Today I would like to evaluate the use of 7 techniques that will establish a pleasant work environment for your staff and have a great impact on the success of your tenancy. These 7 techniques are designed to help you give the prospective tenant that great first impression that means a lot in $$$.
- Curb Appeal – When a prospective resident passes your property, they have to say WOW! Some of the cheapest ways to do this are: Keeping the property clean, frequent landscaping, and every 1 to 3 years (as needed) pressure washing the exterior of your apartment and the leasing office. This will not only attract prospective residents, but will also help retain residents and make it a more pleasant workplace for your staff.
- Lighting – The type of light and the location of light fixtures are important both within your leasing office and throughout your property.
- First, let’s tackle the topic of outdoor lighting. It is important that your property has lighting throughout for a number of reasons, but the two most important are safety and careful lighting of your apartment sidewalk sign (if you don’t have one, you must) will add aesthetic value to your apartment at night.
- The light fixture should be placed higher than eye level, because fixtures such as low lamps can cause direct light to enter people’s eyes. There are several types of light, but the best and most relaxing light is natural light (because of this, sky lights are excellent). The natural physiological response of the human body to light is general awareness and the general psychological response is happiness. Physiological arousal elicits a happy psychological response. The best way to explain this is: What is a good day? Sunny and warm or dark and gloomy? When it’s a nice day outside, people tend to be more active and generally have more fun.
- Color: colors are a second important component of the environment. Dark colors and reds (like fire) are the worst option. You want to have light pastel colors that promote feelings of calm and security. Careful color selection can make prospective residents happy right when they walk through the door and will keep your staff happier for a longer period of time. Read more about the psychological response to colors.
- Smell – This should be self explanatory, but I’ve been to dozens of apartment offices that smell musty! If your office doesn’t smell good, there is a big problem. The physiological response to musty odors is to get out of the area! When you smell something old, moldy, bad, etc., your brain’s sensory nerves trigger a “get out of here” or “don’t eat this” response. So please find a joyful and relaxing fragrance, it will do wonders for your prospective resident’s first impression, not to mention your staff will enjoy it too.
- Sound: Soothing sounds like running water have evolutionarily become a source of happy thoughts for humans. When I was a student, I participated in a study (as if I were a test subject) in which we were asked to sit in a waiting room for 30 minutes before being asked random questions about our week and our day. There were two test groups. One was placed in a “waiting” room with sounds, such as running water (like from a fountain) and light music. The second test group sat in the same empty “waiting” room without the soothing sounds. 600 students and teachers participated in this study (300 in each setting). As you might have guessed, the people waiting in the room with soothing sounds answered the questions positively 80% of the time, while the people sitting in the room without the sound answered the questions positively only 48% of the time. . So hopefully if you follow this logic, your staff and potential tenants will respond positively 80% of the time.
- Comfortable Seats – Okay, this is a great deal, especially when you want a prospective resident to complete an application or lease. Sitting comfortably elicits a response from the parasympathetic system (or in other words, a calming effect). It’s smart to have snacks around too, because when the parasympathetic system is stimulated, a secondary response is slight hunger (which is why a bowl of different types of candy works quite well).
- A mirror: this data came from one of my neighbors. For more than 25 years he has been a customer service consultant for various companies, including Ford and GMC. Having a wall-sized mirror behind the front desk in the leasing office will do a lot of great things. First, it will make your office appear much larger than it actually is (this is ideal for properties with small leasing offices), this also positively affects your prospective resident’s first impression of the property because they will not feel so cramped in a small office like them. normally I would. Second, having a mirror the size of a full wall will help you deal with angry residents. Putting a large (full-wall) mirror behind the customer service desk will dramatically reduce outbursts of anger from residents. The reason it works: people don’t like to see themselves angry (just like you don’t like to see them get angry), it’s a subconscious psychological reflection of seeing their angry self staring back at you. Simple and effective goal.
I hope you enjoyed it,
Sergio navarrete
