Ep. 10 - How Property Managers Can Utilize New Technologies

Read full here: http://fourandhalf.com/find-implement-latest-technologies-grow-property-management-business-chris-hermanski/ The topic today is how building a culture of innovation can grow your property management business. Our guest is Chris Hermanski, someone I’ve known for six years. Chris, can you tell us about yourself and how you came to be a property manager? A: I’m the owner of Mainlander Property Management, in Oswego, Oregon. Our emphasis is managing individually owned single family homes and condominiums. We have a portfolio of about 1,300 to 1,400 properties and we work with 1,000 to 1,100 clients. My degree is in business management and I’ve been doing this for 35 years. I kind of fell into the property management business. I was selling real estate for a few years, but that was when interest rates were high, so it was hard to make a lot of money. Then I started managing houses for builders and we built the property management company from there. I have been involved with NARPM since 1997. I’ve served on the Board of Directors for eight years, I’m a past national president and I founded the Broker Owner event. That’s really our platform for connecting with owners of property management companies and dealing with what’s new and coming. Q: Tell us about your decision making process. A company like Appfolio approaches you, and you know that switching software would be significant. How many properties did you have then? A: 1000 plus, I believe. Q: So there were a lot of properties to switch, which comes with some risk. I know that LeadSimple also came to you around the same time, but you weren’t interested in trying that technology just yet. So I’m curious: you made the move with Appfolio, but you weren’t ready for LeadSimple at the time. I know you’re using it now, but you didn’t then. How do you decide what’s good for right now and what you need to wait and see before you adopt it? A: A little of it is gut instinct and the rest is knowing what your current needs are. With LeadSimple, I felt like I was a fish swimming up hill to get it started. Our staff wasn’t quite ready to make that switch. But everyone was frustrated with accounting, so we were eager to try Appfolio. We used that system right next to our current system. That made it an easy transition. We were simply replacing the backbone of our operations. LeadSimple was more of capturing and managing and in the old days, we could be more casual about that. Today, it’s a more competitive field, so the technology we get from LeadSimple will become the backbone of our business now. Tracking new clients and having a CRM type mentality when we’re tracking and marketing is a new priority that we didn’t have when the company first approached us. The leads we get may be insignificant compared to other leads, but we still can’t afford to ignore them. We can’t always pinpoint where every lead comes from. Sometimes it’s from your reputation and things you’ve been a part of. Someone might see a vehicle with your name on it or someone might call us and we kept track of them and when they are ready, we are there. You don’t know when it’s going to be. Some of the technology is great that’s coming out, but not necessity for our company right now. If it’s not a significant part of what we’re doing right now, it doesn’t matter as much. When you find the technology that can really change things right now, you do your due diligence and you test drive it. I try to engage key staff members so employees can embrace it and see the learning curve as being mild. We want everyone to be fluent in it. Q: If you have only one piece of advice to give to a newer property manager – what would that be? A: Surround yourself with other people who do what you do. Go to NARPM events. Participate. Have a mentor you can brainstorm with. Ideally, that will be someone not in your market so there’s no apprehension and you can play off each other and work together. Learn from that. Keep your eyes and ears open in and outside the property management industry for tech advances and see how you can apply them to your business. Full article here: http://everythingpropertymanagement.com/find-implement-latest-technologies-grow-property-management-business-chris-hermanski/