5 Ways to Stay in Touch With Real Estate Clients After the Sale
Do you want your real estate clients to keep coming back to you again and again? Real estate agents need to employ good client retention practices, and the first rule of thumb is following up after a home sale. Never assume that the job is done after the sale – not if you want those clients to use your services again. Stay in touch. Follow up. Don’t let them forget you.
Buyers and sellers want to use the same agent for their next real estate transaction. According to NAR, 88% of buyers say they would use the same agent again.
So how do you make sure that they call you the next time they are moving? Communication. You need to keep yourself top of mind with your clients. That doesn’t mean you should email or call every day. Chances are they won’t use you again if you bombard them. Instead, aim to send them some sort of communication, be it by email, phone or mail, just a couple times a month.
If you want to ensure that your past clients don’t fall into someone else’s sphere of influence the next time they need to move, realize that the job isn’t over after you make the sale. There is an art to following up, but it’s not complicated. Here are the best strategies and practices for following up with your real estate clients.
1. Send Your Real Estate Clients a Survey After the Closing
Let your clients settle into their new home first. If you send them a follow-up the same week they move, chances are they will be too busy to give it any attention or respond to you. However, a quick five-question survey about three weeks after they move in is exactly what you want to do. This two-to-three-week time frame is the sweet spot because it gives your clients enough time to get comfortable in their new home so that a survey won’t seem like a chore. If you wait too long to reach out, a survey won’t seem as urgent anymore and they’ll be less likely to engage.
Include a personalized note at the top of the survey congratulating them and then ask for some feedback about how they thought the sale went and if they were satisfied with your service.
In most cases, your clients want to hear from you and will be happy to send you feedback.
2. Reach Out to Your Real Estate Clients on Their Birthdays and Anniversaries
Sending Christmas cards is a popular way for real estate agents to stay in touch with their clients. In fact, it’s a common practice for many businesses, so your card or flyer can easily get lost in the shuffle.
Be a little creative when it comes to mailers. Send a housewarming card and small gift. Send your past clients a card for their one-year anniversary in their home. No one else will remember that but you and them. You could do birthday cards and even pet birthday cards – anything with a little creativity that will set you apart from other business’s mailers is a good way to get their attention. Be sure to make everything you send personalized. Hand-write your cards, use their names instead of a generic, Dear valued customer, and try to put a personal anecdote in there if you can.
3. Be a Real Estate Resource to Your Clients
More than anything, people will come back to you if you position yourself as a resource to your clients. Be a one-stop shop for everything they need related to their home. Once they move in, be there to provide names of landscaping businesses, plumbers, electricians, roofers and more.
Follow up with something relevant to them every so often. You could send notices about home sales in their neighborhood, information about mortgage rates or new developments in their area such as a movie theater or mall. Your past clients will recognize your expertise and want to hire you again because of it. Also, being a resource of helpful information is much more effective than looking like a hungry salesperson. People see through that act. They want to feel like they are hiring an expert who also has their best interests in mind. So personalize everything and offer updates and advice.
4. Get Your Real Estate Contacts in Order – Otherwise Known as Your Sphere of Influence
You have no idea how many people you’re connected with who are moving or know someone who is moving until you get your sphere of influence organized. Your sphere of influence includes your friends, family, current and past clients, neighbors, and everyone you’re connected with on email and social media.
All of those categories combined leaves you with a huge pool of possible real estate customers. You should be reaching out to these people and making sure they know that you are not only a great agent but also a trusted resource for everything related to their home and moving.
5. Tons of Agents Are Utilizing Automated Real Estate Newsletters to Stay in Touch
You can stay in touch with your sphere of influence by sending out your very own automated email newsletter. Real estate email newsletters are one of the easiest and most effective ways of staying in touch with past and potential clients. Your newsletter can offer advice about buying a home, home improvement tips or information about your own listings.
An email newsletter is a soft approach to keeping in touch with your sphere of influence while offering them useful content about everything related to homes and moving. It’s also one of the best ways to position yourself as a real estate resource and stay top of mind with new and existing clients.
However, you will never be able to reach these individuals without organizing your sphere of influence.
A Real Estate Marketing Opportunity Awaits
Real estate agents are always on the move, so it is understandable that you might not have time to organize all the contacts you have in Gmail, Yahoo, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and more. HomeActions provides a twice-monthly automated e-newsletter to everyone in your sphere of influence by doing the organization part on your behalf. The setup takes no more than 48 hours, and you will be delivered an alphabetical list, organized by where the contact came from (Gmail, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.), which will be used to automatically send your contacts a newsletter chock-full of great content. Once you have an organized sphere of influence, you can use it however you see fit, such as for real estate farming purposes.
HomeActions offers a set-it-and-forget-it product that you know is delivering your contacts valuable content on your behalf. However, there are tons of options to customize the content as you see fit, and we encourage you to feature your current listings.
Visit HomeActions.net today to start connecting on a regular basis with your real estate contacts and improving your real estate business.
Recent Comments