Hudson McHugh associate director and head of business development Rocco Colosi told PM/ONE delegates that lost property management leads aren’t dead – they’re simply waiting for a call in three months.
That’s the counterintuitive play Colosi shared on stage at PM/ONE 2025 in Sydney.
Working across the ultra-competitive Inner West, he said he has built a repeatable process for turning initial rejection into revenue.
“Unlike sales, once the property is listed, it goes to auction, sells – it’s done. It’s gone,” Colosi said.
“As a BDM, you have the opportunity to win that business back.”
The 90-day rule
Colosi described his method as deceptively simple: log every lost pitch, set a reminder for 90 days, and make the call.
He told the audience his script focuses on service, not the hard sell:
- How did the leasing campaign go?
- Have you had your first routine inspection yet?
- Is your compliance up to date?
- Are there any maintenance issues outstanding?
- Is the communication meeting your expectations?
“Sometimes people are sold a service they don’t quite receive,” Colosi said. He argued that these calls often expose gaps – missed inspections, slow updates, or murky compliance – that create immediate switching opportunities.
Sales discipline, PM cadence
Colosi credited his career zig-zag – from chasing debt at American Express to servicing ultra-high-net-worth Centurion cardholders to eight years in residential sales – for shaping the service mindset he now applies to property management.
“Premium clients expect value in the experience, not in discounts,” he told the room.
He said this translates into frequency and hyper-responsiveness.
“Most of my landlords will hear from me almost every single day when they’re in the market,” Colosi explained.
In practice, he said that means daily bullet-point updates during a leasing campaign, same-day replies, and proactive fixes before problems snowball.
Colosi added that he borrows the consistency of sales prospecting – think hundreds of weekly “touches” – and applies it to PM growth, without drowning in spreadsheets.
He noted that a junior BDM on his team tracks every conversation and follow-up religiously; by week three, that discipline had already converted multiple new managements.
Case file: Summer Hill turnaround
Colosi also shared an Inner West case where a Summer Hill property had sat vacant for months under another agency.
When he took over, he said he reset the campaign and, over 42 days, exchanged dozens of emails with the Ireland-based landlords.
According to Colosi, he arranged removalists, sourced more affordable storage by looking beyond the immediate area, and leased the home in just 12 days.
The point, he told the audience, wasn’t heroics but process. Every friction point – furniture, storage, timing, tenant profile – was owned and resolved quickly.
Controlling the decision
Colosi told delegates that one of his most underrated questions for prospects is, “How will you choose an agency?”
More often than not, he said, the response is, “I don’t actually know.”
He explained that this moment lets him set the criteria: transparency, cadence, compliance, turnaround times, and accountability.
For high-value rentals or multi-property owners, Colosi said he sometimes has his principal, James Price, phone the same day to thank the owner for considering the agency – no matter which way they decide.
Colosi says that it’s a warm leadership touch competitors rarely match, and that it signals depth of service from day one.
The bigger lesson
Colosi told the audience that for PMs juggling today’s portfolios while trying to grow tomorrow’s, his framework can serve as a pressure release valve.
His advice: stop treating lost pitches as failures. Start treating them as delayed opportunities. Track everything in a simple sheet or CRM, set a 90-day callback, and build a cadence of proactive, premium service.
“Three months after you ‘lose’, your competitor might be dropping the ball,” Colosi said.
“That’s your cue to pick up the phone.”
