Are you looking to increase your real estate brand? It takes more than just driving around, showing house after house on a Saturday morning. Before knowing it, you need to understand your buyers and tap into what they want. That is the key to increasing sales.
Understanding your client’s needs can be tricky unless you have a crystal ball or can tap into your 6th sense. Use different strategies to get the upper hand and deliver exactly what your clients want, even before they know it.
How do you anticipate your customer needs in real estate? Here are six proven strategies.
Solve a real estate customer’s problems
People buy and sell the home for one reason; they have a specific problem. It could be that their current home is too small or too big, or they need a shorter commute to work. Maybe they have kids and want to be closer to parks and schools. They need a real estate agent to solve these problems.
Listen to what they say when meeting new clients and ask the right questions. Then target your research on filling their needs and resolving their issues through a new real estate purchase. If you can show them a house that solves their problems, you will have them as a client for life.
Get personal with real estate customers.
It’s hard to know what a client wants if you don’t invest time in them. Having a surface relationship will leave them on the outside not feeling taken care of, and they will look elsewhere for an agent willing to get to know them better.
Dig deep into your client’s life without being too intrusive. You need a thorough understanding of their needs to deliver for them. Whether buying or selling, developing a personal relationship helps you work harder to make them happy. A fantastic tool to improve your customer relationships is with the help of a real estate CRM. This platform allows you to manage information and communications easily.
There are many emotions involved in transitioning in and out of a home. If you are caring and empathetic, that connection will allow them to trust and rely on you.
Provide real estate customers with take-home materials.
Looking at multiple houses on one day can be overwhelming. You do it for a living and have built up a skill set to remember key features in each property, but that doesn’t mean your clients have that ability.
Consider putting together a fill-list that clients can carry with them as they tour homes. This can have a simple checklist of what to look for and checkmarks and note-taking areas for things they like or want in a home. Hand it out at the beginning of the day and let them keep them, so they have something to refer to when they go home.
Include the listing sheets and a community info sheet of schools, restaurants, parks, and other amenities to know what is offered in specific areas. This extra effort in your park will provide vital take-home information to help your clients decide on their purchases.
Exceed the customer’s expectations.
Over-delivering should be your goal with every real estate transaction. Sometimes your clients don’t even know what they want or need, and having the insight and expertise of a real estate agent is paramount.
Recognize the real needs they have to sell their house, like including staging for their place and using a high-quality photographer and videographer to make stunning visuals to get the home sold faster.
Help with their packing and moving by supplying local companies they can trust. Follow up with them before, and after the deal has gone through, and give them your moving checklist, so they don’t feel overwhelmed. These little extras won’t put you out but make a huge difference to excited buyers.
Learn through customer feedback.
You can’t be perfect for every client, but you can learn from every interaction. Put together a robust survey and give it out to clients after providing them with your service. This can be an online survey or a print-out that you collect later. It is important to see where you did a great job and where you can improve.
Take this feedback seriously, and don’t get offended. To progress in your career, you must make positive adjustments and learn from your client’s feedback. Then you can create a better customer experience the next time and take the lessons learned to anticipate any problems you may face.
Understand Your Client’s Market
If you specialize in a certain niche, you should know that market inside and out. These could be foreclosures, first-time buyers or investment properties. For more general sales, become a student in the makeup of different neighbourhoods and city statistics, price points and current and future housing trends.
This is your job, and it’s more than just being a people person. The field is crowded with competition, so make sure you have all the answers when someone comes to you to buy or sell a home.
