Sales Tips for Converting Your Leads | PugTalk

Sales Tips for Converting Your Leads

Spending money and time on marketing to bring in more leads is a waste if you're not converting them into paying customers! Join us as we highlight practical sales tips and strategies that can help you turn more of those leads into rentals and boost your occupancy!

How should you follow up with your leads?
How can you educate about your product during the sales process?
How important is active listening to converting leads?
What are the most common sales mistakes?

Featured Speakers: Melissa Lewis, Alex Keller, Darby Bozeman & Mary Cate LeBoeuf

Aired: August 5, 2025
Duration: 1:12:44

Overview

If you don't have time to watch the whole session, here are some of our favorite parts:

9:00 - How can the formula of know, listen, and convert can help you rent more units?
12:30 - Why is it important to know who your customer is?
14:45 - Why is it important to know your product and what you're trying to sell?
17:30 - How does the sales process change when you're selling RV & boat storage?
19:20 - Why is it important to know your competition during the sales process?
23:00 - How do you diagnose your potential customer's need?
26:40 - What's the best way to help a potential customer visualize the size of a space?
28:10 - Should you take notes throughout the sales process? Why?
29:50 - How does knowing your customer and listening to their need help you rent more units?
31:20 - How can you educate a customer to guide them to the appropriate solution for their need?
34:20 - What are common watchouts or pitfalls during the sales process?
39:50 - How do you handle customers that you don't have the right solution for?
41:20 - Should you always follow a sales script?
46:50 - How do you answer a customer who asks why you're more expensive than a competitor?
53:50 - How do you answer a potential customer who asks if they can get a discount?
56:10 - How do you handle customers who immediately ask very direct questions?
1:03:00 - How does the sales process change when they walk into your office instead of calling?

Carol Mixon-Krendl

SkilCheck

Website: https://www.skilcheck.com/
Email: carol@skilcheck.com

Hailey Teal

Jenkins Organization

Website: https://www.jenkinsorg.com/
Email: hailey@jenkinsorg.com

Resources from this session

Awesome Quotes

“Once your operation is in place, you can become more dynamic with your pricing, but that requires data. You need some method of being able to record the data that you need to know whether your price is in the right place - whether you need to move it up or start giving some concessions.” - Warren Lieberman

“I never want to downplay to what someone else is doing. I'm better than they are, then I'm going to be worth a higher price. That's what value is. If you go out to a restaurant and get really good service, would you go back? Yes! What if it was pricier? You'd still go back because you got better service and a better product.” - Jim Mooney

"It's good to be informed on your competition. I don't want to ignore them, but I don't want to respond too strongly to them either." - Warren Lieberman

"We did a survey of 10,000 facilities on their pricing. We found out that two-thirds of those operators didn't change the price of a single unit of the course of a month." - Warren Lieberman

“Rate increases and value pricing are the number one ways to grow your revenue.” - Jim Mooney

"Tenants in more convenient units tend to be less price sensitive." - Warren Lieberman

"The size of the unit is only one aspect of what people are willing to pay for." - Warren Lieberman

Highlights

Foundational marketing strategies to have in place - whether leasing up or stabilized:

Website
Set up listings (Yelp, Google My Business, Apple Maps)
Social Media
Establish Local Partnerships

Lease up marketing strategies:

Lead Generating Strategies (like digital ads)
Aggregators (Sparefoot, Storagefront, etc.)
Awareness Campaigns (like billboards, flyers, and sponsorships)

Your average customer value
Find the average stay length of all tenants. Next take your economic occupancy and divide by how many units you have. That will tell you what the average customer pays.

Multiply the average length of stay by what the average customer pays, and that's the average value of a customer.

For example, if a customer stays for 12 months and pays $100 per month, then their value is $1,200.

Your average lead value

Figure out your closing rate (or conversion rate) i.e. how many leads do you turn into tenants? Multiply that by your average customer lifetime value to figure out what your leads are worth.

Pro Tip: see which lead sources are converting the best. It may be that certain sources have a higher conversion rate, so those leads are worth more to you than a source that barely converts.

Typical Lease-up timeline

According to our panelists, it's typical to see a 3-4% increase each month, putting your facility at 36% after the first year, and 72% after the second.

Alternately, you can look at your lease up goals through the lens of your units, aiming for 20 units rented per month.

For Nick and StorageMax, they pro forma their economic occupancy at 85% with their sweet spot at 92%.