We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Hankins Jones Team a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hankins Jones, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Showing clients you appreciate them is something I think most folks want to do – but it’s not always clear how to do it in a meaningful way. What’s one of the best examples of client appreciation you can share with us?
We are fortunate to have a mastermind group at our office that works together to host some of our client events. We host events such as movie night at Coyote Drive-In in Fort Worth, Thanksgiving pie day where we host a client party with food and drinks and our clients stop by to pick up a pie of their choice and pictures with Santa and The Grinch. Our office also hosts Burgers for Babies each year to raise money for Cook Children’s Hospital. We pay our client’s way in as a way to say “Thank You!”. But for us, the best way to show our appreciation is to do a stellar job during the process of helping our clients buy or sell a home. A gift basket or gift certificate can’t make up for doing a shoddy job during the transaction.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers?
The approach we take for business may seem a bit old school. We build our business on providing the best service possible for each and every client we have the pleasure of working with. Lori and I make every effort to stay abreast of all the changing industry standards, continue our education at every opportunity, and keep up with the ever-changing market trends, inventory, etc. In this way, we can provide excellent customer service to everyone that we work with on a transaction. We build relationships with our clients. We listen to their every want and need, provide direction, and are present when needed . It does present us with long hours, many miles of driving and some sacrifices, but in the end it is worth it. When you spend so much time with your client you see a relationship develop, then a friendship. It’s been said that the nicest compliment of all, is to have someone you have worked with refer you to their friends and family. A personal referral is worth a thousand words! And we get to begin the process all over again and build another great relationship! That’s how Lori and I build our business. There are a lot of agents out there and the competition is fierce. Professionalism, stellar customer service and industry knowledge is what sets us apart! ~Andrea Jones
When I started in real estate I had other agents try and tell me I needed to wear power suits, drive a fancy car and wine & dine my prospects and clients if I wanted to be successful. What I found out is that to succeed in real estate you need to genuinely care about your clients, understand their reasons for buying or selling, keep an open line of communication and make the experience as stress-free as possible. I don’t think of real estate as simply a way to make a living, but a way to help someone achieve the dream of homeownership. I realize it’s probably the single largest transaction a person will make in their life and I don’t take that lightly.Andrea and I had worked together at RE/MAX Trinity for several years and last year teamed up “unofficially”. We worked well together and felt that we were able to offer better service to our clients as a team rather than individuals. Andrea and I officially became The Hankins Jones Team in January 2022 because we have the same philosophy about our responsibility to our clients. We hope they see how much we appreciate them by the way we handle their transaction. Then after the sale we like to continue showing how much we appreciate them by keeping in touch, hosting client appreciation parties, etc. Our business is based on referrals from our current and past clients and we appreciate that so much! ~Lori Hankins
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
In 2020, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and had to undergo a double mastectomy, reconstruction and radiation. Right after my 7 weeks of radiation, I ended up with Covid and was sick for 2 months. I had another surgery in May 2021 and then suffered a heart attack in August. That’s the abbreviated version, but health wise, it’s been a trying couple of years. Andrea was great to step in and help me through that difficult time, I don’t know what I would have done without her. During this time, I was still able to increase my business and only stopped working when I absolutely had to. When you love what you do, you don’t like downtime!
How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?
Andrea and I like to pop-by and see our clients with small tokens of our appreciation. When the transaction is over we stay in touch with house anniversary cards, pop-by’s, misc handwritten notes for milestones we see on Facebook. Some of the things we enjoy the most are hiding Easter eggs in our client’s front yards at Easter and then texting them to let them know they’ve been “egged”. Sending scratch-off lottery tickets…..we’re still waiting for someone to win enough to set us up for the rest of our lives….lol.
We are fortunate to have a mastermind group at our office that works together to host some of our client events. We hast events such as movie night at Coyote Drive-In in Fort Worth, Thanksgiving pie day where we host a client party with food and drinks and our clients stop by to pick up a pie of their choice and pictures with Santa and The Grinch. Our office also hosts Burgers for Babies each year to raise money for Cook Children’s Hospital. We pay our client’s way in as a way to say “Thank You!”.
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