"We're looking for quantifiable results," Klug said. "We want to see the value before we start to talk about the price. The [lower] price alone shouldn't be the No. 1 value presented."

She said case studies are valuable and can help to further conversations.

Klug spoke of an instance she's run into lately when a vendor is brought on with great promise, only to find that their staffing wasn't as sufficient as it needed to be to execute on the promises they delivered for a full portfolio.

"Once they come on board, it can become a 'Be careful what you ask for' situation," she said. "It might start out as a small, pilot program and work just as they told us it would, but then when we choose to roll it out at many more properties, the vendor needs to have the bandwidth to deliver the product at that level."

When a product or service is chosen, Klug said, it is typically tested with a pilot program at a small number of thoughtfully selected properties within a select portfolio. The results are monitored closely on a weekly basis for a predetermined time frame.

Subject Matter Experts Vet New Products & Services

There are at least a dozen facets of apartment management and there are supplier partners to serve them, but there's no one person who can reasonably assess all incoming offers, she said. 

Greystar has established subject matter experts in given operational areas such as software, technology, maintenance supplies, etc., "and they are used to vet specific products that we might be considering," she said.

No matter how promising the product appears or tests out to be, there are still challenges to gain approval from senior-level management, especially if there's integration involved. 

Klug said that, for example, there's a drip email campaign software tool that she was interested in and tried out to great success. "But approving it for integration takes many steps with many people," Klug said.

"My colleague who was pushing hardest for it created multiple slide decks for presentations to show its worth. Based on her analysis, without the product, we estimated it could cost thousands of dollars to get the results that this new product could deliver. With that product, we determined it would only cost $250 per month per community. A no-brainer."

Klug said it took months for the full vetting and approval.

"Our company and our industry had gone through this process of pivoting quickly during the pandemic because we had to," she said. "But things don't always move that quickly now."

One factor was that Greystar had changed to another property management software system recently and was going through that adjustment, so the hesitancy to add this new tool, in part, was that it was one more thing to have to bring on board, she said. 

Company Portal Welcomes Supplier Partners

In Greystar's case, it has a portal on its website where interested suppliers that want to be considered to work for it can register and propose new products and services. 

Klug said Greystar also has had success by visiting companies at exhibit halls and networking with companies at industry events.