So, I do my best to avoid getting that look from anyone who even crosses my path. Now, I've given that look to others but I can't really control how other communicate with me. However, I can control how my messages are delivered.
We've had to overcome communication issues with our customers here which isn't always easy. We have both a lease and an addendum that we require everyone to sign. I tweaked our former addendum so it could also act as a summary, outlining our formal lease. Most of the people who walk through my door are on a mission, they need a place to store their items and are ready to come in and leave within 5 minutes time. I have our leasing time down to 15 minutes per person, which is pretty good in my opinion. When my customers arrive, I show them the sizes we offer, I discuss what they are storing to make certain they have chosen the correct sized unit, I collect their information, input it into the system and then the last 5 minutes are spent going over the lease addendum and answering their questions. This is generally their least favorite part. Yet, it is the most crucial portion of our meeting. Maybe it seems trivial or silly and perhaps you are afraid to scare off or offend your customers, nevertheless, it is vital that you cover your bases for the sake of your customer and your business.
If I do not communicate everything on this addendum to our customer, then they will be shocked when they are given late fees, are locked out at the gate, don't receive their deposit back, find out we've rescued their cat out of their units (yes, this has happened) or receive an auction notice. In the event I do not do my part, I not only get the proverbial "deer-in-the-headlight look", I also receive angry phone calls, get disappointed emails, drop-in visits from irate tenants, let's just say it's not good for anyone involved. I want everyone involved to have a complete understanding of what they are signing. Recently I posted this story at our front desk for everyone to read while I input their information into the system (feel free to use this at your place of business):
DID YOU READ YOUR LEASE?
Why is it important to always read anything before you sign?
David Lee Roth And The Real M&M Story
This is a short
excerpt from The Checklist
Manifesto by Atul Gawande. Here
explained is the reasoning behind David Lee Roth’s famous obsession with brown
M&M’s:
“Listening to the
radio, I heard the story behind rocker David Lee Roth’s notorious insistence
that Van Halen’s contracts with concert promoters contain a clause specifying
that a bowl of M&M’s has to be provided backstage, but with every single
brown candy removed, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full
compensation to the band. And at least once, Van Halen followed through,
peremptorily cancelling a show in Colorado when Roth found some brown M&M’s
in his dressing room. This turned out to be, however, not another example of
the insane demands of power-mad celebrities but an ingenious ruse.
As Roth explained in
his memoir, Crazy from the Heat, “Van Halen was the first band to take huge
productions into tertiary, third level markets. We’d pull up with nine
18-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And
there were many, many technical errors — whether it was the girders couldn’t
support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren’t big
enough to move the gear through. The contract rider read like a version of the
Chinese Yellow Pages because there was so much equipment, and so many human
beings to make it function. So just as a
little test, buried somewhere in the middle of the rider, would be article 126,
the no-brown-M&M’s clause. When I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown
M&M in that bowl,” he wrote, “well, we’d line-check the entire production.
Guaranteed you’re going to arrive at a technical error… Guaranteed you’d run
into a problem. These weren’t trifles,
the radio story pointed out. The mistakes could be life-threatening. In
Colorado, the band found the local promoters had failed to read the weight
requirements and the staging would have fallen through the arena.”
Bottom line is, how well you communicate with others can and WILL affect the outcome of your business. You may feel you have beaten the world record for number of words spoken in a day by the time you leave work but you have actually made your job easier in the long run. Your customers will have peace of mind and if they do call and act shocked, you can mention that you "went over that" the day they signed their lease. Feel free to go over it again. If they are insistent that they are clueless about the item, ask them to pull out the paperwork they signed and then if they have questions after reading it to feel free to call you back. I can count on one hand how many phone calls I have had like this since we modified our lease addendum. I know this works. If you aren't using effective communication with your customers, it is time to give it a go. Until next time, have a great week!
Michelle Armstrong
Manager
Star Storage
816-765-7300
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