Brian Phelt with ForeFront Property Management found that, as the company grew, things were falling through the cracks.

“As we started growing, things would fall through the cracks. It’s easy at fifty or sixty doors, then you get to a hundred or a hundred and fifty, and if one person has to remember everything, then it becomes chaos if that person’s out or they forget. So I wanted everything to be uniform as far as the experience that the end users receive.”

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So Brian started looking for a solution to help document and track his team’s tasks and processes. The first solution he chose was HubSpot; however, he ran into issues with the software not being specific to property management, as well as the cost of HubSpot.

“And then, upon looking further, [we chose LeadSimple], not only because it had a better price, but it’s built for property management companies, whereas [with HubSpot], you have to take something that’s built for mass marketing and retrofit it for property management.”

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When asked how LeadSimple has made a difference for ForeFront, Brian highlighted multiple benefits:

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💯 A 50% reduction in calls from owners through automated communication at key points

‍“The fact that there’s built in communication in our processes makes it super easy. Owners are notified when an application comes in, if it gets approved or not approved, and when the lease is signed. Those three little touch points right there reduce our call volume by 50% from our owners. Which is what you want; we’re still communicating, but I don’t have to answer the same questions. …So now we can advertise that we do communicate well, and we do, but it’s just automated.”

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🏖 Reduced stress for the team

“If somebody’s out, the fact that we have visibility to see their tasks and we can complete it if we need to. I think that’s the [best] part, because it just brought everyone’s stress level down, knowing that there’s automation of what’s the next step.” 

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🎯 Short onboarding time for new team members

“We went from one remote team member to two, and the learning process was maybe two days. All they have to do is just follow tasks. We just simply assign a task to them, they perform the task, and then they click off that it’s done. The wheel runs a lot smoother having it for sure.”

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💪 Key support for remote team members

“I would say the number one thing for me is that we have two remote team members in Mexico. …The one week when we [weren’t using it] because we had a switch of property managers and she was just getting used to using the system, everything fell through the cracks. So task management for them was key.”

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With well documented processes, the whole team stays on track without stressing about remembering what’s next.

“We’re relying less on remembering how to do something, and if I find myself or a team member trying to do that, I just direct them to LeadSimple. It’s easy when things are very busy and chaotic, for people to go into panic mode: “Did I remember this, did I remember that?” This is what we paid for: this is why we have the system.”

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They are seeing great results with owners through having consistent communication built in automatically into their processes.

“I will say my favorite part is when owners reply to the automatic emails and they’re thanking us for keeping them in the loop. I’m not remembering to do it, it’s just the system says, “press this button” and we do it, but we look like the hero.”

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Brian had some advice for other companies looking to structure and streamline their processes:

“I honestly would tell them, reach out to another LeadSimple user and see what they’re doing. …And then the key on the implementation would be, just do the work that you get each week, because whether you’re doing multiple processes or just one process, the only thing that’s going to hold you back is if you don’t do the work. The sooner you get the work done, then the sooner you can get the processes up and running.” 

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Brian also mentioned how important his involvement in the project was to help get his team on board.

“The proof has to be in the pudding with the leader; they have to use it as well. So I’m one of the bigger users, as far as I go and I look at what people’s tasks are so I can ask them why. That’s what I love as an owner, visibility wise. I can pull up individual tasks per owner, per person and ask why there is a bottleneck here.”

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When asked whether he would choose LeadSimple again, Brian answered:

“Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I don’t have any buyer’s remorse with this switchover at all. It was, I would say, painless. The meetings were structured, with the way everything was set up, the homework you were giving us. It’s not too much at one time, but I would have used it sooner; if I had known it existed sooner, we would have started this a lot earlier.”

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