According to an eight-market study of home buyers conducted by the Newspaper Advertising Bureau asking why buyers and sellers chose a certain real estate brokerage and/or agent:

• They knew the agent previously -- 40%
• Repeat customers of agent -- 19%
• Agent was recommended -- 14%
• Newspaper ad call-in -- 14%
• Brokerage was known -- 9%
• For-Sale sign call-in -- 2%

Over 70% of the time, all other things being equal, people will do business with, and refer business to, people they know, like, and trust.

If you’ve taken the time to work on your advertising...to test a number of small direct response ads, free report mailings, editorial brochures, etc., you are very likely generating a tremendous amount of business as a direct result.

And, in the process, you are laying the foundation to build a very significant referral business, if you play your cards right. So let’s talk about referral generation.

Your sphere of influence is simply those people you know -people who are somehow, some way a part of your life, directly or even indirectly.

Your sphere of influence includes everyone from your immediate family members to distant relatives, close friends, acquaintances, and everyone who touches your life in some way shape or form. These people can include everyone from your mail delivery person, to the checkout cashier, the plumber, dry cleaner -everyone you have the chance to meet.

At least....that’s the way it should be. I mean, if 70% of your business can be shown to come from those people who know, like, and trust you, doesn’t it make sense to increase those numbers of individuals?

This network of people can and will create an endless chain of repeat and referrals for you if you play your cards right. If you take a proactive stance and actually work at making this gold mine of potential business work for you.

So let's concentrate on increasing your sphere of influence.

Remember Joe Girard? He was listed in the Guiness Book of World Records 14 consecutive years as the individual who sold the most cars in the world in a year. In his book, How to Sell Anything to Anybody, Joe points out that everyone knows at least 250 other people, directly or indirectly, and it was this insight that paved the way to Joe’s incredible success. By cultivating a network of enough new people, Joe caused his centers of influence to soar to incredible heights through their centers of influence.

Make sense? Simply by knowing you, I can position myself to influence everybody you know and so on and so on and so on. So keep in mind that everyone you meet knows 250 other people who can help your business. It's easy to overlook people whom you see on a daily basis, but that can be like overlooking the forest for the trees.

Remember, too, one of my favorite marketing truisms of all times... attributed to Jay Conrad Levinson in his book Guerrilla Marketing:

"The ultimate winners in the nineties and beyond will be companies (agents and brokers) that are right in front of the buyers (or sellers) at the time the buyers (or sellers) want to buy (or sell). Not easy, but possible."

You know the phrase "Out of sight, out of mind." Sadly, it is often true. It simply is not enough know a lot of people. They also have to know what it is you do for a living and be reminded of it often. You literally have to keep your name and occupation in front of them constantly...you need to strive to keep "right in front of the buyers when they want to buy." And since you don’t know when when is...you need a system to keep consistent contact.

So, your goal is two-fold:

1. Increase the numbers of people in our immediate sphere or center of influence in order to exponentially be in position to touch the lives of everyone they know.

2. Design and implement a number of systems to help us keep our name and occupation as real estate professionals in front of them constantly.

Published: April 2, 1999

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Robert Fore is the president and CEO for Realty Profit Systems. He is a nationally recognized marketing trainer and strategist who specializes in combining the proven principles of direct response marketing with the cost-effective, worldwide penetration of the internet. Realty Profit Systems publishes the Online Real Estate Marketing Report at http://www.hometeam2000.com and offers a free, weekly e-zine of real estate marketing tips at http://www.top10realty.com.