4 Tips for Keeping Your Real Estate Clients Long-Term

You’ve closed a sale and received your commission check. Congratulations!

The next step with that client is to make sure they not only remember you, but think of you as their real estate agent, now, a year from now and on into the future.

The truth is most agents pay no attention to a client once the commission check is been paid. You can set yourself head and shoulders above the rest by doing some thinking about how to stay in touch with clients that have already completed their real estate deals.

Why do you want to stay in touch?

The reason you want to stay in touch, other than you’re a nice person, is that clients who have completed real estate deals through you are your best and cheapest source of income in the future. Here’s why:

• Most Americans move every two or three years. When the client you just sold decides to move you want them to call you and not someone else.
• When the person you just sold talks about real estate and people do, you want them to have your name at the tip is their tongue.
• When the person you just sold is asked about their real estate agent even five years from now you want them to speak well of you.
• When the person you just sold decides they need a bigger house you want them to call you.
• When their children leave home and they want to downsize you want them to think of you even if they’re moving to another area.

Getting referrals is golden! A client who considers you their real estate broker for life is a client you don’t have to spend money trying to find. Even if they move to another town, if they think of you first you may end up getting at least a referral fee.

These and many other reasons are why you want to spend some time staying in touch with the clients you already served turning them into raving fans of years to come back again and again and again.

4 Tips for keeping your clients long-term

Here are four simple ways to keep your clients over the long haul:

1. Creating a list of vendors a new homeowner might want to use is a great many gift to give a day or two after they actually move in. Stick with vendors you actually know. You’re trying to make things easier for your client.
2. A gift – the IRS says you can deduct up to $50 for a closing gift – given a couple of weeks after client who bought has moved in is a great way to say thank you. Make sure the gift isn’t emblazoned with your name – you’re not giving them an advertisement. Make it useful like a yardstick or a gadget that opens envelopes or even a pretty potted plant. Your name and phone number unobtrusively somewhere on the item is okay. Always think how you’d feel receiving the gift before you choose one to give your client.
3. Creating a monthly or quarterly client newsletter that’s delivered either by email or snail mail is another great way to stay in touch with clients provided you give useful information. A newsletter should be more about what the client needs then information about you. Of course saying something about yourself and what you’re up to makes good sense that the focus should be as always on’s the service on giving service.
4. It’s nice to stop by once or twice a year in person. The holidays can be a good time so can off season times like early spring or fall.  Plan on doing no more than saying something like  “I just wanted to stop by and say hi and touch base with you. Is there anyway I can be of service to you now?”

Your goal is to help them remember you year after year after year. At some point they will probably contact you or tell you when you call on them that their thinking about buying a larger place or moving to another area or any of the other things people are likely to need a real estate agent for.

It truly doesn’t take much effort to find ways to stay in touch with clients long after the sale is closed. Keep it simple, automate when you can and consider this kind of marketing to be one of the best investments you can ever make.

What’s your experience with leading to clients who already bought or sold? Tell us about it in comments.