Planning is an essential part of any organization and as the old adage goes..."failing to plan is planning to fail"! As real estate entrepreneurs, the Clothier family has always taken time out to plan for what comes next whether it be event planning, sales planning, planning for new hires or even planning the changes within the office to assist in growth. When it comes to planning for excellence, that is something that happens daily.
Passive Real Estate Investing
According to the Internet Center For Business Management & Administration, strategic planning is a constant activity in today's highly competitive business environment. We were recently speaking with a group of real estate professionals and one of them asked a very important question. He asked "As you continue to grow, should we have any concerns about customer service in the future"? I think some companies could have easily been offended by this question and I believe for most it is very easy to give a quick off the top answer of "no, we will continue the same great service" without giving any details of how you are going to accomplish that. For us, we took a little different tact.
Delivering a high level of Customer Service hasalways been the most important task that we undertake as a company. Now, that is an abstract idea that can be defined in a lot of different ways. For us, we define it by the experience that a client has when they purchase passive real estate with us. Many of our clients are purchasing investment properties hundreds of miles from home and it is absolutely our job to deliver a complete sense of ease and comfort with that process. Simply calling clients every month is a great start, but what of the information they are receiving. What about the process to gather and prepare that information for the client? Here is a glimpse of some of the steps we planned to make sure there is no interruption in service.
High Level Property Renovation
First and foremost comes the Property Renovation team and the planning they are doing for 60 plus renovations each month. Over the last 60 days, there have been 2 new hires in the property renovation department and close to a dozen new companies brought on board to supply services. From HVAC companies, to flooring companies and even labor crews, we are constantly looking to bring on more partners and teach them the "Memphis Invest" way. Not all companies survive the first couple of weeks. Many, however, quickly fit into our culture of excellence and help us to provide quality renovations quickly. We continue to complete renovations in under 16.5 days and in the month of May will complete 52 full renovations!
We have also heavily relied on innovation and technology. I am writing a future blog and newsletter to introduce some of the custom applications that we have built for our renovation team, but I am will let you know that the apps themselves have cut hours of several key tasks. Those hours add up to a tremendous increase in productivity by our staff as well as real time data sharing. We will debut the apps for our clients to see and believe me when say - You will be stunned by the new applications and systems we have custom built!
Providing Premier Property Management
Once the property renovation is close to complete we need to quickly get it leased and occupied. By adding 40-60 properties each month, it has been imperative that we continue to plan and improve upon our processes. The easy part was making administrative decisions and restructuring the department to add additional hires and split workload. We have added two new staff positions and one of them is full time Customer Service to our tenants. The other changes were more subtle, but they have had a big impact. We changed our actual signs and sign holders to reflect the look of the homes themselves. When you are renovating to a higher level, it is important that the rental signs look professional. We upgraded the sign holders and improved the look of the actual signs.
We also sped up the approval and communication process with potential tenants. This has so far improved satisfaction once the tenant has moved into the property as they have come through a quicker and more efficient process.
Tell Your Story As A Successful Real Estate Company
When we were asked the question two weeks ago, our answer was easy. We had been planning for rapid growth for some time and realized that there was no better way to explain our preparations than to tell our story. A story of identifying where you want to go and the steps necessary to get there. We have a fantastic staff and ownership that can dream big. The key now is to make sure we are all on the same page in building a wildly successful real estate investing company that truly makes passive investing easy and worry free...no matter how big it gets!
