Letter to PM Industry Vendors

"Stay in your lane."

I got some good feedback from a reader of my recent article discussing loyalty to vendors, and I think it’s worth discussing. Let me just quote what she wrote: “I wholeheartedly want venders to stay in their own lane and focus on perfecting their business…and not worry about changing the face of an industry they, in most cases, have never actually worked in.”

Some may say these comments are harsh. But I can’t really say that I disagree with her. While I stand by every comment I made about vendor loyalty, I also think some vendors in our industry (including some of my favorites) need some tough love.

“Stay in Your Lane”

I’ll start here, because I see this as the most offensive item to property managers that I’ve heard quite a few people talk about. It isn’t your place as a vendor to tell property managers how to manage property. Even if you once managed property in the past, that isn’t what you do today, and you need to keep that in mind.

What’s an example of this? How about a vendor posting “tips” on their Facebook page about how to manage property? I see this all the time. Now, I want to be clear, there is a big difference between posting your own tips and doing something like hosting a webinar or a podcast where you ask questions of PMs and allow them to give their tips. You may be the expert in your field, whether it’s insurance, software, repairs, whatever, but you are not the expert in this field. You may talk to a lot of property managers, but that doesn’t make you qualified to teach property managers. It’s arrogant to think that you can, and you really need to read the room a little bit better.

Where I see this as the biggest problem is at industry conferences. One of the most common complaints from conference attendees is that too many of the speakers are vendors. This has been such a frequent complaint that I actually made a point this year as President of the Atlanta NARPM chapter to tell our committees that I don’t want to see more than a couple of vendors speaking at our events. Property managers show up to conferences to learn from other property managers. “Brokers teaching brokers” used to be the unofficial slogan for the NARPM Broker/Owner conference. We need to get back to this mentality, and vendors should lead the way by voluntarily taking a backseat. One vendor recently went about this a great way by asking me if I’d be willing to join them on stage and do a presentation together so that they could talk about their expertise from a vendor’s perspective, and I could talk about things from a property manager’s perspective. This is some excellent self-awareness, and vendors should embrace this style. Either leave the speaking to PMs entirely, or join with them to deliver a presentation that has you sticking to your expertise and not venturing into PM territory.

You’re Not Changing the World

I say this with love, vendors, but some of you have some serious delusions of grandeur. None of you are going to come into the industry and single-handedly change the face of an entire profession. At best, you will make things a little easier for PMs in their day-to-day work lives by adding some efficiencies, but PM will still be PM at the end of the day. I’m reminded of a former tech junior executive who entered the industry a few years ago with a “tech-enabled” PM company of his own and proudly started arguing with me on LinkedIn about how he was going to “disrupt” the PM industry and leave the rest of us in his dust. Where is he today? He had to get bailed out in an acquisition at a bargain basement price because they ran out of investor capital when investors realized that managing a department of a tech company that delivers food using independent contractors who work for near slave wages doesn’t teach you anything at all about how to manage property.

In short, you aren’t a “disruptor.” In fact, just stop using that word. It’s more annoying than “moist.”

Gimmicks Don’t Cut It

Throwing a great event at an industry conference is all well and good, but don’t for one minute think that it’s going to save you if your product or customer service sucks. Sending gifts to clients is a great way to build loyalty, but I promise you, it’s not going to stop someone from leaving if you neglect what actually matters: the product or service that you are supposed to be delivering.

The problem with many vendors is that they’re led by founders who read too many business books and watch too many business “influencer” videos on YouTube. The PM industry is not a TED Talk, folks. We don’t care about your fancy corporate jargon, we make fun of it. No one is interested in “squaring that circle,” “running it up the flagpole,” “double-clicking on that idea,” or “circling back later to discuss the potential synergies.” You sound like a douche. Stop it. It’s a gimmick, and gimmicks are fodder for jokes, not for building real rapport with your target audience. PMs are not corporate drones. In fact, most of us are in the real estate industry running our own small businesses precisely because sitting in a cubicle and fighting our way up the corporate ladder sounds like the seventh circle of hell. If you get off on trying to sound like your favorite Fortune 500 CEO delivering a “town hall meeting,” then keep that to yourself. We aren’t interested.

What are we interested in? Actual solutions to our day-to-day problems. We want you to create a product or service that actually does something, and that something should be easy to describe in normal human language. You shouldn’t need buzzwords, outrageous events, silly gifts, or other gimmickry to make your case to the industry on why what you offer is valuable. It really should be self-evident.

Does that mean that you shouldn’t throw a great party? Of course not. But that should come AFTER you have delivered something of real value. In short, it should be a demonstration of gratitude to the industry, not a way of you getting the word out on your product. Some vendors have done this very well. Others have crashed and burned. I’ve attended quite a few “parties” at conferences that basically amounted to a handful of people standing around and eating bad appetizers. No one is coming to your party until you’ve earned it.

Finally, let’s talk about gifts. Gifts are great…if you’ve known someone for a while and you actually know something about them. I get some great gifts from vendors I have worked with for years, and I am very much appreciative for the thought they put in to them. But I’ve also received a rubber chicken in the mail from a vendor I had never even spoken to. To this day I have no idea how a rubber chicken was supposed to be appeal to me or have any relation whatsoever to our industry or their product. It was just gimmickry. They wanted someone to post it on social media and drive engagement to get their name out there. Instead, they got a post making fun of them. Don’t be that guy. This is the difference between sending people gifts because someone told you it was a good business development strategy and someone sending gifts because they’re genuinely a good person who wants to do something meaningful for you. Be the latter, not the former.

Customer Service Matters

If I ask a group of PMs which vendors they get the best customer service from, I can pretty much never lose money by betting that they’ll mention either Tenant Turner or PMW. More specifically, Mitch at PMW. There are literally shirts going around that PMs actually wear that say “I’ve got 99 problems, but a Mitch ain’t one.” The level of customer service you have to provide to get people to literally wear a shirt with your name on it is astounding. But it happens, and in this small of an industry, that’s the level of service you need to aspire to.

In my own property management business, I have a KPI for my customer-facing employees that they are expected to respond to any email, phone call, or text message within 15 minutes during business hours. They don’t have to solve the problem that quickly, but they damned sure have to respond that quickly. Do they always hit that KPI? No. But the point is that we’re always striving for it. What’s amazing is that we’ve had weeks where they hit 1 MINUTE average response times. That doesn’t happen without a focus on customer service.

Tenant Turner customers know what I’m talking about. When you login to Tenant Turner and open the chat window, it tells you how long the average response time is. On most days, this number is measured in the single digits. Do you think I’m ever going to leave Tenant Turner as long as that’s the case? Of course not. Whey would I risk going from solving problems in 5 minutes to solving them in 5 days? Just to save a buck or get some new “disruptive” bells and whistles from a startup? Nah, not worth it. Customer service is too important.

This is a Relationship Business

The last point is the most important: you need to remember that this is an incredibly small industry, and whatever type of vendor you are, you need to remember that you are primarily in the relationship business. If you screw someone over, it isn’t going to stay quiet. If you behave poorly, everyone will know about it across the country within a matter of days.

I’ll give you an example. A newish vendor to the industry attended a conference about a year ago. While there, he decided it would be a good idea to get absolutely sloshed during an after party and then sexually harass some female attendees. This would have been ignored at some industry conferences by “the powers that be” (a topic for a future article), but the guys who run this particular conference have a little stronger moral compass than that. The vendor was immediately kicked out and permanently banned from the conference. Now, I can’t stress enough that I was not even at this conference. But I heard of this from several sources and later had it confirmed by the conference organizers. Do you think I’ve told everyone I know about this? You bet your ass. Not only that, but this vendor will not be allowed to speak at the Atlanta NARPM chapter while I have anything to say about it. In one drunken, immature, boorish evening, this vendor destroyed their reputation, even with people a thousand miles away who weren’t there to see it.

Your behavior will catch up with you eventually. If you are rude, if your customer service sucks, if you screw people out of money, if you’re a drunk, if you lie about your product or service, whatever the case may be, it won’t take long for people across the industry to know about it. Govern yourself accordingly.

Now, this doesn’t just go for avoiding bad behavior, it’s also about doing the right things. It means that you can’t just sit at your vendor booth during the day and then hide out in your hotel room in the evening. You need to get out and talk to PMs. Have a drink with them (just not too many drinks). Take them to dinner. Be a part of the community.

Conclusion

Ultimately, this is all about finding the right balance of being a part of the community without trying reshape the community. Early on, you shouldn’t be throwing the parties, you should be attending them. You shouldn’t be teaching people on stage, you should be asking a lot of questions and learning. You shouldn’t be “disrupting,” you should be assisting. Being a vendor means understanding that while you are a part of the industry in a way, you are still somewhat of an outsider. You aren’t the one getting sued by the crazy tenant. You aren’t the one taking the 2am phone call because someone thinks an oven not working is an emergency. You aren’t the one getting audited by the real estate commission and having your livelihood on the line. You need to keep all of this in mind and bring a little humility to the table. That’s what the best vendors in our industry have done. And many of those who have ignored that advice are now sitting in the ash bin of PM industry.