I attended the Self Storage Association of Australia’s (SSAA’s) Melbourne Meeting & Dinner last night & was quickly reminded that I need to pack another jacket; the wind was blowing a gale & it was about 7 degrees. Thankfully, the dinner venue – Oscar’s Table – was nice and warm, and the food was absolutely fantastic, too.
Our first guest speaker for the evening was from Midland Insurance, who covered a number of changes with the upcoming Victorian Fire Services Levy. The speaker also briefly covered earthquake insurance (Melbourne had experienced an earthquake measuring 5.2 on the Richter Magnitude Scale the previous evening) and handed out an excellent flyer indicating the total value of insurance claims for various recent disasters around Australia.
For example, did you know that following the Queensland Floods in 2011, the insured cost came to $2,380,000,000, with 89% of claims finalised by insurers. The Christmas-time storms that lashed Victoria cost insurers $670,000,000 and 72% of claims were finalised. Cyclone Yasi, in Queensland, cost insurers $1,330,000,000, and 91% of claims were finalised… some very interesting (and large) numbers!
Our second speaker for the evening focused on sales training, which many of us at the event found interesting; myself included. The speaker reminded us that we need to focus on selling the emotional (why the person actually needs storage & why they should choose you) – not the logical (ie: “the price”)… and that there are ways to sell on other things than just price. The speaker had plenty of tips on how to combat the price shopper who just wants “your best price”.
As you would probably know, storage facilities are different and, often, it’s impossible to compare one with another – therefore, a person shopping merely on price would be silly to do so – the facility down the road that’s $40 cheaper than yours may not have security cameras, or it could be in a flood-prone area. These are the types of things we need to get across to our potential customers – particularly the price-shoppers.
The speaker also stressed that in doing so, we need to target the emotional, not the logical… so design your “sales spiel” in such a way that it focuses on the fact that their goods will be safe with your facility (emotional & very relevant to their needs), as opposed to focusing on the brand of alarm system you use (logical, but irrelevant).
If this sounds interesting to you, I’d strongly advise contacting the association for more details on their upcoming sales training courses… but for now, please enjoy some of the photos from the dinner meeting below.
