Every good agent has a solid SOI (Sphere of Influence). You probably have one. The problem with an SOI is that most agents don't use them. They have an SOI, but they don't make any effort to make their SOI work for their business. The biggest failure when it comes to SOIs is that agents do not maintain contact.

Maintaining contact with your SOI is very important. You should be contacting your SOI in a personal way (meaning not through emails or fliers) at least twice a year minimum. There are many ways you can do this. Here are some great ideas:

- Throw an SOI party. This could be for Halloween, your business anniversary celebration or just a simple gathering.

- Give a seminar. You could get a local professional to give the talk about an important topic, like taxes or legal issues of small businesses.

- Throw an open house at your office. Invite everyone to see how your business has grown and to thank them for helping you get to where you are with your business.

- Host a dinner in their honor. You can break up your SOI into different categories and throw a diner for each group. For example, throw a dinner for people in your SOI who have purchased multiple houses from you or for those who have provided you with referrals.

- Host a charity event. This is a great idea because you are getting face time with your SOI and also raising money for a good cause. Many people who may not attend other SOI events will likely come to this one since it is for a good cause.

No matter what ideas you use, the point is to have personal contact with your SOI. You want to be able to talk with them and let them know how grateful you are to them and how important they are to your business.

Following up on leads is a very important aspect of being a good agent. If you fail to follow up then you fail to ever turn a lead into a client. In many cases speed is the key to good follow up. You want to follow up with a lead as fast as possible so you don't lose the opportunity.

To help ensure speedy follow up you should start by making follow up a priority. You should set a time limit on following up on all leads. The NAR recommendation for lead follow up is 15 minutes and no longer than 24 hours. When you can follow up fast you will have the best chance of connecting with the client and becoming their agent.

Automate whatever you can. If you are using email then set up an auto responder to reply immediately to a lead. Make sure that you keep it personal and offer them something of value, like neighborhood report or market news. Let them know you will be contacting them within the next 24 hours.

You need to have a plan in place on how you deal with leads. Having a good follow up plan can make a big difference in your business. You will find yourself with more clients and more money when you become a master at speedy follow up on leads.

Many agents don’t even deal with expireds, but for those that at least try it, many are failing. It is not because expireds are not a good market. Expireds can actually make you a lot of money. The trick is all in the timing.

When you hear about an expired listing do you jump right on it? Are you right on the phone making calls and trying to get face time with the homeowner? If you are doing this, have you noticed how many other agents you are up against?

It is common to want to jump right on an expired listing, but this is not the right time. Let it sit. Leave it alone for a couple months.

There are a few reasons to do this: 1) The homeowner is not likely to have had the best experience trying to sell their home and may have some bitter feelings towards agents. 2) The homeowner may not know what they want to do. These two reasons will either get you wrapped into a deal where the homeowner changes their mind or they are difficult to work with. It is much better to let them reorganize and figure out their plans before you jump right in.

You might be surprised at how many expireds sit for a few months before they ever go back on the market. The reasons above are why this happens. If you are there at that point when the homeowner has figured out what they want to do then you can grab up the expired and actually end up with a great listing.

Take a look at how you handle expireds. If you are making this big timing mistake then it is time for you to improve your expireds strategy.

One of your goals in business is to make people want to work with you. A good lesson to learn that will have people flocking to you is about the power of a positive attitude.

There is a lot of talk these days about something called the power of attraction. The idea behind the power of attraction is that positive attracts positive and negative attracts negative. You don’t have to take anyone’s word for it, though. Simply give this concept a try.

Spend one day being completely positive. If you feel any negative thoughts creeping in then push them away and replace them with positive ones. When you speak, only speak positively. Put a smile on your face and greet every person you see with a friendly hello.

You might just be amazed at how well the power of attraction works. You should see immediate results. Imagine if you did this everyday. You could really make some big changes in your life and in your business.

Start trying to be more positive every day. Always look for the good in any situation and make the most of it. You should start to see a positive influence in your business and in your own life once you adopt a positive attitude.

As a business owner one of your most important skills is the ability to communicate with your employees. Without communication your business will slowly crumble. You will lose control and eventually fail.

Good communication is essential to good business. You must be able to communicate clearly your ideas and thoughts so that your staff knows what they are supposed to do and how you want it done.

Communication is also important to making sure your employees are motivated and that they know when they are doing a good job and when they need improvement. There is no room for unclear messages. You have to know how to get your employees moving and how to get them working at their peak performance.

The best business owners are the best communicators. No matter what other skills you have or what else you do for your business, without good communication you will struggle. You can be the best agent in the market, but if you cannot communicate with your staff and even with your clients then you will never become a top agent.

Communication is something that comes naturally to some people, but for others it can be something they have to work on. Figure out where your communication skills rank and work to improve them. Communication is really the key to business success.

As a real estate agent you probably do many different tasks everyday. However, as a business owner you need to be focusing your efforts on only the tasks that will make you money and delegating those tasks that are simply administrative or otherwise do not directly make you money.

There are only four tasks that will make you money. They are:

- Listing
- Prospecting
- Selling
- Negotiating

As you can see those four tasks are directly related to your clients. You are trying to attract clients, work with clients and make sales. These are the tasks that should be taking up the majority of your time.

A top agent knows that they need to be making the most of their time. If you want to be a top agent then you will access your business and access what you do on a daily basis. If you see that you are wasting your valuable skills doing tasks other than those four money making tasks, then it is time to make some changes.

In the end your goal is to make the most of your time and to make the most money for your business. Once you focus in on the four money making tasks you will start to see that is exactly what will happen.

Nobody ever said that business has to be complicated. There are many aspects of your business that should be simple and should be free of needless complexities. Right now is a great time to stop and take a good look at your business. See if things have gotten too complicated and complex.

A simple business runs easier than a complex one. Sometimes simple is much better. You will likely find many aspects of your business that have been made more complex than they need to be. Take time to simplify things. Get rid of unnecessary processes and make things as simple as possible.

You cannot get rid of every bit of bureaucracy, but you can clean up many things. You can get focused on what is important. Take your business back to the basics. Once you do a good cleaning you will see how much it benefits your business.