I’m always looking for new free tools and gadgets that will help my clients or me save time when working on their tasks, and I have an arsenal of them now. So, in my quest to begin committing to blogging I am going to start blogging about some of these great free tools and resources that can be used by real estate virtual assistants and real estate professionals to help save time in their businesses.
Today’s tool is a great free program that can be used by real estate agents when requesting a testimonial from a client. It’s always a good idea to offer “something of value” when asking someone to do something for you. I always provide my clients’ prospects and past clients with something that they can use in every communication with them, no canned crap.
This is a program that helps to create a home inventory and what better time to start this project than when moving into a new home. Requesting testimonials is something often over looked by real estate agents, but so very important to the continued growth of their business. A real estate virtual assistant can handle this task very easily for their clients. It can be sent out to look as if it came directly from the agent if the agent chooses to have the image that he/she does everything personally or it can be sent from the real estate virtual assistant portraying the “Team” image. This is solely a personal preference and is decided upon when I begin to work with a new real estate client.
I have a system for my clients that I handle this task for. We spend a few minutes, one time, discussing it when we begin working together. After that, they don’t need to think about it again and their testimonials are taken care of. Sometimes a new client will review my procedure and not want anything changed, at that point they are done and can cross it off of their lists forever.
When we begin our working relationship I create a template for the testimonial, along with a cover letter and I brand it with their colors and contact information. As soon as a property closes the cover letter is
personalized and emailed to the home buyer/seller or snail mailed, along with a self-addressed stamped envelope, if they don’t have email. It’s important to make things as easy and simple as possible when asking someone to do something for you.
The cover letter thanks the home buyer/seller for allowing the agent the opportunity to provide services to them and tells them how important they are, even though the closing is over. It includes a few tips about being a new home owner, documents they should safely keep, home improvement tips, etc. and then lets them know the next page has questions about their home/buying selling experience with the agent, the testimonial. This cover letter also clearly explains what the agent is asking for, why and what they should do with it. It might sound like common sense, but if people are not clearly instructed they will not respond.
And that’s it, I mark it up on my calendar for 2 weeks after the email or mail date. The entire thing is sent out again if we haven’t received a response. Now for the free Home Inventory software that I spoke about. The product information would be included on the cover letter also. By providing something like this it let’s the home buyer/seller know that the real estate agent is still thinking about them and wants to continue to be their real estate agent for life.
KNOW YOUR STUFF HOME INVENTORY
