the way that you position yourself and the type of people that you're trying to attract, but also really affects your sales conversations.
This person that I'm talking to, what do they value? Why are they investing in real estate? What are their goals? Where do they want to get to? Because I do think trust and credibility is still, it's still as important as ever.
There's just a lot more messages that we're bombarded with from all sides and all places right now.
Tim Wehner
Man, I think it's also, like, where are they trying to get and how are they trying to get there? As their adviser, right, as their property manager, are you able to help facilitate them get there? Do you understand that it's not just your job now to do the rent collecting, to do a lot of the stuff that we spent the last eight to ten years automating that's making our lives a lot easier? Right?
So not only where are they going, but how do they get there? And can we help them get there? Right? As an investor myself, I want my property manager to bring me more deals.
That's my biggest pain point right now. I can't find deals. So as a property manager, are you asking the question upfront?
What's important to you? How can I help? And I think we're going to get into some of those questions now, but then you have to have the knowledge base and the understanding to help facilitate that for them. Point them in the right direction or even make it a monetary benefit to you if you can if you can help perform some of those tasks.
Andrew Smallwood
I love what you both are sharing of like, there's been over the past few years, this interest of how do we elevate the property management business to a place where, you know, I think about on the resident side of this, you know, Second Nature has been very focused on hearing what property managers want of like, how do we provide a higher level of service? How do we provide a real experience to people? And we go from kind of service provider to experience provider. Right?
And really take that to the next level. And there's a lot of economic opportunity in that. And Tim, what you were sharing about, hey, elevating from property manager and property management kind of viewed as this just tactical support function to elevating a conversation that's much more strategic around, hey, we want to be positioned and thought of as an asset manager. And there's a different level of conversation and different outcomes, right, that we're driving for you are kind of implicit, right, in that, a different level of expertise.
Tim Wehner
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as a property manager in my career, I've spent ninety nine percent of my time in leasing, maintenance, accounting, those sorts of activities.
But that's not really where our clients spend the majority of their time. And so they spend time thinking about, you know, the capital, right? You know, what their overall investment strategy is, right? Are they struggling with an underwriting process because they're trying to buy more properties? And it's not all financing based. Obviously, I'm coming at it from LendingOne and that perspective.
But those are a lot of the issues that your investors are having. They're not spending ninety nine percent of their time thinking about just a lease up or just a maintenance issue.
Andrew Smallwood
I'm going to connect one dot and then I want to bring Stephanie up because she's got her hand up.
You know, connecting the dots, Ben, I love what you were sharing about just, hey, where are you showing up and what's changing and how prospects are finding and discovering and becoming aware?
And man, you just imagine if a property manager a long time ago was saying, I don't know about this internet thing. And so like, you know, I'm just going to keep putting ads in the newspaper, so to speak. Honestly, that would probably have worked for a, you know, to a certain degree for a relative period of time and then eventually irrelevant. I think we're seeing a lot of property managers say like, how can I understand what are those outcomes that Tim's talking about? How do they think about the problems and how can I show up? Right?
Not just in search engines, but the answer engines. Right?
Tim Wehner
Yes.
Love what you shared there. Stephanie, let's bring you up and get your question in.
Stephanie McCoy
Okay. So twenty years ago, when I started in this industry, twenty plus, it was all about the asset management, the performance of the portfolio and how we can maximize the performance of that portfolio and the profits for that investor.
I have seen these large companies come into the picture and go away from that actual experience, expertise, that type of management of those properties. And it's less about the property manager being on the partner with those investors to following like the hedge fund guys. Here's our numbers. This is what we want you to do.
And all you do then is implement what they're telling you to do. And I see so many have gotten away from even the knowledge of how to maximize performance of those portfolios. And that's, when I set up my business, I went back to that. It was kind of a little difficult stepping back into that world from being away from it for so long.
But all I was doing was lease renewals and leasing. I was doing nothing on the asset performance side of everything. And I'm hearing from so many investors that that is what they've been so desperate for. I think I'm seeing a trend of people, of managers kind of going back to that.
Am I off base here? Am I crazy in that thought?
Ben Smith
Go ahead, Tim.
Tim Wehner
Well, just to speak to, you know, what you're seeing out in the marketplace, I think, you know, it's easier to scale the operations side of things than the deep dive conversations about an individual's strategic position with their real estate. That's why you're seeing a lot of wealth managers go from, hey, I want to get a billion clients down to, hey, I'm going to do ten really high net worth folks because that's easier to to spend that much time. There's not one great way or one wrong way. Right?
There's a lot of good ways to make money in this business. So the larger the larger folks aren't doing it wrong. They're just doing it differently. Right?
And so that may be that may mean there's an opportunity for you there, Stephanie. So I just wanted to speak to that really quickly. IThat's why they're doing that. Right?
And that’s why there is this potential opportunity or shift in the marketplace.
Ben Smith
Yeah. I'll just add, like, you know, and Tim kind of touched on this, like, this push towards let's automate as much as we can. What that allows for is the ability to scale. If you want to get to a thousand doors, yeah we've got to automate some things and Stephanie even back to your point about like the custom owner statement.
Like doing that is not super scalable for you. It would be very easy if you just had the same process for every single owner. But I think what we're getting at here is that like we still need the client to have a good experience for them to want to work with So if they're asking for something that's a little bit outside of our box, as a business owner, you sort of have to determine like, okay, well, do I want everything to fit neatly into the way that my process is run? Or am I willing to think outside the box and do things a little bit differently for an owner that maybe has a large portfolio that tends to be kind of the most common area where people will stray from process or qualifications, pricing even if there's a lot of volume there.
So I think it is a balance, right? Like if you have a thousand owners and you're doing things differently for every single one of them, it's going to be really hard to run your business. But at the same time, you have clients who you identify as, hey, this person's a good fit. It's properties I want to manage in the places I want to manage.
Then I think it is important to be cognizant of like, you still want to provide them a great experience. So it's not a simple this or that. I think it's, you kind of have to develop your judgment for how you're going to navigate those conversations.
Tim Weher
Well, think to Ben's point there, like, you start this in your discovery process, right? What's important to your clients and that's where this whole thing really starts. Maybe a decent segue to move to that piece there, Andrew.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah, Stephanie, I just want to say thanks for the question and keep them coming. We may get you back up here in just a few minutes.
I think it is a good segue of, like, we've talked as a thread throughout the share outs and and through, hey. Like, what are the questions early on so that we can identify, right, people's fit and position our value to ensure there's a match, right, quickly in the process? And Tim, I think you've even got, like, a resource. This is going to get, like, very tactical and actual people, which I think is great. I know Bid's going to have some great great nuggets here to share.
But, Tim, I want to start with you on, you know, what are some of the questions you really like to, you know, kind of start a conversation with or use quickly to find that match?
Tim Wehner
Yeah. And I think it was actually kind of created by all of us here, Laura and Ben and I, in our prep up to this.
I don't want to take credit.
Andrew Smallwood.
I was giving you outsized credit and look at you.
Time Wehner
I don't want to take credit where credit's due. I did that enough at Dodson.
But no, I mean, so I think we're actually going to even leave a lead behind here, but I like to start really big and kind of work my way down. Like, what are your goals here, right? What does your portfolio look like?
What's your long term strategy here? And then you really get a feel– Oh, it's on the screen here, great. You really get a feel then for, you get them talking. Right?
You get your prospect talking, and you hear a lot about them. And then that allows you to help craft where your sales pitch fits into their goals. Right? And you may find out they're not a great fit.
Right? But I think if you start talking about what their overall strategy, whether it's for one property or for their entire portfolio, that's really where you want to get into. So I like to dive early into what's your strategy? Are you looking to acquire more properties?
Are you looking to only have this for a year? I think Barron actually did something great in our breakout room where he was talking about questions like this and then he flips it into, Well, do you realize how great this investment might be? You should probably think about holding it longer. And he flips it into other money making opportunities for him.
But I like to start big, right? I like to start big picture. And I like to do it before I start talking about my property management services, right? I want to know about you so that I can weave my story into the fit for you.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah.
Wim Whener
And Ben may tell me that's totally wrong as the sales genius over here, but that's where I like to start.
Ben Smith
Not at all. Yeah, I mean, I think it's really easy as a salesperson to fall into this trap of like, alright, this person is interested in my service, so I'm going to tell them about my service.
Let me go ahead and kick off with a pitch about how great we are and all the great things that we do. You know, it's funny, Andrew, you kind of mentioned this. I think discovery is as much about us understanding their situation as it is making sure that they're a good fit for our company and what we're trying to do. So I love the question on here, you know, have you worked with a property management company before and what would you know, like what was that experience like? Because like a great example of why it's good to ask that question is if they say, yeah, have and it was terrible.
It'd be easy to just kind of jump on that and be like, oh, well, we're not like that at all. We're great. But asking like what was that experience like, that actually might reveal that they're not a great fit for you. Right? If they're like, hey, yeah, I did work with a property management company, it was awful.
They did this crazy thing called self showings and I just would never I hate that idea and you're sitting there and you're like, well, do self showings so we're probably not going to be a fit for you. You can go ahead and skip doing your whole pitch later on because you're quickly identifying that there's not a fit here and you would be doing them a disservice to try to be like, oh yeah, we're not like that at all, only to find out later the exact same things that drove them crazy with their previous property manager are going to drive them crazy with you. So I think equal parts you qualifying them as well as building trust in the process that you are a good fit for them and asking the right questions is a function of that, right?
Because Andrew, if I'm interested in your services and I call you and you just launch into a fifteen minute pitch about how great Smallwood Property Management is, I probably have tuned out after the first few minutes, right? Because you haven't engaged me at all, right? That doesn't build trust.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah, it's like, hey, if we're just talking about me and my product or my offering, then yeah, it's tough to tune in. And I think you're just there to sell me versus if you're talking about my problems, my opportunities, the outcomes I care about, right?
Much more likely to lead it.
Tim Wehner
Yeah. I think small wood property management sounds great though, by the way. I don't you know, Ben sounded like he wasn't going to hire you, but I thought it sounded really nice.
Andrew Smallwood
Like questionable branding maybe, but Yeah. This is really great. I I think, you know, when you guys think about some of the top mistakes or pitfalls, either that you've seen property managers make in the course correct on or or even in your own experience, you know, have have made and and corrected on, like, what comes to mind for you when it comes to business development and ultimately building your client base?
Ben Smith
I think what I see most commonly in terms of pitfalls or even just areas that it's kind of low hanging fruit to level up.
One would definitely be having a well defined process that not only suits you but also suits your client, right? And what I mean by that is like, we have to acknowledge that yeah, it's good to have a sales process so we can stay organized, right? We can stay on top of where people are in our pipeline. But this is really like a critical period before they become a client where you are letting them know kind of what the experience of working with your company is going to be like. And so that impacts the way that you communicate, the way that you follow-up.
One of the major pitfalls I see is just like honestly really poor follow-up. So Andrew, you and I have a great first conversation and I say, alright, well, I'm going to send you an email with all my stuff so you can get to know our company. And then maybe if I remember, I’ll follow-up with you a week later and say, hey, did you have any questions? It's just kind of very generic.
Whereas I think actually one of the ways that you can serve your prospects is guiding them through a process that's not only going to be beneficial to you but to them. And so an example of that might be, Hey Andrew, I really enjoyed this conversation that we have. Don't worry, I'm going to send you an email that's going to kind of recap everything that we talked about.
But what I'd like to do is go ahead and set up a time for you and I to meet at your property so I can get a look at it but also get to know you a little bit better.
Would next week, would Thursday afternoon work or Friday morning? So you're establishing the next step that not only is going to help them in their process but it's also going to just further build the relationship. So I think that's something I see especially like if you're a business owner who is also the salesperson, right?
You don't have a BDM, the follow-up in the structured process really, that tends to be the low hanging fruit that I think people could get on track with pretty easily.
Andrew Smallwood
That's great. Tim, thoughts?
Tim Wehner
Yeah, that's a great one, Ben. I mean, obviously follow up is huge and how quickly you get back to people is a big deal. I think just to maybe build on that a little bit is overreaction to a mistake or a bad experience. Right?
I've seen a lot of property managers like, okay. I've got a process, and it screwed up. I ended up getting a property that stunk, an owner that stunk. And so instead of sticking to my process of doing a Zoom call with the owner and signing people up quickly, I'm going to make sure that my BDM and my property manager and the owner and I all meet at every single property.
That slows you down so much. Now, again, that may be perfect for you. If you want to grow ten, fifteen properties a year, that may be exactly what you want to do. Right?
So don't get me wrong.
But I think that stems from paralysis from making one big mistake. And so just the overreaction of not reanalyzing the process and saying, okay, maybe that's the best way to handle screwing this up. But maybe the best way to handle it is some other slight adjustment here or changing my contract to say, if this happens, then I have an out. I think we get a paralysis around reacting to mistakes. I think we also get paralysis around, okay, this person's doing this and it's successful, so that's the way we should do it. An example at Dodson of that was, you know, everybody in Richmond would visit the property.
Well, how am I any different than the person next door if I've gotta wait until next Wednesday at seven thirty PM to meet you. So we designed our processes around making it easier for people during times when they want to conduct business. We did lunchtime FaceTimes where you could do a BD call in fifteen minutes on your lunch break at work. Right? Like and I'm not saying that works for everybody. Maybe your process again is you have to go there, or you love 7:30PM meetings, right? Like, I know a lot of people that like that.
No, I'm teasing. But, you know, assuming that because somebody else is successful with something, that's the way you should do it. Be innovative. Right? Be different. And that's that'll help you grow your book for sure.
Ben Smith
Yeah. Tim, I just want to add to the first part of what you said there.
We have to be really cognizant of the friction that we are creating for our prospects in the sales process. If you're making it hard for people to work with you, don't expect to be closing at a fifty percent clip, right?
I think if we all took a step back and think about the way that we buy, right? Like I'm sure all of us could name a really clunky experience that we had where it was just like, do you even want to work with me? Like your process is designed to make it as hard as possible for us to work together. That doesn't feel good. And so I'm a big advocate for simplicity in your sales process. I think a lot of the qualification you need to do can be done by just asking really good questions and setting right expectations.
But yeah, if it's like, all right, we had this conversation and now you've got to talk to Tim. And after you talk to Tim, you're going to talk to Andrew. And then we're going to need you to fax us your W9.
All right, no one's excited about that.
Tim Wehner
I'm done already.
Ben Smith
I'm out. See you later.
Tim Wehner
Yeah. Yeah. That's a great point, Ben.
Andrew Smallwood
Knowing your ideal client and how do we make it as easy for them to do business with us as possible, there's a ton of opportunities in that if you just continually ask that question over and over again. Something you guys were talking about, ahead.
Was just going to say you may not know the right answer, right? So listen to your BDMs on that. They do it every day. If you're not your own BDM, make sure you're getting feedback not only on, hey, are you hitting your numbers?
But how is our process going? Are we making it easy? Is it because I know I failed really badly at that I got a new sales guy, and I was like, I want to try this new thing.
I built this long pitch deck, and I said, here's exactly how you had to do it. And his closing percentage was terrible. And then he's like, I think if you free me up to do it this way, I can be better. And he's the best salesperson we ever had based on his suggestion.
So don't think your way is the only way to do it.
You know, let your ego get out of the way a little bit and listen to some folks.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah.
Love this. Okay. I got one or two more questions, then we're going to kind of open it up to some questions. So again, if you guys are thinking of some questions, feel free to get your hands ready or feel free to use the chat if you need to.
I want to talk about something that comes up a lot, which is, sometimes property managers end up, like let's say they're in a market where there are a lot of other property managers and you're working with an investor prospect who is considering multiple property management companies. Right? And so it's a little bit more of a competitive consideration versus like, I've got a problem, like I called you first and I'm just trying to see if you can solve my problem. And if so, I might move forward. So a little more competitive kind of dynamic to the conversation. What are some of the things that you see that would be, like, helpful tips for navigating that, right to success? And Ben, I'd love to start with you.
Ben Smith
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think oftentimes when we get in a situation where we know we have competition, which in property management is pretty frequent, right?
Back to our Google first page example, they're going to call the first three, four companies on the first page of Google. So, I do think that happens pretty often. And what I typically see is people trying to, they end up in pricing conversations. And a lot of that's driven by your prospect. Your prospect,they've looked at your fees or they want to understand your fees better. And they really seem honed in on that issue and it's easy to end up getting in a conversation where you're trying to justify what you charge.
My, I don't know if I'd call it like a hot take, is that for most people pricing is not actually the most important factor even if they're acting that way.
If I wanted to go get a new tattoo, I'm not going to go look for the cheapest tattoo artist in town, right? Because there's a certain level of quality based on the importance of the decision that I require, right?
This is going to be on my body permanently. I don't want it to look terrible. Real estate is likely the biggest asset that your client has, right? And so this, there is gravity behind this and whether they realize it or not, there are other things that are important to them.
And so, I think the best thing that you can do when you know that you have competition is to really try to understand, what is the decision making criteria? What are the things that are most important to them? And be willing to go deep on that, right? And so, I think if you think about some of the things that a, let's say a self managing landlord or an investor is up against, knowing what those things are generally but then being able to ask the right questions to get to what that person is after.
I'll use the example Tim gave. Somebody is an investor and they say pricing is really important but you ask a question like are you looking to add your portfolio? How do you typically go about doing that? Where are you finding deals?
Now we're kind of getting into a conversation about how we can add value for them beyond just the management fee, beyond just collecting the rent and processing the accounting and deploying the maintenance requests. I think everybody would say, those are kind of table stakes. Like you gotta do that stuff. That doesn’t move the needle.
If everybody just does those things exactly the same, then yeah, choose the person with the lowest price and the best Google reviews because that's all we're expecting.
But if you can kind of help them start to uncover like, well, what actually is important to me?
Why is this an important decision? Are you, hey, I'm trying to retire in five years. And so real estate is like, that's what's going to be paying my bills after I don't have a job. Right?
Like now we're getting to like, real level of understanding like, great, that's awesome. I want to, I want to help you get there. Right? And that's different than, hey, we've got five star Google reviews and we've been doing this twenty years and we've got lots of experience.
I think you have to be able to get down to what really matters to them, where they're trying to get to, and show that you listen to that, right? So like I use the example of what I consider to be bad follow-up, is hey, just checking in. Hey, wanted to refloat this email to you.
Hey, Andrew, hope you've had a great week. I was thinking about our conversation last week. You were talking about your kid's soccer game. How did that go?
Making it personal. Making a connection. Not just checking in. Not just following up. Not just do you want me to resend the management agreement, right? I think the relationship is still a really big piece of what we do. So long winded answer, but Tim, pick it apart.
Tim Wehner
No, I was just going to say, can I pay for your sales consultancy? That was really freaking good. I agree with every piece of that.
Ben Smith
For you anything, Tim.
Tim Wehner
Appreciate it. No, I mean, I think, you know, simplistically speed when you're in a competitive situation, right? Like that's going to be a huge factor. You have to build speed into your process, as Ben was talking about, your reliable process. Speed's gotta be there, or you're just not going to win the business. And then two, you know, I think, like most things in life, you win when you're prepared ahead of time.
Do you understand what your competition is doing? Are you regularly keeping track of it? And are you being innovative in the ways you're differentiating yourself? Right?
Like, know that sounds maybe just know your competition. Yeah. It does. But are you being unique and creative in the way you're differentiating yourself or at least the way you're saying you're differentiating yourself, really?
So I would say, you know, just do your prep work. Know who you're up against and then figure out what turns that screw into them and really nails the hammer to them and knocks them out. I'm mixing all sorts of metaphors there, but what are you going to kick their butts with, Right? And really hone in on that.
Right? Figure out a way, in discovery questions, how to weave that into the conversation.
And that's really the best way to do it. You know, there's a reason the Bulls kept going to Jordan. It's because Craig Elo couldn't guard him. Right?
They knew that he couldn't get guarded. Right? They knew that ahead of time. And every single game, that's where they went.
Right? So well, not every single game. It's when they had that advantage, that's where they went. So they really did their prep work and then they took advantage of what makes them different.
Andrew Smallwood
I love what you guys are sharing here and I think we should spend an extra minute on this. Jock had a question in the chat and again, we're speaking to this, but I love what's being shared here of like, if you understand, right, your competition and where you're competing, who you're competing against, and hey, what is their pricing? What is their value proposition? How are they communicating it?
What have they ultimately built their company on? Right? And how the value they will provide and understanding where is their overlap? Right?
Versus where are things outside of the Venn diagram where you have a comparative advantage or where they have a comparative advantage. And then mapping that to, here's our ideal customer. Right? So like, how do we identify the right person?
How do we position our value, right, appropriately? So it becomes less about price and it's about, hey, we're the only person who can deliver this outcome, right, or this value to you can be a great place to be as opposed to a race to the bottom.
Tim Wehner
Jock always asks leading questions. Like he's always got good answers. So I kind of want to hear his answer to his own question here. Right? Like, what are you saying, Jock?
Jock McNeil
Well, I didn't expect to have to answer it myself. That's why I asked it, man.
No, I think to Andrew's point is, you know, knowing your competition is one and knowing how you stack up against them is really, really important and knowing where you fall in the market. But offering something unique, you know, a competitive advantage that your other managers don't is really going to put you ahead. But, you know, we've seen, you know, some big players come into the market and offer, you know, and we can name names. We don't have to, but like low flat rate in certain markets that, you know, it's great when, you know, when all the all that matters to you is rate, but if you really want to talk to your property manager on a regular basis and be able to get them on the phone or you want someone with boots in the market, you know, you need to look for a different style of manager. So it kind of falls back to my original thing, is asking the right questions and making sure that the right fit client.
And Andrew, you brought up, you know, right fit client too. We used to do an exercise once a year where I would sit my whole team down with a big sheet of paper. This is how long ago it was. Big sheet of paper and write down attributes of a right fit client, a right fit property, and basically make sure that we tailored our marketing to those types of clients and properties.
Ben Smith
Yeah. One of the things I'll just add real quick, like that's very practical that you can use in a conversation is, I always, and this is probably something I learned from Andrew Smallwood, I think one of the best ways you can disarm an objection, like here we're talking about pricing is to bring it up before they bring it up. Right? And kind of state your case for why that is. So I might use an example of like, hey, you know, Jock, I'll go ahead and tell you right now.
I'll go ahead and tell you right now that we're not the cheapest property manager in town, like straight up. We're we're just not. There's a reason for that and that's because we're really hands on with our clients. One of the things we'll do is we do an annual review where we'll actually pull up the prior year and kind of go over how things went and plan ahead for the year ahead.
So what you're doing there is two things. One, you're going ahead and stating you're like, hey, I'm being transparent with you. We're not the cheapest. Like that's the way it is.
But the other thing you're doing is you're planting a seed of something you do that maybe you know your competition isn't doing. Right? And so if they're going to get off the phone with you and Jock's going to call Tim and say, you know, hey, Tim, tell me about your annual review process with your clients. And Tim's like, yeah, we talked about doing that for a few years.
It's actually in the works right now. So you're kind of doing two things at once. And look, one of the things you should know is you are going to lose deals because people are going to go to the cheapest person.
Tim Wehner
Yes, absolutely.
Ben Smith
Is going to happen. And so there's no silver bullet to prevent that from happening other than I would say, you know, follow-up with that person ninety days later and just see how it's going. Right? Because odds are if they went with the lowest cost option, they might not be having the best experience and there might be an opportunity to win that deal back.
Andrew Smallwood
I love what you guys are sharing here and Jock, feel free to stick up on stage here with us for a minute because I appreciate your input, but–
Ben Smith
Tim and I will leave. You just need Joc. We need Joc.
Jock McNeil
I'm new to this. You don't want me here.
Andrew Smallwood
Even put a large scale, you know, providers aside. Like, even if those folks are not in your market, there's so many property owners who, hey, a sales agent in the market has been slow, is suddenly saying, sure, I'll do property management for like three percent, right? Management fee or even free, right? In some scenarios has been thrown out there. But everybody who's probably on this call has been in this industry long enough to kind of see how that movie ends, right?
In that, I love what you're saying of like, when a prospect brings us up, being able to respond with, hey, I'm really glad that you brought this up about price because it's really important to understand that half of the equation always. Price is always important, right? But what you get from property management, right, or your provider is as important as understanding what you pay them. Right? And making sure you're picking the right thing for you. And then being able to contrast, right, those outcomes and that experience, right, that you're going to provide versus somebody who woke up that morning and said, I'm a property manager today and I'll decide to do this.
There's going to be a difference. So love this. Guess, like, Tim, then anything else on this topic, I guess, before we move forward? Or Jock, anything else you wanted to share or get clarity on?
No? Okay. Great. Jock, thanks for joining us on the page. Appreciate it.
Tim Wehner
Good to see you, Jack.
Andrew Smallwood
Okay.
I want to talk about one more thing before we open it up, and then we'll recap with, like, kind of some takeaways. So this is a cue if you, you know, are multitasking, whatever it might be, to tune in because we're going to have a little bit more gold here. And then also we're going to ask you to kind of engage and say, okay, what are some of the takeaways that we want to put into action leaving here today so that you can get value and impact your business as quickly as possible. And I do want to end with this, like, thoughts on process and then open up for you guys. But, you know, Ben, when you think about a repeatable process and making this something that's consistent and works beyond just you doing it and knowing it and owning it as the owner of the business.
What advice do you give there? Because there's a little bit of a step, right, from executing on the right things to creating a system and creating a process that can be duplicated and executed on by others. And I'm curious what advice you'd have in that scenario.
Ben Smith
Yeah, I think it's good to, like if you documented any of this or really thought much about kind of what your process is. I would really just start by thinking about your last few prospects you talked to and what was the flow? Is it important to you that you get out and see a property in person or not?
Kind of structure around what you're already doing but also I think think big from the perspective of your prospect of like, what would really help build trust and credibility, right? A great example might be like, I'm going to send a handwritten note after a discovery conversation to every prospect I talked to, even if we, it doesn't end up moving forward. What's something that I can do that is going to help them feel good about the fact that we got to speak.
The flip side of that too though is like, it also needs to be a repeatable process. If you know that you're not going to be able to follow through on what you've laid out in this grand twenty page sales process document then don't set yourself up for failure.
A good example might be like, hey, if you're in Houston and you want on-site consultations to be a part of your process, Houston's a really big city. Half your day might be driving to and from a property that's on the other side of Harris County. So I think you have to think a little bit about what works for you but also what is actually repeatable.
And I think the reason, just like the most minimalistic, clear cut way to think about this would be, what are the steps in the process? There might be tasks within each step or within each stage, however you want to call it. But have that and obviously hopefully this isn't like a hot take. Like you should have a CRM where you can actually track it because what I see with a lot of people is they say, well, I'm not growing, I need more leads. I just need to get more leads.
The reality might be, have leads, you just are closing one out of every ten. So adding more leads sounds great. Maybe that would help in some way. But you also need to have an understanding of when you do get a lead, like how often are they converting from stage to stage?
If I talk to ten people and have ten discovery calls, how many of those people take the next step? And then how many of those people ultimately get a PMA sent to them? And then how many ultimately sign? Cause what I think you'll find if you have a well thought out process that's clear is there's drop offs along the way.
And maybe you have those ten discovery calls, but only three people take the next step. I think that's the sort of thing where you start to think to yourself like, all right, what could I be doing differently here to get people to the next stage? Assuming they're a good fit. Not going to ding your close rate because someone was unqualified to work with you.
That's important. But I just think that that's going to give you a lot better sense of what's working and what's not working versus just looking at that final door count at the end of the month and being like, yeah, things are going terrible and I have no idea why.
Andrew Smallwood
Understanding the steps in the process and then measuring that funnel. Right? Even as you're doing the work for yourself. Right? That's an important muscle to build. Right? Be accountable to.
And then critically important as other people are taking that work on and managing to that outcome.
Tim Wehner
Just quick follow-up for Ben if I'm allowed to do that.
Is that within the structure of the Triple Win Podcast? Sorry.
Do you advise people doing that all at once? Like, building their whole process and building their CRM? That seems like a heavy lift, but it feels like those are so interconnected. One would be useless without the other.
Ben Smith
Yeah. I mean, I think you can do them simultaneously. I mean, you can sign up for LeadSimple today and they'll give you a standard sales process. And you can look at that and say like, yeah, that's actually pretty close to what I do and what I want to do.
And then make tweaks where needed. But I just think the challenging part about not having some way of tracking all this is that you're ultimately going to end up relying on your own ability to remember things.
And in particular, if you're a business person that is also the salesperson for your company, the thing that will fall through the cracks for you is follow-up with prospects. You'll do a great job on the discovery conversation. You know what you're talking about because you're doing it day in and day out. But two weeks later, you're going to be like, oh crap.
I talked to that guy two weeks ago and I haven't heard from him. Let me go email him. In the meantime, he's talked to three other property management companies and made a decision and you'll have no idea. Right?
Tim Wehner
Yep. Yeah. Hundred percent. Yeah. The only thing I'll add real briefly, I know we're kind of running tight on time, Andrew, but building that process and then if you're not going to be doing it, hiring the right person, the right person that matches the process that you want, right?
There's different types of salespeople. We were in a breakout room, somebody was talking about, you know, Lindsay was talking about, it's a BNI type group, right? So you've got your hunters and gatherers sort of salesperson, you've got your farmers, you got your order takers. If SEO schedule is just so perfect and your website's so awesome, you just need somebody to pick up the phone, like making sure you fit, because those people are different people, right?
So making sure you fit the right person into your process is equally as important as having one, I think.
And that's my big thing to add on to that.
Andrew Smallwood
I love what you're sharing there because, hey, if I know Ben's gotten a number of folks calling outbound leads, right, over time.
But that profile is a little bit different, right, than somebody who's handling everything inbound, right?
Tim Wehner
Way different. Yeah.
Andrew Smallwood
And they're probably a different process and a different profile, right?
Tim Wehner
It's a different process. Yeah, exactly.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah. Yeah. Man, great great thoughts. Pointing to think about lots of ground that we covered. Guys, I'm just going to give you another thirty seconds or sixty seconds of is there something we didn't talk about today that you're like, oh, if we close this call out and I didn't have a chance to like at least mention this or people couldn't walk away with this, I feel like I left something on the table. I just want to make sure we open it up in case there's anything else that you guys wanted to share that could be valuable for the audience today. And I'm looking at your facial expressions and it feels like you've put it all on the field.
Great stuff that we covered, but I'll open it up just in case there's anything else you guys want to share.
Tim Wehner
Yeah. I tend to go to humor when I'm uncomfortable and I don't have much. I was just going to say, I feel like I have the best beard on the call. That's pretty much it.
Ben Smith
Hey, I will say one thing because you know, like I'm sure there are people that came to this call, you know, with the question of like, we talked about lead flow being down, like where do I get leads? And I just want to point out that in Tim and I's breakout with Lindsey and Baron, both of them, the new client that they brought up in both cases came through referral, right? Either a current client or a real estate agent. And I think that if you are struggling with leads right now, you're looking for more people in the pipeline.
That is right now that is where I would absolutely double down. And the same principle of discovery applies to referral relationships as it does to prospects. If Tim's a realtor and I say, hey Tim, I want to meet with you. I do property management.
You sell houses. You probably have clients that can't sell their house right now. I want to work with them. Tim's going to say, Okay.
Got it. Thank you. And nothing's going to happen. But if I approach my conversation with Tim and say, hey Tim, listen, market stuff right now.
What are you seeing? Is there any way I can help?
Are your clients thinking about this? Are they thinking about that? Would it be helpful if I sent you a rental analysis for some of your clients who maybe are on the fence about selling or holding, right? What are the ways that you can provide value? So I'll just share that quick tidbit because I'm seeing that with a lot of my clients too, is just investing a lot of time into the referral relationships. Who are the other people that are close to the people you want to work with?
Andrew Smallwood
Awesome.
Tim Wehner
That was better than what I ended with then. Thanks for showing me up there.
Andrew Smallwood
Well, always fun guys. This has been really, really great. Thank you for everything you prepared. Thanks for everything that you shared.
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