After the deal is made and the closing process is over, what are your next steps with clients? Do you give a closing gift? Keep in touch? Ask for a review?
These next steps make all the difference between a one time job and a lifelong client. And with the unstoppable power of online consumer real estate tools, there is no guarantee your current clients will return when it is time to make their next real estate transaction.
So, how do you make a solid effort without sacrificing too much of your time to leads you may or may not have down the line? Same as all other leads. You create and implement an efficient follow-up plan in these three easy steps:
Re-Evaluate Your Audience
Complete a Realistic Follow-Up Plan
Implement the Plan and Commit to Your Process
Re-Evaluate Your Audience
If you have done your job correctly and closed a deal with your client, then you have successfully helped someone make one of the biggest investments in their life. And this relationship doesn’t fade quickly if you maintain a good relationship.
Imagine how some people are dedicated to car companies, their favorite breakfast spots, babysitters, doctor office, etc. We all make vendor choices both big and small every day. And if the experience is good and we receive value in return, there is usually repeat service.
According to the National Association of Realtors 2015 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, “a typical seller has recommended their Realtor once since selling their home. And 32 percent of sellers recommended their agents three or more times since selling their home.”
Maintaining a good relationship well beyond the first transaction is a good move for creating repeat clients, but also for referrals.
But you all know this. What you may not know or remember to do though, is to dedicate yourself and your team to a post-close action plan.
This plan will achieve the following:
Begin the post-close qualification process.
Request the client to review your business online.
Remind the client of important post-close milestones and resources (tax deadlines, recommended vendors, etc.)
Work towards create repeat leads down the road.
Think of your post-close action plan as your pre-repeat-transaction qualifying plan.
Depending on how your clients respond to this post-close action plan, you can begin to qualify them for their next potential transaction.
When it comes time to close, make sure to have a good understanding moving forward of their interests, intentions, and general goals with their home and their life. Simple conversations about why they wanted to buy their first property with you will usually implicate where their next steps in life will lead.
For example, a young couple buying their first home may eventually need to upsize when their family begins to grow.
Or another family has children growing up and growing out of their home. They may be interested in vacation property or downsizing to accommodate their new empty-nest lifestyle.
Even more so this occurs on a more frequent basis with younger single buyers who are buying to invest. They may need to relocate for work, or move to a different property when they get married, need more space, or want to start renting out their current property.
All of these transactional situations should be imply what type of post-close follow-up plan you put them on. And it does not have to be complicated.
Complete Your Post-Close Follow-Up Plans
Once you have re-evaluated your audience or client, place them into one of your post-close follow-up plans. These plans can be based on categories or buckets determined by their place in life and what information you think will benefit them over time.
For example, first time homebuyers, interested in second homes, investment properties, people who will most likely want to upsize in a few years, all of these are general options for post-close follow-up.
The NAR also noted in their 2015 study that, “for all sellers, the most common reason for selling their home was that it was too small (16 percent), followed by a job relocation
(14 percent), and the desire to move closer to friends and family (13 percent).”
Use the data available to you to inform your follow-up decisions. By doing so you take the guessing out of the equation and act on actual market trends.
For specific email follow-up guidelines, follow our customizable repeat lead follow-up templates included in the blog post below:
Customize BoomTown’s Repeat Lead Action Plan to Fit Your Business
Scroll down the blog post to the “Keep Your Clients Engaged Between Real Estate Transactions” section in order to browse through the follow-up action plan.
It is important to remember, you have to dedicate yourself and your team to this process, before you are able to see results.
Implement the Plan and Commit to Your Process
Once you take a few to create your follow-up templates, the only step left to do is put the plan in place and put it into action. Like we previously mentioned, without committing yourself and your team to the process, there will be no results.
If you commit yourself to losing weight, the weight will never be lost without committing to eating healthy and working out for example. So why would your leads return if you don’t commit to the process of following-up with them? Get where we are going with this…
Helpful Tips: Watch this Video on Maximizing Your Accountability Tools!
BoomTown clients have quick and easy tools such as the birthdays and property purchase anniversaries to compliment repeat lead follow-up plans.
Another value add to implement into your continous plans are market updates reminding clients of the current value of their property. These updates are natural steps when you are smart prospecting with all of your leads.
For more information about how you can implement proper follow-up for your repeat leads and all other leads, visit our Smart Prospecting Tips page.
