How to Build a Repeat & Referral Based Real Estate Business

However good your skills are in negotiating and selling real estate, any marketing professional will tell you that they are not enough to retain your clients. Communication is vital to winning and keeping clients for your business building rapport and earning respect are vital. Clients do not just buy your services; they buy your continuous support and that means maintaining that important element of human contact.

Without that human touch, your business will lose clients. With it, not only will you retain clients but you will gain referrals. Statistics show that it is less expensive to keep a client than gain a new one. Most of us know the 80/20 rule - that 80 % of business comes from current clients and 20 % from new ones. But were you aware that according to the Harvard Business Review it costs up to 8 times more to gain a new customer than retain an old one (Zero Defections by Frederick F. Reichheld & W. Earl Sasser, Jr.). If you do the math you will find that the 20% is only worth 4 % of your business in real terms. You do not want to lose your past clients!

As president of Creative Agent Solutions, an Arizona based virtual real estate marketing company; I can say one of the main features of our real estate marketing service is to utilize a Client Database Management system that allows us to maintain communications for our agents with little effort on their part. We formulate a desired contact strategy with agents and produce 100% customizable direct mail to their clients on an annual, quarterly or monthly basis. Designed pieces include postcards, letters, and folded card formats and can include calendars, recipes, sports schedules, magnetic dry erase boards and more. The contents are fun and full of helpful and informative tips for the agents clients. Some subjects for example can include home improvement tips or knowing when to refinance. Each piece works to keep our agents name in front of their clients year round and also prompts their clients for onward referrals.

Agents can keep their client list up to date all year round by simply faxing a client update form to us, that way the mail count is always accurate. The service is competitively priced and pays dividends as agents get referrals from clients already in their book of business by the most powerful medium of all word of mouth. In the competitive world of real estate, that's a solid gold guarantee not only of continued repeat business but of new business as well.

Sarah Reiter is president of Creative Agent Solutions, a virtual marketing company that specializes in real estate marketing and administrative services. Creative Agent Solutions is a member of the International Virtual Assistants Association (IVAA), the Southeast Valley Regional Association of Realtors (SEVRAR) and Scottsdale Association of Realtors in Arizona (SAR), as well as a Certified Virtual Assistant (CVA) with the Settlement Room. We specialize in transaction coordination, client database management, drip email campaigns, lead follow-up & tracking, closing gifts, direct mail campaigns, desktop publishing design work, as well as special campaigns/projects. Our services are 100% customizeable and are tailered to fit any budget. Our main goal is to leverage real estate agents time so they can be out listing, selling, and negotiating.

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