5 Tips to Help You Choose the Perfect Settlement Gift
For a lot of real estate agents, finally handing over the property from the vendor to the buyer is a cause for celebration. You’ll finally get your commission for a successful negotiation. However, you shouldn’t be celebrating just yet as you still have to think about your settlement gift.
While this small item may seem like an after-thought for others, it’s a necessary piece that will not only celebrate the sale. It could also open your doors for more business and more importantly, it shows that you value the relationship you’ve built with your clients over the past months you spent discussing and negotiating with them. The relationship you’ve also built with them also plays a part in sealing that deal.
Hence, you’ll be needing a well-thought-of settlement gift instead of going for a generic one that may only cause you harm. With generic gifts, it will seem like you didn’t put much effort into buying your gift and that you didn’t really pay attention to your clients’ stories.
Here are ideas and tips that will help you get the perfect settlement gift for your clients:
1. Go Beyond the Basics
By this, we mean going beyond basic questions and information that you exchange with them during your meetings. Make sure that you also ask them details like their favourite colour (which you will also ask them to get them the right property), their hobbies and pastimes, their favourite vacation destination and even their genre of music. By asking these details, you can get an idea of what and what not to give them. Getting gifts related to these details will also show them that you paid attention to the little details that they told you.
2.Think Long-Term
Most real estate agents opt for settlement gifts like food or beverages such as wine. These are also good gift ideas and are perfect for moving day parties. However, you could also go for items that are long-lasting so that they can continue to enjoy and appreciate your gift even years after they’ve moved into the property.
3. Something That Will Remind Them Of You
This is also in relation to the tip mentioned above. A gift that is long-lasting can also be something that will remind them of you and the friendship that you built with them. Gift items that fall under this category could be home decor as these are some of the items that new homeowners may lack. Not only will it remind them of you, but it will also help them to personalise their home.
One of the best settlement gifts you can give is an artificial floral arrangement which they can use as a centrepiece for their living room table, their dining table or their coffee table. You can then choose flowers based on their favourite colour or based on the colour that you know will match their home. If you were able to ask them what their favourite flower was over a discussion on how they could improve the front lawn, you could also get them an arrangement that features those beauties. Since the flowers are artificial, you can be sure that they won’t eventually wilt and be thrown away by your clients.
4. Be Sincere
From negotiating with them, learning all the small but important details about them, to celebrating the success of the deal, sincerity is an absolute need. This will let your clients feel that you are not only there to sell the property, but that you are also there to help them find their dream home. It’s also important to be sincere so that your client’s don’t see how you sell and interact with them as some generic process (which may be a turn-off). By being sincere, you basically show them that they are unlike your other clients and that all of your clients are special in different ways to you.
5. Give the Gift Personally
One mistake that a lot of real estate agents make is making their assistants give the settlement gift. It’s crucial that you give your gift personally to your clients. You don’t even need to be in their new home for an hour. Even five minutes of handing them the gift, congratulating them on their new home or their sale, thanking them and saying that you hope to do business with them again soon will show them how much you appreciate them. By showing up on their doorstep, you also make your clients feel special.
All in all, the settlement gift for your clients is something that you should definitely give more thought. It’s also crucial for you to build relationships with your clients to seal the deal and for you to know what the perfect settlement gift will be.