Credit: Apartment All Stars on Facebook

A couple weeks ago, myself and many of our other associates here at Mills got the opportunity to attend the annual Fall Expo put on by the St. Louis Apartment Association, or SLAA. This year, the day’s seminar featured not one keynote speaker, but three. Toni Blake, Jackie Ramstedt and Kate Good of the Apartment All Stars gave a highly entertaining and informative presentation to the assembled industry professionals.

The Apartment All Stars feature a stable of eight speakers that travel the country in groups of three giving 12 Apartment All Star Experience presentations each year. The trio of Kate, Toni and Jackie in St. Louis brought a wealth of knowledge and expertise to town. All three are accomplished authors and industry consultants who speak at industry events across the nation. Kate Good is also a founding member of the Apartment All Stars while Toni Blake is a professional comedienne and Jackie Ranstedt is also nationally renowned as a motivational speaker. Pete Regules, another member of the Apartment All Stars, played the role of emcee for the presentation. Aside from the group that came to St. Louis, the group also includes Alexandra Jackiw, Don Sanders, Lisa Trosien and Mindy Williams.

The presentation opened with what the All Stars like to call the “Idea Factory”. Things move quick as they present multiple simple, fun ideas you can go right back to your property and use. One of our group’s favorite ideas was adding a tiny bit of vanilla extract to paint used to “touch-up” an apartment. The combination causes the apartment to smell like fresh-baked cookies for a few days. Another idea shared called for communities to use the “Tantalizing Teal” (#6937) paint from Sherwin-Williams. The color of the paint closely resembles the famous boxes from Tiffany & Co. and all of “the feels” that go with those.

The presenters also pointed attendees to resources or ideas that they can use in their daily work lives. They pointed to Trendwatching.com as a way to see what’s popular or will soon be popular. Moss Graffiti can be an excellent way to spruce up exterior problem walls. Instapark sells these great LED flower pots that one of the presenters was absolutely in love with. In many of their slides during the Idea Factory portion, the presenters reminded the audience that they used PicMonkey for many of the graphics. They gushed about this tool multiple times during the rest of the presentation as well. Another product the team talked about was a book written by David Meerman Scott, Real-Time Marketing & PR which you can find on Amazon. The Apartment All Stars also have their own book that was given out as a prize during the event. The Complete Guide to Leasing Apartments is available on their website.

One of the presenters cited a study done by CEL & Associates that found that the multi-family industry will experience a 15,000-25,000 person shortage in qualified workers in the coming years. She stressed that as companies vie for the best-of-the-best, it’s more important than ever for you to be asking yourself “Would You Hire You?” Attendees were urged to have a plan for renting each floor plan at their property and focus on following up with prospects in a timely manner. While answering within three rings of the telephone was previously thought to be a customer service goal, people now expect a phone to be answered withing seven seconds, according to the presentation. That same attention to timeliness also applies when talking about following up with a prospect and responding to any questions.

Another topic that was touched on was paying attention to the words coming out of your mouth. When talking to an interested person on the phone, are you trying to sell them a “2×2” or a two-bedroom apartment home? Don’t let yourself fall into the trap of using industry terminology that, while making sense to you, may not make any sense at all to the person you want to connect with.

The Apartment All Stars presentation was an excellent and informative addition to the St. Louis Apartment Association’s Fall Expo. Did you have a favorite part of the presentation? Did you try something you learned at the seminar at your property? Share it below in the comments.

Here are some of our favorite social media posts sent out during the presentation.

From @KateGood: kids text PAW? Means parents are watching #AptAllStars #gonuts4slaa pic.twitter.com/IAiqG2fxhY

— Apartment All Stars (@AptAllStars) October 21, 2015

Love this! #aptallstars pic.twitter.com/rBZg6CsJZ4

— Angie Hart Hickey (@ang5455) October 21, 2015

https://instagram.com/p/9HEBmDC8cv/

Brought to you by Mills Apartments