A Podcast | Jennifer Merritt

Pete Neubig: Welcome, everybody to the NARPM radio podcast. I'm your host, Pete Neubig. And like I say, every week we have another great show. I actually have one of my new friends, Jen Merritt here. Jen is the CEO or COO of Rent Scale, where she's worked with hundreds of property management entrepreneurs and coached over 100 BDMs to produce industry leading door growth for the last two years. She has 16 plus years experience, so she must have started when she was like four, because she doesn't look anywhere near that. She might have 16 years experience, nine years in plus, experience in real estate experience as a real estate investor herself, she shares her powerful but easy to understand framework and uncommon insights with an approachable staff. All levels of experience. So Jen, welcome to the show. Appreciate having you here.

Jennifer Merritt: Yeah. Thanks, Pete. Love being here with you. Thank you for having me on today.

Pete Neubig: All right. So we read your bio, but tell us a little bit about, you know, a little bit about your story. And then just kind of quickly give us a recap on what Rent Scale is and how they help the property management industry.

Jennifer Merritt: Yeah. So I know quite a bio like a mouthful. Right. But really, I've been in sales since I was a little kid. Honestly. Girl Scout cookies? No, I'm kidding. I'm not taking anything back. but, you know, I worked for a metals company, straight out of college and, sold stainless aluminum and carbon. So I know more about the raw material than most people do. And, that's kind of where I cut my teeth. And I just learned and I worked myself up to a national account manager and got to work with companies like Boeing and Polaris and Airbus. and eventually I was approached by the chief commercial officer, and he was like, hey, do you want to come work underneath me? We are a $4 billion a year company at this point, and we've acquired a bunch of companies, and everybody's selling in different ways. So I want you to come work with me, and I want to try to put some uniformity behind this. So he and I traveled the US and Canada and Mexico learning about what all the diffeRent Scale'speople did. I just got to sit in shadow salespeople all day long, which was a lot of fun. And I learned so much just sitting back and watching what was good, what worked, what didn't work, what was not so good. And when I got back, I went to the Association for Talent Development, and I got a license or certificate in adult learning facilitation and design, and I designed two programs for the company that then got rolled out and ran across all of the salespeople that were 1800 salespeople. So I've been facilitating sales training for about 12 years now. And eventually just kind of got to the point where I wanted to jump into real estate. Also on the side, I had been flipping houses and demoing houses and remodeling houses and the house I'm in now, I actually built. So, I just wanted to step into that world. And so I did got my license and I still hold it in the state of Colorado, but I didn't love being a resale agent or a broker, if you will. And so, I was approached by a large property management company and they were like, hey, will you come on and be our BDM? And I was like, yeah, sounds good. I have no idea what else I'm going to do, so I might as well try that. So I was actually in the business development management role in property management for a little bit, and then became director of sales for that company as well. So learned a lot there about property management and about the space. I did a lot of things right, did a lot of things wrong. And that's when Jeremy found me and approached me. And I've been here at Rent Scale coaching business development managers how to be better in their role, but also how to enjoy their job as salespeople a little bit more. And that's just my main focus.

Pete Neubig: So you went from selling basically billion dollar deals to selling, you know, $200 a month, you know, contract. Yeah. What's like so tell me, like, what's the main difference on that?

Jennifer Merritt: Yeah. So the billion dollar deal is the big like I sold to, you know, Boeing and Polaris and Airbus and Husqvarna. And the thing about those deals is they're all long term nurture. Like there is no transactional business that takes place. You know, a lot of the salespeople in that space come on board and don't actually get paid any commission for 2 to 3 years. But then they land this giant multi-million dollar deal. And so it's just very, very different. There's nothing transactional about it. It's all relational. And if you don't have that, like challenger style, I don't know if you're familiar with the challenger sales style, but you don't have that style where you're thinking critically about how to really help people. You're never going to succeed, because for a lot of people, it's about the silliest stuff. You know, it's not the price at the end of the day or even the delivery, but it's like I had to reduce. I had one client who literally said, you are the cheapest option with the fastest delivery, and I want to go with you, but your freight cost is too high. So metal, you have to truck it in and out, right? And so I was like, okay, no problem. So I moved my freight column on the spreadsheet over to the raw material column. And he was like, done, cut me a $4 million PO. So it's just you. You got to know the goals of the prospect you're speaking to. And then when you come to property management, I think it translates. But I think it's really easy for people in this space to be super transactional.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. Do you think that, even though you're dealing with $4 million deals, people are less, emotional about those deals versus their versus their investment or, you know, if they're a reluctant landlord.

Jennifer Merritt: Yeah. Great question. Yes. It's strange. The dollar amount swing is huge. But the thing about the $4 million deal is that it's not really personal. It's all for a company. It's all driven by, you know, a PNL or a line item, and people want to perform well, but they are somewhat emotionally detached from it. And when you come over to this space. People are very emotionally attached to all of the results, even the investors that say they want to be hands off. Something goes wrong with that property, and they're going to be emotionally attached because that's their personal dollars. So it is a very, very different sell.

Pete Neubig: All right. So you've been training or, you know, training salespeople for a long time or you've been involved in seeing sales people, get salespeople get trained, and all that stuff. Are you born with it or can you actually train somebody to be a salesperson?

Jennifer Merritt: That's a great question. So I do think that people are inherently born with certain abilities and skills, interpersonal or whatever. However, I would say that anyone can learn to become a good salesperson if they're willing to step outside of their comfort zone. So I think that the answer is kind of both, but you can also train yourself to be a completely different person, if that's really what you want. But a lot of people don't do change like that, and a lot of people aren't going to step out of their comfort zone like that. So that's where it's like, well, you were definitely born a certain way, but can I train a salesperson to be great? Can I train someone who is really, you know, unsocial and not as bold and, like, not the typical salesperson to be those things? Absolutely. I say I actually am one of those people. So it's possible. But man, it's, uh.

Pete Neubig: It helps if you have the right personality profile or you're born innately with some type of personality trait that translates. Yeah.

Jennifer Merritt: Yeah. And there is something at the core. But here's the thing is like born that way I'd say raised that way even more. You know, I always say anytime I'm looking for a salesperson, I'm not looking for experience. And I don't necessarily care if they've been in the PM world, and I don't care if they've sold real estate or have a background in it. But what I'm not going to change is I'm not going to change their mindset. I'm not going to change their attitude. I don't really have time to train those things. So when you say like, are you born with it or is it learned? I mean, I think essentially it does get learned, but for me, it's all about the mindset. When you're hiring a salesperson and I don't have time to be your mom. So I'm looking for something that is already innately there in salespeople.

Pete Neubig: Now, I if I know you, which I think I'm learning. I'm learning you. But my guess is every time you interact with a salesperson, whether somebody you're training or somebody like at the clothing store, how quickly can you tell if they're good or not?

Jennifer Merritt: Oh, so quick. One of my favorite things to do is the pest control people that come around in the neighborhood. Even if we're in the middle of dinner, I will stand up, go answer the door knowing that it's a pest control person. And I'm like, I want to hear this. Feel like I'm so excited.

Pete Neubig: And after about 30s, can you tell if they're good or not?

Jennifer Merritt: Yeah, you can tell real quick. And I'll tell you what, those pest control guys are really trained well to like, do all the salesy things. I really appreciate them for that. and everybody says they hate buying new cars. They hate going out to the car lot. They hate talking to the sales people. And I'm like, I'm all about it because it determines whether I'm going to buy a car for this from this person, or if I'm going to go buy a car from somebody else. because I'm all about the sales people. And yes, you can tell very quickly.

Pete Neubig: All right. So now I'm going to flip the question when you are training BDMs because you guys hire, right? You guys help hire and train BDMs whether I say, hey Jen, I need Rent Scale to go find me a BDM or hey, Jen, I have a BDM, I need you to make them actually produce. Right. So, can you tell pretty quickly, if somebody's going to be a good like if somebody trainable and they could be a good BDM. And have you had to have that hard conversation with that property manager owner saying, this guy you sent me, he's a bag of?

Jennifer Merritt: Oh yeah. All the time, Pete. In fact, that's just my daily life. But when we're interviewing people and I actually get to sit down with them, like over zoom, we do them all virtually because everybody's all over the US. But when I actually sit down with people, I can usually tell within the first five minutes. Now I will say there's been a couple people who I'm like, absolutely not, and I'll still interview them all the way through, because I've had a few that have actually changed my opinion as they've gone on and they've worked out to be really good BDMs but 90%.

Pete Neubig: Even E becomes before I after C every once in a while, right?

Jennifer Merritt: Every once in a while.

Pete Neubig: He's always there. He's always the exception to the rule. But generally speaking, you can pretty much tell. And you've been spot on most of the time.

Jennifer Merritt: 90% of the time I can tell. And you know, we get it wrong. But we have a hiring guarantee for that, you know, So yes, I can't get it right every single time. And sometimes people present really well on an interview and they can just communicate really well and clearly. And they have this confidence and they talk all about real estate. And they did a good job preparing for the interview. But then when they step into it, that's just not who their person. That's not what their personality is. That's not who they are. so, you know, occasionally we do get it wrong, but I would say that more often than not, we get it right. And the process we have today is getting better BDMs in than we ever have. I mean, just this last month, we reported four people who signed above 45 doors for the month of July, which is crazy. Like, that's amazing.

Pete Neubig: That's a lot. It's a lot considering what you're hearing right now. Right. People are not getting leads. They're not getting doors. So that's really a testament to you in your team. All right. So I want to talk about structure here a little bit. I want to see where you come on for this the structure. So, one do you believe, like, is your mindset or Rent Scale's mindset, like the BDM has to be local versus remote. And then two, whether that's remote in states or out of states. And then two, where do you where do you come up with on having the BDM have an assistant BDM who might be a high, you know, detailed person to kind of help them wrangle all of these, you know, leads and all that stuff. So kind of break down what your thoughts are what Rent Scale kind of believes. Their beliefs.

Jennifer Merritt: Yeah. I mean, our primary belief is going to be that I want the person to be in the market, and I want them to be boots on the ground. Why? Because I believe that. So I when I was with the property management company that I worked for as a BDM, I sold into six different markets and I understood the difference between a Birmingham and a Detroit, and, you know, all of the different spaces that were in Colorado, I signed far more deals here in Colorado, where I was physically located, because I could say things like, oh, you know, down there on the corner by that new restaurant. Like, that's the kind of stuff people want to hear for real estate. A lot of the time they want to know that you're local. I also want them to be able to go out and outbound prospect and network with the space, and it's a lot harder to do if they're not boots on the ground. So rule of thumb is that I want them in the market. That being said, we have a couple of BDMs who are not in their market, and we're very successful. One we hired for Peter at one point. And, you know, his BDM wasn't in his market, and he did well. He really did well with it. we've got someone we're training right now that is remote, completely like a remote team member. Different country. And she's doing really great. But what I would say is you can only have a remote business development manager. If you have the leads to support that person, and then you're looking for a different individual, you're actually looking for more of an order taker, or like an inside sales person, where they're just kind of taking people in and connecting with them over the phone and sharing a little bit about features and benefits that attach to pains and goals. But if you don't have the leads for that, you really can't have somebody who's not boots on the ground. And then part two to that question is, have you had anybody come and do like an assistant work or help with some of the stuff that, you know, salesperson.

Pete Neubig: The paperwork, the CRM, database update, all that stuff. Stuff that your typical salesperson not very good at, you know?

Jennifer Merritt: Yes. So we are seeing more and more of that come up. and we actually just had somebody reach out yesterday. We'll be actually sending them over to you, with a referral that they were looking for someone who could do that kind of stuff. They actually want somebody who can also do some outbound calling and doing like appointment setting. And so we're seeing it be more and more common and come up more often. But up until I would say about a year ago, not many BDMs needed that because the companies weren't growing fast enough. Now we're getting really good traction. Companies are growing faster and there's extra, you know, revenue available to hire someone into that space.

Pete Neubig: So it kind of goes in line with our thinking. When I owned Empire, we had two salespeople that were local that were licensed, and then they each had their own assistant. And that assistant did all the day, like, did all the CRM, took all the inbound calls. They decided if they were a lead or an opportunity, or hot or cold, whatever you want to call it. They did all the CMAs. They got all the paperwork and my sales salespeople, I guess in your in your verbiage, they were order takers. They just had meeting to meeting to meeting. But we had so many leads coming in. We had 100 leads a month. 50 I think were opportunities. So these two people had 25 meetings per month minimum. You know, and so their job was just go from meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting and follow up, right. And then all the CRM database stuff was done by the assistant which our assistants were in Mexico at the time.

Jennifer Merritt: Mhm. Yeah. And that works. And I think that it's a great way to keep a salesperson organized because you know just as well as I do that if they're truly a sales archetype where they're, they're built for sales, they aren't going to do like it's hard to get them to do the CRM well. That's me. I am not a CRM data person. I can be detail oriented if I need to be, but it's not my go to.

Pete Neubig: I want to say, COO doesn't... You don't get there detail.

Jennifer Merritt: I know. Well, I'm CEO of a sales training company. I always tell people like, yes, I am way more organized than a lot of people, in sales, but also not as much as most COOs probably.

Pete Neubig: Probably. That's fun. All right, so most people listening to this are probably thinking right now in their head, that's great. But how can I pay them? Like what's a good comp structure. Right. And then what are, I'm hoping or thinking this, but what are the metrics that they should be looking at?

Jennifer Merritt: Oh, man. Yeah. Good question. So comp structure for BDM. I've run multiple different ones. But my favorite one that it's, you know, core value here at Rent Scale, simple is always worth it. And two there's a lot of comp structures out there that drive different behaviors. And the thing about a salesperson is they're always going to maximize for their income, and they are just absolute geniuses when it comes to working around their comp structure to make them more money. Okay, so you do have to structure this, right? and I've seen everything from, hey, you give a percentage of the management fee, a percentage of the leasing fee, and you carry that for 12 months, because if you carry it for 12 months, then they're only going to sign the right people on, because if they sign bad people, then guess what? Their commission goes away because they terminate. So I've seen that, but it's really a headache.

Pete Neubig: Doesn't that put a lot of pressure on your accounting team?

Jennifer Merritt: Yeah, it's a headache for accounting to keep track of that. It's a nightmare. Like think about a BDM. If they're signing 30 doors a month, and then you have to keep track of that for an entire year. Like that spreadsheet is ridiculous. You have 150 people plus trying to manage, like when one starts and stops. So yeah, that's not simple as always worth it. The best structure I've seen that is the easiest to digest is a simple base, and I'm seeing in the marketplace somewhere between about 48 and $65,000. There are some California markets right now that are having to go up to almost an 80, 90 and $100,000 base. Yeah, it's crazy crazy. And then you do a what we call an escalating commission on top of that. So the more doors that they sell, the more that they make per door. And we have, like an actual spreadsheet structure that you get and we build it out for your company uniquely because it does look different for everybody. But all in comp, I'm seeing somewhere between about 90 to $120,000, 140 on the high end all in.

Pete Neubig: Do you typically work it backwards like, okay, what are we trying to get them to? And then based on this, you know, then this is how many units that they're going to have to close. And then here's the base salary. So that's.

Jennifer Merritt: Yeah. And I even try to work it backwards with the thought of not even what do I want to get them to? But what is your your revenue support? What is your PNL support? How much are they going to sell? So we actually sit down and we say, hey, what's your annual customer value or your RPU? And then we can figure that out. And how many doors a month do you really want to bring on? What do you think is reasonable? And so we do work it back from like, can we afford this person before we start to bring them into the business? The last thing I want do is...

Pete Neubig: You can go cash negative pretty quickly.

Jennifer Merritt: Yeah. The last thing I want to do is bankrupt the business to bring in a business development manager. Then we need to bring in maybe somebody part time or look at some different options.

Pete Neubig: Okay. Now. Okay. So now let's talk about KPIs or key performance indicators metrics to see how they're doing. Because this is one of the jobs that I found becomes very it's much easier to create a KPI versus like creating one for your accounting person.

Jennifer Merritt: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: Because it's all performance based. So tell me what what is it that you guys set up and look at?

Jennifer Merritt: Yeah. So we look at a couple of different things. And honestly, like the thing about sales KPIs is that you can have sales KPIs for a million different things. And they're coming out our ears. Right. but what I would say is obviously we want to look at the number of doors closed. That's important. And it's not necessarily everything that I want to drive with, but it is a definite factor of what I actually want to accomplish. Then I would say that you want to look at conversion ratio. Now be careful because conversion ratio can be incredibly misleading. There's a lot of factors that go into a conversion ratio. And so you do have to carefully kind of walk that line between what that really means to you. When I talk about conversion ratio, you know, people put different things into that category and that column. And so I always tell people to be careful. But we do say that's one of the KPIs. And we do say a healthy company should be around 30%. Any more than that, and you're probably like there's too many opportunities out there that like, you're not closing them down, you know, and any less than that and you're not filling your funnel. So conversion ratio is a good one to kind of look at some other stuff. Does that make sense?

Pete Neubig: It does. A couple questions on that though. Because, you know, not all leads are created equal.

Jennifer Merritt: No.

Pete Neubig: So do you take that into consideration?

Jennifer Merritt: Yeah. Yeah.

Pete Neubig: Because, what we did and I don't know if it was right or wrong, but we identified a lead versus opportunity, and then we had different conversion rates based on lead and opportunity.

Jennifer Merritt: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: We found that the opportunity was over 50% and the leads were like ten.

Jennifer Merritt: Mhm. Yeah. So your paid leads we find closed somewhere around 5%. We try to get our community up to 15 to 20% on those paid leads. But there are very low conversions. Whereas like your referrals and word of mouth business that's going to close out like 90, 80-90%. So yes, it's incredibly different. And that's also one of the reasons you have to be a little bit careful with conversion. But still, you know, looking at averages is a good thing. So we still want to measure that conversion. And then I would say inbound leads. Outbound leads. Those are important to measure. We can't expect a certain number at the bottom of the funnel if we don't know what we're putting into the top of the funnel or what has to be put in order to get that. So that's where the conversion rates are important too, is like, how are you funneling people through outbound leads? Because yeah.

Pete Neubig: Obviously you're teaching these these BDMs how to actually create their own leads. They're just not, you know, just not focusing just on, on marketing. So they're not the order takers like you say. They're actually going out and killing stuff each month.

Jennifer Merritt: Yeah. We are trying really hard to find find hunters. Now, I will say some companies don't need a hunter. So the person that we put in the role is really unique to what the company is actually looking for and what opportunity is out there in the marketplace. You know, some some markets have more opportunity for outbound than others. And so that really depends on that's going to pull a different type of salesperson for us. I'd also look at cost per lead. and then I do want to measure retention. Or a lot of people in this industry call it churn. Retention is just the positive. I want to measure that and then percent of growth. That's definitely something that I want to look at to know that my company is growing and that we're continuing to chart up when it comes to new door signs year over year.

Pete Neubig: Why do you look at retention? Because that to me is an ops thing. So it's pretty interesting that you're having the sales team look at that. So talk to me a little bit more about that.

Jennifer Merritt: So I want to look at that because I want to make sure that the salespeople are signing the right individuals and not just anybody coming in. You know, I'm all about more doors. But if you know, Rent Scale's. Literally. The booth that we take to over to the thing has a giant heart on it, and it says more clients you love because I don't just want to sign clients, I want to sign good clients. So we are paying attention to retention. Also, you know, if you've got 40 doors in for the year, but 60 doors out for the year, well, that's not good.

Pete Neubig: And you've been in my office. You were at Empire, you worked there, I worked there.

Jennifer Merritt: I've coached a few people. I know how this goes. but, yeah, I mean, we want to measure that, and it's not a KPI that the salesperson has necessarily responsible for, but it is a sales related metric that we have to know and we have to measure. The other thing I would say is if your retention is really low, so your churn is high, you need to put in some sort of like onboarding experience, asset management, long term sales play where there is more that you're doing after the transaction, after they've signed on the dotted line. You're then acting like an asset manager, and that's a huge push that we're making in our community right now. And with our Genesis product, which is you got to have a great onboarding experience so people don't have that buyer's remorse after they sign, and then it doesn't stop after the onboarding. You've got to continue what we call strategic reviews and property outlook reviews. And those are done by the salesperson to turn that one door into three. So that's why I like measuring that retention.

Pete Neubig: So they become like an inside sales rep in a way.

Jennifer Merritt: Yeah. I mean, you know, the lead's already there, right? But at the end of the day, lifetime value of a client is important, right? And so lifetime value of a client extends the more that they buy. The idea for any organization is how do you get people in the door not to buy once, but to buy from you again and again?

Pete Neubig: The one thing about management that I love is they actually buy every month, right?

Jennifer Merritt: Every month.

Pete Neubig: But how many times have you had somebody give you one door, and then you find out that they have five doors. They would just kind of testing you, and they never got around to giving you the other doors. Right. It's like, oh my goodness. I had these other four doors for like six months ago. So yeah, I love that idea. okay, so couple things here because I could talk to you all day, but we only have a few more minutes here. But I want to ask a couple things. Okay. One is, do you have kind of a structure that you created on what is a good lead versus a good opportunity? Meaning like the easy answer is like, oh, well, if it's a property that we would not take, that's not a good lead, right? Or if they don't want to, you know, have a property to manage right now that is kicking tires. So do you guys go through that individually with each customer or do you kind of have a framework like, hey, this is kind of a one size fits all?

Jennifer Merritt: It's not one size fits all because everybody's looking for something different. So one of the things we do with our clients is if you're receiving one on one coaching from us and we're in the trenches with you, we're going to do an ideal client profile and we're going to look at differentiation. And the what you're talking about is really lead scoring, if you will. We don't necessarily lead score, but what we do is you need to know who your ideal client profile is. And when you see that person they should be like we should be attracting them like a dog whistle, but also you should be paying a lot more attention. And so we call that a high payoff activity. Is finding your ideal client profile, identifying that this person would be a perfect fit in the property management company, and then chasing after that. Like you can't lose it. Like you cannot lose this deal. And if you do it right, you shouldn't lose the deal. And so that's the lead scoring. I want to like put air quotes around that because it's not like I'm sitting with BDMs going, this one's a ten and this one's a two. But I want to be clear about who we want more of in our sphere, and that's very individualized to each property management company.

Pete Neubig: You know, when were at the Tony Klein's Onyx Retreat, back in July. When you presented, you crushed the ICP. You were pushing it so much and just telling these people like you were like so passionate about it. So obviously this is like super important. If you're listening to this right here, just just if you can get your ICP down really drilled in this listen will be worth it right then and there.

Jennifer Merritt: Well, and I think every property manager that I coach starts out with, well I want, you know, people who are just going to, you know, listen to what I say and they're going to be hands off. And then they trust what I'm doing, that kind of stuff. And it's like, that's and I want to serve everybody that I hear that so often. Like, I don't care, I'll serve anybody. And I'm like, well, what's your radius? Like what's your geographical radius that you're like, oh, well, I kind of like this city, but like, if it's over here, I'll do it. And if it's over there, I'll do it. And it if you really talk to people who have had property management companies for a really long time, it's one of the biggest mistakes that's made early on to gain traction in their business is to just take anybody and everybody, but most of them end up having to fire those people. So setting up with the right person first is really important.

Pete Neubig: Yeah, I actually live this right. When I started Empire, I'm like, I'll just take anybody. Then it's like, well, I'll take any obviously anybody who has property in Houston. Then it's like, oh, anybody who has a property in Houston, in this area. Oh no, we don't take multifamily anymore. We don't take anything over four units right. Now, it's like, oh, now he has to rent for this amount. So we got it down. It took me... Unfortunately, it took me a lot longer than I than than I had hoped. But we ended up getting it down really good. And by the ICP and having this down, it actually helped on the back end because now the next thing I want to ask you is the sales versus ops. I mean, it is like sales versus ops.

Jennifer Merritt: In a PM company. This is what it is for sure.

Pete Neubig: It's like, so how do you reduce the stress between sales and what like operational people. And I'm operational guy right. They think these sales people because they're always happy. They're high eyes that everything's fun. They come in, they never in the office. They come in, they come to the office only to pick up their check all the way, dancing around. Meanwhile, they dumped all this crap on us. All this work that the property manager had to do, the property management agreements redlined, right? They took somebody that's like, not in our standards, right? That's like kind of like the perception. Right.

Jennifer Merritt: 100%. Everything you said is so true. And Pete, this is exactly why Rent Scale exists. Because in property management everyone on the team is operations focused. Even the owner is operations focused. Set up the systems like that's just who the industry attracts, right is the operators and then your PMS and your maintenance people like everybody operations. You are the sole person at your company with a completely different attitude and mentality, trying to grow the company. And sure, the owner wants to grow the company, but not like a salesperson wants to grow the company. And so what I found being in the world is that you're on an island as a salesperson. It's hard. It's really hard. You're on an island. And this is why Rent Scale exists, because we have a giant community of people who are on islands in their company, and we provide a community of like minded people and a network for you to think a little bit differently and an outlet, if you will.

Pete Neubig: You're like NARPM inside of NARPM. Right? Because like when I became a property management company, I needed that outlet, and I found my tribe in NARPM. But now you have these BDMs that are part of NARPM that, like, I need to find my tribe. And so you have the Rent Scale tribe. NARPM. Very cool.

Jennifer Merritt: Yeah, but you like it is a battle 100%. So what I would say is the best thing you can do to close that off a little bit is to really make sure that you've trained your team and they've shadowed each other. So the sales people need to shadow the ops people. The ops people need to sit with the sales people, because.

Pete Neubig: A day in the life.

Jennifer Merritt: Is that it's just humans trying to do their job, and everybody's doing their best to execute the tasks of their role. It stops that ops-sales battle. And we don't have that here at Rent Scale, but I guess we're all salespeople at heart. But at property management companies, man, it is alive and well. So this is all about the training you give your team. These are all about the onboarding handoffs. These are all about signing the right clients. These are about operations understanding what sales is trying to do and the goals of the company. And I think this goes back to really a leadership thing. Is everybody rowing in the same direction. So do you have a you know, if you follow traction, do you have the VTO in place? Do you have your core values? Is everybody on that boat paddling forward or paddling backward together? And if they all understand what those goals are, they understand the importance of each role in order to achieve those goals.

Pete Neubig: All right. So the last one here I'm going to talk about by the way. Well said. And if you can reduce that stress and you know, if you do have that stress in your business, obviously call Jen and the team at Rent Scale. All right. So, Rent Scale. So I'm going to be a little personal here. Rent Scale is actually putting some training on VPM, the VPM Academy on how to sell the different personality styles. Yeah. So talk a little bit like what do you think is the main personality style that most sales people run into and just give me high level of one thing because we got we're kind of limited on time here. One thing of each different personality style. What's one thing to sell to them?

Jennifer Merritt: Yeah. So I always think of it's four categories the way we categorize it. And it's that said different words everywhere. But it's a driver and expressive and analytical and an amiable. So what you see most often in this industry is probably either a driver or an analytical.

Pete Neubig: That's kind of what I thought. That's what I thought.

Jennifer Merritt: Yeah. What you have to understand is that a driver's basic need is to be in control. So in sales, you have to let that person have a little bit of control and analytical. Basic need is to be right. So you have to provide data, facts and figures to that person and then give them time to make a decision. So in understanding the profiles and their basic needs, you understand how you can better sell to them because everybody needs a different level of patience. Your driver is going to move like that. So if you're not following up and if you're not all over that person, you're never going to close them. You're analytical needs time to digest all this information. So you got to know those things. And yes, I'm very excited for the personality profile training.

Pete Neubig: And you got to let the analytical win.

Jennifer Merritt: You got to let the analytical win because they need to be the experts. That's their thing. Do the data. Mhm.

Pete Neubig: That's their thing. Well Jen we're running out of time here. So I really appreciate you taking time out of your busy day to be here. If somebody is interested in you know in getting trained or learning more about Rent Scale, how to get in touch with you guys.

Jennifer Merritt: Yeah. So you can get in touch with me, just jennifer@rentscale.com. Or even go to our website. We are launching a brand new scale club community that's going to be more open and available to just general public who want to join for a very reasonable price that's launching in September. So it's brand new. Normally what it used to be to get into our community, you had to go through the system. You had to go through the coaching, you had to go through the training, and then you pay to pay a premium every single month for one on one coaching. But now we've created a bigger, broader community. And if you just want to hear what's going on and be part of the conversation and remove yourself from that island, this is a great low cost kind of entry way to step into it. So, jennifer@rentscale.com and I'm happy to walk you through, even if you decide this is something you want to DIY.

Pete Neubig: Thanks, Jen. And if you're listening to this and you're not a NARPM member, shame on you. narpm.org. Or give them a call at (800) 782-3452. And for your next assistant BDM that you're going to hire as a remote team member, give us a call at VPM Solutions or give us a try. You can email me pete@vpmsolutions.com or just go to our website vpmsolutions.com. Jen, thanks so much for being here.

Jennifer Merritt: Thanks for having me, Pete, I appreciate it.