Have you ever thought of using a satisfaction questionnaire to keep in touch with your clients? According to Businesstown.com, most unhappy customers will not complain directly to the business they are unhappy with. Instead, they will complain to everyone they know while taking their business to a competitor. To counteract this possibility, businesses are increasingly making follow-up calls or sending out satisfaction questionnaires after a sale is made. If you go to Walgreen's, Red Lobster, or JC Penney's, you will find a number on the receipt to call to complete a customer satisfaction survey.
You might consider sending out a survey to clients who have completed a transaction or even to prospects who have received a few months of your emails. Your questionnaire can be very simple and straightforward, and if done right, the survey can convey that you care about your service and want to improve it. This means that you may ask customers questions that can be answered by checking choices like "Very satisfied," "Somewhat satisfied," or "Not satisfied," but you also offer them a chance to voice an opinion about why they made the choice.
The responses to open ended questions can offer insights about what you do right and what needs improvement. It may spotlight employees who did a great job. If you follow up on your negative or lukewarm responses, you can pave the way for repeat business or at least soften the anger of a customer who feels he was mistreated. Often, even a customer who was unsatisfied with aspects of a transaction can be pacified with a call that attempts to make things right or at least offers an apology.
Make sure you are prepared to act on negative responses. Nothing turns a customer sour faster than to complete a questionnaire voicing dissatisfaction, only to never be contacted by that company again. On the other hand, businesses who promptly follow-up and resolve customer complaints quickly are finding that those customers are more likely to do repeat business than the average customer who does not have a complaint.
Make A Commitment: I will follow up to make sure my customers are satisfied.
Deadline: _________
No matter how old you are, you probably remember what happened every time you received birthday gift from Grandma. Your mother would sit you down with a box of notes and a pen, and tell to you write her a thank you note.
These days, the computer makes writing "thank you's" easier and email may have even replaced the mailing phase. The important thing is that the message was delivered, but an actual thank you note, maybe even handwritten, makes the gratitude seem a little truer.
How often do you get anything handwritten in the mail these days? How about a personal note from a company you do business with? Imagine for a minute how one of your clients might feel looking through the mail and finding a note from you, thanking them for a recent purchase or transaction. Do you think that would make a good impression on them? It would probably bring you to mind first the next time they or someone they know needs a real estate agent!
If your handwriting is bad, perhaps you might want to type the label or even the message. But you can still add a line to the printed text and sign the card. What you want to convey is that you personally want to offer them a heartfelt "thanks."
The personal touch is what builds relationships with people. When people feel a rappoire or relationship with you, you increase the chances your name will be on their lips when a friend asks "Who is a good real estate agent in town?" or when they need your services.
When you think about spreading the word about your business, a brochure automatically come to mind. Even though customers may find out about you and your services on the Internet, when people meet you, they like to come away with something more substantial than a business card.
Brochures can give a good "snapshot" of your business. Aside from presenting your logo and your contact information (address, phone/fax number, website, email address) - business card content- the brochure gives you a chance to tell the client what to expect from you. It usually lists the things you can do, but offers you an opportunity to go beyond that.
According to Robert Middleton, author of the Infoguru Marketing Manual, most brochures focus mainly on what a business does, rather than the problem the client has and how a business can solve it. No one is really interested in what your company does unless they believe that your company can solve a problem they have, or you create a want or need in them.
Once your brochure hooks in the customer with how much he needs you, don't drown him with detail. If you offer a specialized service ( i.e., relocation) or serve a special market (i.e, mature homebuyers), that's material for another brochure. Briefly tell your story, but use white space and pictures to set off your content. You don't want your message to be lost in a wall of words.
How should you effectively use your brochures? Aside from making them available to visitors to your office, you should include them in regular correspondence to customers or hand them out at events. This means that brochures should be printed on good stock but not be so costly you are tempted to "save them." Many times they can be produced in house if you have a good color copier or delivered to your local Kinko's or Staples in camera ready form for commercial production.
Your brochure is a carry-away reminder of the solutions you can offer!
Need some help reformatting your current brochure or developing a new one? Please give me a call for a complimentary overview of your brochure and your business.
It costs six times as much to get a new customer as to keep a customer you already have. Anonymous Business Sage
I have heard several versions of this quote with different math. The point is the same. Marketing for new customers is more is expensive that developing past or current ones. In real estate, people do not buy homes all that frequently, so you can‘t just work old customers for new business from them. However, they might be ongoing sources of referrals between purchases. This is why keeping in touch with past clients can reap benefits for you.
In addition, all of you have a list of prospects who you made initial contact with but who were not ready to buy at first. You have already warmed up these people with a few calls and some emails. It would be a shame to be forgotten when they are ready to buy.
How can you economically stay in touch? For the next two blogs, we will discuss some popular ways. Today, it is newsletters, but the common thread between all the alternatives we will discuss is making customers feel they need you.
One of the reasons newsletters work is that people actually read them, whereas flyers tend to land in the trash. People read newsletters because they believe they might find something useful in them. A newsletter can include:
Your newsletter can be mailed or sent as an email to an opt-in email list, so your customers have agreed to receive email from you. Email is the least expensive way to reach customers, but in this spam-conscious age, your email must stand out. To help achieve this, remember to give it a title besides "September Newsletter." Name it something like "Your Real Estate Review" to grab your reader's attention and get them to actually read the newsletter. If they just delete the e-mail without opening it, it does not help you at all.
A newsletter is a good example of a task where you should set the direction, then delegate the actual production and distribution to an in-house or virtual assistant or even to a professional newsletter service. Many times, your website software includes access to a newsletter, perhaps for a fee. You gain access to interesting content which you can supplement with local information. In addition, there are newsletter packages you can buy which offer attractive templates you can use as the basis for a mailer with "your look."
As with most types of marketing, consistency is the goal. When planning for a newsletter, it is better to use some standard content or a template format than do it from scratch each time - especially if that could hold up production. Whether you aim for a monthly or quarterly effort, you want it to be dependable. Your business will most likely see an increase in repeat business, add-on sales and referrals if you are consistent with your newsletter program
Keep in mind, your goal is to keep your name fresh in your client's mind. When they are in conversation with someone in the market for a real estate agent, your existing client is the best advertisement you could ask for!
"Genius is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration." Thomas Edison
You remember the old saying about the balance of perspiration vs. inspiration in most endeavors of life. That 99:1 ratio reminds us that after the light bulb has come on, the implementation and the follow through are what matters.
In real estate, blogging and social networking are two of the biggest light bulbs illuminating the field. Both give potential clients an insight into who we are. Blogging, the more time consuming effort, requires more time to prepare, but offers more space to state the case that we are experts in the field and in our local communities. A recent article in Inman's made the point that a blog lasts forever in cyberspace - until we take it out of circulation. Though we may count our "clicks" in the days after our blogs appear, people can read and be influenced by them two years later. An update to our Facebook status or a tweet, has a lifecycle of 30 minutes or less.
In both cases, frequency and consistency are what counts. Neither your blogs nor your tweets have to be brilliant. What's important is that you do them. Since blogs outlive tweets, etc., you need to make more contributions more often in that media to make an impact.
Even Thomas Edison would be surprised at what light bulbs look like these days now that energy-efficient corkscrew bulbs (CFLs) dominate the field, but they give off as much light at lower cost for a longer time. Adding the little rituals of blogging and social networking to your schedule may be tough time-wise, but how we reach people in real estate these days has changed. Print ads, calls, and signs won't do it all anymore.
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