As a real estate professional, you know only too well how much competition there is out there, especially in a housing market that has declined almost 20% year-on-year.
There are just too many real estate agents chasing too few clients. So it's more important than ever that your marketing and branding programs provide prospects a compelling reason to pick up the phone and call you for their next transaction.
Fortunately, many of your competitors think that simply telling prospects how great, ethical, hard-working, blah, blah, they are will have hordes of eager clients climbing over each other to give them their business.
Claims like these do nothing to convince your prospect that they should trust you or that you're any different from thousands of your competitors.
"Your Satisfaction Is My Goal"
"There's A Difference Between Realtors. You'll Notice It Here!"
"Realtors With Results"
"Your REALTORS Worth Knowing"
"Excellence Through Knowledge And Experience"
"Experience And Integrity Are The Difference"
"Service With Integrity"
"Quality Service With Integrity"
"Service With Integrity - Experience The Difference"
"Everything We Touch Turns To SOLD"
"A House SOLD Name"
"Professional Service With A Personal Touch"
"When You Want It Done Right"
Where's the differentiation? After all, does anybody ever admit that they don't have integrity or don't provide professional service? Of course not.
You can do a lot better.
How? By letting your satisfied clients do the talking for you with powerful, believable testimonials.
What's the big deal about testimonials?
A testimonial is what your clients (and not you) have to say about you and your services. This is so important because what others say about you is way more believable than what you say about yourself.
Buying or selling a house is the biggest financial commitment in most people's lives, so there's a significant level of anxiety in choosing who to work with. Learning about the happy experiences of other clients will go a long way towards soothing your prospects' anxiety and make them more likely to do business with you.
When it comes to getting compelling testimonials, letting your clients just say whatever they like is leaving way too much to chance. You need to provide a little guidance so that they say exactly what you want them to say.
So before you pick up the phone, do a little preparation.
Here are some starting guidelines for your testimonials:
* You should have testimonials for each benefit you provide. For example, one client could comment on how sensitive you were to market realities, one on how impressed they were with your negotiating prowess, one in being "Wowed" by your creative ad strategies, etc.
* Your testimonials should address each target market or niche you serve. You select a market niche with the goal of developing the expertise and market knowledge to serve that niche better than anyone else. So you should have at least one testimonial that deals with the special needs of each niche so that you reinforce your credibility with other members of that segment.
* To give the most credibility, each testimonial should be signed with your client's full name, city and state.
* Don't edit your testimonials to make them sound more "professional". Funnily enough, colloquial language makes them more believable. Sometimes, clients will want to edit their testimonial before they'll give you permission to use it. If possible, try to resist this, because they'll usually try to make themselves sound more "polished", and in the process make their testimonial sound less believable. Unsurprisingly, I've found that attorneys are among the worst at this.
* You can't have too many testimonials! Prospects will zero in on the ones that are most relevant to their unique situation.
* Work from a written list of questions that you develop ahead of time. The list will have different questions for different niches, depending on what aspects of the transaction you want to highlight.
* Use someone you trust (i.e. not you) to gather your testimonials. Clients will talk more freely and you'll get better results.
* For best results, record the conversation and extract written quotes for your clients to review. In many states, you must tell your clients that you are recording the conversation. Check with your attorney. After your clients have reviewed the material, have them sign an agreement stating that they approve the use of their testimonial for marketing purposes.
If you follow these simple guidelines, you'll quickly be able to rack up a slew of powerful testimonials from satisfied clients that will position you as the natural choice in your target market.
Paul Pickering is a marketing consultant with over 20 years experience helping clients in the real estate, property, hospitality and technology fields. Before starting his consultancy he was director of marketing for the $150M division of a $2B company. Real estate professionals can download out his free e-book at http://www.branding4realestate.com/eb1.php
» left by Paul Pickering (197 days 16 hours ago.)
Robert, thanks for your comment. I know that the profession's reputation is not the highest. One problem is the low barrier to entry and cuthroat competition which tends to encourage extravagant claims that are hard to fullfil; in my article I give a few examples. I hope that relying less on overblown sales hype and more on client testimonials will be a step in the right direction. Regards, Paul
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