Client Retention – Where’s the Gap?

building client loyalty

There’s no worse feeling than realizing your client found a new real estate agent. You helped them buy their first home – in the best neighborhood & under budget. You even sent an awesome closing gift. Now 3 years later, they’ve listed with a different agent. You’ve been dumped.

 

While we’d like to hope that our clients will remain loyal, data shows that the real estate industry has a problem with client retention. Despite the fact that nearly 90% of home buyers and sellers say that they like their agent and would use them again, only 10% do. We work so hard to help our clients buy or sell, but we drop the ball post close.

 

So why is it so difficult to retain clients? It turns out that most agents lack a strategy for staying in touch & top of mind with past clients. In a recent study, it was found that 15% of agents participate in no form of post-close marketing. And of those who do – it mainly consists of haphazard activities such as bumping into clients in the grocery store or sending a few random check-in emails. So with no strategy to stay connected with past clients and provide value after the sale, it’s no wonder agents have difficulty with client retention.

 

Now, think about the efforts you go through to find new leads. You’ll update our website, hire photographers to take awesome listing photos, buy ads on Zillow or Realtor.com, blog, use lead capture on our website, plan open houses,  advertise on billboards… the list goes on. The fact is, there tends to be huge discrepancy between the effort we use to attract new clients and the effort to retain past clients. What if we diverted even 5% of our prospecting time to post-close marketing? Would it increase repeat business? Lead to  more referrals? Decrease client acquisition costs?

 

The research says yes. According to the White House Center for Consumer Affairs, it’s 6-7 times more expensive to acquire a new client than it is to keep a current one. What strategies do you use to stay connected with past clients?