Relationship Building With Home Staging

How do you get your first home staging job? How do I find clients? How do I get referrals?

At most of my APSD home staging training courses, I teach at least 30% of the course on home staging systems and creativity,30% of the course on the business of home staging and 40% of the course on effective home staging marketing skills. So, in essence, we teach what it takes to successfully and completely build and grow your home staging business.

One of the things that I cover extensively in marketing is building a relationship with your clients. As a matter of fact, I really only think you need 5 good clients to get 50 home staging jobs each year. As one of our Certified Property Scene Designers about it and they will tell you the formula.

Life and Business is all about relationships. Think about it, if you are married, or ever have been, did you develop a relationship before you made a commitment? What about your friendships, same thing, right. The same holds true in business, especially today.

Your client, or future client wants to know who you really are and whether or not they can trust you, will enjoy doing business with you and if you will always under promise and over deliver. So, they may test you out a little. Thats okay, all you have to do is show them how fabulous you really are and they will love you forever.as long as you maintain the relationship.

If you are asking yourself, the questions at the top of this page, I think you might want to think about a better question, because you know the old saying ask a better question, get a better answer. So, what is the better question? How about, how can I build lifetime relationships with my existing and future home staging clients? THAT is a good question.

There are lots of ways, and some depend upon whether you are talking about new clients or existing ones, for the sake of space, we will discuss both, together.

New Clients;

1) Go where they go. Is there a local real estate investors club in your area? Go there and meet everyone you can. Dont come right out and try to get them to help you, find out how you can help them and then build your relationship from there. I am not saying you have to give away the farm, but maybe give a little advice on color or curb appeal, even marketing if you feel as though you can. Then, keep in touch. You know our APSD marketing cycle, 1/7/30.

2) You can do the same thing with sellers or real estate agents as you have done with investors. Is there a local meeting of agents or an event agents are sponsoring for home sellers (some of my small business clients are real estate agents and they hold these events weekly at a coffee shopvery successfully)? Make sure you attend. Bring everyone a small gift that has your business card tied to it such as a silk flower, pennant for a local team, a pak of via, or even a rubber duck. Just anything that makes sense to them that they like and will keep. Then, follow up.

3) In general , once you make the connection, follow the APSD 1/7/30 marketing cycle (ask any APSD certified home staging member if you need help with this), and always make sure that you add a personal touch. This week, I sent 2 personal emails, obviously that only took me a minute or two, but one was to an APSD Trainer, telling her I was keeping her in my prayers as her family was struggling with a personal issue and another was to another APSD certified trainer, just saying thank you, that I really appreciated her and hope that she stayed with us forever. I did not do this with expectation of anything in return. But, boy did I ever reap a rewardfrom both. The point here is that I kept in touch and made it personal by touching on something that was specific to them. During another posting, I will discuss creating your client information file system.

These are just a few examples of how to build a home staging relationship, there are many and I would love to hear your ideas as well.

For more ideas on building your home staging business and making some of the best home staging relationships of your life with your fellow home stagers , join us at STAGE; www.APSDmembers.com/STAGE

To your Home Staging Success,

Karen Schaefer
Founder, APSD, The Association of Property Scene Designers
The World Leader in Home Staging Training and Certification
www.APSDmembers.com