The 3-Step Leasing Framework That Actually Works

The year is 2022. Shea and I just closed on our first self-storage deal. We had the acquisition dialed in: off-market sourcing, cold calling, direct mail process, underwriting system, all of it. But we had zero clue how to actually fill the units.

We knew the concept: clean it up, kick out bad tenants, install marketing, lease at market rates. Easy, right?

We’d both just read Who Not How. So instead of getting in the weeds ourselves, we hired a regional GM from a legit operator. She promised she’d install the marketing and leasing process, no problem. Three months later, nothing. We parted ways soon after.

We then went with a reputable third-party property management company. They do this every day, we thought. Three months later, same story: no real process and no predictable results.

Finally, we dove in ourselves, and within a few months we had a working system. After we built that system ourselves, we hired a team to execute it. The lesson: nobody can build your leasing process for you. You have to do the work, document it, and then delegate the execution.

Brokers and PMs are great at execution once the system exists. But expecting them to create your process from scratch is where lease-ups get delayed. And when deals stall, your partners start asking: 

“Why is leasing taking longer than projected?”

Here’s how you actually build a leasing process that scales, whether you run it in-house or hand it to brokers.

Three Conversion Points

Leasing breaks into three conversion points:

• Create Leads (getting eyeballs on your space)
• Convert Leads to Appointments (qualifying and booking tours)
• Close Appointments (signing leases)

Most operators skip straight to hiring someone and hoping it works. That’s the mistake. You need to do it yourself first.

Create Leads

Run ads yourself for two to four weeks on Facebook, LoopNet, Crexi, and similar platforms, posting at least five ads per week. Track everything, and do it all yourself: the photos, the copy, the floor plans.

After 10 to 20 total ads, pick the two winners based on the best cost-per-lead and inquiry volume. Once you have that template, you can hand it to your broker or in-house team and they can innovate from there.

Document Everything

Take 50 or more conversations and 100 or more DMs yourself. Record and transcribe them all. Find the pattern: what questions close, what objections come up, and what gets people to actually book a tour?

Here’s our online lead script, under 100 words:

“Yes, it’s available. What business are you in? New or existing? Great. The smallest unit is $3,500/month. What’s your budget? How many square feet do you need? Perfect. My number is [XXX]. What’s yours?”

From there, we move to the phone for deeper qualification. Once you’ve done 50 or more conversations, you’ll have your script. Then whoever executes, whether a broker or team member, can follow it.

Close Appointments

Go on at least 10 tours yourself and record every one. Document your closes, draft your lease template, and build out your objection handlers, especially if you’re converting a gross quote to NNN.

Track your conversion metrics at every stage:

• Cost per lead
• Leads per week
• Appointments per week
• Appointment-to-lease ratio

Once you know your numbers, leasing becomes predictable math. If five tours typically equal one signed lease and your marketing generates leads at $40 each, you can reverse-engineer your stabilization timeline and figure out exactly how much it’s going to cost you per deal. Just dial up marketing spend and hold your team or broker accountable to those KPIs.

That’s the “aha” moment. Leasing isn’t an art. It’s a process you can operationalize.

Why This Matters

When you tell your partners “leasing is taking longer than expected,” what they hear is: “We don’t have a system.”

But when you can say, “We’re running five tours per week, converting at 20%, and we need to increase lead volume by 30% to hit our 90-day target,” now you sound like a savvy operator.

Start Building

The main difference between operators who hit their projections and those who don’t comes down to one thing: building the process yourself first. Create your leads, document your conversations, track your closes, and then hand it off. Once you have the process, you can delegate execution to brokers or run it in-house. But you can’t skip building the system.

The operators who stall are the ones who try to delegate before the system exists. The ones who scale are the ones who did the work first, documented it, and then handed off the execution.

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