Utz Property Management is a rapidly growing property management company in Maryland, managing single family homes, condos, and HOA’s, as well as a remodeling and maintenance division. 

Jenni Utz, the owner and founder, knows the pain of a growing company and the need to streamline internal systems.

“For the longest time, the property management world was a lot like the wild west and we didn’t have a lot of technology. It was Quickbooks, spreadsheets, etc. And here in Maryland you don’t actually have to be licensed to be a property manager...so that’s one of the things that sets us apart - actually knowing what we’re doing and having clear defined systems in place.”

The first thing Jenni was looking for was a tool to help streamline and automate the business development process. She quickly found success with LeadSimple’s CRM and lead nurturing tools.

“I knew that in order to grow, not everyone is ready to sign a contract immediately, so you’re going to need to nurture them and that’s the one thing that I didn’t like nor did I have time for.” 

“The problem was I was the one following up on leads and basically I was so busy that if they weren’t signing right away I didn’t follow up with them because I didn’t have time, nor did I have something easy in place to just do it. So this has been great. It’s taken me out of that role at this point; someone else is doing it and it's still the same process.”

The next logical step was to streamline the rest of their internal processes into one centralized place.

“I will say that I was a big proponent of having processes in place, and spreadsheets and checklists and things like that on that side. So we had a lot of different excel sheets and different trackers and things like that, templated letters that were just saved in our drive. So we had a lot of things but then it just got so overwhelming we probably didn’t even use half of them anymore because they were just all over the place. One might have gotten outdated and there might be another one created by someone else and it just got to be too much.”

Now, LeadSimple is their single source of truth, with templates and instructions for every task involved in each process.

“There’s so many different things that it gets very overwhelming for someone, so having LeadSimple in place to say, yes, it might be overwhelming, there’s a lot of different programs and different steps here and there, but go to LeadSimple and it will guide you on what you need to do.”

Getting team buy-in was a bit of a challenge at first, but once everyone got on board and the initial work was complete, the team started to see the impacts of streamlining their efforts to drive more results.

“I would say that, just like everything else, you’re going to have a learning curve [and] it’s going to take time to learn it and to do it. And that’s what I was telling everyone in the office was, ‘Yes, it’s taking you longer to do things right now because you’re getting it all together, but the amount of time you’re gonna save down the road for every single task that you’re doing is well worth this time that we’re putting in up front for it.’ And it really has. It’s exactly what I thought it was gonna be.”

“I think that there’s so many things that a property manager has to do to make sure they are fully protecting the property, the owner, that the tenants are taken care of, maintenance and all that stuff. I mean, you’re juggling so many things so if you can take some of those things off your plate and have them automated and know that they are being done properly, it allows you then to spend more time communicating, building the trust with additional investors or the current ones, helping them figure out the value of their property or if they want to buy more.”

“[Being] able to track things and to have it done consistently across the board has been a huge value add for us and I would definitely do that again.”

Do you find yourself in a similar situation to Jenni? Sign up for a free trial or schedule a discovery call with us to learn more!