Sphere of Influence
Database
CRM
Whatever you call your collection of relationships, that is your best lead source. That is where you concentrate your resources to prospect for gold. Your resources being time, energy and money. The is of course, referrals.
Why would you turn your business over to a lead generation company? That's the same as renting a goldmine being used by many and abandoning your own perfectly good exclusive one. Once you become beholden to a third party source, you no longer fully own your business, they do. They control the flow and they can charge you whatever they want as they do. They are like drug dealers, a free taste or a cheap one, then as you get hooked, boom! They raise prices and you're too invested to cancel.
I get it, some of you have had success with buying leads, but I know many that spent tens of thousands only to discover the majority of their leads were sold and resold and they were not the first to call on that lead. Many "leads" were just people that completed an online form to gain looky-loo access, and were not ever true leads. Many agents lie about their success with leads, they can't admit to the utter failure the experiment was.
Many hotels saw the "wisdom" in dialing back their advertising when Expedia.com started doing all their marketing for them. At first it was free, then for a fee, suddenly, Expedia was calling the shots to the beholden hotel chains, telling them what rates to charge and when. Expedia creators also created Zillow, see the pattern?
Having a license means you own a business. The one who controls the flow of leads and coverts those leads to closed business is the Rainmaker and the one that controls your business. Be the Rainmaker of your business.
Building relationships with each current and sold client, staying in touch after the sale, builds the most valuable gold you'll ever prospect; ADVOCACY!
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