Closing Ratios: Falsifying Stats?

I'm trying to come up with a professional and "not casting stones" way of dealing with what I suspect to be manipulation of data by a leasing consultant that's both boosting his and hurting my closing ratio. Any advice on this would be much appreciated:

I just met with the property manager at the property I work for. She told me I have a low closing ratio, closing 6 leases out of 30 traffic last month. As we reviewed the data, she also indicated that the leasing consultant on property had a closing ratio apparently closing 15 leases out of 20 traffic last month. As we discussed it, I have to admit I sat there in mostly befuddled silence, mainly because I do leasing/tours on a secondary basis, meaning I only take a tour, answer a prospect phone call, etc. when the leasing consultant is busy. So instantly my mind was trying to figure out a) how I had more traffic than the leasing consultant and b) how I had an almost equal number of leases on the board yet his closing ratio was so much better than mine. I'll also admit that once I got home, I spent most of the night trying to figure out how this was possible, and the answer I came up with was ... it's not. There's no way I had that much more traffic than him this month, especially considering that while he's off on the weekends (when we're slower), I'm off during the week (and constantly hear from him how he didn't get certain tasks done because "he was so busy with tours"). So I'm left with a strong suspicion that he's either simply not counting his bad traffic (at one time he did tell me that if he didn't tour them, even if they were walk ins, he didn't record them in our leasing system as traffic) or otherwise manipulating his stats. I know in at least two cases he's also taken leases that I closed (i.e. in one case I toured and reserved with a gentleman who didn't have the funds to reserve that day so came back a day later; while I was out of the office the leasing consultant signed off on his reservation form, collected his fee, and listed it as his prospect and lease. More recently he's told me that if a prospect comes back and tours again whoever tours the prospect gets the lease; twice now he's toured one of my prospects who had been there the day before and taken their lease, and twice I've retoured his prospects ... and he still takes the lease).

Part of my issue is I don't know if I'm just WRONG to count every person who contacts me as a prospect (i.e. if I get their name and phone number, I enter them into the system as a lead), or if I'm somehow misunderstanding how to record traffic ... or if I'm just being more honest than this leasing consultant. I don't want to compromise MY integrity and falsify my stats, but I'm finding myself more and more tempted as my closing ratio keeps getting tanked while his keep getting higher and higher (seemingly at my expense). I also don't know how to broach the subject with the manager without coming off as bitter (which, admittedly ... I kind of am at this point), accusatory, or anything bad like that. I'm relatively new to this business (I've only been working for the company since the middle of December) and am still learning the ropes but really feel I'm being put at a disadvantage and getting sucked into a bad situation where I'm looking bad for being honest and someone else is benefiting from both my honesty and his dishonesty.

Sorry for the rant, but, in short ... HELP!

Have you confronted the other leasing agent? Let him know that you know that he's taking your leads. You're not wrong for counting every person who contacts you as a prospect, they ARE your leads. As for the traffic issue, are they counting your phone calls? You may have spoken to 30 people last month and only toured 15 of them, closing 6. At the community I work at, closing is based on number of applications out of number toured.

Your co-worker sounds shady. I had a similar situation at work. I stopped being Ms. Nice Leasing Agent, and let the other person know that what they were doing wasn't okay. I also got better at pinning my clients down as to when they were turning in applications. This way, I could let my supervisor or another colleague that I trusted, know that an application was coming in, and they would make sure to leave it on my desk for me when I returned.

It might also help to have a calendar book to record your tours and any walk-ins. You'll be able to see where your numbers differ from your the property manager's. Hope this helps.

I think this is a common problem in some leasing offices. The first thing I will say is that you are right to be concerned and you are right to think of every contact, whether it is a phone call, email, or walk in as a traffic/prospect. So, in order to determine how it is counted, your Office should have a written policy regarding what constitutes a "Traffic" and when it is recorded in your property management software system. So - ask your Manager for clarification of this. At that point, you can go back and look at what you recorded, etc. Usually phone calls are not counted in the overall closing ratio and email leads may not be; however, every person who walks into your Leasing Office should be. Again, you need to know this to determine your closing ratio.
It is "cheating" in my book to only count traffic that leases! I have seen this happen with many consultants. What I like to reinforce with Leasing Consultants is this: every phone call needs to be converted to an appointment. That is the goal. Every email lead must be contacted so that questions can be answered. We all know that many times we can lease sight unseen from just a phone call which leads to email contact and an online application submission! How can that not be counted as traffic?
Once you go back over all your lead sources, you can see whether or not you converted those leads into tours and if they leased. To me, this is your true closing ratio. Then, I would go through those same leads and see if they should have all been counted according to your company's defined policy. If you did indeed count more than should have been, let your manager know and show her/him exactly what you mean.
As for the other consultant taking credit, this is a common problem. Absolutely - you have the right to know what happens if you take a tour and they lease. Generally, whoever tours gets credited with the close even if the person comes back and tours again with someone else. The original Leasing Consultant is the procuring cause, in my opinion, of the culminated sale. In some offices, when more than one person tours the same Prospect, they share a commission.
Communication and understanding of your procedures is vital and crucial to preventing problems between leasing team members. After all, working together can produce great results for everyone.

This happened to me, except I was the leasing consultant and the manager was cheating.

I discovered it because she was out and one of her prospects returned. I decided to put in the return visit for her in the computer and they had not been entered.

I started watching her after that and she was breaking all of the rules.

I was told I was going to be let go if my numbers didn't improve. I pulled my traffic sheet and went through them. I was putting EVERYONE in, even people who didn't qualify. I showed it to her and she was not interested at all that my numbers were actually much better.

My former company called me and offered me a manager's job, so I put my notice in. My last week there, I had 6 move-ins, which put us at 100%.

There was no policy in place, except "Enter all traffic."

That was 8 years ago, and she is still at the same property as manager. She gets terrible reviews as a manager and I am 100% recommended.

Karma!!!!

Advice from me... Get on the same playing level. I would ask the leasing agent to write down exactly how they count traffic, so there are not misunderstandings in the office.

I started giving everyone a lease and highlighting just the top area to fill out and bring back. I told them they could fill out the rest if they wanted to or when they returned to look again. I initialed all of them at the top.

Give them your hours in writing and tell them if they bring the application back during that time, you'll give them a special surprise. If you have any company mugs, pens, anything, use that or get free pizza coupons from someone in the area to give to them.

Good luck!!!

Thank all of you for your feedback. This was my first post (it says anonymous I think because my account wasn't validated yet), and your advice is very helpful. I'm glad to say that pretty much the next day three more of my prospects came back to sign leases, and I got one more walk-in as well. I've also been paying attention and noticed that the leasing consultant doesn't ask for contact information until the END of the call, while I always get it upfront ... and we don't count traffic as prospects unless we get their information. It essentially helps him to not have to count disqualified traffic because he "can't enter them without their contact information." I'm not going to stoop to dishonesty but I have started holding off on gathering information until we get through some general qualifying questions (i.e. now the first thing I ask is what kind of apartment the person wants; if they want a two bedroom with washer and dryer in the unit, I'm not counting it because we don't even offer that ... whereas in the past I'd have all their information, tour them, and then find out they wanted a two-bedroom with washer and dryer, and count them as a loss when they weren't qualified to begin with). It still feels dishonest to me ... but if the company says that's the way it's done, then that's the way I'll do it.