Life would be simpler if we could gauge business success solely by closed transactions. Unfortunately, your success as a real estate brokerage is all about repeat business, and closed transactions won't tell you whether or not your customers will be coming back.

Why Does This Matter?

According to NAR (as reported by RISMedia), "Repeat business accounted for a median 19 percent of activity in 2011 and is higher for those with more experience – for members with 16 years or more in the business, that number rises to 38 percent. Referrals accounted for an additional 20 percent of business activity."

If your business falls below this level, you face an even bigger challenge in these already-challenging times.

Are They Coming Back?

Here are a few ideas for gauging how many clients will return to your brokerage for future transactions.

1) Ratings and Reviews
Online ratings and recommendations can indicate the performance of individual agents and your team overall. Don't just request feedback from happy customers. Make a commitment to surveying everyone. Unless you look at the whole picture, you're doing yourself a disservice.

By encouraging your customers to rate your performance, you'll be able to predict whether or not they'll become customers for life. In fact, many agent ratings tools will actually ask this very question in their surveys: "Would you use this agent/brokerage again?"

Wondering about your options for agent ratings? You have many (quite varied) solutions to choose from. A few of these with special features for brokers include:

• RealSatisfied. For a great understanding of RealSatisfied, we recommend our product review, which includes screenshots and a thorough discussion of features.
• QSC. You can also check out our review of the consumer-facing side of QSC - RatedAgent.com.

Of course, there are many other agent ratings systems without the broker-focused reporting tools, including ReachFactor, Mountain of Agents, Zillow, and industry-neutral sites (i.e. Yelp).

2) Core Services
If a client is truly pleased with their experience, they're much more likely to return to your brokerage for complementary services such as insurance, mortgage, and more. Looking at whether or not these additional services are thriving at your brokerage can give you an idea of your success. But these core services aren't just an indicator of your performance, they can also actually help to build and improve relationships with clients – encouraging repeat business.

Learn more about core services in our article "Focus on Core Services to Gain Customers for Life."

3) Responsiveness to Marketing Efforts
Are past clients responsive to your agents' ongoing marketing efforts? After your agents close a transaction, they should be putting their buyer or seller client on a 1-year (or other long term) plan for keeping in touch. Maybe this is through an email marketing service like Happy Grasshopper, or maybe it's through their transaction management or CRM system. No matter how they choose to nurture relationships with past customers, they should be gauging whether or not contacts are responding. When past clients respond to postcards, emails, and phone calls with questions, comments, and feedback, they're showing that they remain engaged with your brand. And they're probably going to return to your business for their next real estate transaction.