Maximizing Team Productivity through Process Automation

A recap of our NARPM webinar with James Barrett, Tenant Turner and Calvin Davis, Keyrenter Richmond.

Discover how Tenant Turner and Keyrenter Richmond have leveraged technology to automate and optimize various aspects of their operations, such as business processes, team and customer communication, and employee interactions. Keep reading for their specific strategies to achieve sustainable business growth and gain insights that you can apply to your business today or watch the entire webinar here. 

Skip to the Three Key Takeaways from this webinar.

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James, how did you get started in the property management industry?

"Myself, my two co-founders, Chris and Brandon, we had investment properties and that's how we got to start Tenant Turner. We had a pain point as landlords around the leasing process, knew that there needed to be a way to streamline, simplify, automate, and make it so we could get our properties leased quickly with less effort."

Calvin, as a former sales development representative for Tenant Turner, you made one of the rare journeys from being a SaaS salesperson for a PropTech company to founding your own property management company. Now you've got your own property management company with 250 doors. So tell us a little bit about that journey. Why did you go that route and how'd you get to where you are today?

"I never really thought that I'd be a property manager, never thought that I'd own a property management company, but from a young age, I knew that I was going to own my own business. I can't really tell you why or how It's probably mom, shout out to mom. Hey mom, really? She kind of drilled that entrepreneurial spirit in me and hey, be your own boss and go do your own thing, right? When I met my now wife, our family was growing a little bit. She wanted to sell it and get a bigger place and I didn't. So in doing that, I learned about rentals and leasing. I became a landlord, and at the time it was intentional. I was doing a lot of research, understanding, hey, this is a way that a lot of people that I look up to and that I would consider as successful have leveraged real estate as an investment in some form or fashion. So I saw that as an opportunity to jump into it, to consolidate what could be a long story. She ultimately ended up saying yes.

We kept that house and moved into another one, and that started the journey. I was hooked. I saw endless opportunity in the real estate space about the same time that was happening. We currently manage 250 single family homes here in Central Virginia. It doesn't seem like a whole lot when you look at some of the numbers and door county you guys have out there but it's been a ride and it's been fun. We currently have a team of six. We focus strictly on single family residential here in central Virginia. I've been open for five years and am part of the Keyrenter franchise network. Phenomenal group, phenomenal company. I absolutely love being a part of that network. "

 

Calvin, when did you realize process automation was critical for the success of your business? What was the catalyst?

"Starting the business, I knew I was going to rely on process automation, that was part of the business plan. 

The catalyst came when I hired my first employee because my wife and I were both working in the business.

So we made our first hire and we're like, man, this is great. Yeah, we've got everything this person needs that they'll be off and running. And after a week of this dude just coming in the morning throwing his hands up in the air, I have no idea what I should be doing right now, Calvin. This started to click. It was like, I really did not set this individual up for success at all. He was a great guy, didn't have any specific experience in real estate at all, but he was hungry. He wanted to learn. And in my opinion, those are the types of people that you want on your team. And I think I ruined property management for him, real estate in general, probably a life.

So when I took a step back after he quit, I realized that I looked to myself, what was it that I did not give them? Did I not train them properly? Did they not have the right tools to do the job? Did they not know how to provide feedback about what they were doing? And I really used it as an opportunity to completely reassess, reassess kind of how we were creating our business. And that led me to a number of areas in the business that I tried to clean up that ties all back into it. But really it was the failure of the first hire that made me realize how important processes are."

 

Calvin, you had your foundational tech stack. You had AppFolio as your property management software, Tenant Turner for your leasing operations and Google Workspace for operations. What's the next layer on top of that?

 

"I've thought about it a lot and I think it differs. What I saw so often when I was trying to sell the software to property management companies that absolutely needed a form of this solution, whether it was tenant Turner or not, is to start somewhere. And that's what I would recommend to people is start try something new. If you've identified a problem and that problem has persisted and popped up on a few different occasions, take that one problem off the shelf and leverage something you haven't used before to try to solve it.  Start somewhere.  I never realized how important that first step was. I heard it for years. Just go take that first step, just do something.

And it was so frustrating when I was having a conversation with somebody and I knew this was a problem as a challenge, I was always a salesperson but I didn't sell you if I didn't think it was a good solution for you.  And it was extremely frustrating to see these people need a solution like this, but not make the  jump. And sometimes there were legitimate reasons. "I don't have it in the budget. I don't have enough time. I'm just a solopreneur and I'm doing all this by myself. " But if you don't take the time and take the opportunities to attempt these solutions, you're never going to see the value that comes from them. And I mean, there's solutions for a reason. There are people that buy them and use them because they do work. Not everyone works. And not everyone works in every scenario or circumstance. But my first recommendation would be, try something, right? If you don't leverage a lot of software now, just pick one at your next conference and try it. And I'll hear all the kickback. What about the 12 month agreements? What about the startup costs and all those things. Ask yourself, do you want to see that same problem for the 39th time? Yeah, I mean after two, I'm frustrated and exhausted with it. You're like, there's got to be a better way.

And then the second group there would be those that have solutions or are tech focused, if you will. And they're always leveraging or exploring or looking. And that's kind of where I've classified myself now is how do you take these software solutions and update them or make them better or fit them to your team or what you're trying to accomplish for that specific period of time. And I think those are the two categories or classifications of property managers right now that, Hey, I don't have anything but I'm afraid to jump. Or yep, hey, I've got a couple things in place, but I'm afraid to make a change. Or I don't know how to make a change, or I don't know how to keep my whole team updated. And that's a real challenge and I'm living in that right now."

 

James, any advice?

"One thing I'll share from a software company perspective is, a lot of what you're referring to is what we kind of refer to as our MVP. So on the software development side, that's minimally viable product. It's the quickest, fastest, cheapest way to test something to improve upon a broken process. So you can use that MVP concept and come up with your minimally viable process in order to automate or streamline something.

Oftentimes with software, you can find free tools to help you with that. You had mentioned Google Workspace, for example. We started out, before we built some parts of our product, we started with a Google form. So if you need to get collect inputs from your team members, if you need to collect inputs from your residents, if you need to collect inputs from your owners, you can start with a Google form. You don't need to pay for some complicated survey tool. You don't need to build anything custom. You don't need to have an IT person on staff or on contract. That's the last thing you need to worry about. But start with something simple. Come up with your minimally viable process. And then once you feel comfortable about it, you've documented it, you've tested it, you'll identify what works and what doesn't. And then you can invest in some SaaS software that would help further streamline the process for you. But just pick one and start somewhere. Just identify one thing that you think could make your life easier and incorporate it."

 

In property management, you've got tenant problems, you've got owner problems. How did you decide what to prioritize? 

Calvin-

"Super scientific, it took me years to get to this. So y'all get a pen of paper and write it down.

The thing that popped up most recently, that's the biggest problem for you, is the thing that I identified. It's that simple, right? A perfect example for me would be, I think onboarding is one of the most, if not the most critical element of your relationship with the client. You're kicking things off. They're excited about leveraging your solution and getting something off their plate. And it needs to be detailed. It needs to be thorough, right? You need to make sure that you get that right. Well, a specific part of our onboarding is how we prep the property for the tenant, especially if that unit is coming on vacant. We require all the properties to be professionally cleaned.

Part of it, yes, was identifying one problem out of the hundred that we deal with each day, but  just doing it, doing something. Again, I realized that, okay, I'm not doing this right and I need to adjust it. But back to your original question, how I identified what I needed to work on at the time was what was the biggest issue. And back to my problem with onboarding, when we were having the properties, when we required the properties to be cleaned by the units before the owners, before we leased them out. In some cases the owners were saying, well, I'll get it cleaned and I'll provide you the receipt. Well, my team was overlooking that and we had our cleaner go out there and clean the property. And now we've got two who eats that cost. Galvin eats that cost. So after I paid for my 13th and cleaning that I shouldn't have paid for. I realized, okay, I should fix this. This is something that I should focus on. And that's just one example."

 

James-

"That's something we talk about here too. We want that cream to rise to the top. When we talk about process automation, one of our company's core values is simplicity. And so we don't want to over automate. We don't want to, and we're a software company, so we don't want to be over-reliant upon disjointed systems if we don't need to be. So we have our core platforms that we rely upon. We look to kind of create an mvp, a minimally viable process with whether it be Google forms or Google Docs or things of that nature. And then we want to prioritize the things that are going to have the greatest impact for us, our team and our customers."

 

How have you been able to utilize technology or software to help improve upon a process within property management?

Calvin-

"There's so many different ways you can leverage it, but back to why I realized I needed it in the first place was when I was hiring my next employee, I realized that what am I giving my employer or what training do I have or what system or tools to, so they get up to speed as quickly as possible and then feel confident while they're doing the tasks that I want them to be focused on. And I realize that, hey, if I don't want the same thing to happen here, I'd better, I better incorporate a process with this specific person or this specific position. And I mean, at the end of the day, the biggest challenge for me when it came to what do you pick first out of all the responsibilities they've gotten and how do you show them or how do you train them that, and really the, it's creating, I use Process Street to create these guardrails, okay. Is a way that I position it and it's not because the employee's a child or unable to do it or anything like that. But what these guardrails allow me to do is keep this position in this person focused on the most profitable tasks in my company and give me the insight that I need into those tasks if there is ever an issue or that employee is on vacation or anything along those lines."

 

Calvin, as an owner, how do you solve the problem of delegating or transferring work when it is all attached to you?

I'm going to try to answer this in two ways. First would be just hire somebody. If you haven't done it yet, pick the top 10 things that you hate doing, put it on a piece of paper, write out how you do those 10 things and hire somebody to do them right? Again, that goes back to the first step of just make a move. Just hire somebody. They're going to be able to alleviate something on your plate that frees up your time so you get a larger return on your time. That's my personal opinion. You ask a hundred people, they may have a hundred different answers, but personally, I'm a trial by fire guy. Again, you can ask my mother, she's call everything I learned. I did not learn by listening, I learned by messing things up and then realizing I don't want to mess up again. And I've heard that before from other people. 10 things that you no longer want to do or 10 things that'll give you the most time back in your day that you can get the most return on. Do that.

The second piece is something that I alluded to when we were kind of planning this meeting of something that I never heard really as I was talking to other property managers out there. And it's when a problem pops up in property management and you've had your leasing agent or your property manager handle it. One thing that I found to be extremely challenging was insight into that problem. When did you send your communication, what was included in that communication? Because most of the time it's in their email or yeah, might be a leasing agent's cell phone because they were texting with a renter, they're supposed to be using Dial, but they're using their direct number because it's easier. So what I realized was I needed a place where I could get that insight. If my clients had a problem or a vendor, my attorney needed something, I could go access it immediately and get it over to the person. It's also a way of quality assurance and all those different things. But my second answer would be find your guardrails. What are the things that you can say, all right, I want you to work here within this area, but I want you to do these three pieces. And those three pieces could be communication specifically. I want you to do it this way, this way, and this way. So you have that insight you need. The biggest concern that I heard from people in hiring was, well, I don't know if they're going to do it my way, or I don't know if they're going to do it exactly how I want them to do it. And if you have insight into that communication, at the least you can confirm how they're sending those communications out or how they're doing that. I have a third, but I'll spare you guys."

 

James, as Tenant Turner grew how did you solve the problem of delegating or transferring work while retaining transparency?

"It's crazy to think, but when we first started Tenant Turner, I was answering tenant lead calls for management companies. Some nights and weekends. And it was because I had my cell phone number on all these different listings all across the country when we were still small and still testing the concept to see if it had any viability. So I was like, okay, that was one of my top 10 biggest problems. I got to solve this problem. So from our development roadmap perspective, we said, all right, we're going to create an automated leasing process that way people could call into a number, get a text message and not have to speak to a person unless they want to.

Then we created a partnership with Virtually Incredible, so that way we can offer twenty four seven call center services. So it's like I felt that pain firsthand and we found a way to alleviate it and get it off of my plate. We've had lots of examples like that in the past where a lot of our communication, it doesn't go to James at Tenant Turner or Tim at Tenant Turner or Natasha at Tenant Turner. We have marketing@tenantturner.com and that's what our NARPM membership is even tied to. So as NARPAM communications come out, I'm not a single point of failure. It could go to Natasha, it could go to Tim, and we make sure that we're staying on top of things for our special partnerships. You could do this essentially with your clients, but for our larger clientele, they have a dedicated email address that they can send things to. So that way if our dedicated account manager for that account is on vacation that she rightfully deserves to be able to do, the communication doesn't fall flat and then it ends up in a system like you were saying, so that way everybody can be there and have oversight. We use email, through Google Workspace, but you know, can't really have insights into that communication. So a lot of what we do is outside of that. And we use tools like HubSpot on the sales side, and we use a tool called Intercom on the customer support success side. So as our customers are chatting in and having problems, it's not going to you saying, Hey, I need this done, etc. And then you're that single point of failure, it's going to support at Tenant Turner, you can see it, your associate can see it. If they don't do it, if they don't communicate the way that you want them to, if they don't stay within the guardrails, you still have insights to it. So I think implementing some technology that will help centralize that communication is helpful. And  having insight into it, having guardrails, using technology to enable that is critical."

 

What tools do you use to centralize communication?

Calvin-

"Communication, transparency, having a process around communication is foundational. So, I look at Slack. You had mentioned your playbook, we call it the Keyrenter method, where I come from. And that's our book that's got all our processes, all the details, all the specifics in it. But how do you, you know where to go for certain things at certain times?  That's what Slack's for. So I have it integrated into all of our solutions for calendar updates for when a specific task gets done for a specific workflow, it notifies the whole team. When a tenant completes a task on their end for move in, it notifies our team that, hey, this has been done and completed. They have access to it and it tells the next person that it's up. Hey, it's their responsibility. So I mean, it's absolutely critical on so many levels and this is where you start to get into how am I building on the tools and solutions that have got in place now?"

 

James-

"Slack is kind of the norm. I think most people are utilizing that. If you're not, you can for free. And to Calvin's point, just try it. Not much downside there. And then once we had that, that kind of became the hub of our company and our culture. And so we have all these various systems, whether it's some of the ones I mentioned before or others, we then can use Zapier for example, to then tie in different things. So when we have a new customer sign up, we get a message in Zapier or from Zapier into Slack. When we have a new demo that gets scheduled, we take that communication and we put it in Slack.

So we're putting in our normal day-to-day communications, make sure everybody's on the same page. But then we have all these things, and you guys, I'm sure you have some examples of this too, but you have all these things that are happening within your business and it energizes the team, it creates transparency within the team. And all you're essentially doing is you're taking something from one silo. In our case, somebody schedules a demo with our sales team, it goes through HubSpot and Zappier picks up on that, Brandon ships it off through the Zap into Slack, and then over here everybody gets excited. Same thing with a new signup. Any of our social media blasts, as Natasha puts out any more of our digital marketing content, as soon as it goes out, that gets put into Slack. Because what we're trying to do is elicit engagement. So there's certain tasks that we want to encourage certain activities from, and we have this hub and then we try to tie it all together with Zaps."

 

Calvin, how does Slack tie into your tech stack?

"So just to give people kind of a lay of the land, we're leveraging Process Street right now as our primary workflow tool. I use Zapier, I have Slack, use all things Google. I also use Formstack, LeadSimple and AppFolio as my property management software. And then I've got a couple other kind of ancillary tools and solutions in there. But to your point, slack is, slack is our communication platform and our team knows that you go to Slack for just about everything. So the way that my kind of new client workflow happens is we'll send out, the PMA will send out what we call the property information form. When the client completes the property information form, a Slack is sent out to the whole team that says, Hey, we've got a new client. Here's how you can access the property information form to see the details of it. As soon as that's submitted, a Calendly link goes over to the client and a workflow is created within Process Street for this particular property or this particular client. So the team is notified that we have a new client, whoever is responsible for onboarding their schedule is then sent out so that the new client can schedule that onboarding call and a new workflow is created. So everybody can see what stage we're at for this new property."

 

Do you feel like leveraging automation for process automation has helped increase your profitability and scalability?

Calvin-

"Yes, but I think in a very different way from most from what most people would think. The buzzwords that you hear out they're right; have more time in your day, efficiencies. Yes, it absolutely has. And that'll be a trickle down effect for any of you that leverage the solution as well. But I think the insight for me was critical. For example, I only manage in central Virginia 30 minute radius around my office. I have a specific rental amount that I bring on. I have minimum property standards that I bring on. And I've realized by having these systems in place where I track everything, I can identify where my most profitable properties are, where they aren't. And it's shown me what areas of my business I can focus on both for my team and profitability. Not just profitability, which is absolutely something just about every business owner cares about.

The company is successful and we have a strong, strong foundation. We're good with what we've got. But then again, I'm looking right now at exploring and branching out into investors. So now I've got all the data and everything because of the systems that I have in place of the profitability, the vacancy rate, so all those details, the average maintenance work order, so and so forth for that specific segment of properties. Now I can do it over here when I grow. So I don't think about it from that perspective as often as I do. Hey, it's just, it's going to make life easier for my leadership team, me, my employees, my clients, and yes, my tenants too.

 

James-

"I think that is often overlooked, hard to quantify, but a lot of what Calvin just talked about indirectly is by leveraging process automation, leveraging technology gives you data and insights to help you make better decisions, which just compound success. Because now you're like, why would I invest my time, money, and effort in this owner or this neighborhood or this community when I know it's not a profitable endeavor for me? So let me focus my time and effort on this. The data is putting me in this direction. And then by getting to that direction and being more profitable, you can make yourself, your employees, your community happier."