Thank you for joining us for another episode of Brilliant Talks, our free weekly coaching program for real estate agents. Today, Mark and I talked about follow-ups for past clients and open houses.

We keep saying that the secret to growing your business lies in the quality of relationships you’ve built. That goes beyond one-time transactions and encounters at open houses and events. 

The key is in the follow-up.

But as agents, we are both business owners in charge of the many aspects of our business, as well as the salesperson and customer support, to name a few hats we might have to put on. Because we are so busy day in and day out, meeting clients, negotiating deals, calling leads, etc., some things can fall through the cracks, and follow-up is often at the top of the list of things we drop when it gets too hectic.

That’s where automation comes in handy, to make sure you’ve got everything covered. We use Agent Legend for our drips, and we are slowly migrating our drips over to Chime, simply because it is awesome. 

As Mark said, Chime is “the future.”

Let’s take a look at how we can follow up with our past clients and open house leads better.

Past Clients

These are people who’ve transacted with you at least once. You’ve already established a business relationship. The goal is to keep nurturing that relationship for possible future opportunities—more transactions or referrals.

That’s why it is important to follow up with your past clients. What we do is nurture these clients for a year, and our past client drip is automated. We set up five different kinds of communication: texts, emails, voicemails, video texts, and video emails, and we’ve outlined when they will be sent out and what messages will be sent out.

One thing to keep in mind: is to always come from a place of service and provide value to your clients.

After they’ve sold or bought their home, what stuff would they be needing that you could help them with? Consider sending blogs, articles, and resources or contacts that they might need.

Providing them with these contacts and resources is no longer profitable for you, at least not right away. However, you are preserving the bond you were able to forge with them during the course of their real estate transaction. 

You are showing them that you care beyond the transaction and will continually show up for them when they need you.

It keeps you top-of-mind, establishes long-term trust, and keeps opportunity lines open for you.

That’s also why, aside from the follow-up drips, we execute the HOP Method: meeting our clients at Home, Online, and in Person.

You can check out the templates we’ve outlined in our Past Client Drip (click the link above or message me), and feel free to switch things out and personalize it to what works for you. We make sure to update the contents outlined in these drips around every six months because the market changes.

Open Houses

The mortgage rates are continuing to drop: they're now in the low sixes after being between 7% and 7.5% for a while. That’s been bringing back a lot of serious buyers to the market. And now they are saying, “Well, what’s our possibility?”

That is why, in several states across the US, we have seen a lot of opportunities at open houses recently. These people coming through your open house currently have their hands raised: “I am interested in buy/sell/invest.” It is important to not miss out on this opportunity and to maximize its potential.

Ideally, you have to get back to all the people who walked through the event on the same day it was hosted. You can wait until the following day, but chances are they went to another open house after yours.

And it helps to have an automated Open House follow-up drip set up. Because aside from open houses, you are also getting online leads, referrals, and doing social media—you have a lot of prospecting arms to farm and nurture leads in while doing all this other stuff for your business, and you need to leverage the tech that you have to make sure you get to all of them.

Our drips run for 15 days, and they are set up to shut off once the consumer responds.

We set up these follow-up drips ahead of time because open houses can get quite taxing. You prepare weeks or days before the event, meet a lot of people during the open house, and take care of cleaning up after, but sometimes, because you are tired or busy, you forget to follow up. And in lead generation, timing counts.

And the follow-up really makes all the difference, because chances are, most of the agents these consumers meet communicate with them in a spammy way. They get asked if they already have an agent, how many homes they have looked at, and whether they have been pre-approved—all the things that the consumer doesn’t care about.

It is also crucial to consider what your audience wants: All they want is to look at properties.

What the consumer really wants, in this current market and any other market shifts, is to get the best property available for the best price. And their number one fear right now is: Are they buying at the right time, or is the market going to tank more?

You have to talk about that fear. And if you don’t talk about that fear, you’re going to miss the opportunity.

Conclusion

Follow-up is crucial in establishing long-term trusting relationships with your past clients and open-house leads. Automation helps you leverage the process and ensure nothing falls through the cracks. Just remember that even when you are building out general templates, they have to be as personal and relational as possible, and they have to come from a position of giving value to your audience.

Whether you are prospecting, farming, cold-calling, door knocking, etc., the way you communicate makes all the difference. Tools such as AgentLegend or Chime are just there to make the process easier to replicate and scale. But it always needs a personal touch.

We go deeper on dialogues, scripting, what’s next on the market, and what you should be doing on social media and in real estate in our one-on-one or group coaching here at A Brilliant Tribe. 

If you are interested in exploring and getting more guidance on how to grow your business, feel free to check out our coaching services and reach out to us.

We also do this coaching for free every week, so feel free to sign up for it. You can check the replays for previous sessions here. And if you are looking for new resources to help you grow your real estate business, my book is coming out soon. 

It’s called Real Estate Prospecting, and it is available for pre-order on Amazon. I’ve compiled a lot of stuff from previous coaching calls, stories from agents on the field, and lessons I’ve learned from others and my experiences working in the industry. I hope you enjoy it.

Have an awesome day!