We have all been there, haven’t we? You’ve spent a lot of time with a client on the phone. You’ve made a real connection; built rapport. You’ve discovered all the things that your client wants in an apartment and you can offer it to her! All that’s left is to make an appointment when your client can come in, fall in love with the home and lease the apartment- and that is when you hear something like this …
“I can’t make an appointment right now. Can I just come in?”
“I’m not sure what my schedule is going to be like today-how late are you open?”
“Do I have to make an appointment?”
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In my experience most associates handle this situation with a response like this:
“Susan, I understand. Yes, you can definitely come in to our office…”
“Joe, we’re open until 6:00 pm, please feel free to stop in!”
“Rick, you don’t have to make an appointment. We are open until 5:30 pm today, please stop in and ask for me.”
A Better Way?
When I first began leasing I would pretty much tell customers to come in at any time…so they did. I noticed that clients I spoke with on the phone were often coming in when I was in the middle of helping someone else; or when I was about to step out for lunch; or when I had something else planned; or when the timing just wasn’t good. There had to be a way to try and manage this better, right?
I also noticed that many of the people that I told to “come on in anytime” would get kind of upset when they did come in and the office was busy. Even if it wasn’t my fault that four people walked in before my phone clients, they would still get mad at me. Has that ever happened to you?
Here is what I developed in response to this, and what I taught to the people I managed and trained and still teach to this day in my phone workshops:
The 30-Minute Strategy
Customer:
“I can’t make an appointment right now. Can I just come in?”
Associate:
“Kevin, I completely understand. While we do welcome walk-in clients, I would recommend that you give us a phone call about 30 minutes before you come in, so that I can make sure that someone is available to help you. Our office can get pretty busy and I just want to make sure you don’t have to wait when you visit.
How does that sound?”
Here is what this strategy accomplishes:
- You reinforce the idea that your customer should not just walk-in, without contacting you first.
- You send the signal that your community is in high-demand, creating a sense of urgency.
- You show your clients that you care enough about them to want to help them avoiding waiting for a tour.
- If the customer chooses to walk-in anyway, without contacting the office, she can’t blame you if it’s busy, because you told her to call before.
Does It Work?
Yes! Obviously, not every customer that you use the 30-Minute Strategy with will call in advance. But, in my days onsite, I had many customers who did decide to call before coming in, which helped me tremendously.
I have also had situations where people decided not to call in advance, came in anyway, only to find that the office was busy and that they would have to wait. Once, I had a phone client that walked in while I was helping someone else- I excused myself from the client I was with to let her know that it would probably be a 25-30 minute wait. I apologized for the delay-then she looked at me, smiled and said …
“Well, you did tell me to call before. I didn’t. I’ll go get a coffee and wait for you.”
As Mr. Rogers so often said, “That’s a good feeling!”
Let us know how this worked for you!
