A real estate agentโs database is everything. Having all that contact information is meaningless if itโs not in a form that is easily accessible. This means the database must be well-organized and actively managed. Organizing your sphere of influence (SOI) database builds the foundation for the success of any real estate agent, team or brokerage.
Where to start with the database?
A real estate professionalโs most important asset is their sphere of influence. Who are the people you know? The starting point is putting these names and their contact information into a single place. The first time a real estate agent starts compiling their SOI, theyโre often surprised by how many people they know. College classmates, neighbors, business associates, doctors, the parents at the PTAโthey all are members of your SOI.
Get the names and contact information into a system specific for contact management. Todayโs real estate-focused customer relationship management (CRM) software makes tracking and using the contact database much easier and more efficient than an email program or spreadsheet. Consider using a CRM to organize your SOI database.
Getting Your SOI organized
Once the names are gathered together, itโs time to get organized. Not all contacts in your SOI are created equal. Itโs vital to structure the database to reflect the different relationships inside the SOI. ICC coach Brad Baldwin offers a four-tier strategy for organizing a real estate agentโs sphere of influence.
Essentially, a real estate professionalโs SOI will be layered with their best advocates, past clients, vendors, and a general network of contacts. Categorize your SOI by how you know your contacts. It makes it easy later to create segmented marketing campaigns specific to โvendorsโ or โpast clients.โ The best databases will have a category function to make this sorting simpler.
Sorting your SOI
Sometimes when people compile their databases, they go overboard–creating 10,000-plus databases. How effective is this type of database? Chances are, not as efficient as a smaller 1-to-2K database.
So whatโs the magic ratio for a SOI database?
The people you want in your SOI are those who you can have a conversation with when you run into them on the street. Select the contacts you can connect a name with a face. This will help keep your database manageable.
How you engage with your top advocates will be different from the people you sort-of know from the church group. Itโs vital to note these relationships in your database so you know what lead nurturing pipeline to place the different contacts.ย With an organized system of targeted SOI contacts, youโll know how often to contact the different prospects and improve your lead generation.ย
- Virtual Staging with AI โ How Realtors Use Artificial Intelligence to Sell Homes Faster
- How to Create a Resource Library for Your Real Estate Agents
- Real Estate Recruiting Coach โ How to Train a Recruiter
- 5 Proven Ways to Bulletproof Real Estate Transactions
- 3 Proven Ways to Attract More Agents to Your Brokerage or Team
- How to Exit Real Estate Agents from a Brokerage or Team
- Reels, Stories, and Posts: How Realtors Use Each to Grow Online
- Create Better Real Estate Listing Descriptions with Google Gemini & AI
- 3 Ways to Boost Real Estate Team Meeting Attendance (and Engagement)
- Pricing Listings in a Slow Market