How to Improve Your Business and Market Yourself as a Realtor

Every real estate transaction is a journey. Every real estate transaction has major milestones that we go through. We're going to talk about how to map those out and make them a whole lot smoother today. My name is Chance Brown. I'm the broker owner of CB&A Realtors and I want to talk a little bit about customer journey mapping. Customer journey mapping is essentially looking at every single touch point in a transaction and trying to figure out how to reduce friction, how to make that touch point more experiential. We can talk about it from a transactional standpoint, but really what we really need to do is talk about it from a business as a whole. How easy is it to find you online? How easy is it to use your website? If they're going to stalk you before they use you, you need to make stalking you relatively simple. That's part of customer journey mapping. Then when we get into a transaction, like how good is your listing appointment and does it answer questions before they ask? Is it providing value and showing value to them so that they want to pay you to sell their home? As you go through the transaction process, are we making things as smooth as possible? And so, step one in creating a really great customer journey map is just writing down randomly all the things that you all the touch points you have in a in a transaction. Doesn't matter what they are, doesn't matter the order, just write down everything that you can think of. We've got a running total in our brokerage with the help of some people that is upwards of 150 touch points in somebody's business. That's great. Get your list down and then let's take some of the lowerhanging fruit, some of the easier things that we can do and go ahead and get those out of the way early. Maybe closing day. What can we do to make closing day more experiential? And I'll give you a hint.

Stop calling it closing day. Closing day has a finality to it. Don't do that. This is a lifelong relationship. We want these people to refer us forever and ever. We want these people to use us next time. Stop closing your relationship because we know that that happens statistically. We watch those numbers. Ah, it's closing. I'm going to get my check and never talk to you again. Thanks for being my client. Instead of closing day, let's call it signing ceremony. Let's call it celebration day. Something that doesn't signal finality, but also gets them excited about it and has them all up in their fields. One of the biggest issues we have in real estate is that people don't think that Realtors work hard for their money. And so the question is, do we not or do we not tell them all the things that we do behind the scenes that actually provide value that they just don't see? And that's how we earn our money. So part of it is you have to tell them you're doing the stuff that you're doing. That's value building. When I say, "Hey, we're preparing for the appraisal. That's it." And I don't say anything else. Okay? A million things as a seller or buyer goes through my mind.

Like for example, what happens if things go wrong and it doesn't appraise? Now I'm freaking out. What do I need to do? Or we could say something more along the lines of, "Hey, we have appraisal coming up. Here's what I'm going to do. I want to walk through the house with you and maybe give you some uh examples of things we can do to kind of just make sure the house is in its best condition when the appraiser gets here. It's not as important as showing day. It's not as important as photo day, but it's still important that when they walk through the house looks nice because appraisers are humans, too. I'm going to be in touch with them making sure that they have a packet of information that solidifies our pricing and they can take that with them to use as they come up with a value. If something were to happen where we don't make value, we have a plan in place to address that to try and get a reconsideration of value and we're going to work with the other agent and their client to come to a resolution. That's a totally different thing than saying, "Hey, appraisal's coming up next week." You've got to talk about the stuff that you're going to do.