Ep. 17: Leveraging & Growing Your SOI With Brian Icenhower

On today’s episode of The Weekly Boost we’re joined by Brian Icenhower – broker owner and a nationally recognized real estate trainer, coach, and speaker.

Brian literally wrote the book(s) on how to leverage and grow your SOI, so there’s no one better to teach us exactly how to do that than him. He’s the author of several titles including SOI: Building A Real Estate Agent’s Sphere of Influence and Prospect: The Real Estate Lead Generation Manual.

Click the flash-player below to listen now:

Episode Highlights:

• Finding ways to leverage your SOI and continue to build your sphere of influence is a great way to grow your business
• Only one out of every one thousand agents is purposefully working their sphere of influence
• Referrals are the easiest lead source to convert into sales but many agents make the mistake of not maximizing their referral systems
• Segmenting a database by SOI (A’s, B’s, C’s) and prospects from various lead sources is the simplest way to organize your leads, then you can make subcategories from there
• Learn to separate your prospects and SOI, that way you know which leads to focus on first
• Your SOI includes people that know you or you know; there is already a connection or relationship with this person
• Your Prospects include leads that you believe you can cultivate a relationship with over time
• People will want you to sell their house based on your ability to market and sell the homes of others
• Separate your clients into tiers with the 80/20 rule, giving 80% of your time to the top 20% of your clients
• It’s important to build an online ecosystem to continue meeting new people during the global pandemic
• Utilize social media as a way to remain top of mind to those in both your SOI and Prospect pool
• You need to find ways to constantly stay in front of people and make them think that you are the dominant agent in that area
• Due to the pandemic and such low inventory there might be a very large FSBO market on its way
• All these methods that create an online ecosystem make a ton of noise; eventually, people will hear
• Closing is something that you should be doing at every stage of the process
• If the authority in the situation is not actively closing the client, anxiety and stress are inevitable
• Assume the sale and set the expectation for what is to come or the client will lose faith in your abilities

Other Ways To Listen:

• Click here to download the mp3 | 35m:00 (Right click and hit “save as”)
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3 Key Points:

1. An effective referral and follow-up program is the easiest way to generate new business, but many agents do not maximize these programs.
2. Having a coach helps hold agents accountable while guiding them through the obstacles that lie on the road to success.
3. There are many more ways to establish new relationships during COVID other than cold calling and mass emails, i.e. social media.

Tweetable Quotes:

• “I think technology should augment the things that you do, you shouldn’t use it as an excuse to stop doing the things that you have to do in your business.” – Ricardo Bueno
• “If you look at how to make your life better…all of those things that get you where you want, we as humans have a very hard time getting there.” – Brian Icenhower
• “People like Budweiser because they like the beer. In real estate, people like realtors because they do a good job of marketing and selling homes.” – Brian Icenhower
• “You create this ecosystem where they can’t run from you…There are tons of ways to create that ecosystem…you are viewed by your local public as the dominant agent in your area.” – Brian Icenhower
• “Closing is not a one-time event. Closing happens at every stage in the process.” – Brian Icenhower

Resources Mentioned:

• Check out: SOI: Building A Real Estate Agent’s Sphere of Influence
• Check out: Prospect: The Real Estate Lead Generation Manual
• Visit Brian’s Website
• Follow Brian on Instagram
• Marketing Audio Course
• Sponsor: Follow Up Boss