Jennifer Allan's Selling to Your Sphere of Influence - No Sales Pitch Required!

At the end of last year, I went on a rampage about cheese. Not the edible kind (heavens, no!), but rather, the prospecting variety. As in, promoting yourself with dorky, pitchy, predictable material that you bought off the shelf or copied and pasted from some free online resource (or egads, maybe you even paid for the krap!). Y'know. Prospecting cheese.

It is my opinion that if you're going to spend your time and your money promoting yourself to your adoring fans, it's far more effective if you actually create the material yourself to ensure that it's not dorky, cheesy or boring. Everything you send out, whether via snail-mail or email, should be done with the intent of inspiring the recipient to smile and think of you fondly.

And yes, that might just take a little more time than you're used to devoting to your mass-prospecting efforts.

Well, seeing how "time" is usually in short supply, many agents read my stuff and say "Okay, I agree in principle, but at least I'm sending out SOMETHING! I figure that's better than nothing, right?"

Nice try, but no. It's not. Especially when you're sending out that SOMETHING to your Sphere of Influence - aka your friends and acquaintances. If you must, go ahead and send out cheese to strangers, but PLEASE don't do it to your Sphere.

Why?

Your Sphere of Influence contact database is precious and should be treated as such. In fact, it may be the most valuable tool in your arsenal for getting good business and bringing in juicy paychecks. Treat it with the respect it deserves. Let me rephrase that. Treat the PEOPLE who make up your contact database with the respect they deserve.

Every single person in your Sphere of Influence has the potential to bring a $10,000 check your way. More than one, even. That's a fact. So, it's well worth the effort to MAKE an effort to, as above, inspire those special people to smile and think fondly of you every time they hear from you. Don't do anything that sends a message that the person is simply a name on your list, someone worthy of your prospecting efforts, but maybe not your personal attention. And that's exactly what canned, boilerplate, cheesy marketing material does. It sends the message that the recipient is just a name on your list.

Frankly, I'd rather take the chance that my Sphere of Influence (which remember, includes my social network) forgets I sell real estate, rather than take the chance that they roll their eyes every time they hear from me. If I'm not willing to take the time to create interesting, relevant, non-cheesy promotional material to send to my precious Sphere of Influence, then a Sphere of Influence business model may not the right model for me.

So, no, Prospecting with Cheese is NOT Better than Nothing. At least not with your Sphere of Influence.

RELATED CHEESE-TO-SOUL BLOGS
Turning Cheese into Soul
Expireds & FSBO's
Newsletters
Open Houses

The other day, a nice man from REALTOR Magazine called me up to chat about the Do Not Call list - specifically, what recommendations I, Jennifer Allan, queen of cold-calling (*snort*) might have for agents stymied in their prospecting efforts by that pesky DNC.

We had a great conversation, although it remains to be seen if any of my brilliance will make it into the final article since I really have no experience with the DNC except for being first in line to sign up.

But one of the last questions he asked made me think... and I came up with an answer off the cuff that I'm rather proud of. Thought I'd share it with you.

Question: "Jennifer, I understand that you never cold-called, but I'm sure that someone in your RE/MAX office did. If that agent were to ask you for advice on what to do instead, what would you have advised him?"

JA's Off-the-Cuff Answer: "Hmmmmmm."

No, seriously, I did come up with something...

"What I would probably tell him would be to get out from behind the desk and the telephone and take his naturally charming self out there into the world and make contacts face to face. No, not by knocking on doors or attending power networking events, but rather by striving to make a positive impression on as many people as possible as he goes about his day. By implementing a Quality over Quantity approach to attracting business. Instead of trying to make contact with 100 people a day, who will almost certainly promptly forget about him, try to really connect with two or three, who will be much more likely to remember him tomorrow... and six months from now."

I'm guessing that someone who has experienced success in cold calling has an appealing personality and a confident aura of success, which would be very attractive out in the real world, too! And, frankly, being out in the real world making real friends and real connections sounds a whole lot more fun and rewarding than dialing for dollars three hours a day!

I must confess that while I think my advice is brilliant, I've never been approached by a master cold-caller for my opinion and I don't expect to be in the near future. There are many paths to success and we're all better suited to one path or another.

So, while I don't expect the cold-calling world to suddenly shift their tactics to the JA-Way, I do hope I can inspire those who'd rather not cold-call to try the JA-Way and see if they like it!

Oh, and watch for your April edition of REALTOR Magazine to see if any of this made it in...

If you've been around my blog for more than five minutes, you probably know how I feel about Begging for Business or Referrals. I don't like it. I don't think you should do it. I don't think you need to do it. I think it makes you look unprofessional, needy and, well, I'll say it again, unprofessional.

Was I clear?

Actually, probably not. When I use the word "beg" I'm not just talking about the literal definition of the word where you accost everyone you know and meet, and sob on their shoulder about your lack of business and beg them to find you a buyer or seller. No, when I say not to "beg" I'm also advising against "asking," "reminding," "incentivizing," and in many cases, even "appreciating."

"But... but... but..."

Yeah, I've heard all the but, but, but's and they don't sway me from my stance on the matter. 

So, what should you do instead? How DO you inspire the people you know and the people you meet to send you business if you don't ask/beg/bribe/remind for it?

Tee Hee... Here comes the pitch...

Join me on Saturday morning, January 16th for a freebie teleseminar on this very topic - "Alternatives to Referral-Begging." We'll talk about WHY it's wrong to beg for business and WHAT you can do instead to get the point across without discrediting yourself. And yes, as time permits, we'll address all the but, but, but's...

Details and Registration here
www.SellwithSoul.com/referral-begging

It's Here!!!! 
The Sequel to Sell with Soul
Own one of the first 1,000 copies printed, numbered & autographed.
www.SWSStore.com

It's here, it's here! My new book - it's here! I mean that literally - it's EVERYWHERE in my house. Boxes and boxes of books, everywhere I look. Yeah, it's kinda cool. Strike that. It's so darn freakin' unbelievably cool. I do a little happy dance every time I trip over my boxes and boxes and boxes! (But check back in with me in two weeks as I'm moving all these boxes and boxes to my new place!)

Here's an excerpt from the first chapter of the book... enjoy!

"If You're Not Having Fun Selling Real Estate, You're Not Doing it Right!
by Jennifer Allan

Chapter One 
"What's Fun Got to Do with it?"

Selling real estate can be a blast. All day, every day? Uh, no. There will be days you long for the stability and security of a steady paycheck and regular hours. There will be nights you lie awake tossing and turning, unable to forget that scathing criticism you received from your unhappy seller. You'll have weeks - maybe even months - when you have no idea where your next mortgage payment is coming from. That's definitely not fun... and, unfortunately, something a lot of us can relate to in recent times.

But you'll also enjoy the euphoria of successfully negotiating a tough inspection. Of beating out five other agents for that primo listing without budging on your commission. Of picking up the phone to find a $1.5M buyer on the other end who found you as a result of your blog. Of hearing from your new referred client that your mutual friend said you were "the best." Of being too busy to breathe and then, when you finally come up for air, realizing that you just had a $50,000 month.

Making gobs and gobs of money is fun. Getting steady streams of referrals is fun. Being a master negotiator is fun. Solving problems is fun.

Being an exceptional real estate agent is fun.

This book is going to show you how to have more fun selling real estate by being exceptional at what you do and making lots of money doing it. Yes, you can mix business and pleasure... and have a heck of a time doing it.

First, we'll revisit and expand upon the Sphere of Influence (SOI) business philosophy introduced in Sell with Soul, because having lots of friends is fun, even for introverts like me. Getting business and referrals from your friends is even more fun-more fun than cold-calling, door-knocking, mass-mailing and advertising combined! We'll discuss how the traditional Numbers Game is not much fun at all and how you can change the rules and beat ‘em at their own game.

Moving on, we'll jump into the car with your buyers and debunk most of the nonsense that real estate trainers have been pushing at us since time began. The way we've been trained to "manage" and "handle" and "protect ourselves from" our buyers is a bunch of hooey! Relax, enjoy your buyers, trust your buyers, respect your buyers and they'll be a joy to work with.

Next, we'll spend some time discussing some advanced strategies for marketing, selling and closing your listings, with a particular emphasis on pricing. Trust me, being an outrageously effective listing agent - that is, one who knows how to actually sell houses - is buckets of fun. Being good at turning your listings into paychecks gives you an intoxicating sense of power over your business.

We'll also discuss some of the finer points of being an exceptional real estate agent-covering topics such as win/win negotiating, the right use of systems and effective communication skills.

Finally, we'll wrap things up with some fresh ideas on time management, taking your career to the next level (or conversely, down a notch), firing your clients and much more.

.....................

Want one of your very own? You can buy it from me (numbered & autographed - www.swsstore.com) or at Amazon... I think the Kindle version is already available, or will be shortly.

You can also get one for free, sorta, if you participate in the book release party at my website - just go here for details.

Did I mention how darn cool it is to release a book?