9 Ways to Keep the Sale Sold

You sold a home. That’s great. Now, how do you keep it sold?

I’ll share nine ways to keep the sale sold.

And before I go any further, big credit to Bob Mirman at Eliant. He and I just wrote a book together. It’s called From Contract to Close and will be out soon! You can pre-order here.

Look, it’s not enough just to make the sale. It doesn’t count until the sale closes. But these days of changing market wins, customers sometimes get a little squirrely, don’t they?

So what do we do to make sure that our customers who are in the purchase process stay in the purchase process? Here are nine ways to keep the sale sold.

Celebrate the Signing

One way to keep your customer in the deal is to ensure that the customer is emotionally invested right out of the gate. One way to do that is to make certain that you have a ritual to celebrate the moment they sign the contract. How do we lock this in as a happy and joyous time? Talk to your peers about what they do to make this a happy moment.

Speaking of peers, if you’re a residential real estate sales professional and want to discover a community of like-minded people where you can ask for this type of feedback, then head over and join us for FREE in Sales365.

Build Relationships with the Team

It’s easier for your customer to cancel the sale if they don’t feel a commitment to the people that they’ve been dealing with. It’s really important that your customers are connecting not just to you but to the others involved in the purchase process. I’m talking about your builder, superintendent, design center rep, and loan officer. Make sure that you’re building those relationships early on in the process so that they feel that sense of connection. 

Video Updates

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth a thousand pictures. Video has a way of engaging in emotion and keeping the customer sold. It’s one thing to send a lame email or make a phone call with an update, but you’re missing out on the opportunity for the visual impact. Now, here’s the good news. You don’t even have to be on camera. Just point at the newest update and narrate behind it. It’ll take you 15 seconds, and it’s free. 

Reconnect to the Current Dissatisfaction

If you’ve followed my instruction for any period, you know that people buy when their current dissatisfaction is high. But when the process gets rough, sometimes they look at their current situation and say, well, you know, it’s not so bad.

Your task is to keep their current dissatisfaction at a maximum. The way that you do that is to connect the customer back to the reason that they are buying in the first place. Remind them that their current situation is not great and they’re getting closer and closer to being out of that situation.

Encourage the Future Promise

When people decide to buy, it’s because the hope of what their life will look like is strong and emotionally positive. But when stress comes along, they ask, Do I want this home? Is it that nice? Your job is to keep the future promise high by reminding your customer of how great their life is about to be.

Give the Customer Homework

While your customer is in the process of having their home built, you can give them assignments that keep them engaged in what their future will look like. Send them a list of the best coffee houses and have them try those out. Get the kids to place their furniture in their bedrooms. Ask them to pick out accent wall colors. Keep your customer connected to their future, to what it’s going to be like to live in this home. 

Surprise and Delight Moments

Sometimes, we have to deliver bad news. You want to ensure that you are countering the moments when you will deliver bad news by giving the customer pleasant surprises. This comes in the form of what we call surprise and delight moments. 

These are small moments where we can surprise the customer with something at low cost or no cost that keeps them positively engaged and lets them know that we care. I’m talking about giving them box labels to help in the packaging process or return address labels that they can use as they fill out their change of address forms. Just small little things that will make a huge difference. 

Only Make Promises you Know you can Beat

Remember, you don’t get extra credit for delivering on your promises. You get extra credit when you beat your promises. So don’t make promises that you will meet; only make promises that you know you can beat That’s a good rule of thumb, both for you and your community team. 

Provide Updates without being Asked

Customers tell us repeatedly that one of the major disappointments is the idea that they are not kept informed with updates until they ask about those things. This is a huge miss. You have to commit to keeping your customer informed without them having to ask you. 

All right. Those are my nine ideas. What are yours? Head over to Sales365, where you’ll find all my videos, articles, and conversations your peers are having. You’ll have the opportunity to share your ideas in the comments. I’d love to see what you come up with.

Until next time, my friends – learn more to earn more!


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About the Author: Jeff Shore

Jeff Shore is the Founder and CEO of Shore Consulting, Inc. a company specializing in psychology-based sales training programs. Using these modern, game-changing techniques, Jeff Shore’s clients delivered over 145,000 new homes generating $54 billion in revenue last year.