How are you celebrating the holidays? Between spending quality time with your family and friends, getting some well-deserved rest, and practicing whatever holiday traditions you hold dear, we hope that you can squeeze in some time to sharpen your real estate acumen and engage your sphere of influence! Use this holiday season to engage potential leads, past clients, and your other allies in the real estate industry. Check out these 6 ways to engage your sphere with holiday cheer!
1. Keep it simple: send holiday cards
Wish your clients and sphere of influence happy holidays by sending out a card. We’d recommend an physical card for an extra-charming personal touch, but if you want to go paper-free, an e-card is a great way to go. You can go a traditional Christmas card route and pick up a set of cards with some seasonal nice imagery, or choose a photo of a happy client you’ve worked with recently (with their permission of course)
Here’s a sample Holiday card message: “Hope this season brings you much joy and success and health and happiness. Let’s talk about your plans for 2020. I wanted to remind you that I’m here to help you with any real estate needs. Is this the year that your purchase your new home or move into a new apartment?”
Pay extra attention to renters! Renters move more often then homeowners—every two to three years. So, if you know that one of your former client’s lease is approaching termination, it’s a great time to reach out.
2. Make sure to add a personal touch for brownie points!
Remember, if you decide to send holiday cards make sure that you’ve added a personal touch to these outreach plans by writing a personalized note inside of each. If you can, include a little detail that you think will resonate well with your previous client. Did they have children who seemed excited about living so close to their school? Maybe they were looking for a pet friendly place? It will go a long way to include their children’s, and pets’ name in the card as well as a little detail about your time together.
Rental Beast makes it easy to remember when your client’s lease is terminating with our automatic outreach plans.
3. Design a Christmas newsletter
If you’re going digital, think about pairing your individualized email with a newsletter you can send to your sphere. You can hire a professional freelance writer to create one for you, but it’s not so tough to do it yourself. Include a welcome message and keep it seasonal with articles like furnishing your apartment during the winter, hunting for a new home during the winter months. As with your personalized card, make sure to include a happy holidays message and let them know that you’re there if they need someone to help them with a real estate transaction.
This will help establish you as a local expert and will also help keep your residents updated about changes to the market. Win-Win.
4. If it’s not cost prohibitive, go beyond a holiday card
But, if it’s not cost prohibitive, see if you can go a bit beyond you average holiday cards. Even attaching a little chocolate truffle to your holiday card, or a Christmas cookie can help you take your holiday gift from generic to personalized and something your sphere of influence and clients will remember, and even cherish!
5. Get involved with your community
The winters months can be tough for folks struggling with homelessness or those living in disadvantaged communities. There’ll be no shortage of events and volunteer opportunities to support those dealing with hardships, so carve out some time this holiday season to give back to your community and help those less fortunate. As you volunteer, you’ll also be growing your area expertise and your sphere of influence by getting to know your community—you’ll meet the clients you’ll be servicing, and can let everyone know that you’re ready to help them with their next move.
6. Go above and beyond: work together with other agents in your brokerage to build a holiday competition for all of your clients.
Work together with other agents on your floor to see if you can all come together to host a holiday party or competition for all your clients and sphere of influence. A small holiday party with cookies and drinks is a good choice. You get to solidify the relationships you’ve created with your clients, so you’ll be top of the mind when they think about moving into a new place, or when they get ready to refer an agent to a friend. Also, chatting to your clients about how they like their area will help you sharpen your skills as a local expert, and will pay dividends down the road! Bonus to your clients: they get to meet other people in their neighborhood!
7. Don’t just show your appreciation for your clients!
Add landlords you’re working with, your real estate mentor, and any other important real estate plays life to your list of holiday gift recipients.
Obviously, your relationship with your clients is super important! After all, they’re likely to become your clients again. But, when you engage your sphere, make sure to engage your whole sphere. Don’t forget the other allies that you have in the industry. Remember to give them a little bit of love on the holidays, too! If you have a coach who you think has been a particularly positive influence on you and has really helped show you the ropes on the real estate industry, don’t forget to include them in your gift giving.
And, if you’re working with rentals, chances are that you already know how helpful it can be to making lasting relationships with landlords. A reliable relationship with a landlord can make sure that you have a constant stream of units to match with your quality applicants. Plus, you can give your partner landlords quality clients! Think about sending a card or small gift to the landlords in your circle to let them know how grateful you are to have them in the corner.
Happy holidays from all of us at Rental Beast! This new year, gift yourself the gift of no co-broke commissions and a pipeline to future homebuyers. Purchase a subscription to Rental Beast and get ready to start building a sustainable business with rentals. To learn more about the Rental Beast platform or to request a no-obligation demo visit Rental Beast for Real Estate Agents.