How to Get $100,000 Clients
SUMMARY
We all love big commission checks, right? And most agents are always looking for how to make more money and earn bigger commissions in luxury real estate and big deals, etc. All of that is awesome. However, the biggest commission opportunities for most of us are not in the “BIG DEALS” but rather in building relationships and earning repeat and referral business by focusing on the Client’s Lifetime Value.
I discovered this accidentally one day when I suddenly realized that one couple had been worth more than $100,000 in a three year period. Here are 3 simple steps to more $100,000 Clients:
- Go after clients, not deals.
- Deliver great results.
- Stay in touch.
The key is to stop just going after the transaction or listing or deal, and start going after the CLIENT. Win the client and you’ll automatically get tons of deals if you stay in touch with them consistently.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Hi there. It’s Kevin Ward and I want to talk to you in this video about how to find $100,000 clients. No, I’m not talking about you have to go out and find people that want to buy or sell a $4 million or more property.
What I’m talking about is something that I learned years ago by total accident. It happened with a couple named Roy and Lou Thomas. They were my first $100,000 clients. Here’s how it happened. I met them actually calling their daughter because she and her husband had a vacant lot for sale in Keller, TX. It was just a little piece of crap, $25,000 lot. $25,000 lot for sale. I was calling For Sale by Owners because that’s what I did, I chased business.
I started my real estate business, I was calling every day. I was just on the phone calling For Sale by Owners, calling expireds, calling around just listed, just sold. I would just call anybody I could talk to, I was calling them. I called this lady and she had a lot. Her and her husband were selling For Sale by Owner. She decided after a while … I talked to her and I actually followed up with her because they were thinking about listing and all that. Finally she said in a conversation after I followed up 3 or 4 times, she said, “You know what? We decided we’re just going to keep the lot. However, my parents have a ranch that they are wanting to sell. You could help them.” She referred me to her parents, Roy and Lou Thomas.
Sure enough, I met with them, I listed their ranch, sold it, helped them buy their next house in Colleyville, TX. A year and a half later, Roy called me and said, “I just never liked this house. We completely remodeled it, put $150,000 into it. We’re ready to sell it. Come list it.” I came, listed it, sold it, helped them buy another house that was their final home.
In the meantime, I took multiple referrals from them. The daughter that had originally had the lot for sale, I ended up from that listing and helping them buy another house. Helping them sell their house and helped them eventually, later, buy another house. Roy referred to me his brother. I helped him sell a house.
Out of all of that, it was like 4 or 5 listings and 3 buyer sales, maybe 4 buyer sales. When I added it up, over a 3 year period, Roy and Lou Thomas were worth over $100,000 to me in commissions.
You’re talking about a kid … This was in Dallas, Fort Worth, TX. My average sales price was less than $175,000 and here was 1 client worth more than $100,000. One day I realized that they were the first ones. I really didn’t have others that I was doing that. Here’s the reason. I was so busy chasing the next deal that I wasn’t building relationships and building trust and earning those kind of repeat referral business from countless other clients that I had had that I didn’t stay in touch with.
What’s crazy is, the reason I got all those deals was because of Roy Thomas. Roy always called me. I realized later how many deals did I miss from other clients that didn’t call me because I wasn’t staying in touch with them.
I wrote down 3 simple steps for how to get $100,000 clients. This is not rocket science, but it’s so simply obvious that 90%, probably 95% of real estate agents don’t do this with passion and consistency. I’m telling you, if you’ll do it, it will change everything for your business. Literally, you do this for a couple of years and you will never again have to worry about a paycheck.
#1) Go after clients, not deals.
Stop going after the deal. Stop going after the listing. Stop going after the sale, and go after the client. If you win the client, whether they’re listing and selling right now, no matter what they’re doing right now, if you win the client, you win the relationship. First you’re going to always get their deals and you’re going to also get more deals from the people that they know they’re looking to buy or sell. I was always going after the next deal. In fact, I didn’t want to talk to you if you weren’t ready to buy or sell a house right now. I learned later, wait a second. The relationship. Get the relationship and when they are ready to buy or sell or know somebody, you’re going to get that deal. Go after the client not the deal.
#2) Deliver great results.
If you don’t deliver, if you’re just playing as an amateur, you’re not doing what you say you’re going to do, you’re not returning phone calls, you’re not really communicating with them well, or they don’t feel like you’re going to bat for them, you’re not going to get the loyalty. Number 2 is deliver great results.
#3) Stay in touch.
Stay in touch after the transaction. Or even before if they’re not ready yet. Stay in touch and ask for referrals. Stay in touch and ask for the business. When you do that, what I have discovered is over time I develop more $100,000 clients. How many clients did I have that were worth $8,000 that could’ve been worth $30,000 or $50,000 or $100,000 or more if I had built a relationship after the sale and gone for the client and understood that the client’s lifetime value was more than any single commission you’ll ever make in your career?
If you’ll do that, if you’ll go after these $100,000, not going after the deal, but going after the relationship, you’re going to find that you have a lot more opportunities to embrace, you’ll be able to add value to a lot more people, and you’ll always be able to expect yes.