Stay in touch with your client using e-mail and telephone. If long stretches go by with no appropriate properties, check in just to let the client know you're still actively working for her. Keep the number of contact points manageableone or two phone numbers, one fax number, and one e-mail address, for example. Consider having a fax machine at your home office or an Internet-based fax service to send and receive faxes. By having a home office fax or using an Internet-based fax service, you don't have to go to the office to send a fax, and you don't have to worry about faxes sent to the office getting mixed up with other agents' faxes. Follow up verbal discussions with a summary e-mail, both to give your client the pertinent information and advice in a document she can refer to as needed and to protect yourself from claims that you said something you didn't or that you failed to disclose key information. Checklist Buyer Service Toolkit A basic technology toolkit for serving real estate buyers would include the following:
As you get more comfortable using technology tools, consider using the following tools as well:
Feel free to use different tools than those recommended hereas long as they do the job you need, of course. Use a client Web page to post relevant documents in one convenient place. A client Web page is also a handy venue for large files such as disclosure packages available to the client that her e-mail system might reject if you sent it as a file attachment. If you're a do-it-yourselfer, you can create and update these Web pages yourself and upload them to a Web server, using tools like Microsoft FrontPage or Adobe Macromedia Dreamweaver. If you're not interested in using technology at such a hands-on level, either hire someone else to do this or subscribe to a service that provides a simple Web-based interface for posting content to the Web, such as the REBT Relay Transaction System. |