In my ongoing pursuit of the CRS designation, last week I attended CRS 210, a two-day seminar on "Creating A Referral Based Business". The class was taught by Chuck Bode, a 24-year real estate veteran who has built one of the most impressive referral-based business models in America.(A quick word about the CRS program: CRS stands for Council of Residential Specialists, the highest designation in real estate. The CRS designation carries the highest education, production and experience requirements of any program in the industry. In fact, only 4% of agents are CRS certified, and those agents accounted for 26% of all transaction sides last year. If no other piece of information was available to you in selecting an agent, simply choosing a CRS would be the smartest decision a buyer or seller could make.)
If you want to build a "clients for life" model, you must deliver an experience that blows your clients away.
In Jeffrey Gitomer's book "Satisfied Clients are Worthless", the author argues that clients in a service-based transaction expect to be satisfied. To simply meet a client's expectations is no longer acceptable. Unless you dazzle your clients during the transaction and commit to staying with them afterwards, you will always be chasing the next deal.
FOLLOW THE PEOPLE, NOT THE DEALS.
We devoted a full day to developing a theme called "Amaze, Amuse, Surprise and Delight". It was all about building an experience around the delivery of your services. And creating effective after-closing programs for staying in touch and being available to solve problems long after the last documents are signed. (Many of you will be joining me next month for my next Client Appreciation Party - a great tool for staying in touch)
Relationships are a process, not an event. The ingredients that drive them are time and trust, which is what I give to my clients.
Is your agent pursuing a relationship, or chasing a transaction? The answer makes all the difference.
