Welcome back to the second part of my series about developing relationships with your clients in your first year in the business.

Years ago when I was working insurance, before I could get my license or sell, we had to have a list of 100 of our friends and family. That practice has gone away, but it’s still important in principle.

You need a list of everybody you know—friends, family, and anyone you know who may refer you someone. This will be a great start to generating future leads. Contact everyone on the list at least once a month and have a conversation with them.

Ask them a simple question before hanging up, “Who do you know who is going to buy or sell a house in the next 60 to 90 days?”

“Your friends and family won’t see you as a real estate agent until you impress on them that you are a real estate agent.”

These people don’t know you as a real estate agent. They know you as a farmer, a mechanic, a mother, a father, someone who coaches Little League, a teacher, a police officer, or firefighter. And they won’t see you as a real estate agent until you impress on them that you are a real estate agent.

For most people, their friends and family won’t begin to see them as a real estate agent for two or three years because they don’t call them regularly; they don’t impress on them their professionalism.

You can really shortcut that if you get a list of people started. You also need to use a CRM, or customer relationship management system. We use FirePoint.net, but there are a ton of them out there. The point of using a CRM is to create a system dedication to contacting your database every single month. If you do that, it will pay dividends over the course of your career.

If you have any questions about CRMs or about setting up or working with a database, feel free to reach out to me. I’d be happy to help.