Building trust and credibility with new clients starts with that first impression. From the moment you answer a call, the seller begins to form an opinion about you and your quality of work. Knowing this, you need to be one step ahead of the game. An effective way to build trust and credibility is through testimonials.
First, create a list of people you have done business with – clients, business associates, customers, etc. Make sure they are people that you know have a positive impression of you. These are the people you will want to contact first. Consider sending out a testimonial letter to people that you deal with that you can sincerely compliment and endorse. When they call to thank you for the letter, ask them if they would like to write a similar letter for you.
Next, compile these letters into a testimonial packet. Include a variety of letters – letters from clients and/or co-workers and letters targeting different aspects of your business, quality of work and/or character. The letters do not necessarily need to be specifically about your real estate business; you want your seller to be confident that you will address their questions/concerns in a timely manner and get the job done while maintaining a professional relationship with them.
Once you have the finished product, keep a reasonable amount of testimonial packets printed and ready to go. Immediately after an initial call with a seller, you should mail them a
testimonial packet. You can also bring a copy of your testimonial packet when you meet with the seller at their house – even though you have already sent them one after the initial call. You want to be positive they have a copy and that they actually read it.
Another effective way to use a testimonial is to insert it into your voicemail. When sellers call, even before they speak with you, they will have the chance to hear about your sound work ethic and exceptional quality of work. This makes it much easier to jump start a positive and promising relationship between you and the seller.
If you continue to build relationships with your clients by maintaining a sense of professionalism, friendliness and reliability, you will always have an abundant source for testimonials.
Until my next post,
James
P.S. If you have not downloaded the Real Estate Investor Daily Training Volume #1 real estate course, you may want to do that while we are still offering it as a free download.
When people are first calling you on an advertising you have out, they likely do not know you. They have doubts about your ability to do what you say you can do. If you are going to pay them all cash for their house, this might not be as big of an issue. But since we are often asking for very creative deal structuring often with owner financing, building trust is critical and absolutely required. You must build credibility and trust with your sellers.
Two of the most effective ways of building trust and credibility is first – use testimonials and second – to do what you say you’re going to do with the little things when talking to them.
First, let’s talk about testimonials. You will want to get testimonials from people you have done business with. Might I suggest sending out a testimonial letter to people that you deal with that you can sincerely compliment and endorse. When they call to thank you for the letter, ask them if they would like to write a similar letter for you. The more testimonials you can gather the better. I have taken 300 or so testimonial letters from customers, clients and business associates from our real estate business and other businesses and compiled them into a little printed pamphlet that I send out immediately to people that call about selling their house. The testimonials are for people’s experiences dealing with you and not necessarily dealing with your real estate business. When potential sellers see that I have worked with hundreds of people and that they all pretty much say, “This is a good guy,” then they are much more likely to trust me.
We also recommend that you bring a copy of your credibility pack with you when you meet the seller at their house and give them an additional copy, even though we also recommend you mail one to them right after you gather the initial information
Until my next post,
James
P.S. Check out the Real Estate Investing Systems book on Amazon for an entire book of real estate investor business systems and checklists in the palm of your hand.
