Are you hiring the right people?

Some of the best people I’ve hired in multifamily had absolutely no multifamily experience.

And that was intentional. Over the years, I’ve hired people from strong retail sales environments — including people who had been trained by companies like Dillard’s — because I wasn’t always looking for someone who already knew our industry. I was looking for someone who knew how to sell.

Someone with drive.

Someone who could connect with a customer, ask questions, listen for what mattered, handle an objection and confidently ask for the sale.

We could teach them multifamily.

We could teach them the software, Fair Housing, policies, procedures, lease terms and how to complete the paperwork.

What is much harder to teach is the instinct to recognize: “There’s an opportunity here. How do I move it forward?”

I think multifamily sometimes gets this backwards.

We tend to hire leasing professionals with an operations mindset and then try to teach them to sell.

But one of the biggest challenges our industry faces isn’t generating interest. It’s converting it. Look at your shops. The barriers to converting are consistently objections and closing—and they go hand in hand.

A prospect says the rent is too high.

The apartment is too small.

They don’t like the location of the available unit.

They want to keep looking.

They need to “think about it.”

Those aren’t necessarily the end of the conversation. They’re opportunities to learn more.

What are they comparing us to? What matters most to them? What is really keeping them from making a decision?

That’s where great salespeople are different.

They don’t hear an objection and immediately accept it as a no. They get curious.

They know how to create urgency without creating pressure. They recognize buying signals. They ask the next question. They know when to stop talking and listen.

And when the opportunity is there, they know how to move it forward.

None of this diminishes the operational side of multifamily. Leasing professionals eventually need to understand a tremendous amount about operating a community.

But when we’re hiring someone whose primary responsibility is to turn prospects into residents, maybe industry experience shouldn’t always be at the top of the list.

Some of my most successful hires didn’t come to me knowing multifamily.

They came knowing people.

They came knowing sales.

And they came with the drive to learn everything else.

Maybe the better interview question isn’t, “Do they have multifamily experience?”

It’s, “Can they identify an opportunity?”