After the Close
Let’s be honest with ourselves, it’s hard enough to maintain great service from time of contract to closing table. I’m going to present an idea today that may be new to you. Most people when they buy a home are in what I call the honeymoon phase. At closing, everyone should be happy – Buyer, seller, buyer’s agent, and listing agent. They’re getting a new home or selling their old home. Who wouldn’t be excited about that? The National Association of Realtors came up with a statistic that said over 70% of clients that were polled would use the same realtor again down the road when they needed to either sell or buy again. But the reality is only 18% of them actually do. Why is that? It’s simple. We fall in love with the deal and we feel like once we put them under contract and close them that our job is done.
Sending a client a post card from time to time isn’t enough. Within the last year I’ve implemented a system that has worked beautifully and has generated referrals from my past clients. At the time of closing we will give or send a very nice hand written note to the client. A lot of times if you bring a gift basket or cookies or any kind of closing gift at the closing table, the affect of the gift is watered down by the excitement of the new home.
So here’s the fix.
30 days after closing my clients get a gift. Either a gift card to a local Starbucks, movie theater gift cards, a gift card to a nice restaurant, anything that you can think of that would have a positive response from your client. A handwritten note is sent along with the gift card thanking them for working with me.
60 days after closing another gift, maybe another gift card, maybe a gift basket, or maybe tickets to dinner and a movie, and another hand written note is sent to the client telling them that I really appreciate them being a part of my real estate family, thanks so much for your business.
90 days after the closing, you guessed it. Another gift. This time the hand written note in the gift says “I was just thinking about you today and thought about how wonderful the experience of working with you and your family was. I would love the opportunity to work with your friends or family that may need to buy or sell, here’s a little gift for you guys to go out and have some frozen yogurt or ice cream on me. Thank you, your Realtor for Life.”
I will tell you the difference between spending $100 for an initial gift basket at closing and staggering $100 worth of gifts over the 90 days after closing is the difference in night and day responses from the clients. I’ve received more thank you notes because of this, positive referrals, Facebook posts saying that I was the best realtor they ever worked with and the only thing I’ve done differently here is staggering the joy.
I have a calendar on my wall that every time we have a closing we write the client’s name on the month that they closed and the next 3 months after. You will see amazing results by doing this one small thing. Sometimes it takes us thinking outside the box a little bit to make us stand out for great service or creative new ideas. Try, it. It works.
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