Are you identifying your customers’ needs and making sure that you build the best customer relationship with them possible? Josh was joined by Nicholas Stankiewicz to discuss how to make sure that you can make everyone happy by building positive customer relationships.
Nicholas Stankiewicz is a multi-award-winning estate agent with a passion for property. He consistently keeps in touch with new market trends, identifying client needs and maintaining constant communication with potential buyers and sellers.
Making a Better Customer Relationship
Nick has been in real estate for 16 years, and their job is all-around customer service—providing a service to both the buyer and the seller. He really had to learn to navigate and get some tools in place to make sure that he was giving good customer service to everyone.
They have a great customer relationship management system in place to ensure that all of their buyers and sellers are kept in the loop. They do it through text messaging and every single day, he calls his clients.
In the initial consultation, he ask his clients how they want him to communicate. He respects the way they want to communicate with him and he mirrors that. That’s really important because you don’t want to over-service somebody that doesn’t need it.
Utilising Available Systems
A great example of utilising their system is they had a property for sale, but the owners ended up leasing it. They pressed a button to convert it from a sale to full lease. All the photos and scripts got automatically uploaded and it was a simple process, rather than having to re-upload everything.
They are streamlining their systems to ensure that these are working to help not only them but also their clients because that means that properties are quicker and getting leased quicker, rather than adding it to the list of things to do.
He made a conscious decision just before COVID to put technology to the forefront of his business and to go paperless as well. They still have a hard copy brochure and a couple of things that they use as a touch point, but they also have e-brochures that get sent out to people who come to the property. He was always running out of business cards, but now he can just use his phone to show and send out his email address, work address, as well as his LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
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The Handwritten Touch
At Dorks Delivered, in addition to digital solutions, we also do handwritten cards as a little touch point. If I meet somebody that I know that lives locally, I’ll send them a card the next week. People aren’t really doing those things anymore. As much as we have the technology side of business, I also want that old school touch point. I think it’s a 10 out of 10.
Finding the Right Person for the Product
Most people think that in real estate, the number one process is sales, and Nick tends to disagree. They have a transaction that happens within the process. However, they’re not salespeople so much anymore. He explains, “I find that I help with staging and preparing the home for sale. I’m more of a marketing consultant, so I have to make sure that that product, being the house, the unit or the block of land, is marketed and put to the reach of the scope of people looking to buy that product at the moment. That is where technology really comes into play. We use drone, videos, virtual tools, script writers and things like that to really target who we think is going to be the target market for this property.”
Real Estate Is An Attraction Business
Nick adds, “We want our properties to be an attraction product. So ultimately the client will come and find us because we’ve marketed it well. I think that’s where the key is, where it’s not really sales. You can’t force someone to buy a $1 million-$3 million home. If it was that easy, we would all be doing it. I’ve never once been able to convince or pressure anyone. They have to genuinely want to buy that product. So, they come to us knowing how much the owners paid for it, because you can Google it yourself and have a look. All that data is public knowledge. So, it’s getting that emotional buyer who will ultimately pay the top dollar. To do this, we run things like auction campaigns, which creates a bit of a competition and making sure that the product stands out from the marketplace through really distinct and unique marketing.”
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How Marketing Helps Build a Good Customer Relationship
Don’t Spam Your Marketing
Nick shares, “I don’t want to annoy the customers. In our areas that we sell in, it’s illegal to put something in their letterbox and I don’t want to reported for sharing our marketing material. We made a shift about 3 years ago to when we sell a property, we will do a client testimonial, or I will do a spill on the property, and we’ll post it and boost it on social media.”
It’s amazing what you can do now. Nick and his team do a kilometre radius search of homeowners around that house. They find it’s a more effective way of promoting the sale than putting junk mail in.
“Our videos are 10-second long. They’re designed to be short, sweet, and to pass on the message. They normally include the sold price, how many people came through, how many offers, and how many days on market. A testimonial is ideal, but not everybody wants to get in front of a camera. So, you have to once again respect your client. That shift has been a massive success in our company.
Cement Your Customer Relationship
No matter what business you have, customer relationship is so important. It is the driver for every business. Nick is in an industry where people are thinking “why do we need a real estate agent” or “what is the need for a property manager” so he wants to ensure that he is cemented into the industry. You have to keep up with the times as well, but don’t forget that human element.
Customers Love Transparency
“We also capture details to notify them once the property has sold and display our sold prices as well. A lot of real estate agents actually don’t display the sold figure, which once again, my job is to be there for the consumer. The consumer is about transparency and we’re in a service providing job. If they have to ring you to find out, that’s annoying to them. So, we display the price and quite often people call us after seeing the sale price.”
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One Customer Relationship Leads to Another
Nick believes that if you do a good job and you market the property well, the next listing will come from that listing. They don’t focus on advertising old stock, it’s misleading a little bit. Because of this, they don’t have any properties displayed in their window in their office.
During a marketing campaign, they can meet 1 to 500 people, and out of that group, there’s probably a selection of people that are thinking of selling. They’re called the private shoppers. They’re going out there to see how Nick and his team are as agents and how they present the product and their customer service.
Business Built Freedom
“For me, my job doesn’t feel like work, so I’m probably not the best person to ask that in the sense that I find it very hard to switch off. I’m very invested into my clients. I’m very invested into my businesses. I love my staff. What does it mean to me? It means that I can retire earlier in life. What that means is that I can probably start doing some more hobbies. I want to buy properties and develop them myself, rather than being on the other side like I am now. Hopefully that’s the next stage of life, which that’s what success means to me, that I’ll have the financial freedom to be able to do that.“
– Nicholas Stankiewicz, Founder & CEO of NS Properties Brisbane
