Share Yourself

Your past clients have undergone rigorous scrutiny by loan underwriters in order to qualify for a purchase or a refi. Afterward, the last thing they’re thinking about is the industry, interest rates, programs, and loan products. In most cases, they don’t wish to re-live the experience of the loan process. If your marketing message is all about rates, programs, products, and basically industry wonk, the target of your marketing message will tune out. No one piece of marketing is going to cause a past client to pick up the telephone because they just have to have another loan.

In other words, the relationship that you developed during the loan process isn’t negligible. They’ve put an enormous amount of trust and confidence in you, and they like to think that they now know you. If you are sharing yourself with your past clients, it is the antithesis of trying to sell them another loan. Since they can’t get one all that often, they’ll refer those who need one to you, their family’s finance connection. This is why it’s paramount that you share yourself in some capacity. Those individuals that share themselves, share their knowledge and become family do infinitely better than those who don’t.

Share Your Knowledge

Being an industry wonk doesn’t endear you to your past clients. They will probably forget about you because you are no longer a part of their lives in any real way after the loan closes. Sharing your knowledge anecdotally through your newsletters is far different than “marketing” yourself as an expert. If you share an experience that had a social or even an emotional impact, and your knowledge was a necessary part of that experience, then sharing that knowledge is far more beneficial than just trying to gain credibility without context. Yes, share your knowledge but don’t make your knowledge the cornerstone of your messaging. Remember, your clients don’t have the same interest in the industry that you do.

Become Family

Your family should be a place where you can feel safe, speak the truth, and strive for the best possible advice for the best possible outcome. Becoming Family, as we like to say, is paramount in being perceived as the go-to person for anything finance or real estate related. Why would someone NOT refer people they care about to you? Well, I can think of a few valid reasons:

1. They’ve forgotten about you. After their loan closed, your ongoing relationship was replaced with ineffective emails, Facebook posts, tweets, or nothing at all. In other words, you’ve lost that client.
2. The ongoing information they perhaps do get (emails, Facebook, tweets) has been tuned out long ago because it’s all industry-focused and they just don’t have the same interest in it anymore.
3. There’s someone else (your competition?) who has taken the time to communicate with these folks in a way that you should’ve been doing all along but hadn’t.

It’s a simple fact: People do business with those they know, like, and trust. People will refer their family, friends, and those they care about to people with solutions. If someone is buying/selling a home, refinancing or just needs financial advice, you should be perceived as that solution. If you have maintained a relationship with your past clients in a real, honest way, you will be perceived as part of the family, and therefore will be considered as someone with a solution. Don’t ever discount the value of loyalty, trust, and admiration for what you do by deciding not to communicate with your client base in a real, honest way. This is what is meant by Becoming Family.

These three turn past clients into ambassadors for you and your business

If someone has respect for you as a person, considers you a friend, trusts you above and beyond the scope of what you do, and considers you part of the family, they will more often than not be an “ambassador” to the one thing they know you take pride in, do for a living, and have helped them within their own lives. By regularly communicating with your client base in a real, honest way, they will become ambassadors for you and your business.

Take the time to develop a real, honest relationship with your past clients through a monthly newsletter, and the referrals and business that flow from it like a river will last a lifetime!