Login
iscover
An award-winning BDM has said building long-term relationships helped her bring in hundreds of new managements.
Elizabeth Hood from Pat O’Driscoll Real Estate, who was named BDM of the Year at the recent Real Estate Business Awards, said she brought in 276 new managements in the year leading up to the awards.
According to Ms Hood, bringing in new business is not about how many appointments she can finalise in a day, but how she fosters long-standing relationships to create the best results for clients.
“I’d say 97 per cent of those new properties were not signed on the day,” she told RPM.
“That means it was a continual building of relationships and every time I went back to them I would provide them with more valuable information on the market.”
Ms Hood noted the importance of maintaining ongoing contact in order to build trust with potential and existing clients.
“I believe that if you can create that trust and rapport at the beginning and over time, then you can have that client for life,” she said.
Ms Hood said creating strong relationships shouldn’t be restricted to just clients and tenants.
“As far as how I got the business here, I was out of the office a lot, taking coffee appointments every week with local professionals, whether it was bankers, insurance professionals, builders and developers,” she said.
Ms Hood said building those relationships helped keep everyone up to date with local market knowledge while creating business opportunities.
According to Ms Hood, bringing in new business also required a lot of work away from the office and outside of business hours.
“Because I’ve got three children of my own, I would wake up and often work from 4am to 6am and then I would work up until midnight, or even 2am, just trying to get all the paperwork done,” she said.
[Related: Customer experience in the age of technology]
Newsletter
