The real estate industry has many professionals who use all sorts of technologies, automation, skills, and techniques to improve their business. However, there is nothing that can improve a real estate business quite like mutually beneficial client relationships.
Client relationships are at the core of the real estate industry, and it can be the difference between success and failure for most real estate professionals. While most real estate professionals make use of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, personal connections are still crucial.
CRMs can only help you improve your client management. You still have to put in the effort to build relationships.
Let’s discuss a few tips for building client relationships that will help you better connect with your clients and, in turn, improve your real estate business.
Tips for Building Client Relationships
Here are a few key tips for building and managing better client relationships in the real estate industry.
Serve Your Community
Always make sure you are regularly serving your community. Being known as an active member of a community is often more important than being known as a real estate professional.
Engaging with locals, communicating, and getting feedback are a few things that help you serve your community better. Taking the time to solve their problems, guiding them with something, or simply taking part in their combined efforts can go a long way.
Although you always want to be sincere in your efforts, communicate effectively, and create engaging experiences with your community. Always give due consideration to feedback if and when you receive it because it has valuable information that will help you in the long run.
When you become part of a community that you serve regularly and sincerely, the business will follow automatically, and it will come from people genuinely invested in you.
Respect Clients
You must always treat your clients with respect, no matter the situation. Honesty, respect, decency, and hard work are just a few things we all expect from any professional, and the real estate industry is no exception.
You do not have to base your client relationship on lies. You simply need to treat clients as you would want to be treated yourself, and this can be a great way to create meaningful connections.
Truly Care About Client Needs
Real estate professionals need to go beyond just selling homes. They need to cater to the needs of their client and care about their demands. Taking the time and making the effort to meet their demands will show them that you truly care, and this will help build a sincere relationship.
When it comes to caring for client satisfaction, your actions speak louder than words, and they will show them your commitment to their needs.
Make Clients Feel and Look Good
A key aspect of any relationship is to know when to step back and let the other person stand out. Real estate professionals make a concerted effort to make their clients feel and look good in front of others. Hence, they move the spotlight away from themselves and more on their clients.
The better you make them feel and look, the more they trust you, and there is nothing that works better than trust when it comes to building positive client relationships.
With enough experience, you will become more intuitive and be able to predict the opportunities and situations where you can let them feel and be seen as the champions.
Open Communications and Reach Out
You need to open communication on all channels with your client and always be available whenever possible. Try to reduce, limit, or eliminate most of your automated client engagement. This does not mean you remove technology; we suggest curbing its use to give a personal touch to your communication with clients.
Use it to ensure follow-ups are maintained; however, the actual follow-ups should be personal to show clients you are invested.
Moreover, it is always better to spend a couple of hours every day just calling, reaching out, and following up with clients and leads. We are not suggesting using social media, automated messages, or generic emails for follow-ups. Try to call your clients and engage them in meaningful conversations.
If you have called every client and lead, catch up with past clients. Having open communications and reaching out will help you anticipate clients’ needs and maintain better ongoing relationships.
Be Knowledgeable and Add Value
Contrary to popular belief, real estate professionals need to learn, research, and increase their knowledge constantly; this helps them become more knowledgeable and expert professionals. However, this knowledge is wasted if you keep it to yourself. You should try sharing it with other professionals in the field and clients.
Not only do you have to share it, but you need to do so for free. It may sound counterproductive; however, if you share your expertise for free, supply good ideas, showcase your unique perspective, and share insights, you become the expert everyone trusts and respects.
You add value to clients and peers, and this means you are the first person they call when they have something important. Adding value is key to building relationships because it helps others accomplish their goals. Even if you are not part of their accomplishment, adding value can do wonders for your referrals.
Every real estate professional knows that referrals are important and make for the best type of new client because there is a pre-existing element of trust.
Never Miss an Opportunity (With OktoHub)
The real estate industry is quite competitive, and to build good relationships and become successful, real estate professionals must never miss an opportunity to impress. You’ll have to make some sacrifices, be present for clients, follow every lead, and strengthen client relationships every step of the way.
However, it is only natural to not be available all the time. Emergencies come up, prior commitments are made, and delays happen. There are a million and one things that can result in missing an opportunity, and this can especially be devastating if you have to make a good first impression.
Luckily, OktoHub provides the perfect solution for busy real estate professionals. OktoHub is the first-ever on-demand real estate assistance program that allows you to create a network of reliable real estate professionals around you and hire them for task-based real estate assistance.
You can rely on your OktoHub network for real estate tasks, like showings, client meetings, open houses, home inspections, and much more. It allows you to never have to compromise on personal or family time and not miss an opportunity with clients.
The best part is you don’t have to hire another professional permanently. You only make one-time payments for the specific real estate assistance tasks you require.
Conclusion
Real estate is undeniably a people-oriented business completely reliant on building client relationships to become successful. Whom you build relationships with, how you build them, and how you maintain them will dictate much of your success in the real estate industry.
The best place to start is with the people you already have a relationship with, like your community. You will have to put in some genuine effort, care about your clients, respect them, make them feel good, and communicate with them actively.
These things will help strengthen your client relationships for the better. Moreover, learning about the real estate industry, your market, and becoming knowledgeable will give you the ability to add value to others and build better relationships based on your expertise.
It will also help you get plenty of referrals, making building client relationships easier due to pre-existing trust. Lastly, you must never miss an opportunity with clients, especially when building client relationships, and this is where OktoHub can be of great help.
If you want to learn more about building client relationships or about OktoHub’s real estate assistance program, please visit our website today.
