Friendly and personable, but not distinguishing their properties from competitors, and not attempting to close. That was the overall conclusion from a recent study of storage-facility managers and employees. My company conducted this first-ever Benchmark Telephone Mystery-Shopping Study for the self-storage industry. Mystery callers placed almost 1,000 calls to more than 500 storage facilities across the United States, posing as very interested potential customers.

Too often, storage owners hire managers and employees based on their personalities, rarely with any testing of their telephone- sales techniques or ability to close a sale. Then they provide little if any specialized training, and do even less follow-up and ongoing monitoring to ensure their staff investment is providing value. If tests are not administered to determine a hires strengths beforehand, mystery-shopping services can at least provide a map for improvement moving forward.

Study Identifies Weaknesses

Here is an example of the type of calls encountered during the study (all names have been changed to protect the guilty!): One manager answered by saying, Thank you for calling ABC Storage. This is Debbie. I told her I could barely hear her, and she said she was in an elevator, on her cell phone, running an errand. There was a great deal of static, and it was very difficult to understand her. She asked if I could call her back in about 45 minutesnot what I would call a professional presentation.

The study identified many challenges managers have in telephone-sales techniques:

The Friendliness Factor

The good news from the study is the vast majority of employees answering the phones are friendly. That means half the battle is already won. If a customer doesnt like your employee, or the employee doesnt present a friendly, professional image, all the sales training in the world will not help him sell more space. In this area of the study:

At the conclusion of each call, mystery-shoppers were asked the highly subjective question, Based on your conversation with this employee today, would you rent storage space from him/her? Their answer was not based on any factors about the property, such as the features described, pricing, spaces available, etc. It was founded solely on whether they were comfortable with the person with whom they spoke (the friendliness factor). Nearly 87 percent of our callers responded positively.

The takeaway from this is friendliness is important in self-storage, probably even more so given our high reliance on telephone sales. But if a competitor has an equally personable employee answering his phones, owners must design and implement a sales process that distinguishes them from competition and requires their salespeople to actually ask for the business.

If you are not measuring your employees telephone performance on an ongoing basis, you should start immediately. Mystery-shopping programs can provide an incredible tool for quick, effective improvements in sales techniques and result in more sales. Used appropriately, they can also help you motivate and retain outstanding employees.

Ron Welty is the president of Perrysburg, Ohio-based IntelliShop, a national provider of mystery-shopping and other customer-experience measurement services throughout the United States. For more information, call 877.894.6349; visit www.intelli-shop.com.