How to Stay in Touch with Your Sphere

"Top of Mind" is a big buzz term in the industry and with good reason. Buying and selling real estate is an infrequent occurrence, and you can't really stimulate activity by running a sale or a buy one, get one free campaign. People only move when their housing needs require it. The trick is to have them think of you when that need arises.

Experienced agents virtually all know that awful feeling of finding out that a past client, friend or family member bought or sold property with another agent. Often they will admit that it's been a year or more since they last had any contact with the person, sometimes much longer than that. So why are they disappointed? When you don't water the plant, you can't be surprised when it wilts or dies.

Sometimes the agent will say that they were in touch, and that they have the people in their CRM or contact list. Fair enough. What were they getting from you?

This is where the quality of the work is the issue.

What an agent shares with their sphere is every bit as important as being in communication at all. Pick me and I'm great are far less useful to people as giving them something of actual value.

What's valuable?

• Hyper local market reports

• Local business recommendations

• Funny stuff

• Instructional and best practices content

• Cautionary tales

• Thoughtful commentary

Brokers are as interested in attracting more agents to their company as agents are in attracting more clients. And no one is better at conveying value to agents than my friend Anthony Lamacchia in Massachusetts. He has built an Empire by conveying value to agents in his market and beyond. His training system, Crush it in Real Estate, has helped him build his brand from a small team 10 years ago to nearly 20 offices in multiple states that do billions in closed volume annually.

Simply put, if you think of real estate in New England and don't think of Anthony and his companies, you are living under a rock.

Anthony is unique in scale but not in focus. If someone is in your sphere they should get content that conveys value and not self congratulatory marketing. Nothing mutes an agent faster than self promotion, and nothing gets more eyeballs than useful or interesting information.

You don't have to be a social media diva, video king or eloquent writer either. You don't have to create content at all. You can curate useful news stories, videos, and market reports that your company or local outlets produce. If your company doesn't supply it, use the local news to distribute useful content a few times per month to your sphere.

The bottom line is to consistently deliver useful value and eschew overt self promotion. Value attracts, self promotion repels.