Over the last few months I’ve had a number of conversations with multifamily executives about important areas of focus for their operations. It doesn’t take long for the subject of sales to come up in conversation.

As we’ve shared over the last few years on this blog, sales in multifamily represents a unique challenge. Traditional approaches to improving sales are neither appropriate or effective. While it’s an important focus, I’ve seen first hand how operators, managers and leasing associates struggle to uncover and understand what it means to improve sales performance in this industry.

Several years ago we shared the seminal research study on sales performance done by CEB, that became the bestselling book The Challenger Sale. We’ve highlighted the study as the model to apply to leasing when designing and implementing a leasing sales performance improvement program.

In the challenger model, CEB highlights three things that top performers do continuously, that average and bottom performers either only do occasionally or don’t do at all. The study showed that top performers teach, tailor their presentation and take control of the process. When I explain this to executives, a common question I get is how this applies to leasing associates.

Top leasing associates, or “challenger” associates, regularly do these five things:

1. They Ask Questions and Understand Before Advocating or "Selling"

While all leasing associates have been taught the importance of asking questions, most associates behave in what we call the ask - answer - tell - ask - answer - tell mode. What this means is that when they ask a question, upon getting an answer they tell (or if you prefer, sell) and then they ask the next question and repeat the process.

For example, an associate may ask a question like, “How important is the quality of schools in the area for you?” When the prospect responds, “Oh, it’s really important we have young children and we want to make sure they get a good education,” the associate starts telling them about the wonderful schools in the area.

While this may sound like it’s the appropriate response, it’s actually highly ineffective. It creates the feeling of always being sold to, and does nothing to help the prospect understand and narrow down the issue so they can make a confident decision (more on this below). The challenger associate asks questions and seeks to fully understand before jumping into their tell sequence.

2. They Narrow Down the Consideration Criteria, Making it Easier for Their Prospects to Make Decisions

When the challenger associate is done asking their questions, they provide a concise summary of all that they’ve heard and they ask the prospect to highlight what the most important areas of focus are.

This not only demonstrates that the leasing associate was actively listening (thus increasing trust), it also enables the prospect to get some order and prioritize what's really important to them. By creating this order, they make the prospect feel safer and making a decision becomes far easier.

3. They Tailor Their Tour and Presentation to Different Buying Styles and Priorities

When we began advising operators on sales performance, one of the things that struck us was how disconnected the leasing associate often was from the prospect. They took just about every prospect on the exact same tour path, covering the exact same points in the exact same way.

The problem with this is that every prospect is different, and different prospects have different learning and buying styles. Challenger associates tailor their tours, presentations and approaches to the different style and priorities of their prospects.

4. They're Always Advancing

While most leasing associates fail to create the clarity of thought and action that’s required to effectively influence people, challenger associates understand the critical importance of advancing the sale, rather than continuing it.

5. They're Always Learning 

As with any type of performance, the best are always working at getting better. Challenger associates have the innate desire to improve and are always working on understanding customers better and learning better ways to do their job.

The next time you do a site visit or review the results of secret shops, be sure you assess these criteria to ensure you get the results you want from your leasing efforts.