Learning how to get and keep clients in real estate is a never-ending battle. With technology moving at lightening speed, getting and keeping your clients is tough! Understanding how to find qualified clients is more than just getting the phone to ring, it’s knowing how to keep it ringing consistently that will help your business grow.
Follow Up is Everything
Most salespeople only reach out once or twice and then give up. Knowing your market, understanding your clients dreams and goals, and connecting them is hands down the most important characteristic in a salesperson. Following up, showing them that they are important, and a top priority will take time. Often it is a six-month, year or two-year long process of keeping in touch and providing them value. If you have amazing luck and someone calls you to set up their listing immediately, the rest of us are jealous! Typically it is a drawn out dance between the agent and the buyer/seller. Keeping track of where you are at with each client and every possible client can be exhausting. If you struggle to keep track adding a service to do that for you can save you hours of time. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is build to help you keep track of new and existing clients. Having a CRM that takes care of remembering who, what and when to send calls or emails so you don’t have to remember is a life saver that will pay for itself.
Relationship Referrals
To get the highest closing ratio, relationship referrals are crucial. If you build strong relationships with current clients, they can expand your network like nothing else can. By using the referrals and relationships where trust has already been established, your business will gain momentum.
Build a Personal Brand
Your personal brand is the overall impression that your audience gets from your social media posts, marketing, lead generation, and pretty much everything else you put out into the world as a real estate agent. Doing a personal brand audit and deciding on some branding basics will absolutely help you get clients. Come up with a logo, slogan, website, and general aesthetic that you can keep consistent across all your real estate marketing and social media channels. If you’re somewhat tech savvy or at least willing to learn, a course on real estate social media marketing is a great way to up your skills. Plenty of agents are getting a decent ROI with Facebook and Instagram ads but another great way to get clients is to try to integrate your hobbies into your personal branding. The idea here is to appeal to your audience’s fun side by highlighting hobbies or interests you might have in common. For example, if you’re a baker, you might want to consider making a cute Instagram post with you baking at your new listing, or maybe go out and rate the local bakeries and post the videos on YouTube. Then you won’t just be another real estate agent. Clients who are also amazing in the kitchen will be far more likely to choose you over someone with similar skills who isn’t a baker. Of course, that other agent may have a culinary degree and volunteer at the soup kitchen, but their audience will never know. So, don’t be a secret agent when it comes to your hobbies and interests!
Educate with Insider Knowledge
Educate potential and existing clients. For potential clients, create a blog full of helpful hints and tricks to aide in their real estate search. For existing clients, point out a feature in an apartment or something about a building that a client wouldn’t know by looking at the listing online. People appreciate learning something from their real estate broker. Teaching someone something they didn’t previously know helps to build trust and a feeling for them that you are adding real value to the buying or selling experience.
Fake It Until You Make It
Luck can change your real estate career. We’ve all heard stories about agents who stumble their way into seven-figure listings their first week on the job. For the most part, those stories are true. But luck isn’t everything. Even if a local millionaire takes a liking to you, you still have to prove to them that the risk of hiring you is worth their time. If you are just starting out, you likely don’t have many accomplishments to point to so your personality is going to have to work overtime to seal the deal. Work on yourself and develop the confidence and knowledge that every good agent needs. Read everything you can about real estate and business and face your fears BEFORE you get lucky enough to book that listing presentation.
