The Four Operator Imperatives From Storable

Four Actionable Steps to Strengthen Your Business

Operators faced a number of challenges at the onset of 2020. Several years into the largest development cycle in the history of self-storage , the industry was staring down the barrel of an oversupply issue. As it always does, oversupply brought with increased competition and downward pressure on rent prices.

Fast-forward to March of 2020, and the world was thrust into a global pandemic which created a sudden and severe economic downturn. As cases of COVID-19 increased and jobless numbers peaked at ~40 million, storage operators now faced a potentially sharp drop in demand and the ongoing issue of an oversupplied market. The downward trend in rental rates intensified.

Pre-COVID, we released a series of e-books based on four imperatives that operators could use to strengthen their businesses and combat these market forces. With the ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak, we believe these four imperatives are more important than ever. Over the next several months, our bi-weekly webinar series will go in-depth on the fundamentals that make up each imperative. You can sign up for those webinars here. 

Below, you’ll find a brief overview of each of the four imperatives from our e-books that we’ll cover more in-depth during the webinar series.

Optimized Marketing Spend

This imperative is all about identifying the most effective marketing vehicles you possibly can. You need to be thinking about all available sources of marketing – including some you don’t even need to pay for – to make sure you’re getting the most bang for your buck. Optimizing your marketing spend is a sure way to keep your operation competitive against other operators and market forces.

Rethink the Tenant Experience

We’ve seen that even before COVID-19, there was an increasing shift to digital channels for interaction – whether it’s paying bills, checking records, or online move-ins. With COVID-19, we’re seeing an acceleration in this space. You’ll need to utilize a combination of technology, process, and people to meet the evolving needs of your customers. We believe the changes operators implemented to continue operating during lockdown orders will remain a permanent feature of the storage industry.

Simplify & Automate Processes

This Imperative is all about three main concepts – to get more from your people, to make their jobs easier, and to give them more time back in their day to focus on other important tasks such as working with your customers. We also believe in a concept called practical automation – which is our belief that not all facilities will be fully automated tomorrow. Rather, there’s a middle ground where we believe most operators are going to be spending their time. It’s important to be in that middle ground and find the right balance of automation and people-powered processes.

Amplify Operative Revenue

In particular, each operator needs to evaluate this Imperative for themselves. How are you pricing vacant units? What about occupied ones? How is the rest of your market handling this? Are you looking into ancillary revenue streams that make sense for your business? It’s important to think about each of these items to tailor a solution that makes sense for your business.

We’ll continue a more in-depth breakdown of these imperatives over the coming months. We hope you’ll continue to join us on this journey. If you haven’t already, you can sign up for our webinar series here. 

As always, we hope you’re staying healthy and safe.