Stop Losing Business to Your Competition with These 5 Steps

The amount of competition in the real estate industry is huge with more and more players entering the industry daily.

How do you stand out and avoid losing business to your competition? There are many ways but here are 5 specific areas you can evaluate that may be costing you a lot of potential business.

Your online experience must be unmatched by your competitors

Today when someone is either looking to sell their home or buy one the first place they turn is the Internet.

You need to be sure that your website is easier to use and has much more information than your competitors have.

If a potential customer can?t find what they?re looking for on your site, if it?s too slow to load or too hard to use they?ll leave. They?ll never come back and they?ll click onto your competitor?s website next.

Your listings should be easy to search with options like the ability to sort for home within a certain radius of a customer?s workplace as just one example.

The photos on your listings need to be big, clear and beautiful. If you?re not adding video walkthroughs of your homes you need to start doing that now.

The majority of a customer?s purchase decisions are already made long before contacting a real estate agent so you need to provide the most positive user experience possible during their research phase.

You need to make a good impression

This should go without saying and also ties back into point number 1.

At first you need to make a good impression with your online presence. You need a beautiful website that?s incredibly user friendly. It needs to be mobile optimized and you need to build trust with testimonials and customer reviews.

But there?s also the impression you make in person.

There?s still a lot of potential home buyers that will show up to random open houses and this is your first point of contact with them.

People are more likely to do business with an agent who gives them a warm welcome and has a professional and positive attitude.

Being too pushy is guaranteed to make a poor impression.

Don?t stereotype your customers and treat them differently. That poor looking exchange student might have incredibly rich parents who will buy them a home after graduation.

Put the value proposition into the prospect?s context

Many realtors will launch into a prepared presentation about the features and benefits of the property and this is a mistake.

Ask questions and find out what?s important to your prospects.

That couple may have just had a baby and they?re more worried about good schools in the area than they are about garage space.

Buying a home is a huge investment and is perceived as being high risk. Be sure to concentrate on alleviating the concerns your clients have as well so the purchase is as risk-free as possible for them.

Follow-up needs to be customized for each client

First you need to be sure that you actually are following up with each client in the first place. If you are, make sure you?re not bothering them too much.

We?ve seen some real estate blog post suggesting texting prospects as much as 5 times in one day!

Be sure that you?re asking a lot of questions from your clients and figure out how best to contact them. Make notes in your CRM system or an app like Evernote so you don?t forget any details you learned.

Make sure to collect their information in the first place, you can?t contact them at all without that. Remember that you can always offer to email them more details or send them other incentives if they provide their information.

The relationship doesn?t end with the sale

In any sales based business referrals are always the key to your success.

You need to be building relationships past the sale and staying in touch with your customers.

Immediately after the sale be sure to congratulate them and ask for a review or a testimonial.

Filming a video testimonial with a happy customer in their brand new home is huge for your brand. In most cases if you did a good job they?ll be happy to do this.

Don?t let it end there however. Be sure to keep in touch over the years. There are many ways you can do this from sending out anniversary cards a year after they bought their home or wishing them. a happy birthday or Christmas.

Having excellent post-sale etiquette can bring in more new business opportunities than you ever thought!