Keeping Real Estate Clients Interested in Your Product, Especially When The Product is You
Grabbing customer attention is one thing, keeping it is quite another. This isn’t just a phenomenon unique to the seller-buyer or agent-client relations in our business, it is the same in all aspects of life, from dating to entertainment and everything in between. If it is people’s attention that we seek, we must continue to capture their interest time and time again. Often, the best tool for doing so is adding just the right amount of mystery to your offering. Here are some ways to keep the fire of interest lit in our day-to-day dealings with clients.
Understanding the Concept of Value-Added Mystery
Plan for suspense, not a lecture - Many agents are trained to be as customer service oriented as possible. Often, it is this very background that can lead to difficulties in retaining the interest of their customers. Why does this happen? Simply put, we give up too much, too quickly. Many will argue that it is our job to give as much good information as possible and that is correct! However, I’d extend this to say it is our responsibility to ourselves, our family’s, and our clients that we do some well thought planning before revealing everything we know about real estate. Think about this: almost all people have a hard time drawing themselves away from a suspenseful movie yet find it difficult to listen to a two hour lecture, right? The reason is simple, good films reveal key information at just the right time in small bites that build on one another and leave a lasting impression. Bad lectures drone on and on in endless detail or with no clear goal until we lose interest. I know this sounds like a stretch but we should strive to be like a good drama (without being overly dramatic), this way, not only will clients receive the information in valuable digestible amounts, but the suspense we create will also be able keep them interested in us and the services we provide.
Invaluable does not mean always available – I know, many want to be as responsive as possible to their clients at all times. Don’t get me wrong, these intentions are good, the problem is that this responsiveness is often seen as desperation and might set the relationship up for failure down the road. There is a fine line between being too available and being unavailable. Somebody who is too available will always drop whatever they are doing, family outings included, in order to show a home to anybody with a pulse. If your clients get the feeling that you have nothing going on, then your perceived professional value has often been compromised. On the other hand, somebody who is unavailable takes more than 24 hours to return phone calls and often doesn’t at all. These kinds of actions lower your perceived personal value because it appears that you just don’t care. Most clients want the best of both worlds, they want to work with somebody who is successful, but they want a successful person who likes them enough to make time in their busy schedule.
Quick Thoughts on Adding Mystery To Your Game Plan
Tease Everything - Whatever exciting things your doing (taking listings, making postings, writing articles, giving seminars, building tutorials, collecting buyers, or giving showings) give continuous little blurbs about them. The repetition builds familiarity and the tease factor builds suspense, both of which will contribute to bolstering intrigue. The possibilities with this are endless: your business cards, online ads, print ads, listing flyers, solicitation flyers, blog posts, web pages, verbal dialogue, newsletters, etc. An example would be a yard sign that teases a neighborhood site, a neighborhood site that teases a sellers guide, a sellers guide that teases a newsletter, and a newsletter that teases some buyers who are looking to buy in the area. Another fine line exists with teasing. Eventually, you need to give up good quality information because if you don’t, interest will dwindle and people will walk. However, giving it up too soon never lets the appreciation level get a chance to rise. Most of us know this feeling, it’s when you get the unappreciative or non response to your hard fought “inside info”.
Question the Questions - Say a potential buyer asks if you deal with foreclosure property. Instead of droning into details about them, first make sure they actually know enough for you to continue. Start asking them some questions like: What kind of foreclosure sales are you talking about? Do you buy sight unseen? Are you open to ______ kind of foreclosures? I picked this topic because many consumers throw the foreclosure term around, but few actually understand the process or sale types. Still, answering questions with clarifying questions can be done with virtually any real estate topic. Politely questioning their questions will not only show that you are listening, but can also help position yourself as somebody with some real expertise.
Phone Calls and Emails – This goes back to the availability issue. While never answering your phone is a recipe for failure, always answering can be a disaster as well. If we can’t get anything done because of endless phone, email, or text interruptions, the value of our service will suffer. Not all calls are urgent, sometimes it’s just best to put one to voicemail if you are with a client. The goal is to prioritize the most pressing ones you miss with well-planned voice and/or email messages. Your clients will often tell you how urgent the message is, we just need to remember to ask. Respecting your own schedule might cost you a few sales from the ultra demanding but you won’t have to apologize for missing family events, won’t be as irritated toward the general public, and you’ll add that hard to obtain level of mystique to your service that makes people think “Wow, they sure are busy, I know I’m not their only client but I really like how they always work to fit me in when I’ve got something urgent to discuss.”
Putting It All Together
Utilizing value-added mystery is the difference between simply keeping in contact and expertly spurring interest. In any relationship, client-agent included, the hardest part is keeping things exciting after the initial novelty subsides. If you are not continuing to demonstrate value, all sorts of bad things can happen from boredom and lack of appreciativeness to communication breakdowns and total mistrust. As sales agents, incorporating a little suspense and controlling our accessibility makes a huge difference in the demonstration of value; ultimately keeping our relationships strong and profitable, and these days I think we could all use as much of that as possible.
About the Author: Todd Foust is the chief marketing executive for the FOUST Team at C21 Discovery; one of the top-selling real estate teams in Southern California. He specializes in Orange and Los Angeles Counties and operates one of the area’s most informative real estate websites. To contact him or learn more about real estate in Fullerton, or homes for sale in Fullerton visit our website.
About the Auther: Jennifer McNamara works as a creative marketing contributor/manager for the FOUST Teams public relations division. She is a Southern California native and specializes in translating complicated real estate knowledge into user-friendly information for local homebuyers.
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