When business is going well enough that you have the opportunity to expand, it's important to stay on top of that growth by ensuring your facilities are competitive. Opening a new self storage facility won't bring greater returns if you can't keep up with the competition in your market.
In this spotlight, Alan Lindsey and Jane Sauls give their best advice for how you can make sure your new facilities are able to overcome the competition.
Question: "With so many self storage businesses growing, how do I find my competitive advantage?"
Check out the video clip below to hear their answers:
In this Gabfocus Session: Growing & Expanding, we spoke with Alan Lindsey and Jane Sauls about what it means to grow your self storage business. They explored everything from how to know when it's time, how to make your new expansion competitive, and the ways your business itself changes as it grows.
Check out the full Session to dive deeper!
Don't want to watch the clip? Here's what Alan and Jane had to say:
I would say, drive to every other facility and see what they're doing wrong and what they're doing right. That's a quick way to tell you.
If you go in another facility and you're like, wow, this person's dressed nice. They've got nice landscaping, they've got cameras, and you come back and your manager's in jeans with their feet propped up on the table, weeds are growing up on the front lawn, you don't have cameras in the office, you don't have a security gate, but everybody else does. That's why you're not making as much money.
You can find things out so quickly. You just say, what are they doing better than me? Usually it's pretty obvious, too, when you go to the other facilities.
Or, what are they not doing well? Maybe they're charging crazy fees. There's been some markets we've been in where you'll have some companies that will be like, yeah, we require a $40 deposit and $35 admin fee. And then you say, Well, we're not doing that. So we're going to make sure customers know that. Make sure we advertise or talk about how our fees aren't as ridiculous as theirs."
- Alan Lindsey
"Go see what your competition is doing and you get that part of it figured out.
But more importantly, for me, especially doing the unmanned facility, is tune into your customer. What is important to your particular customer at your facility, at your demographic, your site, your location? Because everybody's perspective isn't the same. And so what's important to one group is maybe not important to the next group.
So truly, tune into your customer, figure out where their pain points are, and eliminate those. Whatever question you're getting, figure out a way that you don't get that question anymore. It gets addressed and knocked out."
- Jane Sauls
