So what do you do if you can’t just make people rent with you? With no active move or tactic you can take to get someone to rent with you, what is it that lets you put processes into place which make your business successful? After all, there are plenty of successful businesses in this world that rely on selling regularly – and they face the same problem, that you can’t make someone buy. The trick is in the process I mentioned yesterday called check-move theory, and utilizing direct response marketing.

Check-move theory and direct response marketing is simple. First off, a check move is whenever you take an action to which a tenant or potential tenant (client/customer or prospect) can respond. It can be a phone call, an email, a letter, a postcard, a conversation – it’s as simple as that. This is where direct response marketing comes into play – you develop your marketing plan around direct response.

The check-move theory is one of simple mathematics. The more check-moves you make, the more sales you make. The amounts of each vary from business to business, but the core theory is sound – the more times you make direct contact with a prospect or client, the more overall sales you will make in the business.

This is why you can let go of that need to make a sale – which you have no control over anyways. All you need to do is develop a strategic chain of check moves that can be done in a specific process. Once you iron down the process – exactly what each move is and when it happens – you can have your entire sales process handled by other people (and it becomes much easier to train new people to do it). If you look closely at Apple, this is the same philosophy they use in their retail stores. Their ‘sales’ people are not trained to make sales, they are trained to help customers – because Apple knows that the more customers they help, the more sales they will make.

Direct response marketing is simply the kind of tool that you will be using. It’s important to note that your moves are only check moves when the individuals have an opportunity to respond directly to your query (or story, or whatever). An ad placed in your local paper does not count, because you are not directing it at someone (and people generally can’t directly respond to an ad) – this isn’t to say that advertising isn’t useful, it just doesn’t apply here

Examples of direct response marketing which apply to this processes include tools like cards and letters which you mail out. You may mail the same card to 1000 people, but each of those 1000 people is being directly contacted. The same goes for emailing – in fact, mass mailing and emailing lists is a great way to increase your amount of check moves. Ever heard the expression ‘the money is in the list?’ (usually when referring to email lists) The real truth is that the money is in the check moves, and having the ability to create large amounts of check moves each week (by having an email or mail list) is why that process can be so lucrative.

So go back to your marketing plan, and take a look at each segment – the before, the during, and the after. In each element you should focus on creating series of check moves – don’t just do one letter, do 12 different steps at least in your before-marketing element. Each time you start someone on the prospect track, you follow step by step – you will find over time with a process like this, it’s easy to find people to fill vacancies. The same goes for the during and the after – just because they are already renting with you, doesn’t mean that you aren’t still wanting to sell them (after all, you want them to re-rent with you the next year).

Tomorrow I’ll give some ideas on different check moves that can be made.