Everybody Knows That!

“Referrals are the key to a successful long term real estate business”—a wise old broker.

Gosh, everybody knows that!

Well, did you know that, unlike our sister company Geico’s commercials where trees fall in the forest with no one around and they DO make a noise, there’s also a way you can improve your success in receiving solid referrals and turning them into a more profitable real estate business! But it probably will take you a tad more than Geico’s fifteen minutes!

So how do we optimize our relationships and leverage all those wonderful friends and clients so they are delighted to keep us in mind and want to consistently—and proactively—recommend us?

Of course, step one is to provide our clients with excellent service and value so they are delighted and want to recommend us to more of their friends—who doesn’t like recommending a great experience, whether it’s a new bistro or a bike shop or a real estate pro? Those current and/or recently active clients have their Reticular Activator on high alert for both Real Estate and for their favorite Broker—us!

But the problem most of us experience over time is that, after the closing, we move on to our next clients and get caught up in the whirlwind of solving problems and serving needs and executing our wonderful service. And suddenly six months or three or five years have passed and we notice a competitor’s For Sale sign in our past client’s yard! Hey, why didn’t they call me? I sent them a calendar every danged year—with my picture holding my cute dogs and a recipe for square donuts and everything!

Yep, we’ve all been there!

Of course we’ve written and talked a lot this year about the Buffini & Company’s Peak Producers training we’re offering, with its focus on methods, tools, and systems for maintaining connections with and proactively generating referrals from folks who really, really like us, but we haven’t directly addressed step one in that process so far. The good news is that it’s pretty simple and straightforward; the bad news is that the vast majority of agents never quite get around to doing it since it does take an investment of our time.

So, here is the step one magic formula: C R M

Customer Relationship Management

CRM is defined most simply as “a system and an approach to managing a company’s (or an agent’s) interactions with current, inactive, and future clients. It often involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize sales, marketing, and customer service.”

Everybody knows that, right?

And here’s the best news: The BHHS REsource Center’s CRM system is a robust and sophisticated system that links to the BHHS Global Network website where our clients can search using sophisticated tools like Inrix Drive Times and even Walk Scores. Once you’ve entered all your Sphere of Influence contacts into the BHHS CRM system, you’ll be able to organize your contacts both by functional groups—buyer, seller, prospect, family, or bike riders, for example—and also by the Peak Producers approach where you rank all your contacts based on the strength of your professional relationship, A+, A, B, C, etc; you’ll be able to register clients so they are linked to you—and only you—and will even reflect a changing score depending on how active they are in saving searches and homes; and you’ll be able to set up recurring Action Plan email campaigns you can customize with a few clicks on  your computer.

But wait, there’s more! The BHHS CRM system and all the tools are of course available to you at no cost. The only investment you need to make is your time to set up your contacts in the CRM, and we all know that investments will yield a better return if we invest wisely. So, let’s all get started with step one and make use of our BHHS Resource Center CRM and other tools to build a solid referral base to optimize our business!

Of course, everybody knows that . . .

David M. Hassler

VP, Director of Business Development