Facility Marketing & Sales Track

Creating a Mindset for Business Growth

Monday, March 14, 9-9:50 a.m.
Location: Champagne 1
Speaker: John Traver, CEO, XPS Solutions LLC

What is preventing your self-storage facility from increasing revenue and market share? Is it something external or internal? The reason so many businesses reflect on the good old days instead of basking in them full time is they get good and stop—they stop growing, learning, risking and changing. According to John Traver, change always starts on the inside before you can see it on the outside. This session is designed to shift your mentality away from a maintenance mindset, to challenge you to stretch and grow, to risk and change and do it with the objective of becoming great in your market.

Creative Self-Storage Marketing: Real-Life Case Studies

Monday, March 14, 10-10:50 a.m.
Location: Champagne 1
Speaker: Carl Touhey and Jason Allen, owners, Performance Self Storage Group

Traditional marketing methods are no longer as effective as they once were. The self-storage market has changed, especially with the downturn in the economy and overbuilding of the product in some markets. But there is hope! During this informative seminar, Carl Touhey and Jason "Jay" Allen will give you actual firsthand knowledge on four facilities and how they were able to successfully turn them around within four to six months. They will walk you through these amazing transformations step by step.

Design-It-Yourself Marketing: Making Printable Promos for Self-Storage

Monday, March 14, 11-11:50 a.m.
Location: Champagne 1
Speaker: John Roser, president, USA Storage Resource

For many self-storage operators, producing eye-catching, effective marketing materials can be complicated and expensive. Without specialized software and a basic knowledge of graphic design, operators of smaller facilities must choose between high-priced design firms or poor-quality "home-made" designs. In this session, the do-it-yourself marketer will receive helpful tips for creating professional quality brochures, fliers, coupons and even display ads, using inexpensive and readily available software. This is a money-saving seminar you don't want to miss.

Free Ways to Get Self-Storage Tenants Online

Monday, March 14, 1-1:50 p.m.
Location: Champagne 1
Speakers: Mario Feghali, co-founder and chief operating officer, and Chuck Gordon, co-founder and CEO, SpareFoot.com

Get more traffic to your facility website without spending a penny! You'll learn how to set up local business listings on various search engines (Google, Yahoo and others), use popular online classifieds such as craigslist and Kijiji, and get listed on local business directories. Many of these sources get millions of visitors a month! It's time to drive some of that traffic to your self-storage facilities. Already using a few of these things? Our speakers look at ways to optimize your current listings, track your efforts and ultimately maximize your results.

Effective Self-Storage Sales Skills

Monday, March 14, 2-2:50 p.m.
Location: Champagne 1
Speaker: Brad North, president, Advantage Consulting & Management

Learn how to position your self-storage sales program for higher profit with new selling tips that will help you improve profitability in this challenging economy. In this session, you'll learn phone-sales techniques to convert callers in to customers and how to rent more units to the walk-in customer. You'll also learn how to competition-proof your operation through a highly effective lead-prospecting program. Finally, you'll discover how to overcome objections and master closing techniques. Find out what it takes to use these sales skills and rent more units.

Taking the Mystery Out of Mystery Shopping

Monday, March 14, 3-3:50 p.m.
Location: Champagne 1
Speaker: Lori Niemczyk, owner and founder, A Top Shop!

Have you called your own self-storage business lately? Would you describe the person who answered the phone as an "ambassador" for your brand? Do your employees love selling on the phone? This presentation takes the mystery out of how to create a motivated sales team. You’ll learn why attitude, tone and word choice make a difference on the phone, and how the first 10 seconds of a call sets the stage for a sale or a no-show. You’ll also learn how onsite mystery shops uncover the good, bad and ugly about staff performance. Finally, this session will review how mystery renting can track cash to auction: ethics, integrity and liability.

Demystifying SEO: Understanding and Applying It to Self-Storage Marketing

Tuesday, March 16, 8-8:50 a.m.
Location: Champagne 4
Speaker: Brandon Honeycutt, director of search marketing, Storage Marketing Strategies

Search engine optimization (SEO) has become one the most talked about forms of marketing in today’s constantly connected workplace, due to the high return and low investment compared to traditional forms of marketing. Most business owners have been solicited by SEO consultants offering promises of first page listings on Google for search terms relating to their industry and service area. Unfortunately, SEO is a term that is often misunderstood and extremely undervalued. In this session, you will learn the internal workings of SEO and how this extremely targeted form of online marketing can help you increase facility occupancy percentages and overall company revenue without spending an arm and a leg on advertising.

Motivating Staff to Embrace Sales: Units and Retail Product

Tuesday, March 15, 9-9:50 a.m.
Location: Champagne 4
Speaker: Kenny Pratt, president, Crescendo Properties

Would you like to learn five ways you can get your self-storage management team moving in the right direction? Intrinsic motivation is the key to high performance. Presenter Kenny Pratt will show you how to tap into this awesome power that is already in each of your staff members. He'll share stories that illustrate techniques from outside our industry as well as his personal experience in managing a portfolio of 14 self-storage properties. You'll walk away with several new and useful motivational tools to help bring out the best in your employees.

Community Marketing for Self-Storage: Embracing Grassroots Strategies

Tuesday, March 15, 10-10:50 a.m.
Location: Champagne 4
Speaker: Tammy Ross, president, Cutting Edge Self Storage Management

The key to success in community marketing is to first identify how you can contribute value to the community, and then focus on how you can make money. Ineffective community marketing—that which fails to meet the needs or expectations of local residents and businesses—can actually be detrimental to your long-term achievement. In this session, Tammy Ross will teach you the tools you need to reach out to your community, use special events to generate marketing payback, build a stellar reputation for your business, and ultimately drive customers to your facility.

Providing Supreme Customer Service in Self-Storage

Tuesday, March 15, 11-11:50 a.m.
Location: Champagne 4
Speaker: Tom Litton, president, Litton Property Management Inc.

Businesses talk a great deal about providing great customer service, but what does it really look like? Today's successful self-storage operations must be committed to delivering supreme service to tenants. This session will focus on real-life examples and proven techniques for meeting—and exceeding—consumer expectations. You'll learn how to survey customers and determine their needs as well as how to use the Internet to provide great service. You'll learn how far to go when catering to customers and why price doesn't always sell space. Discover how to lead the pack and deliver unique yet affordable customer service that yields results.