The Most Underrated Role in Your Property Management Business

Property management business owners need to recognize the true value of people leaders and operations managers as vital revenue generators through client retention, not just as overhead costs. A thriving property management business needs leadership that supports the team, prevents client churn, and creates systems that allow the business to scale effectively.

• Retention is revenue – keeping existing clients should be valued as much as acquiring new ones
• When property managers feel supported, they stay longer and provide better service to clients
• A good people leader prevents the constant churn of both clients and staff
• Operations managers may be more valuable than BDMs in some business stages
• People leaders handle process improvements, staff support, training, and client retention tasks
• Annual investor audits are a crucial retention tool that operations managers can implement
• Operations managers allow business owners to focus on growth or step back from day-to-day operations

If you have comments or questions about the role of operations managers in property management, please send a message to be discussed in the next episode.

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Chapters

• 1:00 Welcome and Topic Introduction
• 2:03 Retention Is Revenue
• 3:29 The Value of a Supported Team
• 4:32 People Leaders vs BDMs
• 6:45 Real Tasks of an Operations Manager
• 8:31 Closing Thoughts and Invitation

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:31

Hi guys, welcome back to the Art of Property Management. It's Ash here, and today I want to chat to you about something that came up recently in a Facebook discussion and it got me thinking, and it's a great topic. It's about the value of a people leader or the value of a head of department in your business, and we can always look at teams as they, or people as an investment or a cost, but ultimately, a people leader head of department, operations manager, you can probably call them is someone who is running your team, building systems and making sure everything flows, that you, as the business owner, can either focus on growth or you can take a step back and not have to stress about the day-to-day in your property management department. But here's the thing some business owners are not seeing this as a revenue generating role and because of that, they're not valuing it in the way that it should when it comes to remuneration and it's a great topic to unpack. So let's have a little conversation about it. The first thing is retention is revenue, and I think if we can get that mindset right, then that's going to help us when it comes to making a decision about whether we are going to bring in someone to run the department. So if you think that revenue only comes from signing new clients, you're probably missing a huge piece of the puzzle. What about keeping the clients you already have? This should really be at the top of a priority, just as important as bringing in your business.

Speaker 1: 2:06

A solid people leader isn't just there to make life easier for the team. They are the reason landlords stay. They keep the property managers supported, make sure processes are streamlined and, ultimately, make sure that your clients feel looked after. When this happens, retention goes up, and when retention goes up, your business stabilizes. And guess what? That's revenue you're not losing. So it's so important. If you are losing clients as fast as you're bringing them in, all you're doing is staying on a hamster wheel. You are working so hard just to stand still, and a people leader can stop that constant churn, and that is where the real value is. So that's what I really want you to understand from this podcast today A supported team is a stronger business. So let's talk about the team, because this is actually a really important part of the process as well.

Speaker 1: 3:00

Property management is hard. The stress, constant fires, putting out emotionally, it's exhausting, it really is a lot. And when property managers don't feel supported, they're going to leave, and it's as simple as that. We all know how expensive it is to recruit, train and onboard new team members, and a great people leader is going to make sure that that doesn't happen and they're the glue that holds everything together. They're going to take the pressure off, helping your team manage workloads, make sure everyone has the support they need help when people are on annual leave and when you have that stable, happy team, your business is going to thrive. So if you are constantly replacing staff and you're not growing, you're just surviving. Your business is not scaling. So I want you to take a little think about that, because we all know as well that when we have a good long-term team, our clients are happier and we're actually going to bring in more business, just from that simple, simple reason.

Speaker 1: 3:58

So why is a head of department or people leader just as important as a BDM? And this is where some people might disagree with me, but I'm just going to say it anyway People leaders, head of departments, operations managers are just as important If not, I would argue, more important than a business development manager. So, yes, bdm brings in the new business and that's great, but if you're losing those managements as fast as you're bringing them in, what's the point of even having them there? You're spending so much time and money winning new clients only to see them walk out the door a year later. So I want you to really have a little think about this, depending on the stage of business you are in. Maybe you don't yet have a head of department, maybe you don't yet have a BDM, and the question would be which one should you consider bringing in first?

Speaker 1: 4:50

Now, if it was up to me in my business, I would probably bring in the operations manager first, saying that I didn't do it that way. I brought in the BDM first. But then I did realize things got a little bit chaotic and we had to bring in the operations manager. So if anything just learned from my wasn't a mistake but you know, just learned from my trials that if I was to do it again, I would probably do that the operations manager first. I've seen incredible value with bringing mine in only probably about six months ago, and already I can see the value. I wish I had done it a long time ago, but it just wasn't in the forefront. Because of that reason it's not a revenue generating role, and I was of that mindset too, but now that I've got it, I can 100% see the value, so it's really time to rethink this role.

Speaker 1: 5:43

So if you're a business owner and you're listening to this, I want you to ask yourself are you still dealing with headaches every single day, and do you want someone in place who's going to make those headaches disappear before they even reach you? Head of department, people leader, you really need to change that mindset that it's not an expense, it's an investment, and the business that recognizes this are the ones that are going to build that long-term, sustainable success in their business and with their team. Now I also just want to talk about things that I get my operations manager to do that do create that really good retention. So, first up, what she does is she's definitely going through and tweaking our processes, checking our letters, making sure that they're all flowing nice and easy. She's also a voice or sorry, not a voice but she's also someone that our property management team can go to directly without them feeling like they're bothering me, and they can get things done. That's going to make their life easier and make them happier. So that's a really big part as well.

Speaker 1: 6:52

Mine also does the onboarding for new staff.

Speaker 1: 6:57

She does the staff meetings, she does one-on-one meetings with our offshore team, she makes sure that they are all trained up, and we also have her now doing our annual investor audits, which, for those that know me know that that's an important part of retention in my business. But it was also hard to really scale that because they are time consuming and it was hard for me to get through them every year. So with her help, she's been able to do that role and that's a role that I value really, really high in our business because that's actually been a massive reason for our attention and it's also been a massive reason for our growth as well. So they're the types of tasks that I get her to do and she's incredibly busy just doing that. So if anyone wants to talk a little bit more about the role of the operations manager or head of department or has any comments of what I've said today, please send me through some fan mail or send me through a message and I will dissect it on the next podcast episode. Thanks for listening.