Real Estate Client Relationships 

Anyone who has been in the real estate industry for a while understands the importance of building relationships with leads and clients alike. It is the very first step of the sales funnel and until you build a solid relationship, you can’t do the fun part of matching someone with the perfect property. Like any other sales-driven occupation, real estate agents need to focus on building relationships that show leads and clients that they are a trusted authority with the skills and expertise needed to help them buy or sell a home.  

Building and maintaining real estate client relationships takes some strategy, technique, and experience. You’ll need to attract leads and sustain interest as you build the relationship. Let’s dive into real estate client relationships and how to foster them in your community for a thriving and lucrative career as an agent.  

Building and Maintaining Real Estate Client Relationships 

Whether you are new to real estate or have been in the industry for a while, you’ve likely noticed how reliant your success is based on the relationships you have with your clients. Since buying and selling property is a big decision for most clients, they will want to make sure you are the right person to trust with the transaction. Many clients will choose a real estate agent based on a gut feeling. If you build a solid relationship with clients, they will base their instinct on how well you have built the connection. Some questions that clients ask themselves before choosing an agent include: 

• Is this the best person for the job? 
• How will they handle the transaction? 
• Can I trust them? 

Knowing this helps you build and maintain the right kind of relationships with your clients. If you know clients will ask themselves these questions, it helps to focus on your achievements, expertise, trustworthiness, and speed of sales. Clients want to know you are well-equipped for the job so make sure you show them that you are a great fit in all your interactions. It helps to put yourself in a new prospect’s shoes to see how they would interpret you based solely on the information you give them on your landing page, social media page, or advertisement.  

Maintaining Relationships Beyond The Sale 

From your first impression to follow-up emails years later, the relationship you maintain with your clients is crucial to running a successful real estate business. Positive reviews from past clients help influence new leads and many will also refer you to friends and family. This is why maintaining relationships past the sale is still incredibly important. Whether you achieve this through email campaigns, mailers, social media messages, or whichever avenue you choose, keeping in touch with old clients helps you stay in their minds. This way when it comes time for them to buy or sell again, you will be on the top of their lists. After all, most people move more than once in their life!  

Maintaining communication is also important because many people will have friends and families who are thinking about moving. Being the first choice for past clients to refer people to involves staying relevant through continued communication. 

First Impressions In Real Estate 

In an industry like real estate that relies so heavily on client relationships, you can’t afford to make a bad first impression. This is especially true for those agents who run an online business and marketing efforts to attract new clients. Meeting people in person is not as commonplace as it once was with the onset of websites and social media. You won’t have the opportunity to give a quick pitch to a person you meet as often as you will have visitors to your website and social media pages. When it comes to running an online business, how you choose to reach out and attract clients is of utmost importance. It should be treated as the top priority on your real estate website and overall online presence.  

First Impressions With Your Real Estate Website

There are many ways to make a first impression, but most of your leads will probably discover you through your real estate website. This is why it is well worth the effort to create an established landing page that accurately curates your brand and reputation as an agent. How do you want to portray yourself and how do you want to be perceived by leads? Make sure your landing page accurately represents and embodies the impression you hope to make.  

It is also very helpful to keep everything cohesive under the same brand and image across all your online platforms. On your landing page, it helps to also have updated calls to action, contact forms, and information about you and your team. Since you won’t be meeting site visitors face to face, you want to ensure that your website is accurately capturing the image and impression you want.  

Consider The Systems You Have Set Up 

Understanding the systems you have set up on your website and social media profiles helps ensure that they are helpful and useful. To do this, you need to analyze what a typical prospect experience looks like. It is important to consider where leads and prospects are finding you. Are they finding you on social media or are they searching for you on Google? It is also important to consider where your various links lead to. Do you direct prospects to your homepage or do you have dedicated landing pages to collect contact information and answer questions for new prospects? Analyzing these aspects will help you provide a better experience for prospects and make an excellent first impression. 

Once a prospect leaves your website, do you have a system in place to keep the communication going to continue to build the relationship? Many real estate agents accomplish this by collecting email contact information to add to their marketing campaigns. Others use Facebook and Google to retarget prospects. Whatever avenue you choose, it helps to understand and analyze the systems you have in place to ensure you are providing the type of experience that gives a good first impression. Analyzing the systems also helps to streamline the contact process and improve your ability to make meaningful connections with leads. 

Maintaining Communication 

While first impressions are incredibly important, it is vital to continue to foster the relationships by maintaining communication to convert leads to clients and make sales. Maintaining communication is one of the most important things you can do when you’re working on establishing a relationship with leads. There are quite a few ways to connect consistently with prospects and leads to build the rapport, trust, and communication needed to help them decide on you as the best option for their real estate needs.  

The most popular avenues for maintaining communication include email marketing campaigns, scheduled phone calls, newsletters, and target ads. We cover all of this in more depth in this post here so you can develop the best communication efforts. The most important thing about maintaining consistent contact with your leads is that you’ll never know when someone is going to be ready to buy or sell. Through automated email campaigns and scheduled calls, you can keep yourself on your client’s radar. This way, you’ll stay relevant and fresh in their minds to help ensure you’ll be available and considered when that time comes. 

Keep Communication Consistent 

It’s important to communicate consistently with your leads and let them know what you are capable of. To keep things simple and cohesive, it helps to establish a tone and stick with it. For example, it helps to establish a professional presence if you work in a specialty area like luxury real estate. If you work with first-time home buyers, it will be beneficial to establish a helpful, informative, and knowledgeable tone.  

Be sure to reach out with relative frequency to your leads to keep the conversation going and stay relevant at whatever stage your leads are at. Email drip campaigns should be sent out often, over a long period of time. A good rule of thumb is to set your email campaigns up to be sent once or twice per week, for a full year. If you’re struggling to create enough content for a full email marketing campaign, consider reaching out to a writer through sites like Fiverr or Upwork.

Many websites and CRMs have templates for email campaigns as well. This can be very helpful for filling out a full email marketing campaign with details relevant to your real estate business to attract and convert clients over a long period of time. For example, LeadSites comes with pre-written campaigns that you can use as-is, or edit to meet your exact needs. You can learn more about LeadSites here.

Long-Term Follow Up 

In the most ideal scenario, you successfully convert prospects to happy clients as they progress through the sales funnel. While it’s important to celebrate the achievement, this does not mean the end of that real estate client relationship. After you close a deal, maintaining relationships is important for several reasons. Let’s dive into a few reasons why maintaining your relationships past the sale is incredibly important.  

Maintaining Future Business 

Former clients are much more likely to engage with you again when compared to new prospects. It takes a bit of work and sifting for people to find a real estate agent they like. This makes them significantly more likely to go with an agent they know and trust when it comes time to buy or sell again. If you give them a great experience the first time around and stay in touch, you’ll be at the top of their list.  

Increased Referrals  

Former clients can refer new clients to your business. If you don’t already have one, consider establishing a referral reward program to incentivize referrals. Friends and family members talk, especially when it comes to a big decision like buying or selling a home. Make a great impression so your reputation speaks for itself. Staying in contact will keep your name in mind.  

Provide Reviews  

Former clients provide a valuable service for real estate agents in the form of online reviews. When prospects are exploring your website or social media page, they are more than likely going to look for testimonials and reviews to see if you would be a good fit for them. Reviews from past clients help establish your authority and expertise as an agent. They also look great on your website. Be sure to follow up with any satisfied former clients and ask for a review.  

SEO 

By engaging with former clients, you’re able to drive their attention back to your website. This helps to improve SEO. Consider establishing a newsletter for current and past clients. You can fill the newsletter with links to your social media accounts and online blog. This extra traffic can do wonders for your website’s SEO which in turn helps you perform better on search rankings to attract more new prospects.  

For more help writing for SEO, check out our full guide here

To Sum It Up 

Client relationships are incredibly important for real estate agents. Both initiating and maintaining relationships with clients are integral to succeeding as a real estate agent. Making an excellent first impression and maintaining the relationship throughout the sales funnel helps to improve sales and establish yourself as a local authority and expert on all things real estate. It is also beneficial to continue communication past the closed sale as past clients can be very helpful in fortifying your reputation and attracting new prospects to your business.  

Make sure to keep in contact with clients at every level of the sales process and to do so consistently with the same brand and tone. This will help you stand out against the competition and make the right impressions on leads. Since so much of the sales funnel process takes place online nowadays, it is important to make sure your website, social media pages, emails, and advertisements are projecting the best image of you and what you’re capable of. Keep building and maintaining those real estate client relationships to help you flourish in your industry!