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The CE Shop and REAL Buzz Online are excited to announce a new feature. Every Wednesday REAL Buzz Online will be inviting guest bloggers to share their expertise with you. This week we have the outstanding entrepreneur, Jennifer Allan, who has published two books and contributed to The CE Shop course "Selling to Your Sphere of Influence." You can learn more about Jennifer by visiting her personal website: SellWithSoul.com.
by: Jennifer Allan, GRI, Author of Sell with Soul & If You're Not Having Fun Selling Real Estate, You're Not Doing it Right
What, Exactly, IS a Sphere of Influence Business Model?
A Sphere of Influence (SOI) business model is a strategy that focuses on attracting business to you from the people you know and the people you meet socially, as opposed to pursuing business from strangers. It's possible to run a 100% SOI business and never have to make one cold call, memorize a prospecting script or knock on a strangers' door! There are three primary activities in an effective SOI business model.
- Nurturing the personal relationships you already have within your social network (that is, your friends - I call this group my "Group One." Clever, eh?)
- Staying in touch with "everyone else" (that is, the people you know who aren't your friends - I call them my Group Two)
- Meeting new people.
Before you panic and say that you don't have the time, money or energy to do all this socializing, relax! Running an SOI business is much less time-consuming and less expensive than just about any other systematized prospecting method, and can be far more effective, more quickly. In fact, if you spend a few years creating your personal cheering section, you can pretty much coast through the rest of your real estate career.
Nurturing the personal relationships you already have
From a philosophical perspective, this means to ensure that the people in your social network (AKA Group One) know that you care about them. In a practical sense, it means that you strive to have a personal conversation with everyone in your social network as often as you can, at least once a quarter. A personal conversation can be a face-to-face lunch or coffee date, a phone call or even an email exchange. What it's not is a concerted effort to abuse your friends with a sales pitch. Always approach your social network as a friend first, and a real estate agent second, or third, or fourth. Not the other way around.
Staying in touch with Everyone Else
Staying in touch with your "everyone else" group (AKA Group Two) just means that you keep your name in front of this crowd with periodic interesting, relevant, non-salesy written communications, delivered both through snail-mail and email. As long as your mailings are consistent and intelligent, you'll see a significant number of sales from even this minimal effort.
Meeting new people
An important part of an effective SOI model is to add to your Groups One and Two, especially in today's market where there is admittedly less business to go around. The more people you know, who know you, and think you're a generally cool person, the more that telephone will ring. Running an effective SOI business model isn't nearly as complicated as some would have you believe. Yes, it takes some organization and commitment upfront, and an ongoing effort to stay in touch with the people you know and the people you meet, but once it's rolling and you're in the SOI habit, it won't feel like work at all! In fact, it might even feel suspiciously like FUN! And "the more fun you have selling real estate, the more real estate you will sell!"
Jennifer is a former top producing real estate broker, a published author, a speaker and a trainer. She has written five books about the business of selling real estate, including her flagship book: Sell with Soul: Creating an Extraordinary Career in Real Estate without Losing Your Friends, Your Principles or Your Self-Respect. Jennifer sold real estate successfully for twelve years in Denver, Colorado.
From her first day on the job, she resisted the efforts of her company trainers, her broker and her fellow agents to persuade her to implement the "traditional" real estate prospecting techniques of cold calling, FSBO hunting, door knocking and geographic farming. Instead, she focused her business building efforts on the people she already knew, or the people she met. Without ever pestering a soul, she built a business based nearly 100% from business and referrals generated from her sphere of influence.
Jennifer is a regular columnist at Realty Times and other real estate media outlets, a member of the RE/MAX Hall of Fame, and is one of the industry`s most popular bloggers. You can read more about Jennifer`s philosophies at www.sellwithsoul.com.
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