As an apartment operator, you need to be thinking every day about how to help your leasing associates drive lease conversions.

You can outfit your community with all of the modern, in-demand amenities and create dazzling marketing campaigns, but if your leasing teams aren’t converting leads into new residents at an acceptable rate, your portfolio is running against the wind.

And when it comes to boosting those conversion rates, operators will find the one-two punch of a customer relationship management system (CRM) and leasing call analysis very hard to beat.

Putting the Solutions in Action

In January 2019, one of our customers that manages about 30,000 units implemented a CRM and a leasing call analysis program to maximize its lead-to-lease conversion rate. The two solutions made an immediate impact. The company’s overall lease conversion rate rose from 4 percent in January to 8 percent in February and jumped to 11 percent two months later. 

In addition, two key metrics also changed:

• Managed Leads: This measures how well leasing associates are following the CRM playbook with each prospect. The score rose from 54 percent in February to 81 percent in April. 
• Shop Score: This measures the call quality on inbound leasing calls. The score rose from 58 percent in February to 66 percent in April. 

The gains are the result of several improvements to the company’s leasing efforts derived from the implementation of the new technologies. First, the CRM provides associates with a “playbook” for each and every lead that comes into the system. In other words, the CRM tells associates what actions to take with a lead and when to take them. This ensures that associates aren’t fumbling around in the dark with prospects, that they aren’t haphazardly careening from one task to the next without a thought to the bigger picture. CRMs can help prioritize and organize lead-management tasks to ensure that leasing agents are taking the right steps with prospects at the right time.

And with analysis of all associate calls, the operator can see how team members are performing when they’re on the phone with the leads in the CRM and pinpoint areas for additional training and improvement. Are the associates gathering renter information? Are they asking the prospect to tour? Are they professional and engaging?

The CRM and call analysis solution create an ecosystem where leads are captured and strategically managed and where associate communication with those leads is objectively analyzed. It’s a powerful combination that leads to higher conversion rates.

While these results are delightful, none were surprising.  When you focus on the key metrics for success, results improve. For this customer, the focus was on how they engage prospects and the quality of those interactions - the end result was more leases.

The evidence for this customer is clear: the guidance of a CRM and the feedback provided by call analysis will almost certainly benefit your lease conversion rates.