A high-performing leasing team is the very foundation of a successful apartment community. But what exactly are the habits of outstanding leasing associates? In her new Multifamily Insider's blog, Power Pro's Karen Gladney details nine of them. Here's an excerpt describing one of the essential habits: They ask questions Great leasing agents are truly interested in asking purposeful questions to help prospects find the best apartment. They are inquisitive and aren’t afraid to ask what the customer will be using their second bedroom for because they know the answer can only help them help their prospects that much better. To read the full blog, visit Multifamily Insiders .
"We are relentless about improving our solutions at Power Pro. This integration with BetterBot represents a significant improvement in the prospect experience," said Ian Andrews, co-founder of Power Pro. "More than ever, today's prospects demand instant answers to their questions. If your community can't provide those instant answers, you're going to lose that prospect. With a high-quality chatbot from BetterBot at their disposal, operators can rest easy knowing their prospects will get their questions answered in a suitable timeframe." The Power Pro mobile app empowers leasing associates to perform all of the critical leasing tasks and gather needed information from a prospect from anywhere. Through Power Pro, leasing associates can execute live Zoom tours or record and send personalized video tours to prospects. Through the app's Tour to Go feature, leasing associates can send customized e-brochures to prospects and share floor plans and photos as well as the pricing of a prospect’s favorite apartment as quick, personalized takeaways after tours. Power Pro also provides a leading self-guided tour solution and a self-check-in feature for visiting prospects. Taken together, Power Pro’s solutions reflect the company’s Tour Your Way philosophy. Power Pro’s goal is to give teams options so they can create the best leasing experience possible while giving prospects the exact experience they desire. "BetterBot and Power Pro have a common interest as we both want to provide the prospective renter more control over the leasing process," said Robert Turnbull, Co-Founder of BetterBot. "By combining our solutions, we’re providing operators and communities the tools they need to keep renters moving along the buyer’s journey to a new lease 24/7/365." Power Pro’s solutions fully integrate with major property, revenue and lead management software platforms, including RealPage’s OneSite, ILM, Yardi’s RENTCafé, Entrata, Yieldstar and LRO. About Power Pro Leasing Greenwood Village, Colo.-based Power Pro Leasing's iPad-based software technology enhances consumers’ apartment search and leasing experience while at the same time enabling the leasing professional to become more efficient in the leasing and management processes. Predicated on customer-centric needs, the program is designed to raise closing ratios and increase leases for everyone from the greenest to the most senior leasing professionals. When integrated with an apartment community's property management software, Power Pro enables single-entry data and real-time information. This means properties make more money through more leases and increased efficiencies. About BetterBot Today's renter wants control over the leasing process and access to information wherever, whenever, but today's leasing team simply can't keep up. BetterBot is Multifamily's most adopted digital leasing solution providing renters the information they want 24/7/365 anywhere on the Internet. Using the most technologically advanced software to answer the renters' questions about the community, BetterBot showcases floor plans, virtual tours, specials and amenities while driving them to schedule in-person, self-guided, live-video and phone appointments. BetterBot is the round-the-clock leasing assistant of choice, freeing up leasing teams from low-value, menial and repetitive tasks so they can do what they do best, being human.
Power Pro Leasing, the best-in-class mobile leasing app for apartment operators, today announced a partnership and integration with RemoteLock, the leading provider of universal access control. As a result of the partnership, communities using Power Pro's self-guided tour solution and RemoteLock's software will be able to provide an optimized self-guided tour experience. Prospective renters will seamlessly receive access codes via their smartphones for the smart locks on the apartment homes and amenity areas they want to self-tour. This integration will eliminate the need for prospects to pick up and drop off key fobs, increase apartment tours and ultimately drive more lease conversions. "We could not be more excited about our new partnership with RemoteLock," said Karen Gladney, co-founder of Power Pro. "Self-guided tours were rising in demand before the coronavirus, and now they are an essential part of apartment operations. This integration allows operators to provide prospects with the most efficient, contactless experience possible. At Power Pro, we have always recognized the need to allow prospects to tour their way through better integration among multifamily technologies, and we will continue to strive to integrate with as many solutions as possible." The Power Pro mobile app empowers leasing associates to perform all of the critical leasing tasks and gather needed information from a prospect from anywhere. Through Power Pro, leasing associates can execute live Zoom tours or record and send personalized video tours to prospects in addition to self-guided tours. Taken together, Power Pro's solutions reflect the company's Tour Your Way philosophy. Power Pro's goal is to give teams options so they can create the best leasing experience possible while giving prospects the exact experience they desire. "With all of the safety concerns and social distancing needs around the pandemic, the need for access control and self-guided tours in the apartment industry has never been greater," said Barclay Friesen, executive vice president of business development at RemoteLock. "Our partnership with Power Pro enables apartment communities to effortlessly use our two technologies to provide an outstanding experience for prospects that will make a great impression and keep them moving along the sales funnel to a new lease." Power Pro's solutions fully integrate with major property, revenue, and lead management software platforms, including RealPage's OneSite, ILM, Yardi's RENTCafé, Yieldstar and LRO. About Power Pro Leasing Greenwood Village, Colo.-based Power Pro Leasing's iPad-based software technology enhances consumers' apartment search and leasing experience while at the same time enabling the leasing professional to become more efficient in the leasing and management processes. Predicated on customer-centric needs, the program is designed to raise closing ratios and increase leases for everyone from the greenest to the most senior leasing professionals. When integrated with an apartment community's property management software, Power Pro enables single-entry data and real-time information. This means properties make more money through more leases and increased efficiencies. About RemoteLock RemoteLock sets the standard in universal access control with its easy-to-use, scalable, and future-proof software. It provides users the ultimate in flexibility and control—so they can easily grant any person access to any space, from anywhere. RemoteLock manages leading smart locks and access control hardware and can be integrated with its customers' essential software systems. RemoteLock is committed to being the last access management partner our customers will need. Headquartered in Denver, CO, RemoteLock has customers in over 65 countries. Learn more at www.remotelock.com.
Like multifamily properties across the country, Morgan's communities suddenly found themselves needing to connect with prospects through video calls when the coronavirus hit. Fortunately, the Power Pro mobile leasing app used by Morgan was able to lend a big hand. That's because leasing associates can easily launch Zoom calls with prospects while in the app. Click to read the full case study.
Let's talk about experience, the prospect experience. Karen Gladney spoke with Michael Bull of America's Commercial Real Estate to discuss the findings of her 100 properties tour as she sought to better understand the actual prospect experience happening in our leasing offices. Take a listen to the latest Multifamily Market and Leasing Strategies Update Karen starts at the 16-minute mark - and let us know what you think. How can we create the best prospect experience?
‘Tour-Your-Way’ gives apartment teams more tools than ever before to optimize, personalize and customize the leasing process Power Pro Leasing (Power Pro), the best-in-class mobile leasing app for apartment operators, has unveiled a more robust platform showcasing a series of enhancements to its original leasing app. The new Tour-Your-Way is designed to enable onsite teams to close more leases. “Tour-Your-Way has catapulted our offerings well beyond the mobile app distinction. We are truly a leasing platform that delivers the features you need to drive more leases, accurately collect leasing performance data and ultimately increase revenue and NOI,” said Karen Gladney, co-founder of Power Pro. “We are firmly committed to always innovating our products and giving multifamily operators more and better tools to create the leasing experiences today’s apartment prospects want.” The Tour-Your-Way experience includes: • Self-guided tour functionality that fully integrates with leasing-agent-tour software. Power Pro’s self-guided tour solution provides an intuitive and visually appealing experience for prospects, who can access their tour through a web link. After the tour, the same link allows prospects to access a personalized e-brochure about the property. • The ability to transfer a guest card to a sister property while in the app. • Virtual touring including Video and Zoom experience. • The ability to load more than one community at a time so that associates can easily toggle between properties. This multi-sites feature makes it easier for onsite teams responsible for leasing multiple apartment communities to close more leases. • Instant prospect ID verification to create peace of mind for your associates. • A streamlined application workflow to make closing easy with built-in navigation directed to the PMS online leasing platform. • Enhanced configuration settings to support desired workflows. • Visual identifiers to highlight apartments shown and most liked by the prospect. • Enhanced reporting features to improve analysis of leasing effectiveness and prospect effectiveness. • Redesigned quote creating a personalized prospect tour summary that they can return to including all their quotes from a particular property, the location of the apartment, features and any videos associated with the quoted apartments. • A self-check-in app to be used by touring prospects. The app is available in Spanish, making it the first self-check-in app in the multifamily space to accommodate Spanish-speaking prospects. • Power Pro now offers a prospect survey that can be automatically sent to a prospect one hour after a tour. “We are especially excited about Power Pro’s enhanced ability to interact with Spanish-speaking prospects,” said Ian Andrews, co-founder of Power Pro. “This is a fast-growing segment of the renter population, and it’s critical for apartment communities to be able to provide a seamless and comfortable leasing experience to Spanish-speaking prospects.” The Power Pro leasing app unchains leasing associates from their desks so they can create a comfortable, personalized leasing experience to drive prospect engagement throughout the apartment shopping process and the property tour. No longer does an associate have to sit in an office with a prospect and interview them in a setting that the prospect may find too intimidating, formal or impersonal. With Power Pro, leasing associates can perform all of the critical leasing tasks and gather needed information from a prospect while anywhere on a property, whether sitting in a comfortable courtyard or walking through an apartment home. Associates are able to quickly verify a prospect's ID, and the technology enables them to fill out a guest card, show community photos and videos and access floor plans and pricing – even without an internet connection. Additionally, the solution gives leasing associates the ability to send customized e-brochures to prospects and to share floor plans as well as the pricing of a prospect’s favorite apartment as quick, personalized takeaways. The technology fully integrates with Entrata, RealPage and Yardi.
As we start to open up our communities again and as more prospects are going to want to take a tour, the Power Pro team has pulled together 11 steps to make sure that every self-tour is truly a VIP Experience. It is the experience that leaves a lasting impression, make sure it is the best experience possible.
The integration facilitates prospects’ apartment tours Power Pro Leasing (Power Pro), the best-in-class mobile leasing app for apartment operators, today announced a partnership and integration with PERQ , the maker of an artificial intelligence-driven digital marketing platform that engages and captures critical prospect data through a community website. The integration between the two platforms will further drive leads and improve community tour conversion. As a result of the partnership, when a prospective renter schedules a property tour through PERQ’s website solution, the information will be seamlessly fed into Power Pro. The integration benefits both prospects and leasing associates by ensuring a community receives the tour booking selected by the prospect, be it self-guided, video or an in-person, associate-led visit, and enables the leasing associate to create the right experience. “Our new partnership with Power Pro Leasing brings value to both property managers and consumers,” said PERQ Co-Founder Scott Hill. “Power Pro Leasing’s software combined with PERQ’s Multi-Option Tour Scheduler allows consumers to schedule and experience virtual tours of properties seamlessly and gives leasing agents additional tools to close the deal during a difficult time.” The Power Pro mobile app allows leasing associates to perform all of the critical leasing tasks and gather needed information from a prospect from anywhere. Through Power Pro, leasing associates can execute live Zoom tours or record and send personalized video tours to prospects. Power Pro also offers self-guided-tour technology to apartment communities. Taken together, Power Pro’s solutions reflect the company’s Tour Your Way philosophy. Power Pro’s goal is to give teams options so they can create the best leasing experience possible while giving prospects the exact experience they desire. “At Power Pro, we care passionately about integrating with other supplier partners to create great experiences for our customers,” said Karen Gladney, co-founder of Power Pro. “When we create great experiences for our customers, they, in turn, are able to provide best-in-class experiences for their prospective residents. That’s why we’re so excited to partner with PERQ. They truly are a first-class supplier partner.” The Power Pro leasing app unchains leasing associates from their desks so they can create a comfortable, personalized leasing experience to drive prospect engagement throughout the apartment shopping process and the property tour - even over a Zoom call. When in-person community visits are an option, the app enables associates to talk with prospects and get information from them while anywhere on the property, whether sitting in a comfortable courtyard or walking through an apartment home. And regardless of what form a tour takes, Power Pro allows associates to send prospects a Personal Tour Summary e-brochure afterwards. The brochure is a lightweight quick link for prospects to open and see the apartments they’re interested in, access personal quotes for those apartments and see any virtual or custom videos made for them. Power Pro’s solutions fully integrate with major property, revenue, and lead management software platforms, including RealPage’s OneSite, ILM, Yardi’s RENTCafé, Yieldstar and LRO. About Power Pro Leasing Greenwood Village, Colo.-based Power Pro Leasing's iPad-based software technology enhances consumers’ apartment search and leasing experience while at the same time enabling the leasing professional to become more efficient in the leasing and management processes. Predicated on customer-centric needs, the program is designed to raise closing ratios and increase leases for everyone from the greenest to the most senior leasing professionals. When integrated with an apartment community's property management software, Power Pro enables single-entry data and real-time information. This means properties make more money through more leases and increased efficiencies. About PERQ PERQ (www.perq.com), a marketing technology company founded in 2001, empowers businesses and the online consumer experience through innovative solutions powered by artificial intelligence. More than 1,500 businesses in the multifamily, home furnishings and auto retailing industries leverage the PERQ Marketing Cloud and technology to give them more visibility into their digital marketing efforts and sales.
I recently set out to visit 100 properties in 100 days. I wanted to get a truly informed understanding of the in-person experience that today’s prospects have. I wanted to see where the opportunities for improvement are and where leasing teams are knocking it out of the park. I genuinely went into it as a blank slate not quite sure what it would reveal. So often I hear people make broad, sweeping statements after visiting only a handful of properties - as if those limited experiences represent the industry standard. My intention in visiting 100 communities was to see what the industry standard really is. So I set out on my adventure and to say I was surprised at what I found would be an understatement. I was quickly and vividly reminded that the in-person leasing experience often is less than ideal for visiting prospects. I also humbly realized I had personally committed several of these leasing experience blunders myself. And while I understand today’s landscape has vastly changed our in-person touring options, it provides a great opportunity to discuss with your teams how to create a truly impactful experience whether virtually or in-person. The properties I toured were all high-end apartment communities from coast to coast. These are typically the properties that are the early adopters of the latest and greatest practices and technologies that the rest of the industry eventually follows. Here are some of the experiences and surprises that occurred on my visits: Greetings and First Impressions: About 10 communities into this project, I called one of my co-workers and said I feel like I am treated more kindly when I check into a hotel for a one-night stay than when looking for my next home. Offices had packages, sticky notes, and file folders everywhere, and they too often were in general disarray. Associate attire overall wasn’t polished or coordinated, and there were very few people with name tags to help me remember who I was talking to. I definitely felt like an interruption more often than not and not a priority. Nearly 50% of the time, I had to wait for someone to help me or I was sent away because I didn’t have an appointment, the office was closed or a myriad of other reasons. It quickly turned from a project I was excited about to one that felt more daunting. And I must say, when looking for an apartment you get really thirsty and even hungry. And although I was appreciative to be offered anything, repeatedly being offered water and coffee got old quickly. The Discovery: After being asked to sit at the desk, where most people wanted to sit me down, which is not inviting and frankly, felt cold and impersonal (completely subjective), the biggest surprised came to light. STICKY NOTES! Oh my word, I truly had no idea we were still using sticky notes for guest cards at all - much less on A+ lease-ups. It was also surprising how few questions I was asked to figure out the best apartment for me. Most of the time I was just asked about my move-in date, the apartment I was looking for, and price range. Everyone seemed to want to know my budget. I am more than just a price range. What about the floor I want to live on? The direction I want to face? The kind of view I want to have? The type of layout? Color schemes? Many times it wasn’t until we got in an apartment and I asked about a particular feature that the team member said, “Oh! We have that, let’s go see it.” If I had just been asked more specifics about my wants not just my budget, in the beginning, we could have gone to the right apartment home immediately. Tour and Wrap-Up: I can say this, there are some fabulous WOW fridges out there. It felt like everyone had one but in actuality, it was about 40% of the communities. The interesting thing was when I would open it the leasing associate always said, “Yes, that’s our WOW fridge,” but most of the time didn’t invite me to take anything. And since the fridges look like a work of art, I can see how a prospect wouldn’t take anything from them if they’re not invited. Maybe there should be a sign saying “Drink Me” - ha! At the end of it all, the stats indicate I was shown an average of two apartments per tour. I definitely feel like I impacted that and that the number easily could have been higher if I had left things completely to the onsite team members, who often seemed more focused on showing me lots of units instead of the ones they thought were actually a fit for me. Over the course of the upcoming months, my blogs will provide a deeper, stat-filled dive into areas I identified during my visits that are prime for improvement. For now, l want to say I hope these general observations are an opportunity for you to pause and ask yourself if your leasing teams are truly providing the ideal experience for prospects. Or, if you yourself are on the leasing floor, what are you delivering to your prospects? Our industry is filled with wonderful associates who are working very hard. But even well-intentioned and conscientious associates can make the kinds of mistakes discussed here and unintentionally undermine leasing efforts.
The apartment industry has long had a reputation for being slow to embrace emerging technologies. In recent years, however, owners and managers have made impressive strides in using new solutions to improve their operations and create better experiences for prospects and residents. They’ve implemented revenue-management software and turned to lead-management systems to improve prospect outreach. Communities now have mobile apps that allow residents to easily perform any number of tasks, such as paying their rent or filing a service request. And mobile leasing solutions are empowering associates to lead top-notch tours, while self-guided-tour technology is gaining traction as a way for prospects to learn about a community without a leasing associate in tow. For the multifamily industry’s evolution to continue, however, one thing needs to change. It has to be easier to integrate individual technologies. When owners and operators can’t easily assemble a group of solutions that are able to seamlessly communicate with each other, it stunts the growth of our industry. Working Together These integration challenges can have a seriously negative impact on operators. To cite just one example, when a community’s CRM and property-management system don’t communicate well, the end result can be that both leasing associates and prospects have to enter in the same data about the prospect multiple times during the apartment-shopping process. That’s not a good process for anyone. Integrating different technologies can be a very expensive proposition for supplier partners, and those costs have to eventually be absorbed by operators and their residents. Looking ahead, supplier partners need to make easier integration a focal point. They should build their solutions with APIs – preferably open APIs – so those technologies can easily communicate with other solutions. Having open, standardized integrations would significantly reduce the expense of allowing solutions to work together and would create a much more efficient experience for properties as well as their residents and prospects. Entrepreneurs create multifamily technology companies to make the lives of apartment operators easier and to make them better at achieving their business goals. And supplier partners have developed any number of sophisticated, impressive solutions that do just that. But supplier partners can’t stop there. If operators experience significant hassles when their various technologies try to work together, then we haven’t done our jobs. By ensuring our products can play nice with others, we are better serving apartment owners and operators.