Staying in Touch Can Pay Off in the Long Run

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We meet a lot of people in this business – some in person and many more through various forms of social media. Whether they’re prospects, clients, friends or “friends” (the Facebook kind), maintaining a relationship with everyone is crucial to your business. After all, you never know what might happen down the road.

Denis Savard, a Realtor in eastern Tennessee’s Jefferson County, has a motto of keeping prospects in his database “until they buy or die.” That’s a clever and/or clunky way of saying that everyone is a potential client, so staying in touch is good business. His strategy has paid off in the past and did so again recently when a person in his pipeline for five years resurfaced and bought a house.

“They’d been coming down and looking every year on vacation, and on the last trip announced they were here to buy, and they did,” said Savard, whose rural territory is in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains that attracts 4 million visitors a year, making it nice for retirees and second-home purchases. “I did my usual thing by staying in touch, and they contacted me each year during their visits because of that. Now I have some happy campers, even though it took five years.”

Savard’s “usual thing” is sending prospects monthly newsletters, market information and listings that might meet their search parameters. He has different response letters and tactics for people who are first-time visitors to his site and for those who look more frequently. And since many say that they’re simply searching for “down the road,” he takes that into account with his marketing efforts.

“I try to keep it low pressure because if they tell me they’re years away but are qualified and people I want to work with, I stay in touch with links to listings, occasional e-mails and basically keep them apprised of the market conditions,” he said. “Sometimes after a year or two they’re actually in a position to buy, and hopefully if I’ve done my job of keeping them informed on the area and market they buy from me.”

That’s a good strategy, particularly if you work in a less-populated area of the country. Inquiries and traffic might not be extremely high, so treating everyone who stops by – in person or your website – should be handled as if they’ll eventually buy a house from you. You can weed out people you know won’t pan out, but give everyone the benefit of the doubt at first. After all, you can’t have too many friends (the real kind), right?

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