By Kami Zargari
Source: Forbes
It’s true, whether we’re talking about the technology industry, the medical industry or the real estate industry, what Steve Jobs is believed to have once said: “If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.”
Achieving success in property management often takes time — years of experience tempered by discipline, attention to detail and an unwavering commitment to withstanding responsibility and pressure.
Knowing how to juggle the manifold duties of property management is one of the great secrets to success. Understanding the value of communication and how best to liaise with both colleagues and clients is another skill that every property manager must master. And staying enthusiastic and knowing how to stimulate interest in your clients are absolute musts for sealing the deal.
Knowing the secrets to success of the best property managers is not enough; you need to actually possess these skills.
Building The Right Skillset
Constructing any skill set is not enough. The skills you refine and sharpen must be tailored to the profession.
As a property manager, you are exposed to a daily onslaught of real estate tasks. You need to deal with colleagues, tenants, owners, maintenance personnel, prospective clients — the list goes on.
Balance your time wisely to yield the best results. Without effective time management, you become consumed by a never-ending blizzard of stress, hampering your ability to meet the demands of each task. Your day becomes compromised and confused. Staying on top of your daily duties means having the knowledge to know what’s going on:
• Knowing when maintenance contractors are set to arrive.
• Knowing the intricate and unique details about each property.
• Knowing how to sell a property in line with its real and lasting benefits.
In other words, staying on top means staying ahead.
You must not only be prepared for what you need to get done but also to take on emergencies as and when they arrive. And emergencies are surely going to arrive. By their very nature, they are unanticipated challenges and property managers know how frequent they can become.
Dealing with multiple properties only magnifies these risks. The property manager is a vital cog in the entire management process. Failing to meet a target has a negative effect on your colleagues and, by extension, the clients they must deal with. Every member of the team, not just the property manager, needs to build trust and become dependable.
Trust comes with time, an interpersonal factor that evolves in tandem with your performance. Colleagues and clients may not remember the 98 times out of 100 that you were reliable. Instead, it’s the other 2% of times that dominates their impression. Those two mistakes may be the results of an unavoidable accident, but they are still unlikely to forget. Building a reputation of excellence is key to building a culture of trust among those you work with.
In Conclusion
Ultimately, it’s these skills — communication, reliability, the persistent knowledge of what’s going on and how to act upon it — that lead to ever greater client satisfaction. Your professional output is the currency of their satisfaction.
Through that satisfaction, your business can blossom even further. More growth translates into greater success. To become a successful property manager, you need to place the client at the heart of every professional action. While this may sound like a cliche, it has become so for a reason: because it works.