For most real estate agents, the majority of their business comes from people they already know. It’s true for nearly every type of agent out there, whether they’re small, large, new, or experienced.

This means that if you were better about marketing to these people—to your “Sphere of Influence” (SOI)—you would be selling more homes.

This is simple logic.

The perfect time to invest in your business is right now, at the start of a new year. No matter how busy you think you might be, you aren’t as busy as you will be during the spring rush.

Here are 5 ways you can use your database to create more transactions for 2018.

1. Send a market analysis and/or estimate of value

Make it a practice to send one on your client’s home purchase anniversary. If you do not already have this date noted in your CRM, start with the clients you helped in 2017. Note down the date of their home purchase and set a reminder to create this report a week prior to their anniversary date.

After you send it, call or drop by to see what they thought of the report. Find out if they have changed or modified the home in any way. And, of course, probe to find out what changes might be happening in their lives or in the lives of people around them. Change often carries a need for a new residence.

Don’t forget to note down anything you find out and any recommendations you might have mentioned.

2. Say “Happy Birthday!”

Everyone loves acknowledgement and a popular time to do that is on a person’s birthday. Again, if this date is not in your CRM, start with the clients you helped in 2017. Call them and ask. Note down the date and set a repeating reminder to send a birthday greeting.

These days, Facebook makes it incredibly easy to send a quick and easy greeting, but I urge you to resist the quick and easy. Send a video message or a handwritten card instead. You will stand out, far ahead of the crowd!

3. Connect through special interests

Do you belong to a special group of any sort? Service organizations, sport groups, and hobbies are all great examples. So are community causes, political or religious belief groups, and professional organizations.

If you have not already collected contact information for people in these groups, do so. Don’t worry about offending people with your real estate spam; you aren’t going to do that. Instead, commit to sharing information that is valuable to that group. If it’s a sports group, for example, share the game schedules. If it is a hobby, find and share an article about that hobby.

Use your CRM to tag the people who share this affiliation so that you can easily pull up that specific list and send an email, text, or video message.

4. Send handwritten notes to past clients

Do you hate calling your SOI and begging for referrals? Do the words, “If you know of anyone thinking of buying or selling, please let me know…” cause you an upset stomach? 

Try this idea instead: Make sure your SOI are tagged in your CRM. (Ideally, these are people you’d recognize and greet if you saw them in the grocery store.) Starting at the top, commit to producing (and sending) at least one handwritten notecard a day. The message can be anything from “thinking of you” to a specific message that is timely and unique to that client. Note the date of this notecard and move onto the next. (I also jot down a sense of what I wrote. This way I avoid the fear of sending too frequently and looking kinda desperate. And dumb.)

5. Stay in touch with referral-givers

Everyone except the newest among us has received a referral—we just tend to forget about the ones that didn’t pan out. Where there was one referral there are often more—but we have to stay in the flow of their lives. Our potential referral-givers do not wake up each morning wondering how they can get us more business!

Pull up a list of all past referral-givers and start writing notes or calling them to thank them for that past referral. Asking for more referrals is bit overkill—instead, be prepared with timely market information. The new tax laws are a perfect conversation starter!

As you can see, there are many ways you can leverage your database/SOI to earn more business. And here are a few more quick tips and best practices to keep in mind:

1. Perfectionism is the biggest excuse in existence. If you insist on perfectionism, how about starting with just ONE record today?

2. Tagging can get out of hand very quickly. It is helpful to tag with a purpose in mind rather than try to create all the tags you might want “someday”.

3. Don’t depend on mass messages or canned content. After all, any robot can do that. Make sure you find ways to speak to your people uniquely and authentically.

So, what are you waiting for? Start working that database, and sell more homes in 2018!