It’s almost game time!

How American football players and coaches prepare for the big game greatly impacts whether they win or lose. As Bear Bryant once said, “It’s not the will to win that matters—everyone has that. It’s the will to prepare to win that matters.” Team managers and coaches are tasked with making sure their players are at the top of their game by conditioning and training to perform their best.

‍

To win, they need to focus on these three strategies:

Practice

Players have to physically train and practice for hours a day to prepare for game day. The more “fit” the players are, the more successful they will be at game time. Being fit also includes having a positive mental attitude.

Analysis

Football teams track the stats of their players, their team and compare them to the overall conference that they are part of. Look at the actual game, it’s all about getting the first down to get closer to the end zone to score a touchdown.

Coaching

Players watch past games and get feedback from their coaches on how they can improve for the next game. They won’t improve if they don’t make changes to their performance.

‍

Leasing Teams Can Take the Same Approach

Just like football players, leasing teams have to prepare if they want to win the leasing game. If your leasing team isn’t prepared and trained, then they aren’t going to win at leasing. Every member needs to be properly trained to answer the phone, schedule tours and engage with renters.

Just like football, the same three strategies should be applied to your leasing team:

Practice

Just like football players, leasing teams have to be “leasing fit” and ready for action when the phone rings or when a prospect comes in for a tour. Are your leasing teams handling calls with a winning attitude? Are they selling your property and all its amazing amenities? Give your team examples of winning calls so they can practice their delivery and make sure they hit all the important points when they are engaging with prospects.

Analysis

Just like with football, leasing team members need to measure their performance constantly and benchmark how they compare to their peers, other properties and the industry as a whole. How do your teams currently measure their performance? Implementing a call performance evaluation tool is a great way to track and measure performance. Consider leveraging a service to evaluate how your leasing team performs on calls with actual prospects. LeaseHawk’s Agent Performance solution uses machine learning and natural language processing, to score every eligible first-time prospect call. Scores are based on a survey of 19 questions.

Key survey questions include:

• Did the leasing agent introduce themselves and the community?

• Did the leasing agent list the community and/or property amenities, features and benefits?

• Did the leasing agent set an appointment?

Teams are benchmarked against their peers, other apartment communities within their management company and the industry as a whole. Just like rankings in professional football, leasing agents are ranked based on their overall performance score as well as their appointment conversion percentage.

Coaching

Leasing teams need to be evaluated on how well they do on phone calls with prospects. The prospect call is often the first impression for a prospective renter. Having employee training programs in place to identify top performers as well as team members that need improvement is vital to leasing team effectiveness. Just like football players reviewing their past games to see where they need to improve, leasing agents can listen to their calls and tweak their delivery. Managers are also able to review calls and identify their superstars, so they can play those calls for training purposes and recognize their top performers.

‍

Being prepared to win at leasing, means being prepared to lease. Having insight into leasing team call performance gives managers the data to quickly identify weak areas that need attention. So, their leasing agents can quickly make adjustments to their pitch which helps prepare them to win on their next prospect call.

‍