Practice Makes Perfect

Growing up in athletics, I always heard from coaches "practice like you're going to play," and "practice makes perfect," but I never believed them. I took practice to be a boring, time consuming event that kept me away from video games and trying to get the attention of girls.

As I grew up and joined a sales staff I realized these coaches might just be on to something! I was going to fail at sales if I didn't practice, and not just practice once, practice a lot!

Each and every day in our Reservation Center, our agents take hundreds of calls from people looking to be sold. They need a storage unit (or parking), but want us to convince them, that the facility they are interested in, is the best place to put their belongings. To be able to successfully handle as many storage facilities and calls as we do, practice is one of the keys to our success.

Every customer in this business has a story. It's our job as sales agents to make sure that the customer's story is appreciated and make sure that we fulfill their needs and wants to the best of our abilities. Because everyone's story is different we practice scenarios with our staff each and every week to better prepare our team to handle situations. I encourage the staff daily to try new things during our role playing situations as it's vital to a growing industry to be able to adapt, but more importantly be able to feel comfortable in any situation. Customers can sense fear and insecurity and will not feel comfortable giving vital personal information to a random stranger over the phone if you as a sales agent aren't confident (due to practice).

Colin Powell once said "There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure."

My advice to improving your sales skill is this: practice and don't be afraid to fail. If you don't have anyone to practice with, there are a lot of available alternatives to use. Mystery shoppers, recordings of your calls and outside consultants are all great ways you can fine tune your selling skills. Feel free to call us at 866-880-0742 if you'd like to discuss any of these options, we know a lot of very intelligent, hardworking people in the self storage business.