Effectively Leveraging Your Sphere of Influence

Who's in your address book? If you haven't looked lately, it's time to look again. The people in your sphere of influence are a fantastic source of new business! 

Do you have enough listings? Do you want more listings? Better yet, do you want to unlock a continuous stream of listings?

Let’s talk about one of the most untapped real estate niches: Sphere of influence leads. Who is considered a sphere of influence lead? It’s anyone in your sphere of influence — from family to friends to people on the PTA with you — anyone who might need a real estate agent. 

Now before you think to yourself, “I’ve heard this a million times, and I just don’t know if it’s true,” I want to share with you what one agent, Marco, in Winnipeg, Canada, had to say — and what he's doing to tap into his own sphere of influence.

That's what we have to remember: it takes multiple connections for us to stay in front of our sphere and get them to actively promote us. And I’m not just talking about calling to say, "Do you want to buy a home? Do you know anyone buying or selling a home?" 

Calls like that make you appear self-serving and do not enhance your relationships. 

Instead, Marco offers value. He offers content to his sphere by sending out newsletters. He gets his face in front of his connections, and he builds trust and rapport. 

A huge advantage of working with your sphere is that you can tap into other people's spheres and double  — or even triple — yours. Let’s say you send out an informative newsletter and it gets in front of someone who really appreciates and finds value in its content. That person is happy to share it with everyone they know. But to grow our networks, we have to be consistent, as well as creative. 

Speaking of creative, I want to share other ways that Marco is staying in touch with his clients.

Kudos to Marco for holding a yearly event for all his past clients and their friends and families, — and also for using BombBomb to track his results. Though he described the Marco Minute as corny, the important thing is that it brings out his fun-loving, human side, which is what prospects love to see. 

Here's the biggest area where I see agents dropping the ball — they're not consistent. They shoot one video and fail to get a listing, so they stop. Maybe they start again in a year, do another video, or just do an open house video, but they're not consistent. Here's the thing with your sphere of influence — you have to be consistent. You have to build habits into your day. Say to yourself, “This is the day I shoot my video; this is the part of the month that I create my newsletter.”

Regardless of what you decide to do to reach out to your sphere, I would encourage you to start small. That way, you won't have big, ambitious plans and then drop the ball. Build small habits into your day and deliver valuable content. And by valuable content, I don’t mean it has to be revolutionary or something nobody has seen before. You just need to be personable and share information, maybe also share the story side of it. 

I would encourage you right now to figure out how you can maintain your sphere and continue to grow it in a way that's not overwhelming, but consistent. I promise it's going to bring in business — and those listings can later yield referrals.