Have you ever noticed the successful real estate vets work off of a steady flow of referrals? They’ve been in the game for awhile and have an extensive sphere of influence. To successfully transition your buyers into seller leads and repeat clients, you need to play the long game. And you need to win.
What is the long game exactly? We think of it as the ability to transition first time clients into repeat real estate customers. If you put your process into place now, the benefits will pour into your pipeline for years to come.
Rules of the Long Game:
Understand Your Audience
Create Your Community
Make Memorable Moments
Keep Your Audience Engaged
Serve Repeat Customers … The Evolution of Your Clientele Has Begun!
In order to build a bulletproof seller lead strategy, combine tactics to create more immediate demand for seller leads with this personalized approach for longer term seller leads.
How do you find more immediate seller leads? Find our strategy here.
Understand Your Real Estate Repeat Client
Before you craft a longer term seller lead strategy, you need to know your audience. And even though your clientele may range in everything other than the fact they made a real estate transaction one time with you, there are still a few national trends to consider.
To begin with, the first-time homebuyer is changing. And in turn, the first-time home seller is changing. This will make a huge impact on your buyer follow-up plans, which we will go over later in this article.
The first-time home sellers of tomorrow bought their first properties at an older age on average than in the past. They spent more time renting before they bought, and were less likely to be married at the time of purchase. This group of impending first time buyers is also purchasing more condominiums than previous generations, an important stat to note for repeat clients. (Resource: Zillow)
For example, when you’re writing follow-up plans to keep the conversation going after a closing, the likelihood of a client purchasing a larger home after first purchasing a condo is much higher due to getting married, growing a family, wanting more space, relocation, etc.
Bottom Line: Don’t assume you can market to your repeat clients in the same way you marketed to them the first time around.
After your lead becomes a client, and this client closes on a home, the transaction may be complete. But their buying cycle is only beginning. It is your job to follow along with this cycle and be there when they round the circle and are ready to sell, or buy, again.
Create Your Real Estate Client Community
One of our favorite public speakers, authors, and marketers, Seth Godin, gave a TED Talk several years back titled “The Tribes We Lead.” Before you lay pen to paper or finger to key, consider what community or what “tribe” you are creating through this follow-up.
As someone who is helping people transition into and out of property ownership, you are guiding clients through one of the biggest purchases of their lives. The emails, gifts, conversations, connections, and value adds mean nothing if they don’t contribute to an overall goal. Path & Post does an excellent job of maintaining a higher mission with their real estate business.
Through their social media, marketing, general tone, and attitude towards working with people in the real estate industry they have created a tribe devoted to their business, but they also tap into the essence of what purchasing a home means to their audience.
Closers Podcast:Listen to how Path & Post delves into personas, partnerships, and the biggest question in real estate.
Real estate practices can become monotonous and lose their meaning unless you have a higher purpose. If you continue to communicate with your clients well beyond their closing day and treat them as one of a larger community it will only contribute to a larger network and sphere of influence.
For example, consider giving one of your past clients a call when a new client moves into the neighborhood. Asking your past clients questions about their new area and experience as a property owner will help you to keep in the know and it will remind your clients that you keep your community as a first priority.
Let the Good Times Roll, Even After Closing Day
If you hope to have your clients return the second transaction around, then your business needs to live and breathe memorable moments. And I’m not talking a company T-shirt or candle at closing. The are the moments and memorabilia your clients will remember you by and hopefully down the road, will nudge them towards the phone when they want to sell.
Author and management expert, Ken Blanchard, wrote in his book Raving Fans:
“Your customers are only satisfied because their expectations are so low and because no one else is doing better. Just having satisfied customers isn’t good enough anymore. If you really want a booming business, you have to create Raving Fans.”
Since homebuyers are much more likely to react negatively to poor customer service according to CEB Global’s report, it is important to give a one two punch in the value add department.
You memorable moments MUST add value, and create an amazing experience.
In other words, you can’t simply knock it out of the park with a closing gift and anniversary email. These need to be supplemented by communication, messaging, and contact which reaffirms why these clients made a smart decision in the first place.
Closing gifts are the perfect opportunity to kick-off a lasting relationship with your client. You should have the go-to gift for everyone, but it really shows when you take the time to gift an item, experience or gift card specific to that person. Take into account if your buyer(s) are tech savvy, eco-friendly, families, just starting out, vacation homebuyers, etc.
One BoomTowner gifts a year subscription to Angie’s List with every closing which is an excellent way to pay attention to needs outside of the transaction at hand.
Keep Your Clients Engaged Between Real Estate Transactions
Like we mentioned earlier, your audience is varied in interests, needs, and wants. One may have to move after a year to relocate and another may stay in their first home for 15 years.
Either way it is your job to remain relevant and keep up a clear marketing message. And the time it takes to put these processes into a system one time will come back to you threefold in business.
Put Your Processes Into Place with a Predictive CRM
The easiest route to keeping up communication between transactions is email. Consider these transaction follow-up campaigns to be your “Loyalty Program.”
And every good loyalty program retains consistent communication over time. To make it easy, we’ve compiled a list of emails and email ideas below to help jump start your follow-up process. These can be coupled with a newsletter or done on their own.
Example of a Homebuyer Follow-Up Campaign
1 Day After Closing: “The Congratulations Email”
This communication should congratulate the buyer, confirm they received their closing gift, reaffirm how much you loved working with them, ask for a review, and state the upcoming to-dos after purchasing a home.
30 Days After Closing: “Reminders Email”
Remind the recent buyer of upcoming deadlines such as the one for permanent residency tax applications. Go the extra mile and mention you will call them closer to the deadline to make sure they have turned their important documents in. In this email you need to continue to reaffirm their decision to buy and remind them of discounts for new homeowners at local or chain stores.
60 Days After Closing: “Reference List Email”
It has now been two months since closing and the reality of owning a property has set in. At this point it may be helpful to send a “check-in” email including a list of local references you would use including plumbers, landscaping companies, electricians, dog sitters, contractors, pest control services, home alarm businesses, etc.
6 Months After Closing: “Bi-Annual Check-In”
At the six month mark you should begin sending emails with value and service all packaged into one. These should be market updates displaying localized information on the housing market. The new property owner sheen is still fresh, but after six months owners will be curious to see whether or not their investment is gaining value and what else is happening on the market.
1 Year After Closing: “Closing Anniversary Email”
Congratulate your client(s) for owning their property for a year! Reaffirm what a fantastic decision they made and keep the lines of communication open in case they need anything.
Communication After One Year: These emails needs to be consistent and engaging. Continue to send e-cards for birthdays, annual “homeowner anniversary” emails, and the potential newsletters.
Newsletters: Organizing a quarterly newsletter is an excellent outlet for post-transaction communication. You don’t want to overload your clients, but it’s important to reach out and maintain a relationship. These newsletters should include local events (preferably those you are involved with), charitable opportunities in the area, holiday homeowner updates (Black Friday sales particular to homeowners!), and mostly important, home value market updates.
And remember, the golden rule for email follow-up is to not send emails unto others as you would have them sent unto you.
So, if you wouldn’t derive value from an email, then why would they? Ask yourself this before you hit send every time.
Listings Come to Those Who Wait (And Follow-Up)
The constant grind of generating leads and following-up is not for the faint of heart. But like any career you gain experience by doing. Through systematically automating your process with a CRM you can cut out half the time you would spend manually customizing emails. A system such as BoomTown allows for both personalization and automation. It’s the best of both worlds.
Through this you can expand your sphere of influence in half the time.
Seth Godin mentioned an example of “tribe building” in his TED Talk by referring to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. He notes they are two entirely different men, with almost nothing in common. Aside from the fact that they thought of and built fantastic ways to lead people through technology.
They built a tribe based on leading people who were disconnected. But those people had a “yearning.”
You have a group that is disconnected. And you have a group that has a yearning.
Give them the answers they need when they need them and you too can reinvent how clients experience future real estate transactions.
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