After your awesome work getting out your pre-listing package, and impressed by your stellar listing presentation, your potential clients became your actual clients and you made the sale. Success! But wait, you’re not done…there’s still something left (hint: you have to stay in contact).

I once bought a house with the help of a very nice Realtor, who was communicative during the process and generally made the purchase easy. But as soon as the closing was complete, I never heard from him again. In fact, I ran into him a couple months later and he didn’t even remember who I was.

While he did a good job , and I would have used him again based on his abilities as a real estate agent, he failed in an area where many agents drop the ball. How do you multiply a sale into referrals and repeat business? You have to stay in touch, of course, and in a meaningful and memorable way. And you have to ASK them for referrals and testimonials.

That will help you, as a Realtor, keep your clients top-of-mind as well. They’ll be harder to forget when they just offered you a referral!

Follow-Up Builds Relationships

What do you usually do after a sale? Do you send a gift, like Steve Vaught? (click here to read Steve’s idea)

Do you send a follow-up letter asking for your client’s testimonial or for referrals? More details about what you should be doing post-sale have been covered in a previous article: ( After-sale contact tips) 

You probably should be doing all of those things, but MOST importantly you’ll need to keep in touch with previous clients on at least a monthly basis.

Marketing gurus know- the optimal time to contact your database is every 21 days, because after that your list starts forgetting who you are.

Home Anniversary Dates

How about something most agents are NOT doing- recognizing the one-year purchase date of your client’s homes?

Very few agents recognize Home Purchase Anniversary Dates, yet that’s a great time to build your relationship with your clients.

And it’s easy to get those dates– here are two ways:

1) always make sure you enter the transaction closing date in your database right after a transaction.

2) send an update survey to your network every so often to ask them the month and year of their last home purchase or sale (among other things you might want to know about life events, or what they’re currently looking for).

Add an event to your calendar or CRM that lets you know when to send a special card, a letter, or a small gift to recognize the one-year anniversary. Your clients will be touched, and appreciate that you remembered them a whole year later.

Your contact system

So what’s the best way to stay in touch with your list? Many of the best salespeople in the world know- it’s a monthly newsletter. That’s why we created Service For Life – to create a ready-to-use marketing tool that acts as 7 tools in 1 to work to maximize the Lifetime Value of every client and every contact you make in your business. Most agents are “single transaction oriented,” forgetting about their clients after a deal closes. They let their “next” deal walk out with their “last” deal.

Smart agents know the value of cultivating relationships, and rather than playing the stressed-out, feast-famine, “where’s my next deal” mentality, they have a long-term profit strategy that “steadies the ship” and brings them consistent business year after year. Build the back end of your business with these house list strategies, and you could triple the value of each and every client you get. And here’s one more bonus: Working with your house list and their referrals is easy, the clients tend to be very high quality, and you work much less to make more money. Follow-up is the key to working smarter!

Get to Work

Do yourself a favor and start putting these simple ideas and systems to work. Plug them into your CRM after every sale, or just start a spreadsheet to use as a checklist with previous clients. Mark off each post-sale standard contact (thank-you letter, request for testimonial, etc.) as you complete it. You’ll be glad you did!

And if you’re not currently using Service For Life!® in your practice, click here to learn how you can put it to work in your practice starting today.  It can multiply your referrals for years to come by being the “ultimate” after-sale contact system.