Interested in hearing from some successful agents on how you spend your day early on.

Let's say you have been in business for 2-3 months, you dont have many listings if any at all, maybe 1-2 people you know you are working with how do you spend your day? What are you doing all day to generate more prospects?

You have a PLAN everyday and you work the plan. If you don't have a clear direction you get minimal results.

1st year you are usually trying a little of everything to find the one thing you like. When you find your niche that's when you setup a specific action plan for it and stay focused. Leads your cultivating now turn into sales generally months down the line and this is why you are ALWAYS prospecting.

Do you learn how to plan, and what activities to try by your broker? From other agents? Gary Keller's book help? All of the above probably?

I spent some time reading Jennifer Allan's book Sell With Soul.

Sell With Soul - SOI Prospecting for Real Estate Agents http://www.sellwithsoul.com

I like the Sphere of Influence approach much better than the standard approach for real estate.

I spent my early days learning, blogging, learning, blogging

If I am not working with a buyer, I am out taking notes about and pictures of HUD owned homes in my target area. I am also refreshing my site and blog and returning telephone calls. There's also training sessions, meetings, follow ups with warm leads and managing any existing transactions. All of those things combined make for a very busy day, but I love what I do so it's OK.

Oh, and don't underestimate the value of the mid day 30 minute power nap too.

There are a million and one ways to generate leads... and if you've been reading this board for more than a few days you've probably discovered that all agents work differently. Some are successful at cold-calling. Some knock on doors. Some set up booths at the local grocery or hold 'new homebuyer seminars.' Most rely on their initial SOI. And the important thing is that you add a few names to that SOI each day. These should be people you've met and talked to during the day. Not just names out of the neighborhood tax records to add to a mailing list. Mailings can be great... but that's far different from building your SOI list.

If you think about it, by adding just three new people to your SOI each day in less than a year you'll have well over 1,000 people whom you've met, whose name, phone number and email you've got, and who know you are a real estate agent. Those are now 'warm calls.' And those are whom we really love to work with... "Hey Joe, remember when we met at the grocery and you mentioned you were considering relocating? How's that going?"

For a perfect example of what I just posted above refer to my thread, Prospecting... in the Agents and Brokers forum.

So Texas Agent; I believe I garnered something out of what you've written that you were actve in Real Estate in the District of Columbia before returning to Texas ? Or was that someone else ?

Regardless, THANKS for your constructive, and well written, contributions. It IS NEVER a struggle to read anything you've written !

I like to think that the few extra moments someone might take to draft a post "WELL" makes it possible for a hundred, or more, other people to easily read and understand what the Poster is trying to communicate. That's where the economy lies; plus it's respectful ! Thanks again.

To elaborate on Texas's comments about SOI (which are dead on), what if everyone you know, knows just one person who will buy or sell this year? Just one? If you know only 50 people, that's 50 great opportunities for a sale. Your goal is to become the agent-of-choice in your social circles, which is much easier to do than you might think. But it is NOT accomplished with mailings or drip campaigns...

And remember, your SOI is not simply your friends, family and past clients. It's everyone on the planet who knows you and knows that you sell real estate. Big bonus points if they know you, know that you sell real estate WELL, and know where to find your phone number!