{"id":12395,"date":"2026-08-19T07:00:57","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T07:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/listselfstorage.com\/us\/industry-insights\/?p=12395"},"modified":"2026-08-19T07:00:57","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T07:00:57","slug":"are-underperforming-assets-a-market-or-execution-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/listselfstorage.com\/us\/industry-insights\/are-underperforming-assets-a-market-or-execution-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Underperforming Assets a Market or Execution Problem?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!-- VideographyWP Plugin Message: Automatic video embedding prevented by plugin options. --><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\" wp-image-12396 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/listselfstorage.com\/us\/industry-insights\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/facility-image-w-logo.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"249\" height=\"166\" \/>Earlier this summer, White Label Storage co-founder Peter Smyth sat down with Scott Meyers of Self-Storage Investing for a live webinar on one of the toughest questions in the industry: when a facility underperforms, how do you know whether it&#8217;s a market problem or an execution problem?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">And once you know the answer, how do you fix it?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">From due diligence frameworks to revenue management to how to read the market, the conversation covered a lot of ground. Here are a few practical takeaways from the session for any owners looking to improve performance.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=CK2Hm1qm_3U\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-size: large;\"><u>Watch the entire webinar recording here.<\/u><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: large;\"><b>1. Start With a Framework.<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">Before diagnosing any asset, owners need a repeatable way to look at performance instead of relying on instinct.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">&#8220;If you&#8217;re thinking about something or analyzing something and it can&#8217;t be described in a framework, then you probably don&#8217;t fully understand it,&#8221; Peter said.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">Peter uses a framework that breaks facility performance into four buckets:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">marketing<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">customer service<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">maintenance<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">and revenue management.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">Scott added NOI as a fifth bucket, noting &#8220;we&#8217;re looking at not only topline revenue and how to manage that revenue, but how do we keep the expenses down.&#8221;<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">That structure became the backbone for the rest of the webinar: at every step, the question isn&#8217;t &#8220;is this a good asset?&#8221; Instead, what owners should be asking is &#8220;what would a competent manager be doing here, and are we doing it?&#8221;<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: large;\"><b>2. Most Underperformance Is an Execution Problem.<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">One of the boldest claims of the webinar came from Scott, who&#8217;s spent more than 20 years teaching self storage investors. Assuming an owner did real due diligence and bought in a reasonably healthy market, he said underperformance almost always traces back to the operator, not the market.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">&#8220;All things being equal in a decent market, if your facility is not performing, then it&#8217;s nothing but an execution problem,&#8221; Scott said.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">He went on, describing the execution gaps he\u2019s seen most often: &#8220;You&#8217;re not keeping an eye on your rates. You don&#8217;t have a digital presence, you didn&#8217;t train that person, and then you took your hands off the wheel.&#8221;<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">It&#8217;s an uncomfortable truth for owners to hear, but Scott was clear that it&#8217;s also the more common (and more fixable) explanation. Blaming the market is easy. Fixing execution takes work, but it&#8217;s within your control.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: large;\"><b>3. Physical Occupancy Isn\u2019t the Best KPI.<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">Don\u2019t treat physical occupancy as the ultimate scoreboard. High occupancy doesn&#8217;t always mean strong performance; sometimes it just means you bought your way there.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">&#8220;Extra Space pioneered the method of just getting people in at any rate and then treating them as test customers using ECRI,&#8221; he explained. &#8220;It does not mean strong performance. It may mean you&#8217;ve bought a lot of that occupancy with high <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitelabelstorage.com\/blog\/how-much-should-you-actually-spend-on-self-storage-marketing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><u>marketing spend<\/u><\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> through discounts, concessions, and high ad spend.&#8221;<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">The lesson for operators evaluating their own facility or a potential acquisition is to always look at <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitelabelstorage.com\/blog\/physical-vs-economic-occupancy-in-self-storage\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><u>economic occupancy<\/u><\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> over time, not just the snapshot on today&#8217;s rent roll.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: large;\"><b>4. Answer the Phone. It\u2019s Important.<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">Customer service is where small operational gaps compound into <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitelabelstorage.com\/blog\/how-much-revenue-do-self-storage-facilities-lose-from-missed-calls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><u>real revenue loss<\/u><\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">Peter pointed to concrete call center benchmarks: &#8220;We need to pick up 80% of our calls in 20 seconds or less, and we need a 95% pickup rate. If we aren&#8217;t hitting those KPIs, then you&#8217;re going to miss leads. Your conversion rate is going to go down.&#8221;<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">Scott added a more personal take on why this matters, describing tenant retention as one of his biggest pet peeves: &#8220;We spend all this money and we spend all this time getting these folks in here. Just take care of them. It doesn&#8217;t take that much. There&#8217;s no reason for them to leave if you take care of them, other than they just don&#8217;t need the storage anymore.&#8221;<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: large;\"><b>5. Don&#8217;t Wait on ECRI After a Renovation.<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">When you upgrade a property, don\u2019t forget to upgrade your rates to match is a recurring problem.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">&#8220;If people are truly turning a facility around, they have an opportunity to push rates higher, but they continue to increase rates to the same level of where the facility sat when they bought it,&#8221; Scott said.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">If you&#8217;ve added security, resurfaced the lot, or fixed deferred maintenance, your rates need to reflect the new, improved asset, not the property in its previous condition.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: large;\"><b>6. Know Your Numbers, Then Assign Responsibility.<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">Scott closed the session with a mantra that summed up the whole framework: if you&#8217;re the investor and operations isn&#8217;t your forte, don&#8217;t wait around hoping problems fix themselves.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">&#8220;If you&#8217;ve got an execution problem but you&#8217;re not the person to solve it, then stop, figure it out, and then find who&#8217;s going to be able to be responsible for those numbers.&#8221;<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">Whether that &#8220;who&#8221; is a new manager, a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitelabelstorage.com\/categories\/self-storage-management\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><u>revenue management tool<\/u><\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">, or a third-party operator, the point stands: performance problems don\u2019t magically fix themselves. They get fixed by someone taking ownership of the numbers.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: large;\"><b>About the Author<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><b>Zach Watson<\/b> is the Senior Content Manager at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.listselfstorage.com\/us\/vendors\/profile\/White-Label-Storage\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><u>White Label Storage<\/u><\/a>, a leading storage management company. White Label Storage currently manages over 300 facilities across 43 states.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lato, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><b>Source<\/b>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.listselfstorage.com\/us\/vendors\/profile\/White-Label-Storage\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><u>White Label Storage<\/u><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this summer, White Label Storage co-founder Peter Smyth sat down with Scott Meyers of Self-Storage Investing for a live webinar on one of the toughest questions in the industry: when a facility underperforms, how do you know whether it&#8217;s a market problem or an execution problem? And once you know the answer, how do you fix it? From due diligence frameworks to revenue management to how to read the market, the conversation covered a lot of ground. Here are a few practical takeaways from the session for any owners&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":12396,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,21],"tags":[],"gutentor_comment":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/listselfstorage.com\/us\/industry-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12395"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/listselfstorage.com\/us\/industry-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/listselfstorage.com\/us\/industry-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/listselfstorage.com\/us\/industry-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/listselfstorage.com\/us\/industry-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12395"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/listselfstorage.com\/us\/industry-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12397,"href":"https:\/\/listselfstorage.com\/us\/industry-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12395\/revisions\/12397"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/listselfstorage.com\/us\/industry-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/listselfstorage.com\/us\/industry-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/listselfstorage.com\/us\/industry-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/listselfstorage.com\/us\/industry-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}