If you are planning to enter the self-storage business to provide space to companies and individuals for storing and warehousing their products, there will be a lot of things that you will need to take care of on a day-to-day basis. You will need to monitor and track the facility’s inventory, ensure customers are happy with their storage units, and make sure all employees are following protocol.
We believe you should outsource some parts of these operations by implementing a self-storage management system for all routine business processes. This will help you break even faster due to the economies of scale provided by the storage management company.
Given the essential nature of the self-storage facilities as a service, they will be able to withstand economic downturns. This is a good time to start a self-storage facility, as the global self-storage market is expected to grow to US$ 71.37 Billion by 2027 from 2021’s US$ 51.32 Billion.
You can appoint a reliable storage management company that handles the end-to-end implementation of manpower deployment and performs routine tasks, including facility maintenance, billing, and customer service, at a reasonable price.
This step will make your storage business run smoothly, helping you save time and allowing you to focus on critical business tasks like growth and expansion.
In this post, we’ll discuss how to manage your self-storage business better, so that you can start increasing profits and decreasing costs today.
1. Conduct Competitive Benchmarking
The first step in starting a self-storage management business is analyzing the market. You’ll want to understand your competition, study their needs, and identify growth opportunities.
Here are some points you need to dive deep into when conducting a market survey:
- Price point of your competitors
- Amenities offered by them
- Space available across storage facilities
- Number of competitors in your segment
- Your customers’ profile (whether they are small businesses or individual consumers)
- Average monthly revenue generated from your self-storage business
Based on the responses, you can make key decisions like pricing, space requirement, and manpower needed.
2. Consider Software and Hardware Needs
Consider what you want to do with the software. You should have a specific goal in mind, such as automating your accounting or tracking inventory. Then you can decide which features will help you achieve it.
Check that the software is compatible with your hardware. Upgrade both software and hardware simultaneously.
Your software should be user-friendly. Be sure everyone understands how everything works before handing over control over important tasks like payroll processing. Confusion could lead someone into making costly mistakes down the road.
3. Contract Management
Use a contract management system. Make sure the contract management system is compatible with your software, hardware, and your marketing plan. You can ask a contract manager to vet your systems to ensure compliance is maintained. Currently, there are 43559 contract managers in the US, and you should not face any in finding someone to do the needful for your business.
4. Marketing and Customer Satisfaction
Now that you’ve made all the necessary preparations, it is time to focus on marketing and customer satisfaction. This is perhaps the most important part of your business because, without customers, there is no business.
Customers are the reason why you are in this business, and they will be the reason for its success or failure. They can make or break your business, and if you want to be successful in this industry, then you need to understand how important customers are for your success.
Your customers are not just clients. They are partners with whom you need to build relationships to develop an effective solution tailored specifically to their unique needs.
5. Employee Management
Hire the right people. Hiring employees who are reliable, friendly, and good at their jobs is critical to your business’s success.
Provide training. Make sure your employees know how to do things correctly and safely. Your customers will appreciate knowing that their valuables are treated with care, particularly if they’re storing valuable items in your facility.
Maintain a good relationship with your employees. Make an effort to get to know them personally as well as professionally.
We recommend you hire a self-storage management company to provide you with manpower to ensure your business runs well, without too much involvement on your side in hiring and training employees for routine jobs. You can hire the best people for performing specific tasks like business development and marketing, which require experience and niche skills.
Benefits of Self-Storage Management
The self-storage industry is evolving. To remain competitive, small self-storage operators should consider implementing a self-storage management program.
Self-storage management programs offer the following benefits:
1. Increased Efficiency
The average cost of operating a facility is reduced by 25% when you add a management company to your team.
This can translate into significant savings for your business and allow you to increase profits by focusing on other areas that need attention, such as marketing and advertising your properties, improving customer service, or making improvements or upgrades at existing locations.
2. Reduced Costs
A self-storage property manager handles all aspects of running the facility, including accounting, bookkeeping, and payroll processing, which frees up time for you to focus on other responsibilities related directly to running your business, like marketing yourself within the community or managing multiple locations around town, if applicable.
3. Better Customer Service
By having someone else handle all aspects of running an individual property, you have more time to spend interacting with customers face-to-face and helping them find solutions.
Self-storage management is the key to success for small self-storage operators who want to continue to be competitive. It will allow you to better manage your business and provide an efficient solution for your customers.
Currently, around 10% of American families are renting self-storage units. This number is slated to grow as people become more mobile and relocate to different parts of the country.
Rents got higher (14% in 2021), and single-family homes (15% in 2021) became even more expensive. This resulted in people electing to opt for smaller stays and putting their non-essential stuff in self-storage facilities.
