You would think understanding our clients wants and needs would be the first action of every agent, but many waste their time and their client’s time running around aimlessly with no idea who the best fit is for a property. Four bedrooms, three bathrooms in Plymouth is hardly prescriptive of the lifestyle someone is seeking.
Today, we are going through the steps to properly serve a client, from initial point of contact to welcome home! Every client is different, and with a unique experience comes a unique process. Start with a template or framework and build off that, adding on or taking away as necessary to ensure the right fit.
The Buyers
For the sake of conversation, let’s create a buyer persona. Meet the Anders! Married 10 years with two young kids in elementary school, Bob Anders is a C-suite executive who takes the family dog for his morning jog, is an avid outdoorsman, and travels by airline frequently for work.
Now, meet Mary! Mary is Bob’s wife, and she keeps everything running at home. When the kids are in school Mary loves getting coffee with her friends, volunteering in the community, and identifying investment opportunities. Mary is an accountant by trade, handling the family finances and managing their daily budget.
Their children are active and enjoy sports, science, and exploring new areas. They love spending time together unless they are doing homework, when they prefer to have a quiet space to focus on their studies.
The Consultation
A familiar scene presents itself — you are sitting at the kitchen table with the sellers, ready to discuss listing their home for sale and helping them find a new one. Armed with your binder of information about the neighborhood and showcasing your own expertise, you feel ready for anything. They are a polite couple, ushering their kids off to another room to play while you discuss business. A beverage is offered, glass of water at the ready. Gracious hosts.
After some small talk, you get started. About 10 minutes in, Bob needs to take a call — he apologizes and says to carry on until he returns. Mary jokes he may be a while and you may as well keep going. He ducks into a room across from where the kids are playing and closes the door behind him.
You discuss nearby comparable properties, what your process is like, and look at Mary. She seems distracted. You close your notes and set them aside, looking directly at her. This gets Mary’s attention, suddenly aware she hasn’t been giving you her full focus. Then you ask the most important question you will ever ask your clients: “how will the new home improve your life dramatically“?
A question this direct will put many on their heels, but you must get to this point. If there is no strong motivation, no emotional force, moving forward will be a slog at best and a nightmare at worst, for you and your clients. And unless they view this home purely as an investment, I guarantee there is an unmet emotional need to be addressed.
After collecting herself and stammering a few times, a serious look crosses her face. The kitchen is too small — when they are entertaining, she can barely maneuver around the island. The deck looks at another house. The yard is too small for the kids to run and play, so they have to walk a mile to the park any time they want to enjoy the outdoors. The “office” her husband stepped into? One of the kid’s bedrooms, where he will assuredly exit stressed because he could barely focus on his call with the noise of the kids playing. There was a problem at the school her kids currently attend so they are looking at new schools for next year. Their street has no sidewalks and no nearby park trails, so they need to walk in the street for half a mile before reaching a paved path and she feels unsafe in the road with her children in tow.
At this point Bob steps back out, catching the tail end of Mary’s debriefing. He takes one look at his wife, on the verge of tears, and says “find us a house that gives my wife everything she wants fixed and we will not only work with you to buy a home, but you can sell this one as well. If it doesn’t meet these criteria, don’t bother sending it to us. Where do we sign?”
The Search is On
You have been tasked with finding the ideal property for this lovely family, and thank goodness you asked that last question or you would have been stuck sending them generic “5 Bedroom + an Office, 4 Bathroom, 3 Car Garage” homes for months before you either finally got to the right homes or they tired of looking. Where do start?
Well, with those specifics you can hammer in specific neighborhoods relatively easily. They want trails and walking paths, nearby parks (preferably adjacent to or inside the neighborhood), with privacy in their backyard and a kitchen perfect for wowing their guests. There should be access to great schools nearby for the kids. A professional office setting set aside from the hustle and bustle of the daily home activity completes this family’s needs.
For a busy family like the Anders, screening properties in advance is critical. This means agent previews, conversations with listing agents, and gathering as much detail as possible about a property in advance of showing it to your clients. Do a tax search on the property, drive through the community, talk to neighbors if you can. Call the school and see what unique programs they may have available. This may feel like a lot of work, and it is — ideally, they will want to be in an area you are already familiar with and most of this work will have been done proactively, creating an even better experience for your clients.
During a Showing
When showing a home, proper preparation is crucial to maximizing the experience. Have all documents at the ready; even better if you can provide your clients with a “showing package” before they arrive so they know what to expect/can focus on the home itself without staring at a sheet the entire time they are there. Remain close enough for questions without getting in the way — let them experience the home!
Tie everything back to their “must-haves” and ensure all those needs are met. If an item has been missed or something has changed, be sure to gather feedback then and there so you can make adjustments for future properties.
Offers and Negotiations
Hopefully you’ve brushed up on your negotiation skills — remember, we have a duty to get our clients the best possible deal without ruining the experience for them. Understanding their expectations in advance helps with this process, as does knowing the market. The more you know, the better deal you can get.
Keep your clients up-to-date every time an offer is submitted, confirmed received, and the response from the sellers as they mull it over. If a listing agent tells you an offer is accepted verbally, do NOT notify your clients until you receive said confirmation in writing via a signed purchase agreement. There are NO verbal agreements in real estate, and relying on the word of another agent can ruin the relationship between you and your client if you aren’t careful.
Once an offer has been accepted and the signed agreement is in hand, pass it along as quickly as possible and share in a moment of excitement with your clients! You’ve worked hard for this, as have they.
Contract Pending
From here, the rest of the team should step in — the Lender (if financing) and Title Company. And when I say team, I mean TEAM — you are all in this together, after all, and should be working together closely to ensure a smooth experience for the Anders. This part of the process can be left to taste, but I prefer to leave the financing questions to the Lender and the title-related questions to Title, observing communication and stepping in/clarifying the terms of the Agreement as necessary. Otherwise, keep an eye on your timelines, make sure everything is getting done when it needs to get done, and inform your clients of next steps as you go.
Further along, you’ll want to schedule a final inspection of the property. Essentially, this is just to ensure the property is in substantially the same condition as when you purchased it. I always attend these and look around for myself, making notes if anything is missing that should be there. A common one is window treatments, or TV wall mounts. Discuss with the buyer and if any corrective measures need to be made, be sure to handle them promptly.
I also use this part of the process to set a few expectations with my clients:
- Be on the lookout the day of closing for an email from you, inviting them to leave a review for you!
- Ask if they know anyone of comparable quality to themselves considering buying or selling their homes. The phrasing on this is important — you are simultaneously implying they are quality people, and this protects you from referrals who may be less enjoyable to work with.
- Whatever closing gift you generally like to give — I generally order pizza on moving day, so I always ask what kind of pizza they like and know their planned moving date.
- How you will follow-up with them and keep in touch following closing! Whatever program you offer, just let them to know keep an eye out — quarterly drop-ins, holiday cards, etc.
Closing Day!
This is an exciting one! Always try to make closings in person if at all possible — it’s the best time to make a final connection and solidify the relationship between their happy moment and you! You want them to think of you when they are enjoying their beautiful new home and recommend their friends and family to you, and there is nothing better than being in-person to establish a healthy relationship.
Take some photos, post them on social media, but make sure it stays about them — this is, after all, their big day!
Post-Closing
From here, you have hopefully established a great relationship with them. Done properly you might find yourself invited to housewarming parties, graduations, weddings, neighborhood block parties, local fundraisers, high school football games — you will be a part of their life, provider of their sanctuary! Make sure you keep the relationship healthy by touching base periodically, and I don’t mean through cheap gimmicks. Genuinely check in on them, see how life is going.
This is what a truly curated experience looks like for a client — all their needs are met in the new home, the process is kept easy, and all the details are handled by their agent. From end to end the process should be designed with painstaking care for their lifestyle, not just in the home they acquire but the process to get there. By putting them first you are sure to have raving fans, the single best return you can get for your money. A referral from somebody who cares about them cuts straight through any other marketing, and is by far the highest close ratio from appointment to client.
This seems simple in practice, and in many ways it is — however, it requires a great deal of diligence, persistence, and commitment to excellence. Proactively educating yourself on communities you want to serve clients in is a great way to establish expertise and ensure the best possible experience — everybody wants their agent to have firsthand experience and knowledge with the towns they want to live in.
