Tony Cline has over 20 years of experience in property management. After purchasing a real estate and property management brokerage in Denver, Colorado, he spent more than two decades as managing broker. Today he's focused full time on his work as a Property Management Success Coach. Tony is a Second Nature Triple Win Mentor.
At its most basic, your mission is who you serve and how. To put it another way, it’s your ideal client profile, the specific work you do, and the work you don’t do.
There is no single thing that is more important in building your brand, because your mission informs everything about how you present yourself to the market and to your potential clients.
When you clearly identify your mission and who you want to serve, you can better connect with them and build a unique brand around that target audience, and filter out those that aren’t going to be a good fit . Here are some of my best tips for building a brand from your mission statement, based on my decades of experience as a property manager, business owner, and advisor.
When I first purchased a small property management company, we aimed to be “the downtown Denver loft and condo sales, leasing, and property management specialists.” We actually took a map of downtown Denver and picked specific cross streets to define our boundaries. Looking back, that was a great decision because it helped me:
It set us off on the right foot by imposing limits on the properties we would manage, rather than letting us bite off more than we could chew.
I see a lot of property managers start building a company without direction. It's like reaching your hand into a bag and pulling out a block and saying, “Okay, well, this is what I’m going to build with next!” And they put it on the pile. And when you keep doing that, you don't intentionally build anything. You build a Jenga tower, where if you put one more piece on the top, it's going to collapse.
Instead, what property management companies need to do is take a step back to evaluate things. Decide what you’re trying to build, make that your mission, and develop a business and brand that supports that.
Your mission statement should very clearly outline who your target client profile is. That target client profile is going to directly impact how you present your company and the kind of content you’re putting out.
One of the biggest challenges in property management is differentiating your business. The problem is, a huge portion of people think we're all the same. We're property managers. Without anything to separate us from our competition, the only thing they know to judge us on is price.
But with a clear mission and target audience, you identify specific pain points and speak directly to the people you want to do business with. That way you cut through the noise, rather than using general language that doesn’t stand out.
In my experience, a lot of property management business owners act like home cooks. They pick their ingredients based on what’s in stock, what’s on sale, and what looks good in the moment.
They’re managing whatever properties they can bring in and whatever owners they can sign a deal with. They start building this pantry of ingredients, and then they realize, if the ingredients are always changing, they need to keep cooking something different day after day.
Constantly adjusting your menu makes it incredibly hard to really learn what you’re good at cooking and what your craft is.
Instead, you want to become a professional chef. They're intentional about what goes in each dish, and one wrong ingredient can spoil the whole dish. They master a dish through repetition and care until it’s the best it can possibly be.
If you want to master your craft, you have to make tough decisions and start saying no. Taking on new clients who don’t fit your mission will ultimately hurt your business more than help it.
It’s tempting to take on anyone and everyone, especially if you’re less experienced or just launching your own business. Saying no to them takes courage.
One of the most important steps is realizing that it’s okay to not be able to help everyone. So many business owners feel a sense of obligation to be able to help everyone who walks through the door, but that just isn’t realistic. An antique store isn’t going to be able to help you if you want a new 4k television, but that doesn’t make them a bad business. You just have different needs than they can serve.
It’s not easy to tell a potential client, “hey, I don’t think this is a great fit, but I appreciate you reaching out.” But that’s an absolutely vital step to take if you want to grow your business sustainably.
Let’s take a look at two different audiences in the property management space: investors who see their properties as financial assets, and “accidental landlords,” who might have inherited a home and want to rent it out.
These are two very different groups with different knowledge, different expectations, and different emotions, so you can’t treat them the same.
Investors are concerned with the financials and how you’re protecting their investment, so your messaging should focus on things like:
These are the kinds of topics that are going to break through the noise for that person, because those are the things they care most about. You have to extend that messaging through all your channels, including your website, your sales pitch, or your social media channels.
Accidental landlords, who might just be starting to learn about real estate investing, often have deeper emotional ties to it. They raised little Sally in one of the bedrooms and they want to keep the pink walls they painted.
For them, the messaging you have to put out is about turning their home into their product, and how to make this people's number one choice if they have ten options to choose from.
Because they have different concerns, so your messaging—and therefore your brand—has to be carefully tailored. You can’t use the same messaging to appeal to both of them, or it will come across as generic and bland.
You can’t build a strong brand without a strong mission.
Your mission and brand aren’t just about messaging; they’re things you have to live. You can’t just put your mission on a shelf somewhere and forget about it, and you can’t minimize your brand to just a logo and a slogan.
One of the biggest areas where a lot of companies miss the mark is allowing a disconnect between sales and customer service. Business development will make a pitch that clearly aligns to the company’s mission, but the rest of the team doesn't then continue that forward through their operations.
That's why a lot of companies will churn out doors in the first year. New clients hear big promises from sales, but they don't receive a service that meets the expectations that were set. Your whole team has to be aligned on the same mission and brand so that you’re speaking the same language and delivering the same message.
Every time you develop a new policy, it needs to be built on your mission and aligned with your brand. Quite simply, if they don’t fit your mission, then they shouldn't be policies in the first place. You've already committed to a mission, so anything in the company that's not in alignment with that has to be modified in order for you to really have clarity.
Only once your team is fully aligned can you start talking about your mission externally.
One of the most valuable things your brand can do for your business is to help the right clients self-select. If you develop a clear enough mission, and shape your brand around it, you’ll get to a point where your brand is so strong, you never have to say no to anyone. They just won’t reach out in the first place.
When a property owner who doesn’t match your target client profile looks at your website, or your social media, or your email newsletter, they’ll realize that they’re not a good fit for your business, and they’ll move on.
The flip side is that the right people will be reaching out in droves, because they connect with your company and see the value you provide that’s specific to their problems.
That’s the power of a mission-driven brand.
Building a mission-driven brand can feel overwhelming. The good news is, it will eventually start to come naturally to you. The more reps you do, the better you get, the more narrowly you're able to define what you're doing, the more time you can spend getting intentionally better at that one thing.
You also have to get those reps in with your team. When you think you’ve over-communicated your mission and vision—when you think if you say it one more time, if you incorporate it into one more meeting, if you ask one more question about it, that your team's going to revolt because they're sick of hearing it—you’re probably about thirty percent of the way there.
Ready to start building your brand with intention? Start with our webinar on writing your brand positioning statement.