To succeed in property management, one of the most important things that a business owner needs to do is establish workflows. This means creating a formal process for how you and your employees manage your properties and interact with clients from beginning to end.
If you have been operating without any (or not enough) documentation up until now, this blog post will show you why it's time to change that so you can grow your business and service your clients better! Check out our property management consulting insights into why established workflows are critical for success to dominate your market!
1. Better Employee and Client Satisfaction
When your employees feel like they are working in a somewhat controlled amount of chaos every day, they'll quickly become burned out. Customer service often suffers without clear workflows that help your team tackle deliverables on time (or early).
Happy team members lead to happier property owners and tenants! When your staff has clear direction and defined processes, they know exactly what they need to do to serve clients well. Established workflows also build confidence in your team and your customer's beliefs that you are the best property management company in your market.
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2. Reduced Confusion
Without formal processes, your employees can find it challenging to know what to do next. It also creates inefficiency when a team member has to sift through multiple options or potential next steps to determine "the" appropriate next step that needs to take place.
Established workflows help reduce confusion and simplify choices from start to finish with any property management task. Whether it's a marketing effort to list a vacant rental property, get the word about your company's services, or a standard property management task, everything you do should have a documented process for easy reference.
3. Better Returns for Your Property Management Business
Reducing the amount of time your team spends making decisions or figuring out what's next improves your bottom line! If a task takes twice as long as it should because an employee can't find a resource or figure out where to start, that wastes valuable time that a property manager could be managing more doors.
Even if you feel like you don't have the time to wade into your existing processes and create documentation and better efficiencies, keep in mind that you're probably losing money every day until you do. Existing clients won't stay if they continue to suffer due to poorly managed processes, missed deliverables, or lost rental income due to your team's inefficiencies. Property managers will also have trouble bringing on new real estate clients and adding more doors if their current processes, team members, and operations cannot handle more work.
Whether your current focus is to reduce costs and improve ROI or add more doors and grow your business, your bottom line will suffer until you put established processes in place and train your team to work within them.
4. Property Management Company Scalability
When starting a property management business, you might be the only employee! Adding more doors requires adding more team members. As you experience growth, you'll soon need a well-run machine of excellent employees and the best technology and workflows to serve every client well.
However, maintain quality services and supporting growth can't happen without documented processes. Since you can't physically manage every property, owner, or tenant for your growing property management business, it's critical to establish workflows made for replication to help you scale your business to more doors—and more office locations, if that's your goal.
Every property under your management should receive the same high-quality service to delight tenants and owners--no matter how big your company becomes. Dominating a market requires consistency throughout every task and service to make your mark above the competition.
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How Can Property Management Companies Formalize Workflows?
Now that you know how important it is, how do you formalize your workflows? We'll warn you: it's not an easy task (but you don't have to do it alone).
The process of evaluating and documenting your processes includes:
- Identifying each process and its purpose
- Writing down each task within the process and making sure each one is needed and in the proper order
- Identifying team members that own each task (and making adjustments if necessary)
- Eliminating redundant tasks to optimize the process
- Finalizing, documenting, and implementing each workflow
Doing this on your own can be an overwhelming task. Property management coaching with a consultant is the best way to relieve stress and get expert insights into the ideal workflows for your company!
An Expert Property Management Coach is Here to Help!
Whether you own a property management franchise or a stand-alone business, work with Real-Time Consulting Services to establish, document, and implement optimized workflows. A property management coach knows that the lack of documentation in your day-to-day operations can lead to unhappy employees and clients. It also hurts your bottom line!
It's time to take control over your operations by working with our experienced team that specializes in optimizing operational efficiencies for property management businesses just like yours. Reach out to schedule a free consultation!
We will review your business plan and make sure you are on track.