Stora Social | Hacking Self Storage Live Podcast Recording

So would you believe it or not this isn't the first podcast i've done with a beer a lot of my podcasts on a monday i do when i've been watching the football and i've got a drink by my side so yeah this isn't the first one so welcome to the hacking self stories podcast i've got two awesome guests today i've got dave davies and i've got gavin shields and we're going to talk loads of things about self storage and we're also going to open it up to you guys as well and see if you've got any questions that we can maybe well maybe not me maybe dave or gavin can help you with so the first talking point i don't know if anybody's seen recently but gavin's been doing a lot on linkedin with regards his site a lot of people have been seeing the occupancy levels lowering and decreasing and so what we want to do is.

Perfect it's going to plan.

We want to try and see if we can help with sites that have had a decrease in occupancy so gav if you want to tell us a little bit about your sites and what's been happening recently just what you've been doing on linkedin and we'll see if we can as a team see if.

We can come up with something that.

Was almost a brilliant start very smooth.

It was a bloody thing wasn't would.

Have been perfect cool well thanks dean yeah so i have two sites in northern ireland as you know and so i opened the first one in twenty twenty the second one about a year and a half ago and to be completely honest it has been really easy it's been unbelievably easy to fill the site i mean covid kicked in six months after i opened my first site it just honestly just seemed so simple so i spent about one hour a month on the business at the moment and we just we hit about seventy it was seventy six percent occupied about six months ago my first site and you know really doing very well i put in about two hundred thousand pounds of cash to open that site it was kicking out about eighty thousand pounds a year so it was about a forty percent return on that on the investment and you know life was great so we opened a second site and it has taken longer to fill but then about so it was actually about a month and a half ago we released in stora we released this new reporting feature and i could see the number of move ins every week and i just i just because i wasn't spending enough time looking at the data i was aware of a lot of move outs and i didn't see many bookings coming in but i could see in a six week period i did one booking and i just thought oh jesus like that's that's bad because i used to get like fifteen to twenty a month so you know i realized something was going wrong occupancy was at that point this was about three weeks ago maybe was down to fifty five percent at that site and this is from seventy five from seventy six yeah so seventy six down to fifty five in about six months and it's an indoor site it's twelve thousand square feet gross nine thousand of net lettable it's in a town of twenty three thousand people there's a container site with about eighty to ninety containers in it nearby and there's in about a six or seven mile radius is about sixty thousand people so it's quite a large population actually and i'm the only indoor self storage in that whole area and yeah to be honest i don't know what the answer is yet but i suppose i've just become aware that it's time to look at what's going on try and identify what the issues are so i took a few steps so i'll just talk you through the few things i've done initially i checked our website which is all provided by stora i just thought well what if there's something broken what if stora's broken is it any good no stora customers had a booking for six weeks no luckily the website was fine but then i said i'll call the number and see how that goes and i called the number and somebody answered and all i wanted to do was make sure it was answered and then i listened to a few callbacks and i wasn't happy with the way calls being dealt with i could hear there was a call the day before and it was four minute long and thirty seconds in i had my head in my hands a minute in i was almost in tears and then ninety seconds in i just started laughing because it was so bad i thought it was actually almost like a joke this particular call was bad but it was what i decided to do then just immediately just put all calls to my phone so i thought i'll just take the calls and so if i didn't answer within ten seconds i went to the call center and actually the call center has been great i think there's something that maybe gone wrong or there was maybe somebody had started and it wasn't going well had it.

Been great or was it just because of because of COVID situation that it was even if you was terrible at sales you still got bookings possibly yeah.

Yeah i mean that's that's a that is possible i mean the whole process that was working for me maybe it's about to start working again because it's just just demand one of the things i've always noticed from the very start of listening to your podcasts three or four years ago was when you talked about a good month i would have a good month maybe the next month or a month later if you talked about a bad month i would have a bad month a month or two later so i don't know whether the northern irish economy is just like a little bit later or something like the news just takes a while for the news to get there and then you know all this talk of recession just hasn't reached there yet i don't know what it is but i've always noticed that now maybe that's just my head but because of that i have a feeling things are going to get good in a month or two because because you've talked about how things have been.

Going well the past hasn't improved yeah.

But i don't know so i've changed the phone calls to my phone i've changed a few things on the website added a few new offers in and last week filmed some drone footage around which i'm going to use for some promotional stuff because i think a lot of people in the towns i'm in don't even know what self storage is and they maybe think of a barn or something like that so i wanted to show people actually inside and the quality but i'm going to try a lot of stuff i'm really only getting started and i'll see i'm just going to try lots of things at once probably so it's not a scientific experiment which i would prefer to do but having time just need to do piles.

Of stuff so dave welcome yeah hello i haven't asked you a question yet.

Well yeah but mate you don't have to ask me a question it's clearly obvious that gavin needs a consultant.

Someone.

Who knows what he's talking about.

No.

Okay look first of all this business is not easy you said it was easy it's not i think the last the COVID years i'm going to call them right everybody's got complacent i go to different places i was gonna say every day but two days a week i mean come on and people got complacent so it's a lesson to everybody this business not easy this business is not you know it may you know you can make a lot of money in this business but you got to work at it like it's like any business if you don't work at it it's it's it's going to drop off because your competitor will be working harder than you you and you know so that's that's probably the biggest lesson that you know i would say that people have got you know we've had a good time we've had record years ain't.

Gonna last forever so dave if someone comes to you and says dave dave i need your help occupancy's down i'm not getting many quotes something needs to change where would you where would you start what is the start where is the baseline for you data what's our.

Data well just you know the first thing is that people assume why you know the first thing that their occupancies are down they assume that you know vacates are high because you know you would look at your dashboard or whatever you look you're reporting and you think oh the vacates are high but you've got to have a look at the whole suite of data you've got to sit down understand the figures and then work out where the core problem is it might be vacates it might be new lets and until you know that you can't fix it is there ever.

A go to where you think that it normally is this or they're normally not selling correctly or the website's wrong or is it something that most people are doing incorrect.

Well it's interesting that gavin said that you know he listened to his call center because no one mystery shops themselves right so i go out every day and people tell me that the competitors are crap but you know what i know when i go somewhere is i know how good you are because i've misty shopped you not once not twice three times whatever so i've used your website i've called your store i've called your call center i know how good you are and i know how good you have to be because i know how good everybody in the area is because that's my job right so people concentrate on how good they are rather than how good they.

Could be i don't know if he's here in the audience he was here but ben holmes from attic actually sent me a message saying do you do follow up i'm like yeah of course do mate why he goes because you haven't followed up with me i'm like the fuck what do you mean i ain't followed up sorry what do you mean i ain't followed up and so i said what time when was it and it happened to be a fault with our website for whatever reason the quote didn't come through and it wasn't from restorer platform by the way it hadn't come through to our back end and so normally we're absolutely hot on our follow ups and it just goes to show that i thought we was good enough not to ever do a mystery shop myself well yeah but what.

Happens is that you put a process in i know because i've been there when you've done it you've done it right set the process up and then you expect it to happen and it quite frankly doesn't so unless you check on a regular basis or you follow up your team they're not going to do what you want they're going to do what they want so you know you can have a process you can put a process in but if you don't check it then no one's going to follow that process simple yeah so.

With gavin sykes melvin where would you start obviously we don't know the data we don't know we don't know the ins and outs of we don't know specifics but what would you look at for gavin's site now what advice would you give him would you say that we need to do more on pay per clicks would you go down facebook.

Route and don't be sending me a bill after now for this.

It'S okay trudy do that so yeah well look well look you just have to look at the data i mean the first thing you look at is the inquiry numbers because you know if you haven't got the inquiries you've not got a chance of doing the business have they.

Gone down gavin yeah we had so number of phone calls we don't we do we do track inquiries but the number i looked at was number of phone calls and they're way down probably about by two thirds so whenever i flicked to my phone about two weeks ago two and a half weeks ago i got call a day and i think three of them in a week and a half were inquiries so three inquiries in about a week and a half which is way down yeah so my inquiries are way down yeah do.

You ever look at the google analytics and the search term the amount of people searching for self storage in your.

Pacific town well what what i do search i do check the name of the towns put it on put it on self storage check that a lot i go and google it i don't use google analytics i just go onto google and my site is number one and number two so it's number one and then the facebook page is number two so we're ranking really well and also you know i speak to lots of store customers and i know that some customers are not as busy as they were but on the main people are still doing very well and so i know that my site has done a lot worse my two sites have been faring a lot worse than the average in the uk from the data i've seen so i don't i can't put my finger on it well look.

It'S all right being number one and number two on portadown self storage if anybody's searching porter down self storage now i don't know port down and i don't know i know it's in ireland that's about it right but the google analytics will tell you what you know the search terms so that's where you should be checking because you know maybe you've got a bigger town two miles away and people are putting that in i don't know but like you say the comfort of being first and second or either is no good if no one's searching it yeah one hundred percent.

And one thing that i think people miss as well in self storage is that and to be honest i've only just started doing this so we've got the biggest village in the uk right next to willoughby and so if you type in that village we don't come up how stupid why won't we create some sort of seo and have a page and it's only because of storefares because we're going to hopefully open in mansfield and store first are even in mansfield they're in nottingham but they ranked number one for mansfield i'm like why would i do that they're nicking my customers like oh yeah we need to be doing that and so many people don't do that there's a right content on the website to rank for local towns in their vicinity and you're missing out on massive traffic well sorry gavin.

I think two things i'm going to talk tomorrow a bit more about this but people spend hundreds of thousands you said two hundred thousand on a store people spend obviously a lot more than that and then they spend two hundred pounds a month on marketing.

Yeah one hundred percent and it gets me so frustrated when i listen to people and they say we've got a budget for our pay per clicks and i understand the budget first of all because we used to have a budget because our cash flow was terrible we didn't have enough cash flow so therefore when we first started we couldn't spend as much as we like on pay per clicks but if you know your numbers and you know that for every for every inquiry for for every move in we get it cost us around about one hundred pound on google but the lifetime value of a customer is like nine hundred and something pound that means nine hundred eighty seven pound so why would why do you stop the spend but so many people stop the spend and said you know what we got a budget of five thousand pound or one thousand pound whatever it may be but we just said you know what we've got we've got no limit whatsoever because now i'm in a much more fortunate position where i'm not just starting up we've got four sites now and so therefore we can spend more so dave going back to that then so you'd first look at the inquiries what's the.

Next step i'd just look at inquiries new lets vacates they're the three things because if you're getting the inquiries for instance if you're getting good inquiries and you knew lets are not coming through there's something wrong with your sales process or your inquiry management and if it's vacates then that tells you a different story why are people vacating and the answer to that is that you can't do anything about that so you have to up your marketing and you have to get the inquiry and the sales process the new let process working whatever you do because all about what comes in not what goes out so that's.

One of the things that i suppose we were chatting earlier about this like if i'm number one and number two and let's say that the number one lever you can pull for more customers is google ads is that lever available to me because i'm already number one and two do i also need to pay to be at the top of the page what is the leverage and pool because what i've seen is a lot of move outs and very few inquiries and very few bookings my feeling is that it's possibly just an economy thing maybe the area maybe it's you know maybe it's going to come back but i don't know it's a difficult.

One because you don't take physical inquiries they do or you call center yeah yeah well i think two things you already said your call center was disappointing you've said that the calls come to you now how good are you very.

Good yeah he's paying for tonight he's.

Paying for tonight i knew the answer to that i mean look how good are you how good is your sales process i mean look at the end of the day i don't know about porter down i don't know about the economy of porter down but generally across my clients so therefore you know i think i've got enough clients to understand the industry inquiries are flat at worst and are pretty good so demand is high i still think demand is high so the first thing i'd look at is you know if it's a new let issue it's probably how you're handling those calls and what and how your you know your sales process so someone.

Likes me we hide our prices behind an information wall what sort of conversions should we be hitting then so say on a normal inquiry over the internet what would you say that we should be hitting and then also on on the flip side if you show your prices online what sort of conversion rate should you be hitting then.

Well your conversion rate only reflects the inquiries that you log so you know look i have lots of there's lots of people out there who tell you they have a sixty percent conversion rate they don't they just don't log the inquiries simple.

You blow my mind then because i'm thinking holy shit because we we we do we do commission we do bonuses depending on on conversion rates and i'm thinking wait a second could my staff possibly not put down a quote i.

Heard i heard this a couple of weeks ago from some a big operator was telling me that they they've changed the process because they found that staff were not logging inquiries so look unless they were pretty sure they were going.

To close them so look sorry about this but look safe store and big yellow you know if you take that they have ninety percent of their inquiries online they're very sophisticated systems so they log every online inquiry that comes into a central server and then they send it out to the store so they probably have the most believable conversion rates given that ninety percent of their inquiries are online and they're going to be converting at twenty eight percent twenty eight.

Percent yeah wow that's so if you because for me if you display your price online i'm only using the american data because americans show the prices online they can't believe that we don't i mean that's obviously to get this point and they say that you should be hitting a seventy five percent conversion rate because two of the main objectives or egyptians sorry have been hit the price and the location and so they're they're conveying at seventy five percent so what would you say because gavin shows his price online what should he be converting at when he gets a telephone call because he's been saying he's been getting the telephone calls but he hasn't converted itself and so that maybe says that he's not as good as he thinks.

Well well look hang on everything's bigger in america right seventy five percent.

Really what would you say it should be.

Look put that drink down yes sorry.

You thought you could get a drink then didn't you.

Look seventy five conversions does that sound right to you i mean look look this is from a hat lady yeah yeah but the lady the hat lady god bless her right.

You dare slag off no no i.

Love it i love her and i love all americans and i'm very inclusive person right but but but it's a different market and i'm not sure i've ever seen a seventy five convert percent conversion rate but that's when you're showing.

Price online already so that the number one objection already so if they contact you then they already know the price they already know the location i don't.

Get that because if your competitor shows the price online it's exactly exactly the same across the board so i just don't get that i mean i'm not an expert on america you've spoken in vegas dean i have right that's an american salute so but i don't know anything about america so i'm not going.

To comment yeah it would it would only log you down as a as a quote if you actually contacted that person so even if it was like three or four people in that town or that city showing the showing the prices then they might only contact you because they've seen all the other locations prices.

Maybe but seventy five percent conversion just seems far too high just seems.

Outrageous so if it's twenty eight percent for email inquiries what would you expect telephone inquiries for then sixty sixty i'm.

Not very good at telephone sales i.

Knew that well no no i think forty percent i think a good i think if you convert forty percent on a telephone inquiry i think that's a.

Good level yeah i would expect a pretty high ratio on that so we've so we've talked about m two two things that you tell gavin is there anything else that stands out that you.

Would do well i think we've already had this conversation on linkedin is that the reason you have to look at the data is that if gavin now does multiple things changes his website changes his pricing changes his offer changes his deal whatever then you don't know what worked so where it's very i can't think of the word where it's very you know you want to go out there and change everything it's very difficult then to understand which one of those things made your worked or didn't work so you could waste a lot of money and waste a lot of effort.

And waste a lot of time so i accept that point but the issue i have is to do a test so let's say you want to do a test so i make one change every month for the next twelve months and i'm going to then test do an a b test on each of those changes the thing is i might go from ten inquiries a month to thirteen inquiries a month or from ten to seven and there's no statistical significance in those numbers there's no way for me to ever know which of those because that could just be the economy's becoming better and so that's why there's no reason for me to do one at a time whereas with stora now we've just hit one hundred customers on stora in the uk and we aren't at the point of doing this yet but we have enough critical mass there we've probably tens of thousands of website visits a day across all of the sites at that level we can actually try things on the storefront and change some buttons change some flows and we're going to be doing a lot of this later on this year and then those things we can do a proper a b test because we can we probably you know not as much as big yellow but we have tons and tons of traffic through all our sites and so we can do that and i think that's where we're at now where i think we can do tests but not on not on two little sites i just i can't see how that i could ever know so what.

Have you done on your two sites what have you done so far so.

So far i've changed the prices a.

Little bit down yeah i knew that.

I'Ve introduced free van hire which i knew from the past was very popular that's just from me talking to people on the phone people always seem to think it was a great thing and also i'm only i'm paying a hire company thirty or forty pounds a hire so it's really cheap and what else have i done i've turned on some facebook ads which have not worked so far to try and drive a bit of awareness that's it so far okay.

So look look so why would you lower your prices and then increase your costs so this is my point about doing more than one thing so look i'm not going to argue with either but i think that your issue and i don't know because i haven't seen the data and i don't know your stores but but look my experience tells me that it's a demand issue right so lowering your price will not increase your demand you either need storage and you'll pay whatever the price is or you don't need storage and certainly if i was working with dean today or another client i would be saying keep your prices high and introduce the free van hi if you know the free van hi was popular then but i wouldn't do both because they're both costing you does that make sense yeah good.

Point one hundred percent we're in so i've got a newsletter daily newsletter that i'm going to plug called mrcellstorage dot com and i tell you how pretentious and i tell you all my figures everything it's just i lift the cat and behind my business basically and one of the stories tips that we're coming out with in the next few weeks is about either what's better is it discounting or is it doing an offer and without doubt i've run through the numbers and without doubt it's well it's.

Not discounting is it it's not discounting.

No no and it actually dave taught you you taught me but i've actually run through the numbers to make sure you was correct and you was correct and it makes you doubted me yeah well i just want to run the numbers it makes a difference of like thirteen percent per unit size if i come in sorry thirteen percent per customer on average if they spend like the average lifetime value of a customer and so i think thirteen percent what's the.

Difference between the two the difference between in the discounting that you're giving so.

It'S so so i compared giving fifteen percent discount or four weeks half price because most people when when they're worried about their occupancy the discount more than fifteen percent maybe twenty percent or whatever and so i thought fifteen percent was a fair comparison i didn't want to go eight weeks because a lot of people do four weeks half up you know what let's do four weeks and so the comparison there is between four weeks half price and fifteen percent discount and by far and away the offer.

Is better well you know like dean if ever you've listened to mine and rennie's operation session on the ssa or the pricing session i have a saying i have loads of sayings you know that and it's like short term discounts never forever right so you don't drop your price you do a discount because you know whether it's two weeks four weeks six weeks eight weeks twelve weeks at some time that customer pays your full rate okay if you knock two pounds off of twenty pounds you lose two pounds every week that customer storing with you if you knock you know two pounds off for four weeks or six weeks or eight weeks then it obviously comes to an end and they pay full price so short term discounts.

Never forever yeah one hundred percent i'm conscious of the time we've got loads to get through one thing that you mentioned gavin was facebook ads you did facebook ads that didn't work i tested and tested and tested facebook ads because in previous businesses i've had i'm all over facebook ads because facebook ads are incredible targeting you can do you can get so precise that i was like facebook ads for storage nobody does it this is a winner and it just didn't work for my money it's because there needs to be an intent and if there's an intent you go to google and so if you're doing facebook ads you're branding and there's nothing wrong with branding but as long as you know that you've got the money to actually do a branding play where i don't have that spare cash so all my marketing goes to local sports teams charities etcetera and then eighty five percent goes to google what's your opinion dave facebook ads google ads where would where would you spend your money i have.

Two clients that swear by facebook ads out of thirty so it's got to be google for me you've seen the data does it actually well they tell me that you know they get all their they get you know huge new lets from facebook i'm not going to argue with them but for me you've got to have a good google marketing.

Campaign the one thing that works for facebook without a doubt is pixeling somebody so when they get a quote you pixel them and you can retarget them and so then your advertisement shows up on so you know that's a customer who's been to your website they're shown an intent if they're shown an intent then i don't mind spending money chasing them all over the website but they have to show an intent first of all otherwise for me it's just branding do you do any pay per clicks.

Gavin at the minute i turned it off about a year ago actually just when we were really full but that was just that was well hang on hang on hang on hang on you.

Don'T need a consultant however.

That wasn't because of that that's because we're already number one number two and so i thought well i can probably save some money here and not also be there but you know that's the thing so should i should i turn that back on maybe i should look i just haven't done that yet if you turn.

Your marketing off but this is google.

This is google paper yeah but that's.

Your marketing you know we look it's.

To be there to be three instead.

Of two okay so if you turn your marketing off you will not see any effect for two or three months and then it drops off a cliff so you know dean i know that probably from an independent perspective you you spend a lot of money on your.

Marketing i spend about sixty grand on paper clicks yeah at least yeah and.

Other people spend five hundred pounds a month right right so but but if you turn your marketing off if you turn your google spend off the sad fact is that it will bite you.

On the bum well i think i'll turn it back on then i was i was spending three hundred pounds you.

Haven'T already i'm going to go and.

Put it back on see what happens.

Should we take a break put it.

Back on should we have a wit.

Belt.

Yeah i mean yeah you know it seems so obvious but that's why i was asking earlier about whether it's worth me paying to be there again but you know but you know because maybe the thing is they're not searching for the phrases i'm searching for so i'm appearing for other stuff well that's.

Why you need your google analytics you need to understand seriously right you do need a consultant but seriously you need your google analytics you need to see what the search terms are and if people are searching put it down self storage or put down storage then that's not the issue if they're not then that clearly is the issue but but my advice generally would be don't turn your market off right you can you can tweak it you can tweak it up you can tweak it down you know when when the fish are feeding you put more in and when the fish are not feeding you don't you don't put as much in but to turn it off is a false economy and as i said you just won't see the effect for a period of time and then suddenly it's too late it's gone and you have to start.

All over again my last point or question i suppose in your facilities gavin is you mentioned something really interesting you mentioned the location you said that maybe it's you and the drone footage you said there's not a lot of houses around here not a lot of chimney pots maybe that's the reason do you guys think that locate so are you are you on industrial estate whereabouts are.

You positioned it's a very small industrial estate about a mile out of the town it's a really busy road so a lot of lot of passing traffic but it's yeah it's it's kind of industrial state surrounded by farms yeah i.

Think anyone listens to my podcast knows i'm all about locations i am in all about locations for me because you're future proofing yourself against what's going to happen not now but in ten years time because now i do believe the self storage can work back in my industrial state no problem but in america i mean masterminds in america for self storage and all they talk about is location location location location and they're like ten years ahead of us and so if i want a self storage going to be profitable in ten years time i want to future proof myself by making sure that we're in a we can't be you said the term when you was working with me out positioned you went down to my willoughby site and you said nobody can out position you so you are safe secure for the future because you can't be out positioned is that something that you look at dave when you're analyzing new sites the location would you advise somebody to start a self storage in a an industrial state no passing trade no passing.

Cars that's an easy one no i mean look we can't all afford big yellow or say store locations yeah you know that's the fact and you can't right but but that doesn't mean that doesn't mean that we can't find great locations as you say that can't be out positioned so you know if you don't want to be at the back of the trading estate because someone could come on the front you want to be at the front of the trading estate it's not it might not be super prime but the biggest issue you've got is being out positioned by a competitor so you know there's loads of considerations you know dean we've we've looked at many sites today many sites this you know our time together you've dropped.

No brainer mate fucking no brainer i've.

Never said fucking no brainer but anyway you you've dropped me off at many train stations late if you remember we ran out of petrol we ran out of fuel once but anyway enough about that but the point is look i.

Actually forgot my microphone today as well kevin said to me make sure you bring your microphone i'm like when i got here i was like i'm so sorry mate i forgot my microphone and.

We probably should tell him we had a planning meeting at four thirty didn't he didn't have a plan but never mind but i wing it but the point is look don't be out positioned so we can't have we can't afford super prime but don't ever put yourself in a position where you can be.

Out positioned and i think it's a good point i was whenever i took that second sight it was quite early on actually so we were speaking at the time about this kind of strategy around finding smaller towns and opening up sites in smaller towns did you give.

Me that strategy and we chatted quite.

A bit about it quite a lot and this second site i opened it knowing that it was a bit of a risk and it's quite a small town there really isn't very much warehousing there at all so it was going to be very hard to find a site and i actually thought i realized it wasn't a good location but i thought if this can work here if i can take this on and i knew it was a risk and if this can work then this can work in almost any there was twenty one towns in northern ireland i'd identified with the right population size so i kind of picked one of the harder ones early on as the second site because i thought if this can work i can rule it out everywhere i picked an easier one my first one was quite easy and the second one i thought well i'll go for a hard one and by the way it's still filling up it's just very slow and it's profitable it was profitable after a couple of months because we had somebody move into one of the big spaces there it's just it's just much slower to fill so it might still be a great a great one in the end but you're right though we could be out positioned eventually that's a risk.

That i have to take but i think look as i said before we you know most people in this room can't afford safe store big yellow locations and i think that smaller stores in smaller towns is where the opportunities are one hundred percent right but because if you get the right position in that smaller town no one's coming in yeah right because they can't better your position if you get a secondary position i don't know twenty five thousand thirty thousand population you know we've looked at loads of towns together you've got to have a prime location and then people will not come in and compete with you if you're in secondary position they will out position you and do well yeah.

This goes on to the next point about unmanned or manned and we went to did i take you dave to that trolley site charlie by the way it's i keep on checking rightmove and zoopla and everything zoopla whatever the other one is and i'm looking for a location all the time four thousand square foot next to was it five thousand square foot next mcdonald's absolutely incredible and again negotiations went wrong as soon as he knew us we put containers in the yard he wanted more money but i believe now with the manless sites with nokia technology i believe that you can open a manless site now and it opens up to so many more opportunities so you can open a four thousand square foot site in maybe a ten to fifteen thousand population town where before if you had to man it you couldn't do and so there's so many towns out there right now i was just talking to somebody before a thirty one thousand population no self storage and if you can just open a.

Site in there where was it we'd.

Do it well there's one in ashington just near newcastle they've got no self storage it's a growing town as well it's incredible there's opportunities everywhere and i keep every time gavin's on stage and i listen to him and he's talking about it something i text him afterwards saying gavin shut the hell up this is what we're doing but i just think that with manless sites it opens up the opportunity now to have a small site with limited square footage but also limited square footage give limited risk and that's what i love about it.

Yeah look i'm not going to argue against banless sites i think the key to self storage is how you handle the inquiry not whether your site is manned or not so you have some very good you have a great team who handle your inquiries for you you had a call center who were maybe not handling the inquiries so well so i've got clients with man sites i've got clients with manless sites but the key is how you deal with the inquiry so just because it's manless doesn't mean that you don't have to answer the phone and deal with the inquiry there's no such thing as as automated self storage in my mind right and not something i've seen work on a scale so whether you're manless or whether you're staffed you've got to have somebody with a great sales process handing you.

Inquiries gavin you see loads of data because obviously from storer what what do you see with a manless space is manned is is there any correlation can you see any stepping stones to success or do you see anything there what makes you decide what you would do next if you open a third site.

Well i think one of the things that's definitely changed since i started coming to these conferences four years ago is there's widespread acknowledgement that you can set up and run an unmanned or remotely managed site they've become way more popular here and i think in the us there's been in the us quite a bit recently as well and there's much more acknowledgement there that that's the future of self storage so while i completely agree in terms of handling inbound demand you want to make sure you give the customer the optimal experience and we've talked a lot about how that optimal experience is on the phone but if i look at the data from my bookings over the past three years a lot of that optimal experience isn't on the phone it's it's actually what happens on the website and how you handle that and how you handle the move in and everything else so one of the big changes now i think that i've seen is sort of the sort of general adoption of remotely managed sites are the way forward and i think as we move forward over the next five or ten years you'll see more and more of the big chains who might have five or ten staff maybe on site or something like that i think there'll be financial pressure over time for that five to drop to three or two over time i think that i think that's coming eventually but i think one of the things i think we'll see more of and you know i say this while also acknowledging in the past two months my site has had no not one well i said two bookings and you know nowhere near enough but you know at the same time you look across store and you know everybody's getting plenty of bookings but what i think we will see more of is and it's just bound to happen the move to online a greater and greater percentage of customers coming into self storage in the next ten years are not going to phone now that doesn't mean there'll always be people phoning but it's going to happen and so that's something that i'm much more focused.

On gavin yes i'm sorry to say i have to agree with you right jesus shit so look you know my kids if i ring my kids i get a text back saying dad what do you want right does everybody get that yeah right so so look whilst whilst we're not there now my kids are going to be the self storage users in the future so whilst i'm an old fud right and you know i don't think we're quite there yet of course we're going to be there in the future because my kids don't talk my kids text tick tock instagram whatever those things are i've no i bloody idea right but the point is is that you know i think that automation of course it's coming but it's.

Going to take some time though because yeah so if the average user in the uk for self storage between forty and sixty then you've got a hell.

Of a long time absolutely but it's coming it's coming but the point is you cannot i don't believe that you can open open a totally automated store even you've got call center however good or bad they are right you i don't think you can open an automated self storage center in the uk at the moment in america i'm sure you can because they're thirty years ahead of us and we're thirty years ahead of.

Europe everybody i speak to in america they've still got call centers they're still.

Getting of course of course because you then control the destiny of the customer.

Yeah in america that they're stating now at the minute and i'm only using i don't know basically aj osborne's mastermind he's saying that fifty and you've got to question the results because it's it's so split fifty fifty you know it's a it's a round number but he's saying fifty percent of his inquiries move in online without talking to him fifty percent need somebody else right so you've.

Got a call center yeah in willoughby that's what it is it's a story center but you've got three people there answering the phone four sites that's a call center right and you know ten.

Percent move in without talking to us.

We'Re nowhere near fifty percent right i think the the best client i've got with store a store client is he reckons he moves in about fifteen percent of his clients without talking to them but he's like absolutely he's absolutely on his own most people it's like not very many maybe five percent but i'm sure that will grow it will grow it will definitely grow but you still need to talk to your customer at the moment because they're not educated gavin.

Would you ever put prices behind an information.

Oh this is what i've been waiting for well probably well put it.

This way i'm not close to the idea that in some geographies depending on the competitive environment it may make sense.

Around us it's so competitive it may.

Make sense to hide prices i think there's you know there's advantages to that if everyone if people are used to funding around for prices and they see you i suppose your competitors could potentially take advantage of that open openness around the price but on the other hand i think there's an advantage as well so i think if you're if you're online looking for self storage and if you're the sort of person who doesn't want to have to phone somebody and is of a generation that does text their dad back and say what do you want dad i think there's a i think you're going to get those people are going to book with you because they don't want to have to call some other sites so i think there's pros and cons and to be completely honest i don't think anyone has the data and i don't have the data to say which is better i don't think there's ever going to be a final answer but i do and we've got plans for this this year to really start to really focus on this question what's the best way to sell self storage online what's the best way to facilitate that and ultimately make sure our customers who are using stora are maximizing their sales and maximizing their conversions and we're open to anything being the case so we are going to work and think what if it is better to hide prices what's the best way to build a system around that and then we're going to work and do some of that work to make sure that we can do it and then we'll also say well what if it's better to book online and to be really open with prices and we're going to try and optimize that more than we already have and then hopefully over time we can actually run tests and we might be able to eventually say on average it's better to do a or b but in certain geographies where there's more competition it's better to hide prices maybe for now i think that answer will also change over time because i think eventually transparency will win out your end customer has a better experience ultimately if they can just get the answer they want so if you start from that perspective.

Most people in the uk have never used self storage before they don't really know what size they need and so for the optimum customer journey then we need to educate them to the sizes because they have i mean even like i've been in self storage now twelve years and so i wouldn't know what because i'm not on the ground floor anymore and so i would struggle to know what would fit in one hundred sixty square foot room and so i would need someone to talk to me and if there's no if there's nobody i can talk to there's no telephone numbers nobody there to assist me then i don't think that is a good customer journey i think that's more confusing for me i.

Completely agree and for those people you should have a phone number and you should have somebody on the phone answering those questions one hundred percent as long as those people exist and you want them to be your customers you have to answer those questions so that's what we don't do well enough in my self storage business we haven't been doing that well enough and that's what we want to do better but there's a portion of those people there's a portion of people who i think there's a failure for the people who go to your website if they don't get the if they don't get if they don't understand that quickly enough it's a failure of the website it's a failure of messaging there like for example that drone footage that i filmed around my site that to me if i have never been in self storage center that within five seconds you know what it's like inside and our website could automatically run that video so when you load it up if you go to the website it could run that video you can flick through a couple of pictures a couple more videos and you should know you should get that answer within ten seconds of the website you should know what self storage is and what size of unit you need and if you don't it's a failure of the website but there's always going to be people and having taken these calls people ring me and say i'd like a price and the prices are on our site so they haven't even been to the site they've just gone probably on the google self storage put it on or whatever it is just call the number so for those people you have to answer the phone you have to take the time to explain it so i think you have to do both i don't at all think you should just kind of give up on one i don't want to talk for too long about this but there is also there's a guy in australia i know who's launched a new chain there he's one of the biggest investors in self storage even here in the uk he's building a storage chain there that is unmanned huge sites he has a qr code at the gate people turn up take a picture book online and move in and you know we started speaking about three years ago and his goal was i want people to turn up and move in within ninety seconds just from the gate and not have to call a member of staff and you know he's he's convinced that's the way forward and you know i think he knows what he's doing but then in australia it's also a bit more like america people know the know the industry and don't have the same questions australia is.

The second biggest market in the world right so i have a daughter lives in australia you'll be you won't be surprised to know that i spent this day in brisbane mystery shopping i don't know trudy was on the beach or something having lunch with the girls or something right the service levels were shocking right so it's no further advanced than us but look prices online prices offline i think it's definitely it's my business i'm having prices hidden because i want to talk to the customer because i believe that the customer doesn't know enough about self storage yet however i have you know over my thirty forty clients or whatever i've got clients who price online because they certainly they don't want to talk they don't want to talk to their they don't want to be involved they just want to fill their unit and make some money and it works i believe slightly slower right so look it's horses for courses i'm definitely into prices hidden you know get the detail ring the customer back follow up the inquiry all that but as i said earlier in another ten years when my daughter's forty you know it may be different so yeah there's no right answer but it's just moving with the times and i think that you have to give your customers the choice of the way that they contact with you price or no price and because i just don't think that they've got the confidence to buy storage like they would buy a telly or i don't know.

A deep factory hotel room i think it's quite a good comparable yeah yeah.

We just don't have they don't have the confidence they know what a two star hotel is they know what exactly the starring system but they don't know what you don't know what fits in one hundred sixty thank goodness you've got angela but but you know and james yeah and james yeah of course you mentioned james sorry james but the point is is that the customer just hasn't got the confidence at the moment yeah.

We'Ve tested both and we keep testing and testing and testing to make sure that because ultimately i want to i want to display prices because it's going to save me money in the future expansions for my staffing costs and so i've got skin in the game but i've got skin in the game of i want to show prices but everything that we've seen so far it suggests to me i know that gavin probably disagrees but showing prices behind an information wall so we can contact the customer and educate them is better however i know gavin's point is going to be well it's not it's not scientific evidence it's not a scientific test because it's not a versus b it's a versus it's a in december versus b in february you know it's completely different months and he's one hundred percent correct i can't categorically say but from what we've seen and the feel from me and the customer and the rest of the team we feel we've got more control if we speak to the customers look.

I'M not going to disagree with that i think speaking to the customer gives you the best opportunity but also if you don't want to speak to the customers i i think that you can enhance the revenue from your space your building your warehouse before it was making before it was doing anything else so when it was a warehouse it was making x if you turn it into self storage and you put your prices online you don't talk to the customers i think over time you're still going to make more money out of that.

Space yeah i've seen dave looking at his watch because he's got dinner plans.

I was thinking that we're probably getting.

Boring now and so just now and so my my last my last point before we open to any questions that you guys have is revenue management dave this is this is like your passion project talk to us about revenue management what mistakes do people make that they.

Think inquiries has something to do with.

Price increases and so even given gavin's situation now would you still do price increases.

Absolutely you know the answer to that so look price increases to existing customers have nothing to do with occupancy or inquiries simple it only has to do with you increasing your revenue or.

Not yeah and just to be clear me and dave started working together maybe four years ago was it something like that and he came to me said are you doing price increases yep yep doing price increases and he had a.

Look you weren't there were you no i was no no you weren't i.

Was i was doing pricing do you know why jim ross from the self storage show he consulted me he goes why are you doing price increases and don't get wrong it's only three months before but you said to me that people don't move out from a price increase and i was like what a load of rubbish this is of course people are going to move out and so he goes well test it so you give me the spreadsheet and said fill it in every single time you do a price increase and then look at when they move out and.

It'S.

Great no love it hang on let's have a big build up to this.

It was one hundred percent correct and people don't move out as much as you believe for price increases the last time and so now we have the data running in the background and so i only get only get alerted if it hits over a certain percentage but it was it's always it's never been over five percent five percent of our inquiries if any any more than five percent of our price increases if over five percent of them move out in within three months i get alerted to it and it just doesn't happen but so many people think that it's it's connected to your move outs your price increases but it's really not so we have a data point on the first month for seven second point and the third point we call par we think well if we move at that point it could they could have been moving out anyway and they just they just don't move out so the biggest and actually i was on the phone with you maybe two and a half weeks ago and i thought i was aggressive with price increases and you was telling me one of your clients is averaging a thirteen point seven percent increase or something like that i was like holy we do we do twelve percent and i think i'm i've been a bit unfair and so can you talk to everybody about price increases and how important it is to do price increases well.

First of all we have the lothians in the room from len lothian in scotland we track move outs four weeks and eight weeks after price increases and the percentages are zero in fact last april we had ten percent so we've got like two years worth of data and it's like zero or one two percent suddenly it rose for one month and then it's back to normal so who knows but it's tracking your data right so it is a bit of a ball ache having to manually maybe you know we have to check these are the people that we price increased how many moved out within four weeks how many moves within eight weeks it's a ball ache and you have to keep it up it's no good doing it for one month you have to do it for like twelve months or twenty four months or whatever because that data is absolutely priceless but you know me love a price increase and the great thing with price increases you only have to deal with the people who complain so if you if you put up two hundred prices dean at twelve percent how many complaints do you get.

We get less than five percent complaints but then you taught me that we just i'll tell you what we'll look into it for you we'll speak to the manager and so you make a big song you make almost like a play of it and then you ring them back and you say look we've spoken to the manager we don't normally do this however because you've been a good payer etcetera we're not going to give you the full twelve percent increase we'll make sure it's six percent and then the customers over the moon you've kept the customer and you've made sure that you've invested in that relationship that relationship that rapport is better well let.

Me tell you today what happened to me this morning i received my car insurance increase this morning this is a true story sorry to bore you insurance yeah car insurance and the car insurance they have to tell you what you paid last year on your insurance so i got this thing and it said your car insurance is seven hundred thirteen quid it's quite a fast car right seven hundred thirty and last year it was six hundred thirty four and i worked it out half percent so you know inflation is it but you know me i'm a shopper around her so.

You don't like price increases oh not.

For me no no no i love them because it allows me to fund my wife but but but but i'm not paying i mean i didn't say i loved price increases that much but okay so seven hundred twelve quid or something six hundred thirty four twelve so i'm a shop around there so i ring up my insurance company and they say well hello i can help you and i say they said oh would you like to renew i said nah no not unless we can do something about the price so i've got this price and i wondered if you could help me before you know i go and compare the market or whatever and they said oh yes mister davis sunday we can help you so they said you know look it's seven hundred and thirteen pounds have you had a quote from somewhere else i said oh yes i read a quote from saga and they said oh how much was that i said five hundred ninety three pounds had i had a quote from saga put your hands up if you think i had a quote from saga exactly i did not have a quote from saga i made it up five hundred ninety three pounds i have no idea where pound five hundred ninety three pounds came wrong it just came and they said quite mistake let me have a look at that and then they came back and they said we're just going to talk to our supervisor they came back they said we're going to do we could do five hundred ninety two pounds i said oh well i've got my credit card here thank you so i'd say nine percent on last year and twenty one percent on the deal bullshit.

Some practical advice from people out there really quickly then how many what percent would you increase and how often.

Would you do it right so i would increase a minimum of twelve percent at the moment right and if anybody complains i would offer them six percent.

How often would you when they move in set move in in the third month when would you start the price.

Increases so they move in i would normally expect a price increase at month six although i do have a client who does it at month three i.

Do one three but i know you're talking about because he made me do.

It he did yeah so but month six i think month six is fine you can do it because most people don't do it for a year so i think if i can get you to six months then you know i'm gonna pay my bills how much how.

Many months after that so i go.

Six months nine months and then twelve.

Months after that so every so six months in with nine and then every.

Twelve yeah yeah and if you if you if you're bold enough and brass enough and i don't think you have to be very bold do it at the end of your discount period because you've got to catch more people before they move out that's what my thought.

Is we do it three months after the move out then every nine months sorry after the move in yeah and then we do it nine months rolling.

Yeah okay well that's that's probably as aggressive as anybody does it yeah all.

Right before we wrap up does anybody got any questions we all know how expensive david davies is for his time so while you've got him here you might as well ask him some questions.

I will be wanting invoices.

So if anybody's got a question about anything to do with self storage hit dave or me or kevin what's your views on.

Dynamic pricing that's different to price increases.

Isn'T it that's price list well dynamic.

Pricing is usually where it fluctuates with.

Demand yeah that's price list rather than price increase what's your views view on dynamic pricing if it ain't bust don't try and fix it well you know look i think dynamic pricing is a good thing but i think it's overhyped because i think you know what all you're doing is you know if you've got a unit fifty percent it's one price and if you've got a unit at eighty five percent a unit size sorry it's another price i think it's worth having because i think that in this business every penny really does count because it's reoccurring so if you've got if you can if you've got a dynamic pricing model then great if you haven't you can make your own i think it's dead simple actually and i think you should be charging more for a unit size that's ninety percent occupied than one that's fifty percent occupied so i'm in favour of dynamic pricing i.

Really love dynamic pricing because why wouldn't you it's like an airline if you go out to book a flight you might be looking at this whole hotel this whole day and all of a sudden you come back two days later it's gone again because the occupancy on the plane is less and less and less so why wouldn't you charge more it's supply and demand so we always charge more we've just done so beverly my beverly set is ninety percent full now on our units now they're like fifteen percent dearer than there was this time last week why because we've got less available so if you want to move in we're going to charge you more because we've got the opportunity to charge you extra because our occupancy states that we don't have that many units available but not only that as well i would actually charge people we charge people more if you're closer to the lift if you're closer to the entrance because it's convenient people will pay for convenience and it's just that little extra two three pounds a week that can make a massive difference in your revenue.

Management yeah two things one the unheritable the unheralding the thing that people don't talk about the thing that don't talk about too many wines about dynamic pricing is that you're charging more for your fifty because it's ninety four but you can maybe put the customer into a sixty or the customer into a seventy five for a smaller differential so you can actually fill the unit size you want i think what you you're talking about about people you know units near lifts i call them premium units and so that allows you to always show your smaller your lowest price which is the twenty five at the back but you can then offer the customer the twenty five near the lift for maybe one pound or fifty p a week more and again it doesn't sound a lot but when it's reoccurring it's massive on your bottom line yeah and what.

We don't do is we don't want to confuse the customer because if you give the customer too many choices and they get confused and a confused customer doesn't buy so we don't say like we've got a premium room at this price and a normal standard room at this place we just list them all the same and when a customer comes in we always say oh by the way you can have a premium room in our vip room and the difference is it's close to the list they it's two pounds a week more whatever and so we tell the customer when they're coming in and they can upgrade.

Yeah i do this i do agree with that but i think that you can on the website just like you do with easyjet or something like that on a phone or hotel that you mentioned you can set fifty square foot basic fifty square foot premium you can actually get people to upgrade on the.

Website i think there's three ways i think ultimately you're talking about here is optimizing the revenue there's three ways to do it one is price increases on existing customers one is what's typically called dynamic pricing which is affecting your price and weigh in and then the other one which dean you've touched on there is are there upsells at the point of sale and actually i think this is for dynamic pricing one of the things that this industry hasn't done well yet at all is because it's dynamic pricing based off supply so you can alter the price based off you know how many fifties do you have that's pretty simple that's something we're looking at in store at the moment that's pretty straightforward so that's supply based dynamic pricing but then there's all sorts of other factors that go into dynamic pricing if you go to a hotel website for example they will know where you are geographically are you in a wealthy location what is your website traffic your website history are you likely to pay more for example are you using an amex card or are you using a prepaid debit card there's all sorts of different things for example let's say you have a customer in your self storage facility who's using a corporate amex card they're not going to be price sensitive at all so why not give them a thirty percent price increase for example versus a prepaid direct debit customer they might be pretty sensitive to ten percent price increase that person only should receive five percent so there's all sorts of dynamic pricing stuff that you could be doing beyond the supply stuff which i think is going to be really interesting in the future that i'm looking forward to working on and you'll see that with hotels and flights and flight companies and then for the idea of upsells showing we've just released sitemaps a couple of months ago letting people pick the actual unit and showing same way you pick your seat on easyjet which is i normally fly with you know you pay thirty quid if you want to sit in the front row for a half hour flight it's crazy but some people will pay it and there just as you said dave it's free it's kind of free money so you should really be doing that and my point was going to be because i've repeated most of the stuff you just said i think actually a web experience over time is actually able to handle those complexity of all that much more easily than somebody on the phone trying to explain prices as a person so if you build a great web experience to manage all of that complexity i think it will actually convert better because it'll be more straightforward but i think we're a.

Few years away from that yeah look i'm going to give you a plug at the moment because you know that i do have a number of my clients on store because i send them to you because i believe that you're the best system for them for various reasons and i think that in the main they're smaller independent less experienced operators and for me if you can give them you know if you can automatically raise their price for instance because they've gone before beyond a seventy five percent threshold or lower their price because they're thirty percent then that just enhances the product so for me data driven information for my independent clients is hugely welcome.

Just one thing about optimizing revenue what you mentioned you mentioned about decreasing credit cards if it's a company credit card etcetera in america what they do is they do price increases depending on your location so if you are located close to the site they will give you a smaller increase than if you are located away from the site that's the.

Wrong way around isn't it you can't.

Be bothered driving over to get your.

Stuff yeah it's a bigger problem for you to do it but and i was like oh yeah this could be amazing i can earn so much more money because i'll do on postcards i'm like you know that's a bit icky i didn't i personally feel comfortable doing that for whatever reason i thought ah.

Do you know hong kong was locked down during COVID and i was chatting to a hong kong operator and they checked they sent everybody an email at the start of COVID and they checked.

The.

They checked the ip address of where they opened the email you know what it's going and it's if they were out of hong kong and they couldn't get back one hundred percent increase it was a much higher what's an.

Ip address.

So have we got any more questions from anybody can we go.

Home yes i'm starving hopefully last question.

Just you said the premium on on.

The table close to the elevator st.

Stuff like that what about a premium.

In terms of access times so you.

Have eight to eighteen hundred for normal.

Customers and twenty four seven you pay premium yeah of course one i don't think you want people twenty four seven if you're inside but equally so i think that people get normal hours even if you have extended hours you could charge fifty p a week or a pound a week i mean really i'm talking small money here and if you want twenty four hours you can if you want twenty four hours you can say well that's two pounds fifty pence a week if you don't want it you say that's twenty pounds a week right so yeah i think that it's definitely another way in very small you know fifty ps but they're recurring income and that's where you make the extra.

Money we tried in the first up and we charged ten pound per week for sorry ten pound a month for twenty twenty four hour access and we had two out of maybe sixty or seventy people use it and so in the end i thought you know what i can give more of marketing this as free twenty four hour access than i can from people upselling people and so i use it as a as a hook as something that a usp that i like armadillo they can't do that because of what i don't know what the reason is on their their units but they can offer twenty four hour access and so we can and people don't use it because we looked at the log and we know that people don't use it but also if they do use it you might want to take a closer look at the people who are using it at three o' clock in the morning all the time but majority of times people don't actually use it but it's a great usp for me to sell it onwards.

Look you can mark it twenty four hours access but you don't have to give it.

Anybody else some more questions.

Maybe one or two more another five minutes or so wasn't such a question be pleased to hear there's more observation so you were talking about gavin was talking about having maybe five inquiries over the walls in a month so say you know say we have one hundred inquiries in a month we know that only five percent of them are for us but we still phone one hundred inquiries whereas you're only phoning five because.

We'Ve got the customer's telephone number not.

Suggesting one hundred of them will answer but we are phoning one hundred back so it's not the inbound call that's important it's our call outbound and i.

Think that's what you're missing i've never heard it put that either that is sums up perfectly and don't forget text as well once you get a number like ninety odd percent of text texts are open emails is only like less than twenty percent telephone calls god knows how many but so yeah you've got to utilize the customer's details i think.

That'S a great two one to us.

Gavin what do you think gavin his.

Microphones give up on him well i mean if the numbers were like that i would obviously buy my prices to get the one hundred leads i would argue that my website traffic is down quite a bit and it's probably more like maybe five versus ten so i think it's all pros and cons the way i see it is i want to focus on building the best customer experience what's the best customer experience for me it's giving them the information they need to make a quick decision and get them through the phone as quickly as they possibly can with a minimal of distractions even if their data is on grab your microphone so i suppose that's where i'm coming from and it may be that if i did that maybe i would get more customers and so i may well try it i don't think the numbers would be five versus one hundred but i'm open to the idea that potentially at maybe at tougher times especially as quieter maybe it is a better approach but i don't have the data to back that up.

Have you ever thought about doing one in one store and one in the.

Other store well to be honest as i said i spent about an hour a month on this until a few weeks ago so no but yeah it's.

Probably an interesting trial i mean yeah douglas you make an excellent point there about the follow up and i'm going to be talking tomorrow about inquiry management and follow up and i think it's you know it ranks in my top five tips so come along and listen but you know sorry i think that as we said earlier there will definitely come a time when people are confident to book online without talking to somebody it's just not right now but having said that as i said before i think transparent pricing or hiding it behind the gathering of information right at this moment i think it's horses for courses what do you want from your business you don't want to be picking up twenty phone calls a day or twenty phone calls a week so it suits you so i think it's very much each individual operator deciding what they how involved they want to be in selling their space i love this i can talk some storage all day we got to go i'm hungry did we say.

We'Ve got one more time one more.

One more hi guys good chat and.

This one's for dean mainly i was just wondering is that working i don't know i just wondering using space manager on your old stores and sora on.

Your new ones how are you getting.

On using both side by side oh difficult and are you considering moving over.

To sora moving the old sites over to sora or is it just the new ones that it makes sense where they're unmanned.

I don't think we've got.

Time for this one we're all listening oh oh hang on i'll be back.

Do you know what i was talking to stephen the other day from the sora team and he was showing me all the improvements store's got and i have one hundred percent no doubt that store will be the go to platform and don't forget stora has just come into the industry over the last two years and space manager etc have been around for ages and the one massive massive massive advantage that storer has over them apart from the payment you can do payments online is the look and feel of the platform it looks beautiful it's easy to see in a glance where if you look at i'm sorry for the space manager report people here but if you look at space manager reports they're so old fashioned and you've got it's like an old dos working computer it's just it's not you can't see what you want to see in a quick look however saying that the reports that i like if i'm being completely objective the reports that i like store and don't yet have however stephen was asking me they went through everything with me and says listen what do you need what do you want and i showed them all the reports that we get from space manager that i want and by the way whatever you guys get from space manager i get more because i've actually paid them to build me i must have spent twelve fourteen thousand pounds in the last year because it's i always say that if we're going to do it once then we might as well automate if we're going to do more than once sorry we might as well automate it and save time and so we paid them to do these reports that i get every single day in the morning we get reports as soon as the computer switches on i get a report as soon as the computer switched off at evening i get reports from every single location and so we've invested in it and so it's not and so space manager wouldn't have given me that unless i asked for it and so to answer your question if i was setting up now a manless site one man band i would one hundred percent use stora if i had five or six locations i would probably still use space manager and i think you probably i think you said to me that you was advising somebody who had like five or six sites and you were saying that it wasn't quite right for that person in that situation i feel like i'm plus six year active crushing so.

Look we had a discussion on the phone i was in edinburgh airport and you said to me how do i get bigger companies and look the real issue is that changing your software platform when you've got ten stores or twenty stores or whatever changing your software platform that's a big gamble right but but and you know i recommend stora to the clients i believe my clients that i believe stora is the right platform for and there's some i believe it's right for and there's some i don't at this moment but you're right it's all about the data it's having the reports that we can you know stora's got so many great attributes and i know that you're working hard on it you know it's getting those reports now i want it to tell me what i need to know so i can make the decisions that i can make using space manager but one advice i.

Give to gavin and gavin wouldn't they all want my advice anyway because i used to have a software company in the betting industry and my problem is that he who shall allow this added improvements for and it was ridiculous you should not do improvements just for one person you should do the improvements for the majority of people that's going to.

Benefit from it and you know that we've used some of your space manager development for one of my clients thank you but but equally so same thing this is a very well known system supplier and they they don't share that amongst their audience they they build it for you because you pay for it but yeah i want them to share it i wouldn't have a problem because.

I don't mind paying for it and give it to anybody who wants it i'll give the plug in for anybody and so i don't mind if they market it at all because it's beneficial to everybody so why wouldn't they they just build it for me and not used it which is and they're never going to have the discussion with me.

And you know someone you know gentlemen here talked about dynamic pricing these big operators should have a dynamic pricing model that they can give you not that.

You should pay for for us i mean i can't comment on other software there's some great products in the market our goal ultimately is to provide uk operators with the best software product that will help you to grow your business and we started we only launched our first customer on two years ago so it is still pretty still early and we're there's tons of stuff to come we're innovating as much as we can but our goal is to help operators to grow the business and that's what we just stay really focused on and we innovate we're just releasing tomorrow we're announcing the release of this new product called one minute move ins which is kind of everything you need to package up a non staff move in so somebody can turn up in your gate book pay id check contract and move in without anybody so we're just as focused as we possibly can on helping people build the best businesses that's where we're going and i hope two years in i think hearing you say we're a great fit for startups and kind of smaller operators is great and my hope is that in two years time what we're saying is it's a great fit for the large operators in the uk and outside the uk too that's where we're trying to take the business.

To we'll do this again in two years.

Right i think that's a ramen thank you very i need a toilet thank you so much because i i don't know how you guys have sat through this all because i love it except i've loved it but yeah i appreciate all the questions i appreciate your attention as well and thank you very much dave and thank you very much gavin it's been.