Customer retention is the key to success in real estate. How long could you retain your past clients? What percentage of your former clients have returned to you for their next deal? While almost all home sellers say they’ll work with their former real estate agent again, in reality, only a small percentage of them do it. What happens between one sale and the next? Are you desperate to know how you can maintain your relationships? Keep reading then!
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Why Customer Retention Matters in Real Estate
Whether you are a reputable broker or a brand-new agent, a solid customer retention strategy is something you shouldn’t neglect. Customer retention can increase your revenue twice as much as customer acquisition does. Customer retention is all about maximizing the profitability of each client.
When working with buyers, your career has great potential for repeat business and referral. When working with sellers, however, this potential is even greater as most sellers will look for a new home after selling their current home. There is no guarantee that the owners will enlist your services for both transactions, but you can maximize the chance of getting both. How? Apply these customer retention strategies to ensure that when purchasing a property, your past clients will contact no one else but you.
How to Maximize Customer Retention?
Elevator Pitch Is Important
Can anybody deny the power of an engaging elevator pitch in customer retention? To create an impressive elevator pitch that explains the nature and benefits of your business and services, you need to know what exactly you want to communicate about yourself. Begin by introducing yourself, and explain what you do that differentiates you from other agents.
To grab the audience’s attention, open your elevator pitch with something captivating (for example, a familiar pain point) and spark curiosity by telling them you have a solution for that. Remember that creating an elevator pitch is a strategy to invite prospects to a conversation. So keep it short and get ready to answer the questions.
Deepen Your Relationships
People usually feel more confident when doing business with whom they have already built a meaningful relationship. To build trust with a client, you need to start getting to know them as a person, and at the same time, let them know more about you – after all, one-sided relationships rarely come to a happy ending.
Don’t be afraid of revealing your personal information – albeit not a very personal one! Share something about yourself that helps you relate to the clients – your past experiences or challenges you could overcome, for example. Remember that being open is quite different from being unprofessional. Words are open to interpretation. So think carefully about what you are going to say before saying something that causes people to question your reliability.
Client Expectations Can Be Managed
Most sellers are emotionally attached to the place where they have had so many great, life-altering memories. So it is no surprise if they start believing that their home will be precious and desirable to potential buyers as well – as you know, that is not always the case. Now imagine what they will do if they don’t receive as many offers as they wish. Exactly! They’ll start blaming you.
Unrealistic expectations can be a serious barrier to customer retention. To avoid losing trust with your clients, you must learn how to manage their expectations from the very beginning. When negotiating the price, use the data available as evidence to show the sellers what the market value of their home is; show them comparable listings and sales in the immediate neighborhood and explain to them why those listings or sales are more or less valuable than their property.
Nevertheless, it is difficult for some sellers to accept that their beloved house is not worth more than the recommended listing price. What should an agent do in that case? Disagreeing and walking away from the listings or listing the house for more than what it is truly worth and letting it sit on the market until it expires? Honesty is a great retention strategy. Remember that you are the most knowledgeable person here. You know the market better than anyone. While respecting your minds, be transparent with your clients. It is wiser to disappoint a client than to damage your professional reputation.
Don’t Shy away from Discussing Thorny Issues
Despite all the effort you make to market a listing, if it ends up not sold, you should get prepared to come under attack. No need to panic. Not all properties listed on the market end up sold. Improve your ability to respond to the sellers’ objections appropriately instead. Deepening your relationships with clients is a time-tested strategy to deal with tough conversations.
One useful customer retention technique to minimize your client’s dissatisfaction is to explain to them why interest is low. There is always a reason a listing fails to sell – poor home staging, unrealistic price, bad location, poor condition, to name a few. Whatever the reason is, be honest and confident in the way you explain it. Inform the sellers if there is something that should be changed, repaired, or removed. Ensure your clients that if they trust you and take your advice, they can get their property sold.
There are many other ways to maximize customer retention in your business. Comparing your practices to those of other professionals or industry leads is one of the best things you can do to improve customer retention in real estate.
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