I have had a busy week catching up with friends and getting ready to head back to San Francisco.   If you’re reading this today, on Friday morning, we are in the air winging it back to SF right now.  One of the other things I was working on this week is building up my sphere of influence. 

I love talking about it and something I learned many years ago is that having a large and vibrant SOI is one of the keys to having an Unleashed listing business.

And wanna know the one way I have always increased the number of people in my SOI?

By calling professionals in my area and getting them to be one of my referral sources.

Let me s’plain.

Call CPA’s, investment advisors, probate attorneys, estate attorneys, insurance agents, anyone you can think of in your community that could refer you to new listings.

Get them on the phone and say, “This is Jane Doe with ABC Realty and I heard about all your good work and wanted to stay in touch for referrals.  Would that be ok?” 

Trust me, they rarely say no.

Thank them, tell them you’ll send a card to them and then put them in your CRM as another new SOI and then call them every 3 months asking for referrals.

And don’t only mail a card.  Mail them a pre-listing package with all your stuff, bio, testimonials, marketing plan, just like you would to a seller.  They will be impressed and you will stand out compared to just a business card.

BOOM!  Do this with 5-10 people a week and the number of people you can call asking for referrals in your SOI goes up exponentially.

I have been doing this for years and am surprised at the number of listing agents that aren’t doing this.

So start this week and use your imagination to increase the size of your SOI and the number of badass referrals you bring in!