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Agent | Broker Reset Filters to Default Back to List4 Tips to Ensure You Never Lose Another Client
October 16 2023
Welcome back to our "Tips and Tricks Tuesday" series, which highlights articles around a monthly theme. October's theme is "Never Lose Another Client." Read on for tips and tricks on maintaining long-term relationships with your clients:
The current market is presenting many challenges to agents. However, by using technology and a few strategic steps, combined with some simple best practices, you can stay top-of-mind with clients and increase the chances that they will do business with you. Technology automations can help you stay in touch with clients through email, social media, and other channels, as well as automate some of your marketing and sales processes.
Here are the four tips to ensure you never lose another client.
1. There are no past clients and no future clients — everyone is a forever client
There is no such thing as a past client, there's only a client. I remember when I bought my first home, I felt like I was in over my head. I had so many questions and didn't know where to turn for help. My real estate agent was a lifesaver. He was patient, knowledgeable, and always available to answer my questions. He made the whole process so much easier and less stressful. I'm so grateful for his help, and I would definitely use him again if I ever need to buy or sell a home.
That's the critical key for real estate agents: to build relationships with their clients. This means being responsive, helpful, and knowledgeable. It also means going above and beyond to make sure that your clients are happy with the service they receive. If you can do this, you'll be sure to have repeat customers for years to come.
A second home purchase could be an additional investment. Mom-and-pop investors mean that one client could make five, six, seven, or even more transactions in their lifetime. As you all know, the average person owns a home for five to seven years before moving. So, if you get someone who buys a home in their 30s and lives until they're 80, you're looking at about 50 years of home transactions.
As someone gets older, they have a higher propensity or likelihood to work with those they know. The likelihood of older people working with a new real estate agent increases as they get older. This is a major issue, as NAR research shows that 89% of buyers would use their agent again or recommend them. However, we believe that this number is actually closer to 40-50%. This suggests that there is a problem with the way real estate agents are currently serving older clients.
The solution: leverage technology to help you keep in touch with past clients, as they may become repeat customers. Great real estate agents need to stay top-of-mind with their past clients in order to continue to earn their business.
2. Customer trust leads the way
We are passionate about customer success because experience has shown that if we do everything right for our customers, those customers will be happy and tell their friends about the company's products or services. This creates a positive word-of-mouth marketing campaign that will help the company grow without the expense of traditional marketing.
To do this, it's critical to maintain relationships with clients after they have been acquired. Being responsive, helpful, and investing in both marketing materials and engagement systems are just a few ways that this can be accomplished.
Proactively send home information related to their personal needs (such as the Home Valuation Report), have marketing materials that are well designed and high quality (such as a Monthly Neighborhood Report), and use intelligent systems to engage clients and increase your lead funnel.
All too often, we don't spend money after a client's initial closing gifts. It's important to maintain relationships with clients after they have been acquired, which means investing in marketing materials and engagement systems after a client has decided to work with you in order to keep them interested and engaged. In other words, treat clients just as good (if not better) than how you treat leads.
3. Become a family adviser, not just a financial adviser
Working in real estate, professionals often see themselves as financial advisers and rightfully so. Real estate purchases are moments of truth, as they are often the largest financial transactions that people make. Along with landing a new job, getting married, or having a child, these are critical moments in someone's life and can have a significant impact on the customer's overall experience.
Buying a home is considered the third most stressful life event, after the death of a loved one and divorce. It is the single largest financial asset that most people have. In addition to the financial aspect, from a psychological perspective there is also emotional memory and attachment added to that transaction.
Consider the home an extended member of the customer's family. Tappable home equity is around $18 trillion dollars in America right now. The average homeowner has around $200-300k in tappable equity.
Helping people navigate their equity situation will generate goodwill. That will inevitably lead to prospects becoming clients and clients becoming clients for life, a goldmine of repeat and referral business.
4. Stay in consistent contact
Mass marketing has around a 20-30% open rate. At best, the click-through rate is roughly 10%. That means for every 100 people you email, only two to three will actually engage with it. Conversely, personalized emails have a 70% open rate and a 50% click-through rate. Sending information about someone's home is personal. And more importantly, it's valuable and useful to the recipient. Typically, you will receive a positive response. We always say that the best marketing is the one where someone replies back, "Thank you, this was so helpful." Every once in a while, you might get a response like, "Hey, did you send this? Is this you?" and the answer is an emphatic yes.
When sending a monthly home valuation report, the email will show up as coming from you, their agent, not from Percy. Your client can click on the "View Your Monthly Report" link to see their home value report. Once subscribed, your client will receive this report every month moving forward, providing automatic updates on recent nearby sales and buyer demand in your neighborhood. This tool enables consistent and most importantly, personalized client engagement, but in an automated way.
Brandon Carroll is the Vice President of Client Success at Percy.