Coaching Relo Clients

Article from: http://www.stlagent.com

Click for Larger Font | Click for Smaller Font

By: Darin "Sid" Cameron, CRS
Thu, Nov 1st, 2007 10:48 am

Was asked by an agent in North Carolina about how we coach relocation clients to ask for us since we're not at a Cartus or Prudential preferred brokerage (i.e. Coldwell Banker or Prudential).

Kimberly is the expert here, not me but she says we have active clients using both Prudential Relocation and Cartus right now without a problem.

Neither company really cares that we are with RE/MAX just as long as we make it easy for them to get their referral fees. Fortunately our broker-owner jumps through the hoops to keep the relo companies happy (Mr. Owner is a retired VP of HR so he gets it...)

We've never really experienced a relo company pushing the client too hard to use a specific brand so I don't know what advice to give you, only to say if I was going to loose the business anyway, I'd push back hard.

With that said, we did have a client get a relo company fired (he's been relocated several times so he knew what to expect and this company was absolutely awful). The client went so far as to talk to his HR department (without any input from us, I swear) to demand we shouldn't have to pay a referral fee (and we didn't).

What we do "coach" clients on are things to put in their agent evaluations to their HR department and relo companies at theend.

As a result we just became the "preferred agent" in St Louis for one (unfortunately very small) company because we not only got back two excellent evaluations but had a third client tell them, "their agent was OK, but they wished they had used us." (I just wish it had been a bigger relo company with more than one client in St Louis!!)