So you made your first sale or have hit your sales goal. Hooray! But after the celebratory pats on the back and handshakes from colleagues and friends, you begin to dread on how to maintain this success in your career.
And why wouldn’t you? Getting your first sale probably takes a lot of your effort and time: uploading property listings in every free and paid real estate platform you think of, spending hours or days flyering in public spaces like malls and parks, answering hundreds of inquiries over social media, SMS, or mobile phone calls. Not to mention the many heartbreaks you had when your prospective clients backed out at the last possible minute.
Ensuring Repeat Success
You’re probably thinking to yourself whether there is a formula to ensure that you get success in your real estate career every single time. Like, how do the real PROs do it?
But before knowing how they do it, or read up and follow their morning habits as successful people, there are a couple of reality checks you need to know.
For one, success can be achieved every single time if you understand a homebuyer’s journey. This is because once your KKK network (kapatid, kamag-anak, kaibigan) has been fully exhausted, you will now need to “create” customers for your business. This also means getting inside their heads and knowing where they are coming from so you can guide them to the end of the journey not as a salesperson, but as a friend.
Second, it can be a real grind if you’re not going to set your sights higher than just getting by every sales month or quarter. As such, it makes sense to have a set of systems or processes in place to consistently hit sales goals faster with finesse and a little bit of effort, especially when the real estate industry experiences a slump.
Understanding the Homebuyer Journey
The word “customer” is used quite loosely in the services industry. By definition, a customer is anyone who is looking to do business with you.
A real estate pro, however, understands the needs to differentiate the people he or she engages in the business. This is because a real PRO values the importance of tailorfitting how he or she engages with a home seeker in order to move the latter to the next homebuying stage.
A homebuyer’s journey typically follows this exact flow in a sales funnel:
- A homebuyer is classified as a lead when he sees your property listing online (or is aware that there is a property for sale).
- The homebuyer becomes a prospect when he contacts you and remains interested with the property you’re selling/leasing.
- The homebuyer becomes a customer if he or she purchases or signs a lease with you.
Thanks to the Internet and new technology, it’s quite easy to bring awareness to the properties you’re selling or leasing out. The homebuying stage that needs more of your effort and time is if your home seekers are now prospects. This is because there is so much to do to convince your prospects to move to the next step and eventually be your customers.
Bringing Them “Home”
In a sales funnel, there is a huge drop-off in home seekers right after they post their first engagement with the broker. At this point, you have already answered all possible questions that they can throw at you. But for whatever reasons, your prospects seem to be stuck at this stage.
Being able to figure out what it would take your prospects to move to the next step is key to closing a sale. And because each prospect is different, you need to retrofit your nudging strategy accordingly.
Some require a little effort, others may call for an aggressive strategy. The rest could may just need a little bit of space, but would like to know that they are still remembered.
Creating Customers Beyond The Sale
While it seems tempting to entertain the next prospect who’s more likely to convert, it also pays to give importance to your customer, especially if you have done your job well to the latter’s satisfaction.
With little effort such as informing them of new investment opportunities or a simple birthday greeting, your customer can be your biggest and most loyal fan to champion you as a “maaasahan” na broker. You probably already know that a good word-of-mouth can drive enough good to best leads or prospects.
Moreover, your customer may also be enticed to make a repeat purchase in the future if you treat them like they’re special. Customers who make a repeat purchase may purchase a similar property outright from you or go through the sales funnel again simply because they love what you do for them.
Start effectively moving leads into closed sales. Grab or receive a homebuyer inquiry here.
