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As an agent, your clients expect you to return their phone calls and emails in a timely manner – in fact failing to do this can cause them to decide to work with someone else!
But often enough, you’ll find yourself dealing with a client who never gets back to you in a timely manner for anything. You know the type – this is someone who is one day away from their home inspection deadline or counter offer and suddenly it seems as if they have vanished into thin air!
Or there are the customers who are not clients yet – maybe someone who you met through an open house or an opportunity time call and after several messages and emails they’re missing in action too.
Sometimes you might even get this from fellow agents – they just don’t take their job quite as seriously as you do, or maybe they went on vacation without telling anyone!
What do you do with clients like these?
Most importantly, do not get angry or lose your temper. This will make you seem unprofessional at best, but could have even longer lasting effects such as no more referrals from that person or the loss of a client who decides to work with someone else.
After that, there are a few techniques you can try. One I follow regularly for urgent issues is to attempt to contact this person through every means possible – phone, email, snail mail, fax, etc. I will leave one voice mail, and a follow up voice mail saying I wasn’t sure if the last voice mail worked since I know they would call me back as soon as they could. Then I would fax and email saying “Just in Case Your Voice Mail isn’t working” – after that is snail mail with a quick note saying “I hope you already contacted me about xyz issue and everything is okay, otherwise please call asap, I’m having problems reaching you.”
Leaving a paper trail of your actions and trying every viable form of communication is especially necessary when you are dealing with an absent agent or client on a deal – you want to have EVERYTHING documented as much as possible that you tried to contact them so they can’t blame you for not meeting a contract date and if it defaults.
If it is something less urgent, such as just trying to get in touch with a follow up prospect, you want to make sure you are not being too aggressive, since this can turn people off as well. Add them to your email list, send them snail mail, and then make a follow up phone call to ask if there is anything else you can help them with or if they no longer wish to receive updates from you. Some people will let you know they don’t want to hear from you ever again if you give them a friendly way to tell you so! This will free you up to spend time and your resources on a prospect who does!
How do you handle the client (or agent) who never gets back to you? Comments are always welcome and encouraged!
7 Comments
LOL. I love that picture. Well, a client dosen’t get back to you, it is likely they are not interested anyway. A client would come to you if they were truly interested!
I agree with Kevin here. I had so much experience with this and I do not longer use some of the techniques you are saying here. Numerous times I lost precious resources to grab a client who just wasn’t interested or didn’t know what he wants.
If you have a good product/service to offer and do it right on the first meeting/contact, you do not need a second time. Move on and find someone else.
Yes, I agree — sometimes it is just a waste of time to spend that much time trying to contact a prospective client. But if it is someone you are already working with and can’t get ahold of them, it is really frustrating. I’m like you — I leave a voice mail and I also email, in case they don’t have the phone on them. You’d think with all this modern technology it would be easier to reach people, but some people are just not good at getting back to you regardless!
What gets me is the clients who dont produce the documentation you ask them to produce.
Like a foundation warranty. I will hear “I cant find it. Can you call the foundation company and see if you can get it from them?”
Naturally we want to help our clients in any we can. But the homeowner is the one with the business relationship with the vendor. We are just someone unrelated to the vendor who is bugging them for records.
If a buyer is not getting back to you — then they are not interested in buying.
Ahh yes, I’m sure we’ve all experienced those clients who just suddenly vanish at the most inopportune of times. Enjoyed the post thoroughly, thanks.
I think during the looking process its ok if clients dont get back to you. I figure they might lose out on a good house but some people move at a slower pace. Once we get into an option period I try and warn them they need to be somewhat available so we get done with everything before the option period ends.
There can be 2 reasons why a client is not coming back
1) Either he don’t liked your services
2) He don’t need the services anymore
So just move on