Inside Look: 6 Mistakes I Made During My 6 Years as a Leasing Agent

I have been a leasing agent in San Francisco and Oakland for over 6 years. I have met thousands of interesting people, had some amazing experiences, and as of this writing, I have leased 1017 apartments. I wanted to share my top 6 mistakes I have learned from so that you might shorten the learning curve in this exciting sales career.

1. Joining the wrong professional groups. When I became a realtor, my mailbox was flooded with offers to join different brokerages. I get phone calls, texts, and emails daily trying to sell me offers. For some reason, realtors are a big target to sell services to. With all the noise out there, I decided to join different professional groups. Some are free and some are paid. Over the years I have spent tens of thousands of dollars on different groups ranging from writing, copywriting, sales training groups, course creation groups, landlord groups, house flipping groups, and more. I’ve always been trying to learn more, get better, and reach my potential, but some of these groups were really a waste of time and money. As they say “You don’t know what you don’t know,” and sometimes the only way to learn the secrets is to get into the paid groups. But now that I have experienced lots of groups, I know to ask more questions ahead of time, and get out quicker if I am not getting the results that I seeked out in the first place. (Hopefully in the future I will run my own paid group for landlords seeking my knowledge)
2. Using automated scheduling software. When I first started using scheduling software, I thought it was a major game changer. I would post ads online and I would allow for people to just select a time to come meet me at the apartment (within my time restraints, of course). In my mind, I would save so much time on the back and forth of aligning my availability with my client. No more phone calls, emailing, or texting. I also thought that this would allow me to close more deals - but the numbers didn't prove that at all. I was having more appointments, but I closed the same amount of deals as before. Why didn't this work? There are a number of reasons it didn't work out the way I wanted it to. Looking back, it was lazy on my part. Rather than taking a few minutes to speak with the person, and take them down the sales process to figure out their current problems, wants, and desires? - I merely just showed up at the appointment. I did not know anything about them to see if this apartment will solve what they are looking for. Another issue that came up frequently was that people would cancel their appointment just as easily as they booked it. This led to holes in my schedule, which was inefficient. Again, I had no connection with them, so canceling on me was as easy as hanging up on a telemarketer. What I could have done is send a questionnaire form to answer a bunch of questions ahead of time, but the problem with that is that most people don't want to fill out a bunch of questions for 1 apartment when they are looking at so many. And now that I have learned some more advanced skills, the advantage of speaking with them ahead of time, is that I can pickup on tonality, and dig deeper into their problems. Maybe I know of an apartment that might fit better than the one they inquired about. Since our rentals are scattered all over San Francisco, another problem that happened is that clients would book appointments all over town, so I would be crisscrossing back and forth. If I had spoken to them I would book my appointments closer to where I was already going to be. That way I could fit more people into the schedule at the same or nearby buildings.?
3. Showing after 6 PM because ‘client couldn’t get off work.’ Personally for me, clients that came into the evening to see an apartment were rarely on time, and rarely serious. When I first started leasing, I was not very skilled TBH. I was intimidated by titles and salaries of tech workers, and I didn't have a great process for problem solving a way to meet during the daytime. As a result, I would stay late to show apartments to people, and not much panned out from it except coming home late to my wife and kids. Showing an apartment when it's dark, is not the most ideal. Clients don't know what the natural lighting is like (which is important to most people), and it's usually kind of hectic in a big city around that time because everyone is trying to get home. And most importantly, if the person really likes the apartment from the ad, they will most likely make time during the day to see it (I know this doesn't apply to all types of workers).
4. Dipping my toes into residential real estate. On paper, leasing apartments vs selling houses seem to be in the same field. But they are quite different and both consume a lot of time and energy. When I started putting time and energy into residential sales, my leasing performance plummeted, as well as my income. Either can be lucrative, but I was not able to put my full energy into either and therefore I became bad at both. Once I finally gave up my time and focus on residential sales, my leasing numbers quickly picked back up. Leasing apartments is a high volume business, with lower emotional stakes. When someone buys a house, it's usually their life savings, and the transaction takes 30 days with high emotions.
5. Responding to texts calls, and email messages in the late hours. When I started as a leasing agent RentSFNow , I did not put any boundaries on my personal time. I would get questions via email and text into the late hours. I would answer, and most of the time when I thought it would be a quick message and be over with, the conversation went on and on. That took away from family time and focus. I quickly learned that messages answered the next day will not result in lost sales. It's rarely urgent to answer someone at 9pm. I soon understood that I needed boundaries from work. I have a 2nd phone line that send autoresponders. I put my phone on silent from 10pm-7am, and I leave it in another room when I sleep. I turned off email notifications on my phone.
6. Giving too much ground to the client's excessive negotiation demands. When I first started leasing, I was so desperate to make a sale,? that if someone asked if the price could be reduced, I would always phone up my boss to see if we could lower the price. Now that I know more about the psychology behind that, I am able to guide the conversation in a way that is both beneficial to the client, and the owner I represent. I have learned that when someone asks for a discount, this is just the first thing they are asking for, and typically will ask for more even after the discount. Some clients will come back to me and say ‘we really like your apartment, but there is another one around the corner for less. Can the price come down?’ In response, I usually ask, ‘can you tell me about the other apartment?’ 95% of the time they will tell me how the apartment I showed them is better, and the reasons why. So they basically just sold themselves on it, and I just need to hold my ground. (I can write a whole article just on negotiating on apartment prices)

In Summary:

• Join the professional groups that cut the learning curve quickly
• Ditch automated software and call the prospect
• Don’t show units in the late hours
• Stay away from shiny rock syndrome - put 100% effort into leasing
• Don’t text and email in late hours
• Stay firm and ask questions when clients negotiate

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