Agents; get chatting…
“Chatting” can be a key aspect of growing and developing yourself as an agent in today’s competitive market. In today’s 21st century the key to all business and non-business relationships is communication, if you can’t communicate then unfortunately you may struggle. Today’s market is so competitive with agents all being categorised into the same group as they have the same prices, the same advertising methods and the same job. The only thing that can make you different is you. You must build strong, profession yet friendly and ever lasting relationships with your customers’ so that they stay loyal to you. You must also offer them the very best customer service you can, as if you don’t they may venture somewhere else.
Building relationships can start anywhere, whether it is online or in the everyday world, here are a few examples of the many ways agents can start communicating whilst building up your knowledge of the industry.
Organising/Attending Events
Organising or attending events such as awards, exhibitions, industry debates and industry conferences gives you a better chance of communicating with potential clients, as well as gaining new industry knowledge and innovative ideas. Although organising an event is time consuming and can be expensive, if you do it right and attract the right market, then it is guaranteed to be a success. An event in our eyes doesn’t mean gaining lots of new customers’, but it does mean gaining new and invaluable relationships. Events can be used to attract different types of customers’; you can use events to attract tenants, landlords and buyers, or even to look at new contractors or partners for your business. When attending an event, it’s important to advertise yourself but also have conversations about general and industry topics, as you don’t want to be seen as a “typical sales man/woman”.
Social Media
Social media, if used correctly, is the world’s best marketing tool, it’s free and you can reach millions of potential clients. It’s important from day one to decide what your marketing style will be on your website, leaflets and Social Media; this will determine what kind of content you will post on Social Media. Whether it’s funny and witty posts or professional and informative posts, you will start to build a community and speak to potential customers’. Once your Social Media is responsibly established you can use it as a USP when communicating with potential customers’, make sure that the usernames are on your business cards and website so that they are able to find you. The best posts and way of communicating to customers’ on Social Media is posting activities and comments that will get them involved and make them voice an opinion. A great way of doing this is starting debates or commenting on debateable topics that are “hot” in the current market (a great platform to do this on is LinkedIn). This also makes your Social Media and Website busier, improving your SEO. When it comes to chatting on social media, we recommend Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as the three main platforms you should utilise.
Forums
It is important to engage and watch a range of relevant forums, as the internet is such a key way of communicating in the 21st century, a lot of people write comments on forum sites and if you are there watching then you will be able to promote and market yourself to potential customers’. There are millions of forums out there for every sector of every market but you must make sure that you engage in relevant and constantly updated forum sites or you will get left behind.
Going back to Social Media, these platforms are often used to ask questions about current companies, as people rely on recommendations. If you are connected online with the vast majority of your market then you have a good change of spotting these questions and being able to respond accordingly.
One thing to remember is that you will most likely never win every customer out there; there will be some customers that you won’t want to deal with and some that you might want to but never will due to their outstanding relationships. You must focus on what you can achieve.
If you’re struggling to establish your unique selling point we can help, at VTUK we help agents with business continuity, growth, retaining relationships and increasing profit. We are able to do this with our four products, Gemini – Lettings and Management, Aquarius – Sales, Scorpio – Client Portal and Taurus – Automation. Being in the industry over 25 years, we know the industry and we know what customers’ want. For more information about our solutions please click here http://vtuk.com/prodcuts or call 0800 328 0460 to speak to a member of the team.
To find out more about VTUK follow us on Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIn.
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