Attracting Your Best Customers For Your Business
We are about to change the paradigm of landlord and tenant relationships. The time has come for us, as investors to start to understand the business that we are in is actually a business. No different from any other business out there.
Many people call the purchase and operation of rental real estate an investment and by doing so lump it in with all of the passive investments such as mutual funds. This, in turn, creates the belief that real estate investing is similar to other investments, when it is truly not. Yes CRA rates real estate income as passive income when treating it from a tax perspective, however the truth is that it is far from passive if you want to do it right.
Let’s face reality, by investing in real estate, you are starting up a business, a business that provides a product and service to the community. This business has every component that a successful business has (and most other investments do not): marketing strategies, income, expenses, accounting, financing, management of the day to day operations and balancing of assets and liabilities.
Investment real estate, whether commercial or residential, is also like other businesses in that it will only be successful if you find a way in which to attract quality loyal customers to purchase your product or service and to provide it to them at a price that makes sense to both you and your customer.
That means that the absolute first step in becoming a sophisticated real estate investor is to begin to think of your tenants as clients or customers. Without them you do not have a successful business no matter how hard you work or how many properties you own. Change your thought paradigm from tenant to customer and your marketing and business opportunities will begin to grow exponentially.
This subtle shift opens up a whole new thought process for your business, you can immediately start modeling other successful businesses (in any industry). At one time we have all been customers of businesses that we enjoy and became loyal to, that means we have first hand knowledge about the power of customer loyalty.
You can learn from your experiences by analyzing what they do to keep you as a loyal customer. Pay more attention to why you return to the same store or service provider over and over, then begin to find ways to transfer these strategies into your rental real estate business. For instance:
Is it like they know what you’re thinking?
Does it seem like they intuitively know what you need?
Do they listen to your concerns?
Do they make dealing with them an experience you enjoy?
Do they reward you with loyalty rewards?
Do they do little things to thank you for your loyalty or repeat business?
Do they appreciate your business?
As simple as this thought shift sounds, it truly is one that will change how you look at your business from now on and more importantly help you to stand out and become a landlord that renters WANT to stay with over the long term.
Over the coming weeks we will be going into detail on changing the paradigm of passive investment to active property owner and the strategies that will allow you to simply increase your bottom line and decrease the hassles.
In this thread, why not add your experiences from interactions with companies that you have become loyal to or really enjoyed. Take a shot at writing why your drawn back to them. Then we can start a conversation on how those experiences can be adopted into the rental real estate business
