#77 - Suzanne Hopson Talks Centralized Leasing and How It Can Work for You

Welcome everyone to this episode of Marketing Home. Marketing You Podcast! This week we have a special guest. I am so excited to speak with Suzanne Hobson, President of Operations for Tricap Residential Group. Since I saw Suzanne present at AIM alongside Kristi Fickert of Realync earlier this year, I knew that I had to have her on the podcast to talk about this important topic of Centralized Leasing.

Here are a few of the questions Suzanne answers:

>> [00:37] - What is your current role and what does a typical day look like?

>> [01:55] - What is Central Leasing, and why was it right for Tricap?

>> [05:48] - Why do you think our industry has been so slow to adopt this change in the manager’s role?

>> [08:33] - Who is centralized leasing not for?

>> [11:30] - What are some challenges to be aware of?

>> [18:06] - What are the top benefits of centralized leasing?

>> [20:56] - What are standout qualities in employees?

>> [26:55] - Getting to know Suzanne better.

Let’s Dive In with Suzanne Hopson

What is your current role and what does a typical day look like?

We are either in the trenches remotely with our teams, or we are managing from a distance. A typical day for me is all about the people. Especially in my new role, I have been really focused on continuing to look at our organizational chart with all of my counterparts in crime, as I call them, and we're continuously tweaking that org chart to make sure that we've got our right people in the right seats.

And as you know from the AIM conference, we are scaling quite rapidly. So there's a lot of focus on people and on the process, and also just how we're supporting the teams. Being very passionate about people and processes is a powerful combination.

What Is Central Apartment Leasing, and Why was it right for tricap Residential group?

Centralized Apartment Leasing looks different depending on the organization. Now that people are dipping their toes, or jumping in full force into this new concept, you're hearing more and more about how companies are structuring this depending on their product type, or how they're structured. So for us at Tricap, it developed from a couple of different areas. One was the pandemic, but also there was the need to stop making the property manager wear every single hat, and look at what people were good at and how we could best align their skillset with their role.

Zoning in on sales in particular, we ask, “How can we take one of the most important roles in our organization and get people laser-focused on what they're good at and really lift all the other responsibilities from them?” That was one of the concepts: Centralizing some of those responsibilities to other departments and other roles to allow salespeople to focus on sales.

Another part for us was more of a strategic move during the pandemic. This was really listening in on what our customer was asking for. They really didn't wanna see us, or have in-person tours. It then became a matter of addressing how we are going to accommodate the need of our customers. We made the decision to not only examine the role but also how we could build the tech stack around our customer’s needs and our employee’s needs so that they could show apartments virtually and close out the sales cycle from start to finish, remotely.

We started out with the basics- basic equipment that some of our teams had already, and some that didn't. We were already paperless at the time but some of the more challenging things that we did to centralize our process were to make sure that every team member had a space where they could do virtual tours. We made sure they had the right matter port and the right video equipment so that we could truly deliver an eye view into that product virtually. That all required a lot of thought and many different changes in tech and support systems. Now we have a much more robust “library.” To give everyone an idea of what that looks like in our current model, we are still completely 100% remote for sales. We have approximately one salesperson for every 500 units. Scalability is very doable and profitable. And we have people that are super happy with their job roles, so our turnover in that role is very low.

who is centralized Apartment leasing Not for?

I think it could be for everyone, but it's not for the faint of heart.

You’ve got to go all in. You can take smaller steps so that there are not a lot of risks, but once you start to readjust your tech stack, or begin to change the process, it can be really hard to undo. You have to think through the entire execution of it, and at the same time, have the forethought to really push you and your team to make it happen.

There are also different types of centralization. There are models where you still have a corporate offsite office that has centralized salespeople present and that is something that I've seen that really works and also helps with that resident and prospect engagement.

Part of what we're challenged with now is remote work. It was really exciting for some, but for those who have been in the office or those that need people, who need interaction every day, you have to figure out how to build employee engagement and fight feelings of isolation. But it’s worth working through those challenges. I don't know that there's anyone that wouldn't benefit from looking at centralized services in general.

what are some challenges to be aware of When transitioning to a centralized leasing model?

It has to start with your customer journey. You need to identify your customer personas, all of them, not just a couple of them that are in your main demographic. The real challenge is to look at all of your customers and their journey throughout your tech stack. The tech comes secondary to examining the customer journey and that's where people can miss the mark and put a tech solution on a customer that's not a match. For instance, we do acquisitions because we're scaling. One of the challenges that we didn't foresee was the refiguring of all of the resident profiles, going into a property that we hadn't owned prior.

Other challenges presented themselves. If they weren’t a paperless company or were used to dealing with a property manager every day, we had to work through offsetting that through education, engagement, and interaction. It's much easier to train prospective residents because most people are finding us through our website and through technology. It's more challenging for our current resident base to understand and learn how to interact with us. So that whole program was done secondarily to us launching, and that was a hiccup for us.

I also think that when you are training your teams to now operate differently in this way, a lot of education needs to be in front of them. The statistics are very compelling as to what our customers need, but not necessarily as to what our salespeople need to be successful. What's worked in the past, isn't necessarily what works going forward. That can be challenging for team members who have been trained and have done the same methodology and selling for five years to now suddenly go and try to do it differently.

Technology is also challenging. We’ve found that using small focus groups first and testing on just a couple of properties before rolling it out across the organization helps. This is also really good for the team that is participating. They get to do something fun and new and also work out all the bugs before a launch. If you haven't worked through all the bugs first, when you do larger rollouts these can really slow you down.

There are still many more challenges but the advantages outweigh those challenges and they’re just things for us to solve, not stoppers.

An experiment mindset is key. I quote Bryan Pritchard all the time: “Don't ask why. Ask, why not?”

That makes me think a little bit further than I was before. Why not? Why can't we do it? Let's really examine that because that may be a stopper that someone else on the team can overcome. Maybe it's not really a stopper at all. That's the beginning ingredients of actually doing stuff like this and making it happen. You have to have that mentality. See challenges not as obstacles, but as opportunities.

what are the top benefits of centralized Apartment leasing?

We've elevated a position that historically, in our industry, has been the lowest on the totem pole. And from that, our team is very proud to be a sales manager and they know how important their role and contribution is to our management company. We've been able to pay them more. We've been able to bonus them more. We have very low turnover in the sales manager role and I think that's all from thinking through the true importance of one of our major revenue generators, and that's sales. So I think that’s been the biggest benefit.

We never have a problem recruiting and that's a really hard thing for most right now. Historically sales or leasing positions have been hard to fill long-term, but we have not had those challenges. I would say that the number one benefit on the inside for our employee experience is that people like their job, they like what they're doing.

Our customer experience outwardly is still an area of work in progress, but the biggest benefit for our residents and our prospects is that they can go through our entire process without talking to a human, and they can feel confident in what they're seeing is what they're going to get. We had to put some other things in place like our 30-day money-back guarantee to help people trust the process and the product without seeing it in person.

Ultimately, being able to service our customers in a more efficient way and the way that they wanna be serviced is a huge benefit.

What qualities do you think are most important for a property management professional?

The biggest thing that sticks out to me as a highly desirable quality is “owning it”. When a colleague is struggling or we're going through change, when they don't hide and when they own up to what is happening and the mistakes that can happen, it creates so much more room to assist and to help, to mentor and coach. That openness to feedback is really critical and when people do their job, amazing things happen. Finger pointing never happens because they're owning their control over whatever's occurring and it may be limited. They may not have a lot of control over what's happening, but whatever control they do have, they're owning it and they're making the best of it at that moment. That means that they're open for a lot. They're teachable.

If I could give advice to my younger self, I would say: Soak in all the feedback. Good feedback. Bad feedback. Feedback that is given to others. Don’t take it personally. What people say does not define you. You are who you know you are to be. So be the best that you can possibly be and take something from all feedback.

getting to know Suzanne Hopson better:

Do you have an evening or morning routine that is sacred to you?

I've become very protective of my morning hours. My husband actually does a lot of the heavy lifting in the morning and I get to sleep in a little bit. I don't sleep in much. I get up very early and I like to get the blood flowing. I typically either have coffee or water. I love to read, sometimes I'll spend that time in the morning reading. I typically spend my mornings just on me and thoughtful time, getting ready for what I know is going to be a very challenging day.

I need that clarity time. I call them clarity breaks or focus times. These are times that I build into my calendar. We utilize Teams, which is really helpful, and one of the data streams that come out of Teams tells you how you spend your time and it will schedule focused time for you right into your calendar. I like to do that before I get into my office.

what would people be surprised to learn about you?

I was in a rock band once, back in my early twenties. I worked at Marquette Management and worked with the most awesome group of people. We were challenged with using our gifts and talents as a team to raise money for a charity. I was working at a property at the time and my whole service team was in a rock band. They heard me humming one day and were like, we know what you could do. And so by the end of it, we had done three concerts and raised $25,000 for hospice. I sang in that rock band with that team for about a year afterward. We did some bar hopping in Detroit!

if you weren't working in multifamily housing, what would you be doing?

I probably would have been a teacher. I feel like I'm teaching all the time anyway, but I think it would've been more like a bona fide teacher.

how would you spend a free day?

I would probably do a slow ramp-up in the morning. But then I would be heading to see my daughter and my granddaughter 20 minutes away and probably dragging them to the beach. If I have longer than a day, I'd be traveling. I'd be going somewhere warm most likely. I would definitely be spending the day with my family and my dog. I have a boxer and he's super cute.