Keeping Up with the Joneses
How Well Do You Really Know Your Competitors?
Keeping Up with the Joneses: How Well Do You Really Know Your Competitors?
A practical framework for auditing the self-storage facilities in your market
By Camille Broom
Ask most self-storage operators how their facility compares to the competitor down the street, and you’ll get a general impression — a sense of who’s cheaper, who’s newer, who seems busier. Ask them for specifics — current unit mix and availability, how their phone team handles an objection, whether their online rate matches what they quote in person — and the answers get vague fast.
That gap is a problem. Your customers are not operating on general impressions. They are actively cross-shopping you, often before they ever pick up the phone, comparing prices, unit features, cleanliness, and online reviews across every facility in their drive-time radius. If you don’t know exactly what they’re seeing at each of those competitors, you can’t tell them why to choose you instead — and you lose the chance to save them the trip and win the rental on the spot.
Knowing your competition isn’t optional, and it isn’t something you do once a year before a rate review. It’s an ongoing discipline built on five components: defining your true competitors, physical visits, virtual audits, phone shops, and turning all of it into action.
Start With the Right Market Area
Before you can shop competitors, you have to know who actually qualifies as one. A simple geographic radius is easy to draw but imprecise — it assumes every direction from your facility is equally accessible, which is rarely true once you factor in highways, rivers, or one-way corridors.
A drive-time zone is more accurate: it maps how long it actually takes a customer, in normal traffic, to reach your facility from any given point. Rural customers generally tolerate a longer drive than urban ones, but a 10-minute drive-time zone is a reasonable default for most markets. Tools like StorTrack will generate both radius and drive-time maps along with competitor detail layered in; free options like Smappen and Travel Time can build a drive-time zone without a paid subscription. Once the zone is set, rank the competitors inside it by proximity and comparability, and start your shopping list with the closest, most similar facilities first.
Physical Visits: Two Approaches
The friendly, announced visit is the simplest starting point: walk in, introduce yourself as the manager of a nearby facility, and see what happens. When the other manager is open to it, this is your best chance to ask questions you can’t answer any other way — occupancy, unit count, expansion plans. Not every manager will be receptive, and that’s fine; the key is leading with information, not just requesting it. Sharing a relatable observation, or offering to refer business you can’t accommodate yourself, tends to open doors that a cold ask won’t.
The incognito visit is more involved but often more revealing. Because it only works once per manager, send someone the competitor won’t recognize — an assistant manager, for instance — and treat it like an internal mystery shop: note whether the office was open, how you were greeted, the employee’s appearance, whether a tour was offered, and the property’s cleanliness, maintenance, and visible security. Pay close attention to sales skills — did they create urgency, ask for the rental, and attempt to overcome an objection you raised? And note not just what they have, but what they’re missing compared to your own site.
Virtual Visits and Reputation
A competitor’s website reveals rates and specials, unit mix and availability, move-in fees, and how smooth their online rental process is. From there, check how they show up in search — including AI platforms, which are increasingly part of how prospects find and compare storage options — and audit their reputation on Google and Yelp: star ratings, review recency, and customer-uploaded photos, which tend to show unit condition and cleanliness more honestly than marketing photography does.
Because rates and specials change frequently, a single website check only captures a moment in time. A rate-tracking service such as StorTrack allows ongoing monitoring, so operators learn about a competitor’s rate change or new promotion as it happens rather than after losing a prospect to it.
Phone Shops
Calling a competitor’s number as a prospective customer tests something a website audit can’t: live sales skills. Was the call even answered, and was it a call center agent or the on-site manager? Did the greeting include their name and the company’s? Did they ask qualifying questions and control the conversation, or simply wait to be asked for information? Did they help create a mental picture of the unit, confirm the caller had reached the correct location, and attempt to close — either booking a reservation or asking for the rental outright? Raising an objection, such as mentioning a specific competing facility by name, is one of the most useful tests: it shows whether the team can handle real-world pushback or simply moves on.
Turning Research Into Action
The final step is the one operators skip most often: applying the same evaluation to their own facility, then comparing the results side by side. Where are competitors stronger — price, features, location, reputation? Where is your facility stronger? Is there a rate discrepancy between what a competitor quotes online, in person, and over the phone? Inconsistent pricing across channels is a common finding, and one that can help you gain insight into true standard rates, variances, and promotions offered.
Done consistently, this process does more than inform pricing and marketing decisions — it sharpens the sales skills of everyone who participates in it. Frontline staff who shop a competitor and watch an unfamiliar manager smoothly handle a tough objection often bring that technique back to their own sales conversations. Compiling findings into a shared binder or spreadsheet — features comparison, rate comparison, notes from each visit — keeps the information usable rather than anecdotal, and some operators go a step further, sharing a curated version of that comparison with prospects directly in the office.
The Bottom Line
Self-storage operators who treat competitor research as a one-time exercise are making decisions on outdated information in a market that changes constantly. Building it into a regular routine — mapping the real market area, visiting in person and incognito, auditing online, phone shopping, and comparing the results against your own facility — turns competitive awareness from a vague impression into a concrete operating advantage.
Ready to Put All of this to Work?
Packed Planet’s Revenue Pro service was designed specifically for self storage operators who want enterprise-level pricing performance and competition monitoring without sacrificing operational independence.
Revenue Pro combines automation, competitive market intelligence, and dynamic pricing strategies into one powerful platform – helping facilities maximize revenue while staying agile in changing markets. Please reach out and let’s discuss.
Camille Broom
Business Development Manager
Packed Planet Self Storage Solutions
