Totally Toni - national speaker at dynamic educational events,training programs and tradeshows,providing tools,forms,information and publications that support the multifamily industry;creator of New Home Essence apartment aromatherapy

Five Sensory Selling - the Silent Sales Person
By National Speaker, Author & Comedienne Toni Blake

How important are the senses to selling? Does a product have to have a great appeal -- taste, smell, look, sound, and feel great to be successful? There is important research on the impact of each of these senses that can be translated into exciting new selling strategies for multifamily housing. Are you ready to add a Silent Sales Person to your leasing team? A poster, a carefully placed fresh flower, a photograph or a note on the refrigerator. Find your favorite pen, and get ready to add to your "things to do". This article has real solutions for taking every advantage you can in using Five Sensory Selling!

Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory!
Visual stimulation in selling is used effectively in many areas. Retailers work very hard to increase revenue with colorful product displays, signage, photographs and merchandizing, especially in the main path of the customer. Retailers identify the highest revenue path in each store. This is called the "Golden Path". The world's largest manufacturers spend millions of dollars on research designed to discover the right color, style, words and image to influence the customer's decision process. It is time for multifamily to find their Golden Path and implement better practices for high visual impact. Once this "high profit" - "high impact" path through your property is established, it should be separated out for special maintenance, landscaping, and marketing enhancements. For example - weekly touch up painting of the front curbs to keep a "new", "clean" image to the front area. A planter with a dead flower and a welcome mat that is missing letters is a very expensive mistake in the visual marketing. I might not be able to afford to remodel my whole property - but I will be clean, neat and freshly painted with manicured landscape on my golden path. At every step, your leasing team should be supported by visual displays, added merchandizing, and success tools that will help them weave their magic into Gold. I have created totally new leasing tools & procedures designed to influence the customer's decision: The telephone, office display area, guest card, the apartment demonstration, and the follow up / closing cards.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
Have you seen those cute metal stands for photos? The base has metal arms extending out like limbs from a tree with rings on the end that hold photos. They look kind of like a photo tree! Well, what if you used your Polaroid camera to take the photo of each customer at lease time and asked him or her to write a testimonial with reasons why they decided to rent. Instead of just photos - your tree would display a photo card with testimonial messages to the future residents - therefore making it a TESTIMONIAL TREE!!!!!!! If a picture is worth a thousand words - how can you use photographs to help sell your property? Some properties have purchased digital cameras and taken them on tour. They ask the future resident if there are any special amenities or features they would like photographs of . . . and then they email the photos as a part of their follow up!!! What are you doing to use - disposable camera's - digital - or even Polaroid?

Village Marketing for the New Customer Approach to Leasing
I believe the customers have a new approach to the way they decide on a new apartment. The first level of this new approach is exploring the question "Which Area of the city is right for my family?" The customer's search for an apartment will take them in a variety of directions and different parts of the city and they are trying to identify "which area bests suites my lifestyle?" We want to help the customer answer that question by creating a powerful visual tour through the area with pictures. Purchase a high quality disposable camera and take pictures of the storefront of every business within 3 minutes of your property, 5 minutes etc. Include the front door with signage from the auto repair, dentist, Chinese restaurant, dry cleaner, jeweler, shoe repair, pet hospital, hair & nail salon, etc! If you have a park or playground, even within the housing community, take a picture of the city sign with information about the park. Look for trails, health clubs, golf courses, movie theatres, and other social areas in your village! You want to show them that everything they need for the perfect life is right here in your zone! Each of your offices have digital cameras. Perhaps they could be assigned to take the pictures and send them to marketing to be printed and organized.

Be Visually Organized - The New Resident Packet
In order to create a new leasing tool, I have designed a "New Resident Packet". This two-pocket folder organizes all the tools needed to lease an apartment and integrates the new selling strategies into one neat usable packet. In advance, the leasing team builds the right side pocket of the folder to include Applications, Pen, Guest Card, business cards, Floor Plans, site maps and other leasing material. The right side pocket is a portable leasing station. This allows a leasing consultant to be completely prepared when the customer arrives and he/she has the ability to lease whenever and wherever the customer is ready to sign. One additional benefit has to do with the size of some of the property brochures. We have documented the collection of collateral materials from the different communities during the customer's search. If your brochures are formatted on paper smaller than 8 ½ x 11, your information may "literally" fall between the cracks in a folder. With the "New Residents Packet", your property not only stands out in the crowd, but also might become the key organizer for all the customer's collected information. Your marketing piece, when placed in between other material, gets lost because it does not extend to the top edge of the file. I want to recommend you build a special packet of information in 8 ½ x 11" two-pocket folders. In the left side pocket, each property could create a welcome packet on the area: including area parks and recreation information, schools, mover's guide from the post office, banking information, local storage, village marketing, utility numbers, along with other important and helpful moving information. We have found that in order to generate new customers, many local businesses will offer you an incentive. One property manager arranged for a FREE cell phone for her residents who signed up with Verizon at the location near her community. Other managers have arranged for FREE pizza, one FREE year of checking, FREE packing materials, FREE drink, FREE appetizers and FREE dry cleaning. Print down my Village Marketing section for more details, additional examples, and letters written to the local businesses. One of my clients was able to create a "New Resident Packet" with gifts and incentives of over $750.00. Why not let your local business take care of the "FREE" in your marketing and stop giving away rent. You would be amazed at the wonderful "gifts" local businesses are willing to give your new resident as an incentive to choose your area. Leasing people should be required to create individual New Resident Packets for their desk to include their business card and personal touches. You might have a contest for the best New Resident Packet and do a show and tell at your next team meeting. Make sure your New Resident Packet answers the question convincingly - YES this is the best area!

The beauty of the "New Resident Packet" is not just in the great marketing tool, marketing incentives, and organizational properties - the use of the packet may also impact your closing percentage. In testing the use of the "New Resident Packet", we have found one additional impact of the leasing process. Most customers have the "just looking" mindset and in response, some leasing people think of their job as "showing" an apartment. So much so that the word "show" in response to "look" has crept into our vocabulary. "I'm going to go show an apartment". Some places even have signs that say, "We are out SHOWING an apartment". I believe the role of our leasing people is to "lease" and not show. Imagine someone saying "I'm just looking" and the leasing person responding "Well, I'm just leasing" and then turning to the staff and saying "I am going to lease an apartment - I'll be right back". What about a sign for the door that says "We are out Leasing an apartment". Most consultants use the trip to the apartment to "take the scenic route". When using the "New Resident Packet", we find the best use is on the way to the apartment. The discussion about banking, moving boxes and area services forces the conversation toward "moving" not "looking" and therefore creates a buying mood and sense of urgency. This is a much more effective use of the time on the way to the apartment. THEN. . . on the way back from the apartment, you can introduce the future resident to the community and all the amenities. After all, on the way to the apartment, it is still "my property". However, once the resident has seen an apartment, there is ownership and the property tour is about "their new property". This exciting leasing tool should be an immediate addition to your leasing procedure.

The SELF-CLOSING Apartment
Have you ever been frustrated reading shopping reports that tell you that your leasing team is not offering an invitation to rent or any kind of closing statement? I have the perfect solution - the SELF-CLOSING Apartment. I have written out 48 closing statements designed as visual displayed for the apartment. As long as your customer can read --- they will be invited to rent over & over & over again - by the apartment. The wonderful cue cards give your leasing people more than 40 opportunities to close in one apartment alone by assisting in demonstrating the apartment, placing furniture and discussing the area. YOU WILL LOVE THESE and they are available at no cost. Simply go to Free Stuff. There you will find a word document with your self-closing apartment cards typeset and ready to use. You may also want to print down my amazing Closing Card Game to teach your people when to adlib in conversation and lead a customer to the close. Out of site - out of mind. We need to look at our world and decide where we can create great visual displays to help us be more successful. The SELF-CLOSING Apartment cards are one of many opportunities we have to "speak out" as a silent sales person. Be creative - don't just print down the messages I wrote. Think about how you can deliver those messages more powerfully! Today you can purchase decal paper. This clear plastic paper sticks to flat surfaces without adhesive. You may have seen it used on your sunglasses to communicate different features. You can copy some of the Self Closing messages onto decal paper to put on mirrors, windows, and other flat surfaces. You might hand write some of the cards, write a note in lip stick on the mirror - Great American Business Products sells the markers that write on glass for creating window art! BE CREATIVE!! HAVE FUN!!

If it does not SMELL well . . . it does not SELL well!
Do you know which of your senses has the greatest influence? Even though many of our evaluations and judgments are based on sight, . . . it is the sense of smell that is the most impressionable. Imagine a richly decorated environment filled with the most expensive décor, ornate touches, colors and furniture. No matter how visually attractive your clubhouse and models are - no matter how much you spent on decorating - burn some popcorn and people don't want to be there. Scent is the only one of the five senses that is directly connected to the cerebral cortex of the brain and is the more powerful image builder. The right scent can influence sleep, romance, and mental focus. It is also proven to make both people and environments more attractive. And that's nothing to turn your nose at. Environmental fragrances have been a phenomenal commercial success as a mood enhancer and aromatherapy. The Home Fragrance industry estimates $3 billion in annual sales, according to the Fragrance Foundation. If our customer is spending billions of dollars to make their home environment inviting - why would we not use this amazing tool in selling? Aromatherapy has become an everyday part of many people's lives - bergamot oil to "jump start" the day or lavender lotion before a meeting to "calm and relax". It can be used to reduce stress and ease tension. You can't walk into a mall or even an airport today without passing a retail storefront full of "aroma" products. Everyone seems to know that smell matters except multifamily housing. Out of 100 communities surveyed, 97% experienced revenue loss and increased down time due to odor. 100% had replaced carpet and painted walls in hopes of removing odor. We are still expecting people to rent and live with residual odor left behind by the previous occupant including their cooking, personal body odor, and loving family pet. Many companies make-ready procedure do not address making the apartment smell good. "Clean" is the primary goal. Cleaning doesn't always neutralize odor and today there are very inexpensive chemicals that can easily do the job. We simply need to make "smelling good" a part of our apartment marketing plan. Go to www.newhomeessence.com for additional ideas on how to make your apartments smell "new" and reduce odor effectively and affordably. The scent of New Home Essence contains the fragrances of each of the elements present in a brand new home - including the furniture & decorative touches. This gives a room the psychological scent of "Brand New". There is the scent of Corinthian leather combined with the essential oils of Cedar Leaf and Sandalwood. This offers your guests the scent of fresh wood & leather. They also blended just a touch of essential oils from the exclusive decorative candles such as patchouli & the exotic oriental spice Ylang Ylang. To give this unique fragrance a psychological selling advantage, they added the chemically engineered scent from new carpet, varnish, fresh wood and other important "scents" of new. All together these fragrances duplicate the scent of a multi-million dollar new home model. Today there are some great advantages provided to us by unique products - stay current on the newest in environmental fragrances and give your team the advantage of the "newest" ideas.

Toni Blake began her career in 1978 as a leasing agent and worked her way to a nationally recognized Speaker & Author with a drive for excellence, innovation, and high performance. Toni was selected by the National Apartment Association as one of the industry's "Marketing Gurus" and is recognized for her industry research and innovative concepts in customer service, sales, and marketing. She received the 2001 Sales & Marketing Magic's "People's Choice" Award for Educational Excellence and Imagination and Innovation. Toni has appeared at many of the country's popular comedy clubs, including Denver's famed Comedy Works and Seattle's Comedy Underground. Her industry comedy makes her a favorite Keynote Speaker and MC for dinner meetings and awards programs around the country.