Mastering Client Communication: Techniques for Building Trust and Loyalty
Effective client communication is pivotal in building long-term relationships and fostering loyalty in the real estate industry. After all, your client doesn’t just disappear after the transaction has closed. They’re still a viable contact for you to nurture, but how do you ensure you’re the one they reach out to when they need real estate expertise again? Implementing smart communication tactics enhances client trust and satisfaction.
How’s Your Client Communication Approach Now?
As you prepare to master your approach to client communication, you’ll want to take a look at what you’re doing in this area currently. Assessing your current landscape of communication will help you know where your strengths are, and what can be improved. Take a look at the tone of voice you use, the channels you’re reaching out to your clients on, and how consistent and timely your outreach is. Do your clients know where to reach you? Do they know when they can hear from you? Are you seeing any consistent upsides or downsides to your current communication approach?
Keep these questions — and the current state of your client communication — in mind as we walk through advanced communication strategies to take your client outreach from “good” to “great.”
The Strategies You Need to Master Client Communication
Having solid client communication, each and every time you reach out to your client, will put them at ease. This helps build and strengthen their trust in you as their agent or broker. In turn, they’re far more likely to remain loyal to you, even long after the transaction is closed. Use these strategies to master your client communication approach with ease.
#1. Focus on Building Rapport
Good rapport is an essential, foundational part of having great client relations. Rapport is most impactful when it’s established and built early on in your connection. When you meet with clients, aim to find common ground, even if it’s as simple as a shared love of a local business, song on the radio, style of home, flavor of coffee… you get the idea. Finding even the smallest commonalities early on is like a building block that helps you spark the connection with your client from the get-go. This fosters trust and also helps put you on a strong path to providing a satisfying client experience at the very start of your relationship.
#2. Be an Excellent Active Listener
What kind of listener would you consider yourself to be? Look, you know real estate and everything that comes with it like the back of your hand. But your clients don’t, so it’s only natural for them to have concerns, ideas, hesitations, motivations, and more that are fueling their approach to the transaction. Instead of trying to quell their worries or questions with real estate terminology or your own experience, start by being an active listener.
Active listening happens when you listen to your client intently with a goal to understand their perspectives. Don’t interject when they’re speaking or formulate their response while they’re sharing with you. Instead, simply listen, showcase active body language like nodding or thoughtful facial expressions, and show them you understand what they shared by paraphrasing it back to them.
Utilizing active listening with your clients is powerful. It helps you truly understand their needs, perspectives, and preferences so you can provide them with excellent, tailored service. It also helps them feel heard, understood, and like they’re in the best hands in real estate (which they are).
#3. Always Have Clear and Consistent Messaging
Your messaging as a real estate professional is one of the most important parts of your client communications approach. It’s crucial you aim to be transparent and reliable. Deliver updates or reach out to your clients in a predictable, consistent manner. When something changes — or even if you don’t have any news — prioritize updating your client as quickly as possible. Ensure you’re using the communication channels you committed to when you first met your client, so they know where to expect to hear from you and how they can reach you, too. It’s also a good idea to minimize complicated jargon or getting too in the weeds with certain details.
Remember, your client needs your guidance to understand what’s happening with their transaction, so the simpler you can make your real estate take on things, the better. Being clear and consistent with your messaging helps keep your communication approachable and digestible, which helps support your client and deepen trust.
#4. Streamline Your Feedback Mechanisms
The transaction process is primetime to develop your relationship with your client. And since you’re working for them through the process, you’ll want to establish feedback loops early on. Check in with your client regularly throughout the process and keep an open door for feedback. This preemptively makes them feel comfortable being honest with you, helping build upon the rapport you established and continue to strengthen their trust in you.
If your client does give you feedback, don’t take it personally; instead, view it as an opportunity to improve, tailor your services to their unique needs and situation, and a chance to understand their perspective better. Then, put it into action. This is another strong tactic to strengthen client trust and satisfaction in the long run of the transaction.
#5. Use BoldTrail Technology to Get a Communication Boost
How you communicate face-to-face with your clients is crucial. It’s also equally important to ensure your technology-driven communications are solid, too. BoldTrail has a robust, AI-powered CRM packed with effective, impactful communication tools to help you streamline and enhance your client interactions, ensuring no detail is overlooked. From automated follow-up to the ability to send customized video messaging, you can count on BoldTrail to give your client outreach a serious communication boost.
#6. Leverage CoreHome to Easily Stay Engaged After the Transaction
Just because the transaction has ended, your client relationship doesn’t need to follow suit. CoreHome is a first-of-its-kind homeownership solution designed to put real estate brokerages and their agents at the center of the coveted lifetime consumer relationship. Stay front and center throughout the customer lifecycle of living in their home and needing to buy a new one down the line.
CoreHome helps consumers feel empowered by understanding their local market data, provides visibility into their mortgage and insurance information, and shows trends and opportunities to ensure they have the most competitive rates available. It also has tools to help them tackle their move, understand their transaction progress, and even home maintenance reminders. Most notably, they can easily contact you at any time through the app. Ensure seamless client relationships for the long haul with help from CoreHome.
#7. Use Present to Tailor Your Client Presentations to Fit their Exact Needs
Another important piece of the client communication puzzle? How you deliver your message. When you first meet, client presentations are key to winning the client over. Take the guesswork out of your deck creation and information sharing and leverage Present from BoldTrail to get superpowered technology that helps you easily build customized presentations that fit clients’ exact needs. Present is a next-generation CMA and presentation builder that helps you guide clients through an interactive and compelling pricing discussion. Using a single, intuitive tool, you can create an engaging CMA in under a minute or build a fully branded, customized presentation with real-time activity tracking to ensure you win the deal.
Ready to put BoldTrail’s power into your client communication? Click here to get a demo!