As we all begin a New Year many of us have written down or mentally checked off our resolutions for the next 12 months. How many of us will forget about those resolutions within the next few days? Sadly, forgetting about or not keeping to a New Year's resolution is as much a tradition as the holiday itself.
I decided to kick off my 2008 blogging with a few short stories about the importance of following-up especially in a sales position. Since I come into contact with hundreds of agents per week in my line of business I have heard my share of stories from agents that failed to follow-up to an agent who was rewarded for following-up ...I'd like to share a few with you today.
Here's one of my favorites considering that the contact was actually someone who rented. An agent 
maintained contact with this renter for over 22 months. The form of contact was an automatic email that was delivered every 3 months. Most agents hear "renter" and they might turn away. This agent was rewarded with 2 referrals after 14 months. It does not end there. Eight months later the renter decided to purchase his first home. His agent was the agent that maintained contact via an automatic email every 3 months (4x a year). Emails do not cost anything to send out; as long as contact is being maintained within a database one should not consider that an "inactive" customer will be so indefinitely.
A few months back an agent attended one of my training sessions as a result of a story that she relayed to me. After noticing the "new listed" homes on her company's bulletin board she focused in on one that looked very familiar to her. Sure enough, this was a home that she sold to the couple 3.5 years ago. The problem was that this home was now being listed by another agent within her office. How could that be? The agent admitted that one year after the closing she stopped following-up with the couple. They simply "forgot" about their agent and when it came time to sell they listed with someone else.
One last story; this a personal one. My wife and I relocated from New York to North Carolina over 4 years ago. 
We owned a co-op and listed that co-op with an agent that did everything under the sun for us. She was attentive, detailed, courteous, a great listener and an extremely skilled real estate agent from our perspective. Not one complaint from our initial meeting to the actual selling of our property 4 weeks later. Soon thereafter, we moved to North Carolina and aside from an initial phone call 30 days after our co-op sale, we never heard from that agent again. The problem here? My entire family was still living in New York and I had 5 friends moving out of apartments into their first homes looking for an agent that they could rely on. When my friends started to call, asking about that "great agent" we worked with I could not for the life of me remember her name.
Although I too am a sales person, I also consider myself an educator/consultant and one thing I always make sure to impart especially to new agents is that one can never take any contact for granted. Consider the fact that over 90% of your clients say that they would work with you again in the future. The sad truth is that less than 30% will since most will likely forget your name. Keep your name resonating...follow-up with everyone in your database on a regular basis. We should all keep this resolution and we will never need to make another one again.
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