Handling Inquiries When Starting Investment Projects | Krickett Alexander & Zain Jaffer

One of the most common questions that we hear when starting a new project is how to handle the inquiries. This video talks about a few of the best tips for handling customer inquiries. You will find what to expect, avoid common mistakes, and attract the right clients.

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Handling Inquiries When Starting Investment Projects | Krickett Alexander & Zain Jaffer

You bring up an interesting and nuanced point here. You're busy. When you identify a problem, then you need to go and start researching. It's important for startups to position themselves, have a good website, and rank well on Google because that's how you gain awareness a lot of the time. References and referrals are essential. In this case study you gave here, it's the recommendation from your property management software company and other vendors you trust because it's a small world. Those are the things that startups need to nail.

How do you respond to requests when startups want a meeting with you? You barely have time because there's so much going on in running your business. Do you just delete those emails? Do you read them and forward them on? Do you all cover them for later? Do you even have time to get back to them and tell them you're not interested? Do you take meetings when you get them? I know you're more of a technology enthusiast than other property managers, at least from my experience working. How do you handle the inbound inquiries when these startups approach you?

In an ideal world, I was fortunate when I started as CEO because I had a whole team of people. The leverage points were much different. I basically feel like I went back to square one, and I'm a startup all over again. Even though I've had the experience of running a successful company and having a team of people, I'm like a one-stop-shop now. I am the bookkeeper and all of those things. In an ideal world, there are solutions, virtual assistants, that can wade through your email and can identify, "Here's what's junk. You don't need to waste your time on this. Here's an opportunity." You teach them how to identify those things. You can do virtual assistance here in the United States or overseas.

We use MyOutDesk. That's nice. You get to vet them also. You get to interview and figure out who's going to work well with you. It's a cost-effective solution and a win for them as well. Identifying what for you is most important and then leveraging against it is a hard tool to help you wade through the 300 emails that come into your inbox in a day. It's having help and knowing that you need it.

Having a robust property management software can help reduce the number of systems you use to run your business.

What technology solutions have you implemented where you've seen an impact on your business? Maybe you could give us a quick breakdown of the different categories and a quick example of how this technology has enabled you to gain that leverage.

When you have a good phone system, you're able to triage first with the system. Nobody likes a prompt system. However, it is what it is. We need to triage in advance of getting to a live person. That's one thing, having a good phone system. Secondly, having property management software that is robust and can help reduce the number of platforms you use to run your business. Accounting is important. The functionality of being able to produce financial reports is important for your investors and you as a business owner.

That's not the only component. Make sure that it also integrates with the website and pushes out to all of the 50 or 60 different available advertising sources for you so that you're not having to go individually and do all of this, that your system does it for you. Make sure that it captures all the guests' card and brings it in nice and neat for you and if you have the opportunity to have some type of artificial intelligence. AppFolio is great because they have AI already built-in, but there are other great companies out there like Quiq, a new upcoming company.

They created a digital human who could be a virtual leasing agent. Every owner out there should be looking, especially in multifamily, at this. Especially like a small multifamily owner with 150 units or less, you're probably operating with just one manager. You need to be looking at digital humans. Their cost for that is way less than hiring another person.

PTVC 163 | Handling Inquiries

They can take a lot of the work off of your property manager. They can answer the questions of the prospective resident. They can send links to applications. They can interface as though they're the property manager while the property manager is doing the other important things, like making sure the units are ready to move into and that the bills are paid.

Digital human is something we all need to be looking at. This is silly, but for me, it's important because it's my communication board. Make sure that you have an online make-ready board or a unit turn board where you can put all of the information in. If your owner wants to see how much everything's going to cost, you can push a button and put it out there. Gone are the days of the whiteboard with the make-ready board on it. We need that to be digital. I'm fortunate to have a unit turn board with our property management software. Not all softwares have that. I would recommend the use of a unit turn board, some sort of electronic make-ready board.

Virtual assistance, I'm going to tell you that that's probably for a startup looking to know they need help and can't necessarily afford help. MyOutDesk and companies like that are good to have in your back pocket as well. There's something else I'm intrigued by, smart entry systems. I love smart entry systems. I don't want to have keys in the office anymore, yet that's not feasible in every complex. If you can start being open-minded to smart entry systems, you don't have to worry about keys.

People can have a QR code that they can put up to the smart entry system and into their unit or the property. There are all sorts of safety and security things coming out now, like gated access devices that have facial recognition. Those are probably pretty important to where we're going in the future. They are leverage points because nobody wants to be out there making keys. That's a waste of time at this point.

Gone are the days of the whiteboard with the make-ready board on it. We need that to be digital.

This is more of a technical perspective now, but you probably have a lot of different systems. I imagine the last thing you want is another login and password that you have to use. How important is it for you that a technology solution is integrated with you or the workflows and systems? Do you have the patience? Are you open to having yet another login and password that isn't integrated? Is it critical for you? I know for larger firms, it's critical, but for you at the size you're at and for others in your position, how do you think startups figure out that challenge?

That's critical, even on the property manager level. It seems silly, but our software integrates with Blue Moon. We don't have to leave this software and log into another software. We can say, "Generate a Blue Moon lead." It goes out there, pulls into Blue Moon, and then nicely populates it back into our software. It's super critical to have a platform that is integratable with different apps. We have Rhino, OneApp Guarantee, and Stake, a new thing that we're starting to roll out at our properties. You want to make sure that those things you're going to introduce can fully integrate with your system so that you do not have to run multiple reports. You're not having to go here and go there. It all flows into one thing

Being a venture capital investor in PropTech, my key observation is the startup may have an amazing value proposition and a beautiful, slick-looking product. If they don't have integrations into the key property management systems that don't focus on the workflow, the workflow of the property manager is going to be using it. Ultimately, you're not going to get any traction.

You could have the best AI in the middle, but if there's no way for the property manager to easily implement this and not have to remember a login and password, that system is not going to be used, and there's going to be churn, or they'll never give you a chance. This is something that I found, as investors reading this, even a tech company needs to analyze and realize how are they positioned to gain access and make the lives easier of their clients. It's not just the value proposition. It's difficult to assess if you're not within the industry.

PTVC 163 | Handling Inquiries

What I appreciate about our software company is that I feel they're consumer-centric. They care about us as a property manager. They're not just a bunch of programmer techies behind there making sure all the tables match together and it does what it's supposed to do. They're saying, "Let me create something and have something that I can evolve over time to meet our customer needs." I won't switch because of that.

We can go in as consumers or customers and say, "We want you to create this within our software. We need you to be able to let this provider come in and integrate." We can all go vote on it. I've been to their nice little conferences. I've watched them mastermind and how they solve problems. The fact that they care about the real-life experience of the end-user matters tremendously.

It's great parting advice. I appreciate it. Krickett, it's been wonderful having you on the show. We have all types of readers. I know many startups want to reach out. Also, we have a lot of investors who are trying to keep abreast of technology trends. Many of them like to work with property managers. How can people reach you? What's the easiest way?

My email is my first name, Krickett@Onward-Properties.com.

Thank you so much for coming to the show.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

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About Zain Jaffer

Zain Jaffer is an accomplished executive, investor, and entrepreneur. He started his first company at the age of 14 and later moved to the US as an immigrant to found Vungle, after securing $25M from tech giants including Google & AOL in 2011. Vungle recently sold for $780m.

His achievements have garnered international recognition and acclaim; he is the recipient of prestigious awards such as “Forbes 30 Under 30”, “Inc. Magazine’s 35 Under 35,” and the “SF Business Times Tech & Innovation Award.” He is regularly featured in major business & tech publications such as The Wall Street Journal, VentureBeat, and TechCrunch.