THE PREMIER MULTIFAMILY EVENT IN THE MIDWEST!
Schedule
VIEW THE 2023 SCHEDULE BELOW
The Midwest Multifamily Conference is for apartment professionals who want to level up their career, community & connections. Whether you’re a leasing professional, regional supervisor, property owner, or maintenance professional, you’ll find an education track tailored to you.
Keynote Presentation: Choose to be Remarkable
The usual. It’s conventional, operating within the established norms. It’s predictable, delivering the expected. It’s comfortable, maintaining the status quo. It’s…safe! But the usual will never be Remarkable!
Remarkable means notably or conspicuously UN-usual. It is living life and doing business in such an extraordinary way that people “remark” about it. And when you inspire others to the point that they are telling your story, then you indeed have become Remarkable. Don’t ever settle again for living life or doing business as usual.
Participants will:
1. Learn the three elements that drive a Remarkable culture.
2. Experience the power of collaboration.
3. Embrace three questions that ensure a Remarkable customer experience.
4. Gain practical principles for building healthy team dynamics.
5. Be challenged personally and professionally to be Remarkable!
Sponsored by:
Top 5 Things You MUST Do To Close the Sale! An advanced leasing seminar
• Phone skills (i.e. open ended questions, finding common ground, humor and more). If you don’t elevate your phone skills, you will never get them in the door!
• Shopping your competitors. If you don’t know what’s out there, how can you upsell what you have that they don’t?
• Learning how YOU are the one thing that can set you apart from your competition!
• Rapport Building is 90% of any sale! How do I build connections with a total stranger?
• Soft ways to ask for the sale with no pressure for the prospect.
Sponsored by:
Finding an Extra Hour Every Day: Time management tips & tricks for busy professionals
In this popular program on “finding an extra hour of productivity” every day, Randy Dean, MBA, “The E-mail Sanity Expert”®, uses humor and high energy as he goes into many of the most common areas of productivity loss (and possible gain!) afflicting many busy professionals today: dealing with e-mail and input overload, managing multiple projects and tasks, maintaining “traction” when dealing with unexpected interruptions, clearing the clutter in your mind and your workspace for better focus and attention, keeping staff on task, tracking “who owes you what when” and getting that information on time, and better managing your calendar and contacts for better time and relationship management. He also shows specific strategies for Microsoft and Google users in this session so they can apply the overriding strategies to the software they use every day. His goal is to help stressed out performers learn several new and immediately useful strategies and tech tips for finding a few minutes on your daily tasks, activities, and actions, leading to (hopefully!) at least an extra hour of productivity every day.
ASPIRE: Authentic Self + Professional Image = Real Engagement
ASPIRE is the only formula you need to boost your career and your life! We explore what living as your authentic self means and how to elevate your professional image. We work in groups to develop and practice an elevator pitch for each student, discuss how to approach others and be approachable for everything from CapEx projects to turning a lead into a lease, and most importantly how to find satisfaction and comfort in all of your professional relationships. This unique and inspiring course is a must for Supplier Partners too! ASPIRE to reach your highest level of engagement and success. CEC qualified for NAA credential holders.
Sponsored by:
10 Steps to Starting New Hires Off Strong
Hiring is hard. When you finally find that new team member, don’t blow it by botching their onboarding experience. Data shows that one-third of new hires don’t even make it to the 90-day mark, which indicates there is significant room for improvement in how we’re orienting and onboarding new team members. If you’ve been burned by a new-hire flaming out before they even made it through a season, you may be reluctant to get too invested in your newest team member. That’s understandable, but it’s also a huge mistake. In this session, explore the most common mistakes hiring supervisors make when welcoming a new team member—and what you can do differently.
Sponsored by:
It’s All About The People! Finding your inner superhero
We all have our strengths (our superpower) we just need someone who cares enough to find it and channel it.
• Finding ways to always motivate your staff so that they continue to take care of the residents, prospects and each other.
• How to actually get positive reviews and how to respond to those that are negative.
• Customer service stats that have dwindled due to the pandemic – have we become lazy?
• Building rapport and making that great 1st impression so that when we are short staffed or we are overwhelmed, our residents are more forgiving.
Sponsored by:
The Power of Gratitude: Keeping your team happy and engaged
Gratitude is the gateway to everything good in an organization. When gratitude is present everything the team and customer experiences is better, but when gratitude is absent or lacking it opens the gate for bad things to take root. While we talk about the “great resignation” and “quiet quitting” we ignore what’s causing these issues. A big part of it is a lack of gratitude in the workplace. It is felt by the team and the customers! Nothing we talk about in this session will cost you money, but it will require your time, attention and awareness.
1. Understanding the residual effects of your conversations.
2. The power of perspective.
3. How to develop a deeper connection with your team.
4. A different kind of transparency.
5. The secret to praise.
Sponsored by:
Taming Turnover: Top tactics for multifamily talent retention
Excessive employee turnover has long been an operational challenge for rental housing companies. In today’s uncertain economy, it’s especially hard to hang on to top performers. Wouldn’t you like to know what it takes to make people stay? We’ve analyzed the candid responses to thousands of apartment industry employee satisfaction surveys to spot the turnover trends. Join us to discover what factors have the greatest impact on an employee’s likelihood to stay with their company — and how to drive down turnover on your team.
Transforming Customers Into Cheerleaders!
A guide to exceptional Customer Service, this interactive class offers tools and techniques for establishing relationships with all types of clients.
Audiences will come away with an understanding of:
• Different behavioral and communication styles
• How to apply active listening
• How to handle upset customers
• How to have uncomfortable conversations that result in better understanding of the customer’s needs
• How to set clear expectations that avoid future customer misunderstandings and upsets
• Creating experiences that surpass expectation
The result? Your clients becoming your biggest cheerleaders, boosting your production, sales, and overall success!
Sponsored by:
Lunch
Lunch and networking.
Trade Show Floor Open
Unreasonable Customer Service
Everyone of us is a customer and we all experience poor customer service on a regular basis. When we experience great customer service it really stands out because it is so rare. Why is it so hard to find great customer service? Far too often the customer is viewed as “unreasonable”, but what if we decided, as the customer service provider, that we would be “unreasonable” with our level of service? What impact would that have on our business?
Unreasonable Customer Service explores the root cause of failure in our customer service efforts and how to make it an experience that the customer will never forget. This will require you to do some things differently, but none of it will cost you big dollars to deploy. This session promises to deliver on award winning strategies for customer service that will have your customers raving about the experience!
Sponsored by:
Find Success by Focusing on What’s Essential - The Principles of Essentialism
It’s been quite a ride this past few years, and no one knows for certain when or if the ride is going to end. A few things we’ve learned however are:
1. We can’t rely on external forces take care of things, let alone our businesses.
2. Reliable sources of information are the high value currencies.
3. Our businesses have survived with strong leaders that have been focused on just a few essential things that truly create value. – Which is the main focus of this session
High performing organizations and leaders have an amazing ability to sort through all the noise and identify the most important goals and tasks which they choose to place all their effort and energy. This high impact, interactive session will help participants identify those truly essential behaviors that add value to their personal brands and ultimately the organizations in which they serve. What are your highest value tasks and behaviors? Are your efforts scattered in all directions or laser focused on what really matters? How do you measure your impact vs. your good intentions? What can we do to create new habits that will allow us to do more or what matters and less of what does not? Where are you wasting valuable time and energy on things that really do not move the needle in your business or your life? Participants will leave this session with a renewed sense of energy and purpose that will empower them.
Rock That Role - How To Level Up With Confidence
Whether embarking on a new role, new promotion, or a new business, change can be terrific and terrifying!
This highly energetic and interactive session will offer inspirational tips, proven strategies, and immediately applicable tools to help you Rock That Role!
Audiences will learn how to:
• Identify and vanquish self-sabotaging thoughts and habits
• Overcome fear or apprehensions about starting something new or leveling up
• Formulate a strategic growth plan
• Effectively leverage resources to help bolster success
• Face transition with greater confidence
Managing and Leading Great Staff & Team Meetings (Including Virtual Meetings!)
Well-managed meetings are highly effective tools for keeping people and teams informed and productive, but they don’t happen by accident. Unfortunately, many teams and organizations report far too many unproductive meetings causing a drain on productivity and staff morale. Businesses and leaders need to make sure that their meetings are effective, productive, and consistently create value for the organization. If you are a leader that wants to plan and run more effective meetings using the least amount of valuable staff time and resources, this program provides you with the tools and strategies you need to plan, manage, lead, and end effective, efficient meetings. And, with the new rise of virtual tools and meetings due to the coronavirus outbreak, we will also cover several tips and strategies for making your virtual meetings work better and create value. Finally, this program has a few fun and interactive exercises, including a fun tutorial on how to run a better, more focused brainstorm session!
Open for Supplier Hospitality
How to Stop Worrying and Start Living: Top 10 principles to help you live and work happier
You’ll learn the top 10 principles from How to Stop Worrying and Start Living to help build confidence and resilience, reduce imposter syndrome and reduce stress. Learn the importance of mindset on our happiness, relationships and work. We see how these principles help us connect better with our team and perform better as well as improve our wellbeing and work life balance.
The Perfect Turn
Turning apartments is hard and labor intensive and far too often the resident moves into an apartment with a list of missed or pending items and that creates a bad experience. This session will teach the audience how to have a perfect turn every time. From the front door and back nothing is missed! Learn the art of the perfect 100 score apartment.
Invite Them To Your Party: How to ask for the sale after a tour
What happens when someone tells you about a party they are throwing and then they don’t invite you? If you are like most people, you don’t go to the party without a direct invitation.
This workshop focuses on the critical skill of inviting your prospects to your “party” by asking for the sale after a tour. Using improv techniques, participants will practice asking for the sale and experience why this is so important. We will discuss different ways of asking, and practice how to ask with ease. Participants will leave with the confidence to identify buying signals, create a positive selling environment, and directly ask their prospect to lease with them.
Why Talent Matters – Attract & Retain Top Talent
Now that we have firmly entered the Post-Covid Economy it’s clear that the rule book and expectations of our team members has changed permanently. A new type of employee, no matter the generation requires an entirely new type of leader. This is exactly why Talent Matters and investing, nurturing, and growing that talent is only way to attract and retain the high performers you desire.
While some time-tested attributes of high performing leaders have remained intact, the modern definition of top talent and leadership is being written as we speak by a new generation. How you coach and train this talent around the fundamentals of Leadership Agility and being able to flex in the moment to meet the new demands of the modern workplace is the difference between surviving and thriving in the new economy.
This High energy, high impact session will discuss the most current trends of the why talent matters and how leadership agility is the new workplace superpower.
Key Session Take Aways
1. What are the new attributes of high performing leaders and teams?
2. Define leadership agility and the impact on our teams and organizations.
3. How has your organization adapted to the needs of a post covid team members to attract and retain the best talent?
4. How are your leaders managing the enormous amount of change in the workplace?
5. Action steps to train, retain and sustain top tier talent and leaders.
If you are growing tired of the constant churn of the revolving door in your company, take a look at what Executive Coach and Leadership Consultant Tim Furlong has learned about attracting Top talent, the benefits of Leadership Agility and how it can help transform your workplace.
Maintenance Job Description Re-design and Retention
What if you could change you Maintenance Job Description, compensation model and duties to retain these invaluable team members longer? This session will be an exploration into current job descriptions, industry expectations, existing market conditions, and tips for finding and hiring maintenance staff. Delve into this creative and insightful session and leave with action items to turn your maintenance turnover into tenure!
Sponsored by:
Soft Skills/Customer Experience: Bringing humanity to your insanity
What if you could continue through 2023 or launch into 2024 having an exceptional
team with exceptional attitudes toward the customer experience? It’s possible! Join
Steve Wunch, a professional facilitator in Leadership, Sales and Customer Service as
he unveils the process of recognizing the differences in each person’s “story” and how
to give them the best customer service possible.
We will look at some key (probably already known) elements:
• Emotional Intelligence
• Covid – How Much Has It Changed?
• Who is Your Customer?
• Your Attitude is Everything
• Easy Concepts That Help You Humanize Policy & Procedures
Steve brings home some truths we probably all know – but may have forgotten – with
humor and grace and guarantees that if you pay attention – you will take something
home that will transform you results AND your relationships!
Connecting the Dots Between Employee and Customer Retention
The rental housing industry has long been hyper-focused on delivering exceptional customer service, earning positive resident reviews, and driving down resident retention, with good reason. Resident turnover is expensive. There’s only one problem with our approach: our efforts aren’t working. A look at resident turnover data from the NAA shows us that in spite of our efforts, the industry’s average turnover rate has held steady for a decade or more. Maybe we’re not investing enough attention to the other part of the equation…employee retention. In this session, get to know the Service Profit Chain, which explains how and why employee and customer retention are so closely linked.
The 3 Cs of Multifamily Sales
Sales techniques are too often overcomplicated with steps and required skills. Today, a successful seller only needs to do three things to close a sale: connect, collaborate, and commit.
In this interactive workshop, participants will learn the definitions and techniques of The 3Cs and have the opportunity to experience the impact through a variety of improv exercises. This workshop provides sales professionals with a unique and engaging way to develop their interpersonal skills, improve their sales performance, and enhance their ability to connect, collaborate, and commit with their prospects.
Lunch & Awards
Trade Show Floor Open
Operational Risk Management (ORM) and Multifamily Properties
Whether it is safety and security, environmental, or financial risks, each multifamily property is a hotbed for actual and potential risks. A failure to understand basic operational risk concepts along with basic strategies to identify and control risks can lead to organizational ineffectiveness, poor customer service, unnecessary physical harm, reputation damage, low employee retention, and fiscal losses. This one-hour session introduces basic ORM concepts, terms, and processes and includes a 30-minute exercise. Attendees will learn 1) methods and strategies to identify hazards, vulnerabilities, and threats to multifamily properties, 2) how to quantify and qualify the associated risks, and 3) how to develop and implement risk controls and risk mitigation strategies. Attendees will be encouraged to adopt a slightly more pessimistic attitude toward the properties they manage, meaning, they will learn the power of asking two vital questions: “What can go wrong? Why could that happen?” Ultimately, attendees will leave this session with a better understanding of the basic skills required to thoroughly identify and prioritize operational risks, leading to higher organizational responsiveness and effectiveness and thriving multifamily properties.
Sponsored by:
Promotion of Maintenance Professionals
The next step in maintenance team members’ development? Promotion! Everyone agrees maintenance professionals are essential to the apartment industry. So how does a maintenance tech go from doing work orders to supervision? This session will explore that question by analyzing the existing skillset of technicians and the needed skillset for the change into leadership. Learn how to understand what is needed in order to transition to the next level within a maintenance career and how promoting your own maintenance teams will also help with the acquisition and retention of team members AND residents!
HIP HIP HOORAY! I Love Living Here! Retention through events and how that can market your community
• Event ideas on-site and otherwise.
• Session Breakout for ideas to share amongst all.
• How do we get them to attend events?
• How to best market the events to make them successful and worth it – (i.e. modern message, drawings, etc).
• Acts of Kindness – healthy for the soul of your teams and for your residents/community.
The Peace Index
It is for anyone that wants to discover how to “Conquer Chaos and Find Fulfillment.” The session will walk us through how to determine what areas of your life may be causing you stress and how you can make changes to ensure the best outcome. It’s a tool from a leadership program I teach and I have fallen in love with it while coaching and mentoring executives in our industry. The beautiful thing is, it’s truly for anyone in the organization that wants to find fulfillment in life!
Top 10 Principles to help you Win Friends and Influence People
In this session you’ll learn 9 principles to coach people from How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie. It’s the # 9 best-selling book of all time on Amazon for a reason: these approaches to handling people have been proven by millions of people around the world.
You’ll learn a 4 step process to handle mistakes and improve performance in others without arousing resentment or crushing people’s confidence. You’ll build trust as a leader and have the diplomacy to handle difficult people and situations.
Inspection Readiness and Preventative Maintenance
Who is coming to your site? What will they find? How can you prepare? Whether its HUD, OSHA, your local inspector, bank lender or those pesky corporate types, this session will give you tips and tricks on how to make sure your community is always inspection ready no matter when it happens or by who. This session will discuss the best way to inspect our properties quickly, effectively, and completely in a way that can be tracked and used for ongoing maintenance budgeting, repair protocols, and replacement avoidance. This course will take you through proven processes for making the most of your inspection time and future resources. Understanding inspection readiness and preventive maintenance is more than just knowing its definition. It is about practice, patience, and due diligence.
Sponsored by:
Rapport Building with Prospects
Are you ready to discover new ways to build rapport and transform the prospect experience? If so, this workshop is for you!
In this hands-on session, we will discuss the fundamentals of rapport building and practice your technique through a variety of improvisation games. These games will provide participants the experience of connecting with prospects on a deeper level, building trust, and learning to respond authentically. Participants will leave with the tools they need to improve their skills, enhance their connections with prospects, and create atmospheres that will help them stand out from competitors.
Maintenance Executive Social Hour (MESH)
Awards Dinner Reception
Midwest Prodigy Awards Dinner
Join us at the JW Marriott for the annual Midwest Prodigy Awards Dinner to celebrate the best of the best in the industry.
Open for Supplier Hospitality
