FEATURE


objective areas (SkilCheck also utilizes 10 overall subjective sales skills): • GREETING • INQUIRY • COUNSEL • INVITATION • CLOSING


Sales Conversation


The sales conversation should be a pleasant and professional interaction with the customer. It is not simply giving the price and ending the call. Open the call with a good greeting and ask effective open-ended qualifying questions to determine the customer’s storage needs (e.g., size space, location, AC, etc.). The information from the customer leads to discussing the characteristics of the facility.


Overall Sales Skills


The subjective portion of our sale evaluation gives our experienced sales evaluators an opportunity to show specific areas that the employee can improve: • Effective sales presentation • Controlling the sales call • Built value in the store by sell- ing the features and benefits


• Created a sense of urgency to visit/rent


• Handling qualifying questions • Enthusiasm/friendli- ness/positive attitude


• Involved customer in the sales call


• Voice (rate of speech, clarity) • Professionalism (rings, length of call, hold, attitude)


Implementing The Sal es Evaluation


Over the years I have trained and supervised hundreds of storage managers. My managers’ bonuses are based on their mystery shopping score. For example, my employees would need to score above 80 percent to get their sales bonus. The higher the score, the higher the bonus. On one occasion, I was at my storage


property in Las Vegas and the man- ager came out to my car as I arrived. She was obviously nervous, and she told me that she wanted to discuss getting a raise. I informed her that I needed to make a quick call and then I would speak to her in the office. I verified with the home office that for three months she had scored below 70 percent on her mystery shops and that her bonus would have been $1,100 extra if she had scored at least 80 percent. My office manager also noted that we had several complaints about the manager’s


Remote management of self-storage


facilities can offer several benefits, but


it also presents some challenges.


service from current customers who called our 800 number. When I went into the office, I asked her how she would like $1,100 . She said, “Oh my gosh, that would be awesome!” and she hugged me. Unfortunately, my response was, “Don’t get too excited, because that is what you would have received if you had scored over an 80 percent on your mystery shops.” As you may have guessed, she did not like that answer. As I did my physical inventory, I noticed a variety of things that were not being done on the property. Ultimately, I proceeded to find a new manager who loved selling, scored in the 90s in her first month, improved the occupancy in the low 90s, and increased the income of the storage property by over $10,000 per month. I prefer the


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mystery shopping process and training to be a positive reward, however, it is an indication of training and attitude issues of the employees.


Our work force may be composed of the over 60 million members of Gen Z. They may appear much different than what we are used to seeing. Generally, they will be easily frustrated with outdated or dysfunc- tional software or any training that involves old technology. If we think about training younger employees, we need to create shorter instruc- tional videos and put them on YouTube.


As I was writing this article, I zoomed with a client; we were discussing their mystery shops and he commented that one of his managers got a really low score. While talking with her about her low score, she shared the fact that she was just diagnosed with cancer. Job perfor- mance can be impacted by many factors. It is important to discuss low scores or even a change in the team member’s attitude, mood, habits, etc. You may discover something that is problematic for the employee that you would want to know about and help resolve.


Setting A Standard Of Behavior When implementing the mystery shopping program with your staff, be sure to reward and congratulate your managers for excellence. It is much easier to utilize a training tool that has a reward for the desired behavior. And, if you have multiple storage properties, every store may not have the same bonus structure. I prefer to tie in the phone performance scores and store income to determine the monthly bonus. If you are interested in seeing my Excel Manager Bonus spreadsheet, please send me an email (carol@skilcheck.com). Happy renting!


Carol Mixon is the president of SkilCheck Services, Inc.


Spring 2024


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