The Annual Call to Past Clients

Ask any established agent where their business comes from and the answer is referrals. Ask when they last called a client from two years ago and the answer is usually never.

Why the call works

A homeowner is asked for an agent recommendation more often than you would think — by a colleague moving cities, a cousin buying their first flat, a neighbour selling.

They recommend whoever is present in their memory. After eighteen months of silence, that is not you, even though you did a good job.

The call costs ten minutes and it restores you to the top of that list for another year.

The reason to call

Not "just checking in", which is an ask disguised as a courtesy.

Call with their number:

"Hi Anjali — it's Priya. Two years since you moved into 704. Two flats in your building sold last month, both around ₹6,400 a square foot on carpet, which puts yours somewhere around ₹78 to ₹82 lakh. Thought you'd want to know. No agenda — just the annual update."

Homeowners are curious about their own property's value. It is the one piece of information they will always take, and it costs you thirty minutes of research to prepare for a whole building's worth of clients.

Then ask two questions

1. "How's the flat working out? Anything you'd have wanted to know before you bought?"

Useful for you, and it shows you care about the outcome rather than the transaction.

2. "Anyone you know thinking of buying or selling this year?"

Ask directly. Once. Not as a plea — as a normal professional question. Most people are happy to answer and many will think of someone.

The list

Keep every past client in a sheet with:

• Name, number, property, date of purchase or sale
• The month you call them each year
• What you talked about last time

Spread them across the year so it is two or three calls a week rather than forty in one January.

The between-call touches

• A message on the anniversary of their move
• A note when something significant happens in their society or locality
• Sharing anything genuinely relevant to their building

Three or four touches a year, all of them useful, none of them asking for anything.

What not to do

• Mass festival greetings with a logo. Everyone gets forty of these and they signal a mailing list, not a relationship.
• Forwarded property listings to someone who just bought.
• Asking for referrals repeatedly. Once a year, in the annual call, is the right frequency.
• Only calling when you need business. It is transparent and it undoes the goodwill.

The arithmetic

Fifty past clients, one call a year each, is under ten hours annually.

If even a small fraction produce a referral, the return per hour is higher than any other activity available to an agent — higher than paid ads, higher than cold calling, higher than content.

And it is the one almost nobody does, which is why the agents who do it have businesses that feel easy from the outside.