This blog post is the 3rd in a series of 5 articles demonstrating the impact templates and workflows can have on your real estate business.
Do you make an organized effort at showing your clients how hard you work—in detail?
(Because, all things considered, we tend to not be very good at that.)
We are responsible for an incredibly complex transaction, and the detail and coordination that goes into it is a lot of work. But most of us make pretty much no organized effort at telling our clients about it! They only see the major things on the surface of the transaction. They have no clue about the myriad of details that go into it and how hard you work to get them right.
If you want more referrals from your clients and a deeper appreciation of your level of professionalism, you need to educate them! (How convenient is it that you now have the perfect vehicle to do that without spending any time whatsoever doing it?!)
You’ve invested heavily into building your workflows, so now it’s time to take advantage of that accomplishment in every way you can. The many internal advantages to be had by using workflows are covered in other parts of this series, but how does it benefit your clients, and how can we point that out to them?
Are you impressed with yourself for building your workflows in your crm? You should be! That was a lot of work, right? How many other agents in your market do you think do this? I’ll answer that for you. Very, very few! So what does that make you? Different!
What is one of the things we are always looking for to better market ourselves and improve our chances at a listing interview or an initial buyer interview? Ways to differentiate ourselves!
We should always be looking for ways to differentiate ourselves from the rest of the mooing herd.
If you can do that in meaningful ways, you’ll increase your odds of successfully getting that listing or that buyer. So how do you do it?
How To Differentiate Yourself From Other Real Estate Agents
You have a client relationship management system (CRM) comprised of incredibly detailed workflows. So show them to your prospective buyers and sellers at your listing presentation/initial buyer interview.
Isn’t there usually one person in the couple you’re working with who is, let’s say, very analytical ? To them especially, your workflows are going to be very impressive. Make it part of your presentation. If the agents you’re up against for that listing have a marketing piece showing what they plan to do for the client, it is 99.9% likely that all it will be is a generic list prepared for the masses and it looks like just what it is.
You, on the other hand, can talk about how…
“… at one point I realized that there are far too many details and important events that need to be timed just right, to be left to a paper checklist. So I invested a good deal of time and money into a system that ensures that I will not have to worry about things falling through the cracks. It enables me to provide you with even better service than I was capable of before I got this organized.”
So now you’ve built your workflows and you’ve strategically bragged to the client about how organized you are. Time for the proof in the pudding.
In your workflows, make sure you are sending out reports with status updates to your clients regularly. Seller Reports and Buyer Reports are integral to keeping your clients informed, updated, and calm. They also help to minimize the number of unnecessary calls from your clients—many times, you will have answered their questions in your reports. And the best part is? It’s automatic!
Last, but far from least, make sure that those workflows contain a post-closing follow-up that touches them from time to time and reminds you to make follow-up calls to them. Why? Because this is something else that most agents are poor at doing. Don’t be like most agents!
Putting it all together
You have done what few other agents have done. You have invested the time and effort to be incredibly organized with workflows. Now all you have to do is put it all together.
- During the presentation, show them how organized you are.
- Back up that presentation throughout the transaction with regular reporting.
- Follow up (using your workflows) in an organized manner.
How can they not refer you?
