Closing Plan- Buyer Closing
I think an Action Plan is one thing that we could all continue to grow and refine, it’s actually something that I’m trying to evaluate and think through even for myself. When I say action plan, I mean, basically, my checklist of things that I do whenever buyer closing. Whenever I have a transaction, where I represent the buyer, these are the tasks that I do. This also includes the timeframe that I do them for each task from a certain event in the transaction, IE. X number of days after acceptance, X number of days before closing.
This is something you can set up and use with your CRM that can help manage this type of list in. I use Top Producer, and others have used Capsule (which is free) for us for the capsule. There’s lots of good CRMs out there, I would encourage you guys to have some sort of CRM that prompts you for each of these types of tasks. As you scale your business up, it is a lot harder to keep track of this stuff through a spreadsheet. I would encourage everyone to have a CRM that you can kind of lean on and rely on help keep you organized and your process on schedule.
Zero Days after Acceptance
What do I do day one of a transaction where I represent the buyer? First, I will email the contract to the listing agent, the title company, the buyer, and the lender to make sure everyone has it. Technically, the listing agent is responsible to get the documents to the title company. I will automatically email it to the title company to make sure they do get it, just in case so it’s not an oversight.
Earnest Money
Next, Deliver earnest money. This task does pop up immediately after the transaction is in progress just to remind me to get that plan in action. This lets me coordinate with my client to determine when they will be dropping it by. If they say they are bringing it by later or what have you, I will kick this task to tomorrow. Or if they say, “Yeah, we’re out of town, but I’ll drop that earnest money check off the day after tomorrow” … Hopefully I’ve already gotten it when I prepared the offer, but with everything being virtual it does go faster. You don’t always have that check in handwritten you prepare the offer, but technically in our contracts, according to Kansas Law, you have to have earnest money deposited within five business days of the effective date of the contract. This early reminder allows me to get everything in order and if it will be a few days before receiving the earnest money, I will then I kick that task down the road until it’s done.
Set Up Inspections
Third thing I do is set up inspections. This is something that’s very important to do. It’s best to get the ball rolling on this early on in the transaction. Sometimes I will have left a couple of voicemails on Inspection companies’ voicemails, and then I kick that task to tomorrow. Then tomorrow if they haven’t called me back, that’s my reminder to check in on those inspections and make sure they get scheduled. Once I have this scheduled, I will also set the inspection deadline during this zero-day section. For instance, if the inspection deadline is 14 days, I will kick this task down 14 days, and I delete the word “set” so it is just the Inspection Deadline. On my CRM, I can then assign an urgency or importance flag to make this super important. It will give me a little red icon to remind me not to forget about the inspection deadline. I will also be reminded on that inspection deadline date.
Add to SkySlope
Added to Sky slope. This my reminder to get it in the system.
Home Warranty
“Do I need to set up a home warranty?” I found that I was forgetting about this every once in a while. This is just giving myself a little reminder to look at the contract and see if we negotiated a home warranty. If we did, I would get the ball rolling day one, as opposed to forgetting and then scrambling on closing day.
Set up Resolution Deadline
So then five days later, I said that I have this set resolution deadline. Again, a lot of these I treat as reminders for multiple things. When is the resolution deadline? Well, if we’ve submitted our inspection notice already then, I’ll set it five days afterwards. Otherwise, I’ll keep kicking that task down the road until we submit an inspection notice and then that’ll remind me of when is that resolution deadline.
Email Resolutions to the Title Company
10 days after I want to email the resolution to the title company and to the lender to make sure everybody’s on the same page of any contract changes. If there is a price change, closing costs change, or what have you.
Confirm Appraisal has been Ordered
Confirm the appraisal has been ordered 15 days after acceptance. In my mind that gets us at least close to the end of the inspection stuff, and if not, you know far enough along that they should have probably ordered the appraisal anyways. This my reminder to kick this down the road until somebody has actually called the listing agent says, “Yes, we have it on the schedule for this day.”
Has the Appraisal been Conducted?
20 days after acceptance has the appraisal been conducted? When this pops up, it reminds me to check in on it the scheduled appraisals and ask, “did you finish up on this day?” Now my software puts it kind of in a weird order because this is 20 days after acceptance and now it shifts to before closing and then after closing.
Has the Appraisal been delivered to lender?
Has the appraisal been delivered to the lender? I want to know that 10 days before closing.
Email Client about the Final Walkthrough
You want to schedule that 10 days before closing. You want to get that on the radar with your client and start talking about that.
Email The Lender
Email the lender eight days before closing. How are we doing on loan approval? Are we going to make our deadline? Is everything looking Okay?
Closing and Final Walkthrough Scheduled
Seven days before closing (one week) before closing, I want to have the reminder in place to make sure we have that final walkthrough scheduled. Do we have closing on the calendar? Do we have everything in order? If we’re waiting on something, then I’ll just shift this task to 6,5, or 4 days before closing to make sure we have everything scheduled.
Confirm all Resolution Items are Completed
If we did renegotiate a bunch of work, I want to check with that the other agent to make sure everything got done.
Email Client: Utilities
Anything on this list that email is a template of the email in my system. For instance, I have a templated email with a link to our utility worksheets. In the email it reminds clients to make sure you get utilities switched over into your name for the day of closing.
Set Closing
Four days before I make a set closing.
Has CD been Issued?
Four days before closing have us issued the CD. Obviously, this has to be issued three days before, so 4 days gives you a little buffer.
Buy Closing Gift
I want to buy him a closing gift and this is to remind myself to have all that in order two days before closing.
After Closing
And then after closing, I have just a light kind of follow up plan that I think is good for customer service.
I have “Get and Deposit commission check” in here because some of the title companies don’t have our wiring instructions yet. But the main ones that we work with do. I’ll add a closing picture to Facebook, I’ll put the closing on Zillow, update their closing anniversary in the in my CRM so that way I send them a real estate review at that day next year. I have a reminder to add contact tags.
At this point I will add them to my sphere of influence (if I feel like this should be my sphere of influence). I will add them to my poker mailing list, if they’ve told me they were interested in playing poker. Whatever the tags are that I need to add to their name in my CRM I will do it at this point.
Follow-up Call, How’s the house?
Two days after closing, I will follow up them and ask how’s the house. Make sure everything is going okay. I will say “I just want to call make sure everything went well with moving in house, you know, if you did move in, or what’s the plan, hope everything’s going well with the house. By the way, I’m going to be sending an email in the next couple of days, asking me for reviews, if you wouldn’t mind writing a review or two for me, I’d really appreciate it.” This preps them for the next day when you do request reviews.
Request Zillow Reviews & Add to Broadly
Three days after closing is when I request reviews. Broadly is our software that solicits reviews for Google, Facebook and Yelp. I usually let them know, “You should get an email from me asking for personal reviews for my business as an agent, but then you also get one from our company asking for reviews for our organization as a whole. And both are really important, I’d really appreciate if you if you would be willing to do both.” At this point you can send their name, phone number and email address to the office assistant and they will plug it into broadly. Broadly will notify them three times and then it will stop notifications if they haven’t submitted anything.
1 Month Follow up: Unpacked? Pictures? & 3 Month Call: Everything still going well?
I do a one month follow up and a three month follow up. Hopefully at that point they’re on my competition list and they’re a part of my sphere of influence. I will be touching base with them once every other month and they are getting my postcard as well as receiving my email newsletter. I also make sure they’ are getting my invites to whatever events I’m doing. This way they get into the flow of my sphere of influence stuff as opposed to an after closing drip campaign.
Other tasks you could add
- Reminder to make sure that Contractors are paid, and bill/invoices are sent to the title company
I found that a good CRM, that helps me manage all of these tasks, and keeps me organized. I would encourage everybody to have some CRM platform that you can use for your business. As you scale up your business, there’s a strong potential you will need to find a system like this.
I was using their little top bound folder before I upgraded to the CRM Platform. I had these awesome checklists, but I found once I started having a ton of contracts at a time, little things started slipping through the cracks. It wasn’t quite as airtight as I hoped it would be. That is when I implemented a good CRM.
You may just be different than me too, because different people operate differently. But I would just encourage you guys to keep that in mind that once you get your business to a certain point. This system also becomes much harder to implement when you have a ton of business already going on. It’s easier to implement ahead of time and to get used to using it. I will also visit the checklists every once and awhile to reevaluate the system. But again, if checklists are working, “don’t fix what ain’t broken”, right?
ClosingBuyerActionPlan (Download)