If you ask anyone in the real estate business what their key to growth and success is, they will tell you it’s their sphere of influence (SOI).
If you are wondering what a sphere of influence is, to put it simply, it comprises the people with whom you have meaningful connections and people who value the work you do.
Essentially, they are the people in your network who are most likely to recommend you to their friends and family. These people can be customers, colleagues, friends, or family. As long as they support your business and promote it willingly to others, they belong to your sphere of influence.
Who Exactly is in Your Sphere of Influence?
If the term Sphere of Influence sounds too general, let’s narrow it down. To find out who is in your SOI, start at the home base of networking: social media. LinkedIn is a good way of identifying people who believe in your work, or at the very least, are interested in it. A single platform will not cover your entire SOI, but it will give you something to start with.
Divide the list into suitable categories such as ‘family’, ‘peers’, ‘clients’, etc., and arrange the entries in each category in order of how much influence you have over them. For example, assign priority to people who bring in lots of clients, promote your work without asking etc. Then, go through each division and add people you think fit the categories, even if they aren’t on social media.
This process should leave you with a visual representation of how much impact you have in your domain. Facebook and Instagram are also two huge platforms that you can use to identify people from your sphere of influence. It is also a good idea to refer to niche-based forums such as Reddit communities.
Now that you know what a sphere of influence is, let’s talk about how to nurture it for a successful real estate business.
How to Nurture Your Sphere of Influence
Everyone talks about the importance of having great interpersonal relationships. What they fail to talk about is how to develop and maintain said relationships.
1. Participate in community events.
To build a strong presence among people, you have to be present. Therefore, make it a point to attend society meetings, neighborhood events, and other community occasions. This is how you form a lasting impression on the people in your locality.
As someone in the real estate business, having the residents in your locality back you up is vital to gaining traction. When people see that you are actively involved with customers and their needs and take the time to interact with the community, they are more likely to recommend you to potential clients over others. Local real estate conventions are another great tool to find contacts and grow your SOI.
2. Share your experience.
Irrespective of whether you cater to organizations or families, and individuals, documenting happy customers is crucial. Everyone wants to go with the best, and nothing sways people like a feel-good customer testimonial or review.
In addition, having an accessible portfolio that showcases your experience and positive client encounters will increase people’s perceived value of your business. Make sure this portfolio is straightforward and readily available to everyone.
3. Give personalized and thoughtful gifts.
There is no such thing as trying too hard in real estate. On the contrary, making people feel appreciated is the most effective way of establishing positive business relationships. Calling and enquiring after their welfare is standard practice; everyone does it.
However, take a leap of faith and send your clients something you know they will appreciate to stand out from the crowd. Sending clients personalized gifts on important milestones or occasions will make them feel like they are not just another customer. The more personal and thoughtful the gift, the more fondly they will remember the interaction, and the more likely they are to recommend you to a friend.
Admittedly, gifting requires research, effort, and time away from the business. If you believe that it is time not fruitfully spent but still want to benefit from solid client relationships, there are tools you can consider to make gifting an extremely simple exercise.
Your first option could be to hire personnel or an agency to outsource your gifting program to. While outsourcing something as personal as gifting may come across as disingenuous to some people, it is actually better than not implementing a gifting system at all.
If you do choose to outsource, you should keep in mind that the people running your gifting program are still prone to human error and have their own subjective opinions on what they consider a good gift. This can lead to issues with quantifying the effectiveness of the scheme.
Your second option is a simple yet highly effective solution to this problem. Eva- the AI gifting assistant.
4. Automated Gifting
Eva is a smart gifting assistant. What this means, in a nutshell, is that Eva chats with the people you want to send a gift to, finds out what they like, identifies a suitable gift, and takes care of the delivery without any assistance from you.
The entire process is as simple as generating a personal Eva link and sharing it with the gift recipient. Eva finds out what they like, what their interests are etc., and identifies their gift preferences. To do this in person would be an awkward situation, would require a significant chunk of your time, and there would still be no guarantee that the recipient will like the gift.
The benefit of Eva is that people are more honest in their opinions when they deal with chatbots instead of humans. Eva takes all the hassle out of gifting and makes it easy to build relationships with your clients.
Further, you don’t have to worry about repeating this process individually for everyone on your list. Simply upload your gifting list to Eva, or connect it with your CRM (if you use one), and Eva will take care of the rest. There is also an exchange option (free- with no questions asked) in the rare event that people don’t like what they received.
To learn more about how Eva can change your business for good, visit our blog. For more information on how to grow your real estate business, check out this informative article. Finally, to find out how to improve your relationship with your office employees, look at this post.
Conclusion
In a business as cutthroat as real estate, you should grab all the help you can get to grow your presence.
It is a great idea to develop strong relationships with your community, be it employees, colleagues, peers, friends, family, or clients. These relationships are the basis of your business, and it is important to nurture them to grow your business.
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