Would you like to make $1 million in real estate commission by maximizing your sphere of influence (SOI)? When it comes to making money in real estate with your sphere of influence, it’s about mindshare. In other words, you must stay top-of-mind and front and center with the people in your SOI.

  • Making money in real estate with your sphere of influence is all about mindshare.
  • Cement your relationship with the 8-by-8 system.
  • Speak by phone to your sphere four times a year with a scheduled quarterly phone call.

Would you like to make $1 million in real estate commission by maximizing your sphere of influence (SOI)?

When it comes to making money in real estate with your sphere of influence, it’s about mindshare. In other words, you must stay top-of-mind and front and center with the people in your SOI.

In a recent Pat Hiban’s podcast, guest Joshua Stern explained how to skyrocket your real estate commission by following a simple, yet effective, prospecting-based marketing-enhanced system that keeps your sphere of influence delivering referrals.

This is the exact same system that pulled in $1 million in commission for Stern.


Let’s dive in, touch on some highlights and get you started one down the path toward making your first $1 million in commission from your sphere of influence.

Step 1: Cementing the relationship

The first step involves cementing the relationship after first meeting someone in person or over the phone. You will sort these individuals into a tier 1 lead or tier 2 lead.

What’s the difference in these two tiers? Well, a tier 1 lead is when you only have part of a person’s contact info (name and phone number but not email address).

A tier 2 lead is labeled so because you have all contact information. Your goal is to quickly move all new contacts into tier 2.

Your main goal when cementing the relationship, however, is to activate your 8-by-8 system.

This system involves eight touches in eight weeks. You will use a number of platforms to create these eight touches including video blogs, direct mail, telephone, emails with customized videos and so on.

Step 2: Maintenance system

After completing the 8-by-8 and moving all leads into tier 2, you then move on to the maintenance system. Stern’s team based this on the principle of creating 33 touches a year — forever.

As Stern mentions, “We don’t weed our database. We feed our database; we water our database; and we grow our database.”

As you’ll hear in the podcast, his team’s 33 touches is actually closer to 47 touches. These touches involve the following: two video blogs per month, one monthly mail newsletter, a year at-a-glance calendar at end of year with a personal note, four client appreciation events per year (with an invitation and a phone call) and two text messages per year.

The gasoline in the engine of this prospecting-based, marketing-enhanced system is making sure you are making a quarterly phone call to talk in person with individuals in your SOI at least four times a year.

That’s why Stern’s team has client appreciation events as it gives them an excuse to make the phone call without seeming like they have an ulterior motive.

How well does this two-step system work? Well, we’ve already shared that it helped make $1 million in commission for Stern.

But here is another important statistic that shows the ROI of this system: Stern receives a 6-to-1 return on his 8-by-8 and 33-touch system.

In other words, for every six people you stay in touch with using these steps, that sphere of influence will give you one transaction.

Now you know how to make $1 million dollars in commission by maximizing your sphere of influence. Want to hear even more so you can start making more money with referrals from your SOI?

Listen to the complete podcast here.

Pat Hiban is the author of NYT best selling book “6 steps to 7 figures – A Real Estate Professional’s Guide to Building Wealth and Creating Your Destiny”, the founder of Rebus University and the host of Pat Hiban Interviews Real Estate Rockstars an Agent to Agent Real Estate Radio Podcast with Hiban Digital in Baltimore, Maryland. Follow him on Instagram or Twitter.

Email Pat Hiban

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