“If it’s not a hell yes, it’s a hell no.” – Yovonne Kenny

When I first met Yvonne Kenny, it was clear she wasn’t just selling a bathroom product, she was solving one of the most painful bottlenecks in leasing: the shower. From her days scaling Preferred Floor & Tile into an eight-figure business to her latest role with Palisade ACP, Yvonne has made a career of understanding how operations, aesthetics, and timing all intersect when it comes to turning units and retaining residents. Our conversation was a masterclass in what it means to sell not product, but performance.

“The resident experience is the priority because if you don’t have happy residents, you don’t have residents.” – Yovonne Kenny

The complexity in single-family rentals (SFR) and build-to-rent (BTR) properties is real: multiple trades, unreliable labor, long dry times. Yvonne’s product, a groutless, waterproof wall system reduces install time from five days to two or three, dramatically accelerating make-ready timelines and minimizing disruption in resident-occupied homes. But the product itself? That’s not what gets buyers to say “Hell Yes.” It’s the outcome: reducing the average age of open work orders, avoiding resident churn, and enabling teams to lease faster. That changed how I think about my own sales pitch. If your product isn’t tied directly to KPIs, you’re just another vendor.

“We don’t sell showers. We sell lease-ups.” – Yovonne Kenny

This was the turning point. I’ve always believed in connecting our product to outcomes, but Yvonne’s framing was next level. Showers are an invisible component of the leasing process until they’re broken, delayed or outdated. Her product doesn’t compete on finish or flash; it competes on time. On the ability to show, lease, and move in so the cash register rings again. That realignment from selling features to selling velocity has made me revisit how I explain what IRCX does. We don’t sell AI maintenance software. We sell closed tickets. Fast turns. Lease-ready units.

“The number one source of churn is controllable. And it’s maintenance-related.” – Yovonne Kenny

Every operator knows this. When maintenance delays creep, churn follows. And yet so few sellers make this connection. Yvonne does it instinctively. She speaks the language of operations: average work order age, unit readiness, cost of trade complexity. She doesn’t start with product specs unless the buyer asks. And that’s another insight I took with me: technical buyers want specs. Operational buyers want time savings. And leadership? They want less churn and higher NOI. Aligning the message to the audience is the difference between a “maybe” and a “when can you start?”

“We gained market share because we were willing to do the things our competitors wouldn’t.” – Yovonne Kenny

What made Yvonne’s approach stand out was how she engineered simplicity into complexity. She didn’t stop at offering a better product—she redesigned the process. Her previous company even added lockbox swaps to unblock flooring estimates. Why? Because that solved the customer’s problem. That mindset removing friction wherever possible is what I try to bring to our own platform. Whether it’s making integrations easier, or adding automation to triage, the real win isn’t just in features. It’s in the reduction of operational drag.

Here’s what I’m taking with me from this conversation:

• Your product’s primary value is not what it is, it’s what it enables. In Yvonne’s case, that’s faster lease-ups and happier residents.
  
• Time, not price, is the true differentiator. Buyers will pay more to save days, especially at scale.
  
• Every alternative has trade-offs. The best sales conversations help buyers choose the one that aligns with their risk profile and KPIs.
  
• You’re not competing with just similar vendors, you’re competing with the way things have always been done.
  
• “Objections” are often invitations to collaborate. Frame them that way and you stay on the same side of the table.
  
  

In a world full of vendors selling features, be the one who sells faster lease-ups. Be the one who earns a “Hell Yes!”