If you want to build a scalable property management business, you can learn a lot from McDonald’s. What McDonald’s can teach all of us is “consistency”.  Wouldn’t it be nice if some things were performed consistently the same good way at all of your properties?
For example, do you want to see consistency in ….
  • How the phone is answered
  • How lead information is entered into the system
  • How visitors are greeted
  • How the showings are conducted … and more
You cannot achieve this consistency by nagging your team. You have to build systems that enable people to perform on a consistent basis.
Let’s turn back to McDonald’s. Would you agree, that no matter which teenager is tending to the fries, the fries are similar in quality?
 
 McDonald’s achieves this consistency because of two key reasons:
a) Each employee is part of a system that has been designed to “consistently produce high quality French fries”, and
b) The employees are trained, and given regular feedback. Better yet, each employee has a way of knowing how they are doing without being told.

Property Management Systems Lead to Results

The French fry “system” doesn’t just include tasks in the back of the restaurant. The system starts at the farm where potatoes are grown, to the storage and processing points, to the restaurant.
The selection and handling of the potatoes and other ingredients is coordinated, measured, improved along this way. This is the kind of heavy lifting that makes consistently hot, tasty French fries look so simple.
 
 
Does your leasing staff work within a  a deliberately designed system?

Your Property Management System

Think about your property managers, your maintenance team, your leasing team, your collections team. Are they part of a system that has been deliberately designed to address the needs of prospective tenants, active tenants, staff, and even owners and investors?
 
 

Property Management Systems Have to be Designed

Property management companies have to proactively design “systems” for their core processes, such as converting leads to leases, or planning and performing turnovers, or collecting rent.
 
The property operator that can figure this out is posed to grow their portfolio without plateauing, or worse, burning out.
 
 

McDonald’s Training Manuals

Here are two training manuals from McDonald’s that I recommend looking at: