What if I told you that right now, there are hundreds of dollars a month in fees leaking out of your business that you are entitled to, but are simply not getting?
Let’s look at some really common causes of lost revenue:
1 : Set your file up correctly
When you say it out loud, it almost seems laughable.
Yet small anomalies that go undetected over long periods of time add up to sizable chunks of missing revenue.
When was the last time you did a file audit to make sure that the fees stated on the managing authority match the fees that are setup in your software system?
And how rigorous is your initial file setup and checking process to ensure the fees you worked hard to negotiate, are the fees you will actually earn?
Rarely in the history of property management, has a customer alerted an agency to being under-charged, so keeping on top of this one is a basic, but critical, fundamental.
2: Event-based fees
Fees which are charged when a particular event occurs will hopefully be automated in your property management software of choice, so that things like lease renewal fees, marketing fees, inspection fees and more will be automatically generated and charged each time one of those events occurs.
However, there are always limitations on the extent of digitisation, and fees which are commonly stated in managing authorities, but might be for less frequent events such as tribunal appearances, valuation attendance, key cutting reimbursement and more, which can require reliable internal operational processes to monitor and ensure you are receiving what you are rightfully entitled to.
How are you managing these instances at the moment?
3: Monitoring and reinstating management fees
Waiving management fees for a period of time is a common method of dealing with a service complaint.
Often when this action is taken, you are in the ‘heat of the moment’ and want to resolve the issue with your client quickly, and move on to other work.
This can lead to process breakdowns, where actually creating a task or reminder to put the fee back in is missed.
How are you monitoring your portfolio for fees that might be missing?
Tightly managing these three areas will ensure that your revenue bucket has no holes in it, but, what if you want to grow the size of your bucket?
4: Ancillary revenue generation….. but digitally
There’s a lot of opportunity in property management to leverage revenue from adjacent service providers, and this assists your business resilience by diversifying your income streams.
But relying on your hard working property managers as a means to sell those opportunities can be a distraction to them, takes them away from other critical work, and usually has an impact on your overall conversion rates.
Accessing these opportunities via digital means can unlock the revenue opportunity, without creating an operational bottleneck.
5: Property management as a service
Creating efficiency and capacity in your business is excellent, but, how do you realise financial return on that?
Have you thought about managing rent rolls on behalf of other businesses and sharing the revenue?
Perhaps approaching sales only businesses to offer a joint venture, where they can offer their own branded property management experience, but this service is delivered seamlessly by you and both businesses can share in the revenue and asset growth?
6. Uncovering your customer sentiment
Knowing what your customers think of you is not only a powerful way to unlock revenue through new business opportunities, it’s also an excellent way to identify and retain an unhappy customer before they leave.
Implementing a regular and reliable means of surveying your customer base is a high business value exercise but carries a lot of operational overheads when managed manually.
Ideally, an integrated and automated solution is the best way to leverage the benefits without burying yourself deep in a logistical challenge.
It’s these sorts of innovative pivots in property management that excite me, and it’s possible to achieve immediately.
