Open home follow up strategies (including scripts)
Stop treating visitors like potential buyers and start treating them like potential vendors. This subtle mental switch can make you better at spotting opportunities and building customer-for-life relationships.
Here are some quick tips on the subject of open home follow up, that might just help you generate a few more listings in the weeks and months ahead.
Because - if you are going to spend hours of your weekend away from your loved ones, running open homes, then you might as well make the most of that time, right?
For those of us who have been in real estate for many years, it can be easy to fall into the trap of running through the motions on open home days, not taking full advantage of the opportunity.
But following up well doesn't have to involve a lot of work. You just need a dependable process.
Let's start with the basics...
Why run open homes?
It's not about selling the house. If you're marketing is right, then it should attract the right buyers whether you run open homes or not. In running open homes, we have two goals: To make it easy for those potential buyers to view the property without having to book a time (saving their time and ours), and to meet people in your community (future potential sellers).
Open homes are your shopfront. Your time to shine. They are the very best way to meet potential sellers in your local market, a.k.a 'nosy neighbours'.
What does that mean in practice?
When you run open homes, don't focus on selling the house. Focus on meeting people and giving them a good experience. This can be hard to do when you only have one listing and you desperately want it to sell, but it's critical for your long term success.
Stop treating every visitor like a potential buyer and start treating them like a potential vendor. This subtle mental switch can make you far better at spotting opportunities and building customer-for-life relationships.
For more tips on what to do at your open homes, check out this guide:
How to follow up open home visitors like a pro...
Send a thank you text message.
Many salespeople miss this step but in this modern age, it's crucial. Most real estate CRM (customer relationship management) systems have an SMS / texting function. Use it! Text messages have a 100% open rate. No other communication method comes close.
Here is an open home follow-up text-message script:
"Hi Andy, thank you for visiting our open home at 123 Main Street. I appreciate your interest. If you have any questions at all, please get in touch. You can find more info here: (insert property URL). From Joe @ Agent Monday Realty."
Use a website like https://bitly.com/ to shorten the property URL so it fits better in a text message.
You can also use text messages to send deadline reminders, price change notifications, and my personal favourite - a 'just sold' text with a rough price guide.
