What do you do when Janice, a renter you’ve had around for years, who you’ve done everything to accommodate with discounts, who you’ve lent a sympathetic ear through multiple life changes, decides it’s time to move out?
Janice has never missed a payment. She’s never late. She’s always polite, and she even sends a Christmas card to your facility every year - she’s perfect. But now she’s ready to leave.
What should you do? Well, you celebrate!
Hold on–really? You let your perfect renter leave?
Sometimes, the best thing for a happy renter to do is hit the road–and today, we’ll talk about how to turn that parting into a win for your business.
Plus, we can’t (legally) force anyone to stay.
In a perfect world, happy customers stay around forever–you’ve worked hard to earn their loyalty by going the extra mile for them. But sometimes, a customer’s ready to go. They’ve finally got that new house that fits more of their stuff, they’re through that tough time that sent them to your storage facility, or they’re moving to a new town after landing their dream job. No amount of discounting or shifting amenities will keep them–and that’s okay!
Just as you want to humanize and validate your renters throughout the sales process, sending them off happy goes a long way. Let’s dive into an offboarding checklist, and break down how to use each step to benefit your business for the better.
Everything we’re discussing today assumes you have a good relationship with your tenants, and that they’d want to let you know before they move out. Having a conversation with a departing renter isn’t possible if they just vanish over the weekend. This is one reason why having involved management who keeps up a healthy line of communication with renters is so important.
If you have trouble with renters, even happy ones, leaving without saying goodbye, consider offering incentives toward giving you notice of their departure. Doing so will have the added benefit of fostering that sense of goodwill we want our happy customer to carry with them when they leave!
When a tenant moves out, we always want to know the reason. And while only 1 in 26 customers who have had a negative experience bother to say why they’re leaving, happy customers tend to be a little more talkative. But when the reason for move-out is “I just don’t need my storage unit anymore,” it can feel like there’s no lesson to be learned.
But a clever manager can delve a bit. If your departing renter is leaving for a happy reason, learning it and congratulating them helps add that last bit of goodwill before they leave. And you can go beyond that, if you want to turn a tenant into a champion that attracts more renters for you. For example, a renter who is moving to their dream home might not expect to receive a housewarming gift from you–but they’ll definitely remember one and tell their friends about it!
Beyond making your outgoing customer happy, though, gathering data is important. A renter you’ve built a good relationship with, and one who has nothing to lose by being honest with you, can point out things about their experience that really worked for them–and things that you can improve in the future.
Whether it’s a brief conversation or a questionnaire, learning some key data points from a tenant planning to leave can go a long way:
If you get a quality answer to just one of these questions, that's worth the asking.
Of course, saying goodbye to a renter doesn't mean it’s goodbye forever! Your renter may be ready to move out now, only to come back to you in a few years when their situation changes again.
And this is where you can score some points–why not send your departing tenant away with a coupon for a returning discount? Saying you appreciate their past business is one thing, but making yourself the easiest and most viable option for self storage in the future means that the next time they need storage, you’ll be the first place they think of.
It’s possible to even establish a line of communication for future short-term options for your customer. Maybe you know their kids have sports gear they don’t use during the off-season. It might not warrant a large storage unit–but if you have smaller, short-term options available, reminding your tenant that you can meet a need for a few months a year may give them the tools they need to solve a problem.
There’s always the chance that they don’t need anything from you, and won’t again. That’s okay, too! That brings us to the most important aspect of moving a happy tenant out: the impact they have on their peers.
If you’re not already familiar with a flywheel model, Hubspot’s marketing experts can provide you with some eye-opening info. The short version is this: in a flywheel marketing model, happy customers drive referrals and keep your business growing. If you spend the time and effort to get Google Reviews, for example, your business will appear more appealing to potential customers when they see how many five-star reviews you have.
And in a flywheel model, a happy customer on the way out means more happy customers on the way in–if you spin it right.
So when you have a delighted customer on the way out, set them up to represent your business in a positive light. Generally, 72% of customers will tell six more people about their positive experience. You never know when your exiting tenant will encounter that friend, family member, or coworker in need of self storage. Your self storage.
Consider a quick checklist like this one when a tenant moves out:
Now your happy customer has a few tools–and potential perks–to carry your brand forward with some grassroots marketing. And the best part is, you don’t have to invest very much into this–after all, you don’t need to pay for a fleet of ads or hire someone to market for you. Your former renter will be doing that on their own, simply because they enjoyed renting from you and want to see your business grow!
Sure, we’d love a tenant to stick around forever, through rate increases and changing life circumstances. But freeing up a unit for a new tenant means new opportunities–and your renter on the way out can still support your revenue by giving you insight, coming back at a later date, or sending more business your way. In this industry, more satisfied folks in our community is a job well done!
Read more about grassroots marketing and other powerful marketing tools:
4.5 Ways to Win Renters with Word-of-Mouth Marketing
