Managing a self storage facility: Ideas from across the pond

Self-styled as “The Hat Lady”, Anne Ballard has been building up storage businesses for many years and manages 41 facilities in the Southern USA. She combines rare abilities at selling and examining the numbers with a teacher’s gift for explaining how to do things.

At a recent presentation she gave for storage industry executives she, and others, offered a number of tips on marketing and how to maximise returns from your business. “Essentially self storage is the same everywhere” is her motto, suggesting these ideas are applicable for UK storage managers:

– Make sure you present your business well. For example, when new customers walk in you should stand up and greet them with respect and with your full attention. Make sure you smile!

– When working on marketing strategies, look at your occupancy not in terms of physical occupancy but economic occupancy, so that what matters is not the percentage of vacant units or square feet but the proportion of non-earned storage fees.

– Concentrate on managing “delinquencies” (people who are late paying or significantly in arrears). One technique Ballard suggests for those seriously behind with payments, and who say they cannot pay at the moment, is to do a deal with them (if you can establish contact): ask them to move their belongings out in exchange for, say, half the rent owed.

– When you sign up a storage room user it is both a selling event and the beginning of a debt management exercise. Anne Ballard suggests that, while you are trying to make clear that the storage fees should be paid on time, some users are trying to train you to expect late payment. To cope with this, she sets early expectations and refuses to take partial payments.

– Mention at the outset your regular sales of contents (if you do these); point to the rules on late payment surcharges and have a clear notice stating the rules, so that everyone knows where they stand. Paradoxically, owner-managers often have worse arrears and bad debt problems that hired-in managers – the owner often has special deals with old friends and tends to over-sympathise with users whereas a manager can act as a more effective debt collector. Most software programs for storage centres will have a way of recording how good a user is – with comments columns/boxes to record how often they have paid late and any other issues that have arisen.

– Impose rates increases regularly. This is always a potentially difficult process. The Hat Lady’s approach is to “let the customer history prevail”. If you have a really good customer you can defer the increase to keep him/her happy, but with more awkward customers make the increase the full amount and make it stick. Many people review what they are charging once a year, but some managers look at their storage charges even more frequently. Small, regular increases work best.

– Use the phone for debt collecting. This can be done by managers when they are not helping existing customers, selling packaging materials or signing up new customers. Ballard’s rule is “call, call, call” in order to make sure that the user sees their storage charges as an outgoing of high priority.

– Use payment discounts to boost cashflow, especially at new stores. Even with existing users, you can afford to offer a 5% discount for payment 3 months in advance.

– Know your customers. Typically in the US, your users will be between 26 and 45 years old, 70% will live less than 5 miles away; and 60% will be male. If most of your customers come from referrals you can do things to increase those referrals, further. Anne Ballard talks about getting involved in the local community, having events at your self storage centre and paying meaningful referral commissions.

– Many people compare features and prices between you and your competitors. You could prepare a table comparing the features you offer and asking if the competition have these in their offering.

– Work on your BSPL (box sales per lease signed up). Once you know this figure, you can set meaningful and higher targets and find ways to achieve these. One way is to say to people who phone, “Don’t pack until you’ve been in to see me”; and another is to make sure the display of packaging materials is really good. One idea is to have a large bin into which people can put in cartons and packaging material they have finished with: People will be happy to recycle these, but in practice they will also buy more new cartons too.

– Consider improving your signage and reception area. It’s surprising how quickly it can start to look tired. An area manager or outsider is often better positioned to see this.

– You can create a model storage room where you colour code the floor to show different sized units.

– Ask the right questions about customers’ storage needs. The key question is whether they have used storage before. This tells you how basic you have to be in your explaining and how much they will already know. You can also ask them what they will be storing, which gives you a lot of information about them; and, crucially, you can ask them when they need to get their stuff moved in.

– Don’t ask them questions they won’t know the answer to, such as how big a unit they will need. Better to show them different sizes and see which feels right for them.

The main thing is to focus on your customers and help them to find the ideal storage unit and to get the extra materials they need, and above all make sure the possibly traumatic experience of storing their possessions is as pleasant as possible for them.  Anne Ballard’s approach is very customer-focused – but also very focused on filling up her storage units and collecting the rent.