Sphere of Influence Marketing for Realtors®

Let's put this article in context. I love the fact that the unemployment numbers came out today and the total unemployment. It's kind of actually shocking that the total unemployment rate is in single digits. Considering that it wasn't that long ago it was almost 25%.

Just two months ago pundits were talking about how unemployment now was the worst since whatever the glorious headline was. That was all clickbait. But still, it's shocking how fast things are turning around.

In this economy, with so much money being made available through the Fed, you're going to see appreciation or inflation across real estate asset classes. The hype and momentum that is building inside the economy is to me like nothing we've ever experienced before.

Now there is going to be a price to pay for all that. For now, the wave is definitely going to carry you to higher level, so make sure you're riding it.

The collective unconscious out there has everybody thinking, "We've got to move this thing forward. We've got to get on with our lives."

The enthusiasm for it... Everyone is pushing the same direction, and you can really feel it in the housing market. We have a continued story of stymied supply and a ton of demand. Lots of great news came out last week including the unemployment number, which is now below 9%. We had the fed coming out sharing a new policy that we're going to keep interest rates this low or possibly even lower. That was good for at least five years, which is insane. 

Borrowing at 3% is going to create a massive surge of FOMO - fear of missing out.

If you thought that we were in some kind of seller's mode in the past, that was a little hard to keep up with, get ready for the surge. It's going to come out of all these people that are going to essentially be looking to spend money, buy houses and what not now that we're theoretically seeing the end of covid.

There's a possible vaccine for covid. Everybody was saying there wouldn't be a vaccine for at least 18 months. Maybe never. There's a vaccine that's going to be hitting the market, that's going to be widely distributed by the end of this year. 

The fed is going to do everything it possibly can to avoid a recession. There are all these crazy things that are happening that have never happened before. Now here's the flip side to it. There are historical precedents where there's have been recessions that have come and gone just to come back again, and then they settle into being depressions.

But who really knows? In the short run, being the next 12 to 24 months, it's not really that much of a concern of yours, because there is nothing you can do about anyway.

So just make the most of what this market has to offer and be thankful that it is what it is. It looks to me like the bad economic times are largely in the rear view mirror.

Now, let's talk about how do you actually communicate. What is a communication plan?

It's actually a Seven Step Plan for your past clients and center of influence lovingly known to all of you as your database. This is a very common question that we get. 

We've looked back on live events with the grizzled veterans out there that have been in business for 20 or 30 years, and they've done thousands of transactions. We asked "what would you have changed? Looking back, what would you have done differently?"

It's not: I would have spent more marketing. It's not: I would have learned to pick up the phone or done some radical thing. Okay, it's not more facebook posts. They all say the same thing. 

I would have done a lot better job with my database. I would have done it sooner. I would have done it more frequently.

Your follow up question is always why and they say, you know what? I would have spent a lot less money on all the marketing things that I tried. I would have had a lot less stress going feast to famine. 

Then we ask why they didn't follow up better and do a more effective job of centers of influence and past clients. They never have a good answer.

What happens is people get overwhelmed not knowing what they're supposed to do. Then they get caught in what we call the chochkee trap, where you think you're supposed to be dropping off chochkees and forget-me-not seeds and pumpkin pies following some rigid schedule being a junk giver-awayer. You don't have to do it. That's not what people want anyway. So what we're going do today is we're gonna go through seven points on how to create the ultimate center of influence and past clients follow up campaign.

As a side note, when I ask people today what's the one thing they wish they would have done? Almost all of them say they wish they were joining eXp Realty sooner because they underestimated the opportunity. If you want to talk to me directly about that, you can text me directly at 303-589-2320. If you're interested just in learning more about the eXp, if you're just getting ready to get started kind of in your learning phase, then text the word MYEXP to 31996, and I'll text you back a seven minute video that will brilliantly answer most of your questions about eXp. But when you're ready to move forward and you want a strong business partner within the fastest growing group in all of eXp, then go ahead and just text my cell directly at 303-589-2320. 

We are actually going to start a national real estate team. The reason I'm doing that, frankly, is because we can do it because of our association with eXp. It makes it simple because eXp is licenced in all 50 states, Canada and a whole bunch other countries.

So we are actually going to build a national real estate team, an actual real estate team. But the team is not gonna be a traditional team. The benefits and what you're going to get by being part of this national team and the benefits you can get are all available on our website.

If you're interested in working directly with our national team, then you can just go to the website and fill out the application. We're going to be taking agents in all markets, and the countries that eXp are also licensed in. My goal is help you with lead generation.

But we're also then going to build a very tight referral network. If this is implemented correctly, we should be one of the largest producing real estate teams in the country. So do consider checking that out. 

All right, so this is fun. We have seven powerful points for you to organize your center of influence, you past client database. 

This is just like the simplest best system. You do these seven things and you will never be one of those grizzled veterans saying I would have I should have. I wish I would have done this sooner and faster and more consistently. 

POINT NUMBER ONE

Okay, first one, most important, you have to actually have an organized database to work your database.

So the first thing of course, you're all going to ask what's the best CRM, right? Well, they all basically do the same thing, so the first thing to look at is what is your broker already paying for for you? Use that if you're not already. For example, eXp has a great CRM that comes with the program. So that's the easy button.

Now if for some reason your broker doesn't provide one, or you're just doing your own thing, then use whatever CRM. This is the real bottom line answer: use whatever CRM you'll use. Liondesk for $25/mo or whatever, but you do not need a fancy drip campaign... what you need is just something very simple to organize contact information that will then set reminders for you to follow up with the people in 30 days. 

99% of the time, you don't need a fancy, expensive CRM. The most basic CRM will work just perfectly. Everyone gets seduced by the idea that you need these complicated drip campaigns. 33 touch points and all this other garbage that basically is overly complicated.

That's when you get seduced into overspending. That's also the slippery slope into believing that you need to start basically dropping off chochkees and spending a lot of money on your centers of influence of past clients, even though that isn't what they want.

Statistically, guys, the number of the number of leads and business you get from long term lead follow up is zero. It's virtually nothing.

The more complicated your CRM is, the less likely you are to do anything with it, so it just negates the purpose. Keep it simple, guys. 

POINT NUMBER TWO 

No drip campaigns. They don't work. You guys get frustrated by them all the time.

You pray to the real estate gods that if I just keep on being consistent that somehow the leads will come to me. They are garbage. Do not send me any recipes. Do not do not drop stuff off at our door. Do not drip your junk on us, please. That's just that sounds disgusting.

When drip campaigns first came out, conceptually back in the 1990s and the early 2000s, everyone thought that was going to somehow make busines flow in so they did not have to actual do the real work of real estate, which is making direct, proactive contacts with their centers of influence and past clients.

They thought it was the panacea. Oh, finally, I figured out a way to hack actually having to do real work. Well, maybe initially when people would get four emails a day back in the olden days in the 1990s, maybe then a drip campaign would work because it would be one of the emails that people would open. But now the problem is that your centers of influence and past clients are not just getting drip campaigns from you. They're getting drip campaigns from everybody.

Every possible business sends these sort of repetitiously boring emails, and you know all kinds of solicitations. What happens is not only does your email not even ever get noticed or open, but it gets spammed.

This is the ultimate problem with all of it, because you're fooling yourself because you have so many people in your database you're dripping on. You actually fool yourself with a false sense of security. What you have to accept is that this long term lead follow up through drip campaigns is a waste of time.

Agents who have these huge lists of leads that they're dripping on are usually the agents have don't have the skills to actually pre-qualify those leads to determine what the true motivation is. So what you guys do a lot of times, you just rushed to throw these poor souls into your drip campaigns hoping and praying that one day they're going to raise their hands and say, yes, help me with the real estate transaction.

Maybe occasionally, you have somebody that emails you back or responds, and that offers a glimmer of hope that you will never have to do the real work of real estate.

That lulls you in to even more complacency about actually learning how to do the real work of real estate.

POINT NUMBER THREE

You are to contact - a contact is a actual conversation with a decision making adult about real estate - contact everyone in your database by phone once a month.

That's right. You're going to have to make some phone calls, and we're going talk about what to say. Then supplement that with video. Video is more important now than ever since everybody's going to zoom and video has become less weird, right? I think it's really critical to be doing video right now.

If you do only one thing, make the phone calls.

What I will suggest you do is you make a phone call that is supplemented with just a short video.

So how are you going to contact everybody in your database once a month? Well, let's do some simple math. The first micro point on this is the goal is not to have 2,000 or 3,000 people in your database. Of course, you're not going to be able to get through all that in a month.

You want to make sure that you've got actual real contact information. That if I were to talk to that person, they could tell me who you are. 

To clarify an important point, there are two types of lists that agents always get confused. There's your centers of influence and your past clients. Then there's everybody else.

What you guys do is you mix the list and then you essentially made your list junk. You do not want to be trying to do any kind of generalized marketing using video, for example, to the masses. It is a complete and utter waste of time. 

Do not try to create a bunch of social media content to try to build some mythical online brand is a waste of time. Now, with that said, you do definitely want to love on your centers of influence and past clients. You do definitely want to call them.

Then you do want to supplement with video. You do these things in combination because you feel comfortable and confident doing it because you know you're going to be delivering information that they're going to want to have as it pertains the real state market. 

For example, look at the long term interest rates. If your focus needs to be put on sellers, you could call your sellers and you could send a video and explain to them what inflation's effect is going to have on property values.

You can explain to them right now if they lock in a long term low interest rate that the the inflation on the property will actually more or less pay for the property, at least in the short run. Who knows for how many years?

So maybe if they've been fence sitting and thinking about moving up in a house, which is good for a lot of you guys to consider when talking with some of your perspective buyers (because if they could get a long term, low interest rate... $1 million borrowed at 3% is like $2800 or something, right? So people might want to just skip the next natural move and go to the move that they would be considering, you know, 10 years from now, because they can take advantage of the low interest rates and, frankly, because assuming this inflation kicks in, they're gonna essentially have their ship rise along with everybody else's).

A little side development from low interest rates is that people who normally would be very adverse to buying first and then selling are now comfortable with it because the payments so small. That's a fantastic thing because that is usually something people will fight agents on.

When you're thinking about what to share with your centers of influence and past clients, look for information that excites you about housing as that will excite them as well.

There are two critical things when you're communicating, whether it's by phone or by video, there are two things that have to happen.

One is what we just mentioned. You need to communicate something of value.

Secondly, include a call to action. What are they supposed to do about it? If you only do the first one, it's kind of like you're a public service announcement. You're just great information. Fantastic. Thank you. 

That is why you also have to always remember to have a call to action. Here's an example. This is a very simple call to action, and you should not be real aggressive. 

People do not react to a direct solicitation in the current environment. But if you ask the question like this... You're going to call them up every single month, and the first call is going to go something like this.

"Hey, this Rick. I have been getting a lot of communication ~ calls, emails and texts from my friends, family and people I know love and care about, and they're all seemingly concerned about what's going on with property values. So what I'm going to start doing is I'm going to start calling all of you guys every single month and giving you a very quick snapshot of what's going on in the housing market. I'm going to share what's going on with your home's value so you don't have to worry. I have your first report ready for you now."

You can do an abbreviated version of that, but you get the point if you listen to what I said: I'm calling all the people I know love and care about.

You are telling them why you're calling them. You get it? That's going to be something that immediately is going to make them feel appreciated. Appreciated because you're showing appreciation, and then all they want you to do is give a quick snapshot of what the home's value is.

Go to the MLS. It's an absorption snapshot. Find out how many homes are currently for sale. Find out how long it's taking for the inventory to sell off. So if there's for example, 5,000 homes in your MLS last month, and 2500 homes that sold, then assuming the inventory stays roughly the same, you're going to be looking at two months inventory on the market. Now it's away over simplification, but that's really all you need to do. Many of you can get all this information from the MLS, but do have at the ready more drilled down, information and the statistics right from the MLS if you do have somebody that wants more specifics. So then you're just going to give him a quick snapshot, mr. Seller, right now, you know, mr past clients, center of influence, friend, family... the market right now is still very much favoring sellers. Based on the inventory, based on the days in the market, the average home is sitting on the market for like 12 days, and at least the last few sales we've had they sold for over asking price.

So I am here to tell you is that you are in the right place at the right time. Congratulations for being a home owner. By the way, and this is how you you just basically loop the conversation around while you're obviously going to be having natural conversation going back and forth... then you say these two calls to action. Say, "would you like me to do a more drilled down appraisal or CMA of your home and email you a more drilled down report? Actually, I've already started on it, so I could just send it to you later today. That way, you will get a really clear idea of what your home is worth. They will, or they won't say yes. Now, if they say yes, say, all right. Perfect. I'll work on this. I'll send it over to you today. By the way, are you thinking about putting your house on the market or you just asking for this for the sake of just you know, like I said, knowing what the value is going to be? Feel them out to see if they have any real motivation.

Because if you don't ask that question and all you asked was if you could provide the CMA, I don't think that they're going to bridge the gap mentally and emotionally to then assume that you want to list the house, right?

You have to be overt and offer to have service. Help them buy or sell a home. 

Now, if they say no, they don't want the more detailed drill down CMA from you.

Then this is how you end the call, no matter how. Who do you know who is thinking about buying or selling in this market that I should be helping?

And that is the script everyone has memorized. By the way, IT IS NOT "Do you know anyone?" Because they are not going to give it much thought that just say nobody comes to mind, right?

It's WHO do you know? That's such an important one word distinction. Who do you know who could use my help buying or selling real estate? Okay, you could preface that as well and drill down even more and see who are the one or two people that are top of mind.

Who do you know who I should be helping right now to buy or sell their home in this market? That's what we're saying: you have to be overtly asking for the business, every call, every time.

So how to follow up where maybe a lead says, well, I'm not ready right now.

You know, "don't talk to me for a year or so. I don't have my financing together." A call like that you can still ask, who else do you know who could use my help buying or selling?

That's the script to memorize. 

Agents don't ask for the business because they get stuck in their head of what to say. It's such a simple thing to say, and people are very receptive because you're not directly saying at that point to you, when do you plan on selling?

If they ARE planning on selling, they are going to tell you because it's about them. It's a brilliant script cause it's easy to memorize.

It's short and you can use it with virtually everybody. That's right. One of the things that we like about what viral marketing does is they actually interview you guys once a month talking about your housing and your homes.

You know the values in your marketplace, right? They'll interview you and then they slice those into short little videos, and then they send those to your centers of influence and past clients.

However, you cannot just think that by itself is going to get the job done. You have to supplement it with a phone call. The proactive always wins, the passive rarely does.

So do the viral marketing videos to supplement the actual calls. Just doing the videos by themselves will not get close the same result of making the calls. If you can only do one, choose to just make the calls. If you guys are not going to make the calls, don't do the video. That's right. That's the bottom line. 

POINT NUMBER FOUR

Consistency. I go to our grizzled veterans' brains on this. One of the things they said was I would have not just done it at all. It's the consistency of it.

You have to schedule this every month. Call the same people at the same time. Program them that you are the go to person, that you were there for them. You're going to keep that information coming. 

Its first having your CRM. So here's the thought for you. Here's what your life should look like. You take your whole database - and maybe it's 50 people, maybe it's 500 people (not much more than that, truthfully, unless you've been in the real estate business for a long time or are a really social person - weed out the fluff in your database), and schedule it in. How do you get your database?

The simplest way to do it is go to your phone, go to your old phone, go to your old email, go every place you can possibly imagine - LinkedIn, Facebook - and again, input only real centers of influence and past clients. These are your old neighbors, people you may have known from church, people from work. Then obviously add your customers, your recent customers, anyone you currently do business with... those are the people that go into this list.

The further out you get from the core people, the harder it will be for you. For example, think to yourself when you're deciding whether or not you want to add someone to your database. Think about if you had to call them up today, do they have to remember who you are? Because if they do, they don't go on that list. That's a simple litmus test for you. Then, as you're building it, just make a point of every single day until you've exhausted all your leads lists and past clients leads list, then work to add two or three of them into your CRM every single day. Every single day your homework is going to be go research two or three people and add them to your list. By adding them, you're going to call them, and you're going to use our scripts.

Now, if you've got a big CRM, if you have a bunch of people in there and you've been doing a really poor job of falling up with them, which is the case for most of you, I have good news for you. They don't know that you have not been following up with them. They haven't been keeping track. They don't have an egg timer saying, you know what, that Rick Janson hasn't called me for six months.

They don't know. Ok, so so don't use that as your excuse not to reach out to them just because you have never called them, or you've only mailed them and you've always been passive. You know what you've been doing doesn't work, and you're going to start doing the stuff that does work.

This is why now is a perfect time to start. No one's going to criticize you. They're not going to remember the last time they came in contact with you. Matter of fact, it's just the opposite. What's gonna happen, is, is when you call them up, use our scripts. Do not apologize for not having called them. Don't make it some weird situation and overcome some objection they didn't even have in their head.

Just call. Use our scripts as if you just called them 30 days ago. That's it. That's how you start.

Do not intorduce some weird sort of vibe in to the call, making it uncomfortable for everybody, right? Maybe do a little homework on the person prior to calling if you haven't contacted the person in a while. Go to their social media and see what's going on there. Make sure they're still alive. All that good stuff. 

POINT NUMBER FIVE

Grow your database at least 10% per month. There is a 10% rule, but when you do this plan you will get well more than 10%.

The 10% rule is that if you've got a great pass client center of influence database of 100 people, you'll get 10 fairly easy deals out of that every year, assuming you communicate with them. So obviously, if you've got 200 people, that 10% rule, you'll get 20 pretty easy deals. 

Here again is the problem. Some of you are just heard what if I have 10,000, and I start dripping on them, and I start showering them with all these chochkees hoping and praying that they are going to do business with me? That's a mistake. Remember the idea of building a huge database of people you're going to farm to or or geographically market to and all this other stuff... it doesn't work.

It doesn't work it a high enough level to even consider doing. That's the reason that when you're actually going to drill down on centers of influence and passed client list, your goal is not to have a huge list.

Your goal actually is to have a list that's responsive. Otherwise, the 10% rule won't actually work.

At the same time, you should also be focusing on trying to grow your database by 10% per month, call the same people the same day of every single month using the scripts you were just provided. Keep the conversations focused on the things that matter to them, which is being of service. Don't talk about yourself. They really don't care. Focus on them and being of service to them, and always end every single contact with "oh, by the way, who do you know is thinking about buying or selling that I should be helping in this marketplace?"

Here's what's going to happen. You'll make those contacts the first month, and the effort will generate no leads. That's probably true for the second month, too. But what happens after they realize that you are indeed going to call them every single month and you're going to bring something of value to them, they're actually going to start overtly looking for folks to refer to you. It's the law of reciprocity. It's not really a law, but it's the way it works. Think of it this way. Next year when you're walking into a Starbucks, where you're allowed to stand next to people and you don't have to wear a mask, the good old days right? and somebody opens the door for you, aren't you going to feel sort of like there's almost this debt that has to be paid where you have to somehow reciprocate that? That's what happens when you build up that unpaid balance in the mind of your centers of influence and past clients when you contact them with something of value every single month. No, not all of them are going to feel that way, but a vast majority of them will, especially when you supplement it with a great video that's going to give them even more drilled down information. What's going on in the market.

Your ultimate goal with your centers of influence and passed client is to have them think real estate and think your name. There is a direct correlation. There is no doubt that Rick Janson is in real estate, right? That's how you guys have to basically be associating with your centers of influence and past clients as well.

If you're just getting started, it could be a small list of 25 people. It will grow over time. But that statistic, that 10% of those people will send you business every single year with the proper nurturing and follow up, that is completely accurate. Again, over time, as you become more successful, you basically have a bigger list.

That's the reason the agents that have been in the business a long time, the most successful agents in the country, they can actually start focusing more on centers of influence and past clients because the numbers, the law of large numbers actually works in their favor at that point because that they have 500 to 1,000 people in their true centers of influence and past clients guys. A lot of these guys, they don't really have to do a heck of a lot of work outside of just loving on those people to build and have very consistent businesses because the numbers work in their favor.

In fact, at that level, they're more of a lead follow up business than they are marketing or prospecting business because they've done such a killer job on this. Remember our previous point, when you're talking about some of these veterans that you interview that have a database of 500 people, remember that those were not random 500 people. Those were not leads or impressions. These were honest to God past clients or close centers of influence. 

Tag the true source of all of our transactions, and you'll after about two or three years that 60% of all of your deals come directly from centers of influence and past clients.

Even if you just got your license, like just now, and you're thinking I don't have a database, you do! You have your close friends. Again, the litmus test is that if I call them right now, they can tell me who you are. They might even have your phone number in their phone. They've got to be that close to you.

You might not have more than 10 people. That's okay. Start right now. Take really good care of those 10 and keep building. 

So how do you build your center of influence and passed client list? 

Let's say you've really done a great job, and you only pulled out maybe 10 or 15 people that could be your true center of influence and passed client list. That's actually kind of a blessing because it gives you more time to focus on those people. Ultimately that also means you have to learn how to proactively lead generate and create past clients from the transactions that you've done. Centers of influence and past clients are always the first spoke that we tell agents to put on your lead generation wheel.

BONUS - POINT NUMBER SIX.

You have to do something for client appreciation now. We call it a past client appreciation event, but certainly your center of influence can go to that as well.

Call all of them and invite them to a christmas party at an actual christmas tree farm and do it up. You can have pictures with Santa, apple cider and hot chocolate and the whole thing. It can be fantastic, and it's so beautiful. You're also providing a place for them to do their holiday cards with their family, etcetera.

But how do you get people to show up? Call them. Do videos. Send it out and make sure they're going to show. Don't give them a Christmas tree. Hold it at a Christmas tree farm, so they can get their tree there.

You can also have a pumpkin fest. The pumpkin thing is great. I like these especially, and we're coming up on October. This is an outside events so it's a much more covid-friendly idea. The pumpkin fest is super easy, and this is a great time to put it together. You find your local pumpkin farmers, which all of you have pretty much nearby and they're getting ready. They're doing their orders for grocery stores, right? So they know about what their inventory is gonna be.

You can buy them wholesale, and they can deliver them to you. You can start out doing it at your house in your front yard. Then take it up a notch to the elementary school. So you buy the pumpkins, right? Then just let people come by take them. 

It doesn't have to be a jillion dollar thing, but what's involved? So let's say there was an ideal elementary school that was a perfectly positioned at the entry and exit to the community in a perfect spot. Ask the principal if you can use the parking lot for the pumpkin fest. Ask if you can a Red Cross Blood Drive at the same time. 

Then go to the local Starbucks and ask the local Starbucks if they can provide coffee and whatnot. You know, the whole thing, right?

So buy as many pumpkins as you can afford. 

These past clients, center of influence appreciation events can be a lot of fun.

The reason we did it with the Red Cross is well, obviously we wanted to expand it so that it was a charity and the Red Cross to work it so that they would do the blood drive.

But here's a little hidden benefit of the Red Cross. They have very high level local press tie ins. When they do a press release saying they're going to be doing a blood drive, it will show up in all the papers. In conjunction with Rick the Realtor, we're going to be doing this event at this particular location.

Here's the amazing part. They will have telemarketers, call them the volunteers of the Red Cross, call the people that had previously donated blood and invite them to your event to essentially donate blood again.

So you get all this free press from the Red Cross. All these people that were obviously trying to proactively lead generate on your behalf to get people to attend.

If you sell the pumpkins, donate all the money from the pumpkin sale to a charity that's involved in your center of influence. Tie all these bits and pieces together.

Just do something, get your feet wet, get started with the pumpkin idea and see where it goes. Eventually, people anticipate it and they look forward to it.

Alternately, and this is a very old idea that works really great.

There's always some family-friendly, feel-good-type movie that comes out every year, and with covid, who knows, but the movie theaters are opening up again and you have people rushing back to movie theaters. So when whatever national feel good Christmas story type situation that's appropriate for families comes out, consider renting out your local movie theater. Now i'll give you a little secret here. It costs less than you think because they know that the people showing up are goint to buy popcorn and soda and what not, and that's where they're gonna make their money.

Send your folks an invite digitally, like evite or FB events. There's tons of ways to do it digitally, and then call all of them and then also tie it into some kind of food drive for the holidays. 

So the "cost of admission" is they have to bring some food that you can then donate to the local food pantry. 

We like to do toy drives as well. That could be a fun one.

So the point is to do something and people love it. And we're at the perfect time of year to do it because this is the time of year where people are naturally more in to gratitude.

We're walking into what's going to feel like a massive recovery in the economy. People are going to be feeling joyous because of the fact that they've been under so much emotional pressure. It is going to be like nothing we've ever experienced in our life. 

Open your minds to wherever and however you can be of contribution to your centers of influence and past clients.

POINT NUMBER SEVEN

There are going to be people on your list who are like your AAAA rock stars. Who are those people? The ones that actually sent you referrals. Do not pre-qualify whether the referral worked out or not, that's not the point. The point is that they thought of you, and they sent the referral. So if they sent you a referral and it closed, great. If they sent you one that didn't close, great. You have to treat those people like gold because you'll discover in your center of influence and passed client list that there are going to be a handful that are like your fans. They live to send you a referral. If you don't root out who those people are, they're never going to feel appreciated.

So you might think you know who they are, but then you've got to start digging around because maybe you're just focused on the ones who sent you a referral that closed. Look for anybody that sent you anybody that was interested in buying her selling real estate.

Then show these folks some massive appreciation. For those people, you've got to do something extra special for them that involves you directly and overtly saying, thank you. I appreciate you. So one of our favorite ones is to do a simple, nicely packaged bottle of wine with a little holiday card attached to it. Ok, why wine? For starters, you will eventually figure out that leaving a pumpkin pie on the front porch is a really bad idea. The other reason to give alcohol is because if the people are not home (try to deliver these wine bottles on a Saturday morning, dressed up - holiday festive and what not - starting as early as Thanksgiving), and you deliver the wine in a pretty gift bag then if they are not drinkers (or maybe don't like your medium quality wine), then can re-gift it.

Why deliver on a Saturday morning? Everyone answers the door, and you want them to answer the door. You want to hand it to them and not just leave it on their doorstep.

You can leave it, wine does not freeze, but do be conscientious of the fact that there might be somebody in the house that is going to be a kid, for example, and you want to make sure that you are definitely putting the wine in direct contact with the receiver.

Now, it doesn't have to be wine. Agents have done really nice, classy looking ornaments that look like the front of the house. You can have an artist who will do a rendering of the front of the house, or give a bread gift basket if one of your past clients owns a bakery. Try to connect the dots with your past clients and give back to them. That's always a nice thing.

These are your crown jewels, not 100s but maybe your top 25.

Think about giving them something that they'll keep.

Maybe it's a picture frame, something that's going to see if they leave it out and subtly remember you. Maybe they'll at least feel somewhat emotionally obligated to make sure they call you.

There's all sorts of things that you can use, and maybe it's not the same gift for everybody. Maybe you've got a few really special clients.

You can go to their social media and find the cutest picture of their pet or kids and turn that picture in to pop art, or make it look like it was hand painted, or a travel mug with that picture on it. Wouldn't you just melt if somebody thought to send that to you? So some Saturday morning, somebody knocks on your door and gives you this beautiful picture of you and your family from the trip to Hawaii that you took two years ago that was obviously a high point for your family.

What are you gonna do? You're going to go door to door and you're going to look for seller for that agent. That's what you're going to do. You're going to have raving fans. 

So think about the impact of gifts like this in a year like this.

Now, here's an easy, free one. Look at whose birthday it is on Facebook. Create a little video. Use the camera on your phone and send him a happy birthday video singing Happy Birthday!

Yes, most of you are going to sing a horrible song, but the more you spoil the people that actually are your best centers of influence and past clients, the more they're going to spoil you back.

That's how life works in general. If you're wondering why you're not getting more business from your centers of influence and past clients, it's probably just because you're not asking. 

So ultimately, all these nice little ideas, these bonding moments that we're trying to share with you guys to motivate you, inspire you, they're not worth a dime unless you're following up and you're calling and you're actually asking for business. 

If you do not call them and you do not overtly ask for business, nothing will happen. 

So get ready, get locked in, get aligned with people that are going to help elevate you to take full advantage of this market. And always remember, the highest and best purpose of all of us on on this planet is to be of service to other people. If there's anything I can do to be of service to you, you can always text me at 303-589-2320.