Real Estate 101: which is more cost effective - keeping your current clients or finding new ones? Most of us learned quickly that it's easiest and cheapest (and more fun) to keep your current clients than it is to constantly have a high turnover in your client base.  For managers of real estate offices, this principle is also true in terms of your agents: it's cheaper and easier for you to keep your current agents happy than it is to lose them and have to prospect out new ones.

So why is it so hard to do?

When we get busy, we can forget to prospect and keep in touch. These two things, prospecting and following up or keeping in touch, need to be Priority Number 1.

It helps a lot if certain things you do to this end are on "auto pilot". Like what?

As an agent...

(1) you can set your work week up so that every Monday you call 25 of your best clients and just check in with them. See how they're doing. Offer to do a CMA on their home (even if they don't want to sell). Offer to meet them for coffee. Go through the FORD list of asking them about their Family, Occupations, Recreation, and Dreams.

(2) you can send monthly newsletters or postcards out to your circle of influence with something useful and interesting to them - it can be by email or print or both (I suggest mixing the media).  I send Home By Design Magazine every other month to a core group of clients and each month this group gets a couple of email newsletters from me, plus holiday CDs in December. This part is really on "auto pilot" so it's easy - but the stuff they get is all good.

(3) take a client to lunch, or meet for coffee, a day or two each week

(4) when you take a new listing, invite your clients who live nearby to see you at the open house. They care about their neighborhood

(5) program your clients into your cell phone so that if they call you back, you can answer the phone saying hello and their name. (Doesn't it make you feel special when you call someone and they pick up the phone and know it's you already? You know you MATTER enough to be in their phone! This is one of my favorites, though I do all of the above.)

For a manager...

(1) agents need to know you care about them as people and not just part of a numbers game. Walk the office and "check in" with them. Take 30 minutes at some point each day and just walk around and visit. It may feel like a waste of time, but it's not. You are letting them know, collectively and individually, that you are there for them.

(2) do keep your office door open at least an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. Agents may not want to bother you when the door is closed and they may not have time to make an appt for 3 days from now. Be there for them.

(3) return calls and emails quickly, just like you want the agents to be quick in getting back to their prospects and clients. When you make an agent wait 8 hours, it's frustrating and it erodes the manager-agent relationship.

(4) public praise - spread it around. Most offices have an issue with "managers favorites" (where certain agents seem to get all the referrals and attention). Find a way to commend the good stuff that agents do at office meetings, from new agents getting their first listings to near retirees staying in the game or anything else that can be found praiseworthy.

Whether you're an agent dealing with leads, prospects, or clients, or managers dealing with agents in your office (or those you'd like to have in your office), it is very important to "Make 'Em Feel Special". Sometimes it's the emotional disconnect that can open the door to a professional break in the relationship - so don't let it happen!  Better to keep your key people on your team with planned attention than to be 100% busy with prospecting and lose the good folks you had.