Sphere Fear Anyone?

Last year, when I was still enamored with ActiveRain, I wrote a post titled “How MLM – MultiLevel Marketing Prepared Me for Real Estate.”

Today, I am reflecting on Sphere Fear.

Sphere Fear is a permutation of the fear of cold calling. It’s that weasel of a thought in our brains that says – don’t bother your friends by asking for referrals. Or, your friends will hate you if you ask them for referrals. Or, some other idiotic nonsense from that most wonderful aspect of the human psyche – the Inner Critic. Here’s a great book on the subject of how to get this monkey off your back – Soul Without Shame

Now I’m no genius, but I know my friends (I get to choose them) and my friends all want to see me succeed and help me succeed. I feel the same way about them. It is most likely the same with almost everyone.

Why is it then that we have reservations about contacting our sphere of influence and asking for referrals? Are we afraid that people will equate us with telemarketers or worse?

I’m not looking for answers here, I’ve heard them all as I’m sure you have. The critical issue it seems is that real estate is a lead generation business. If we are not actively involved in lead generation, then why are we in this business? Why are we not working this business?

One of the great business books of the last decade is The E-Myth Revisited. The focus of the book is working on your business, instead of working in your business. Working on your business requires objectivity and a love for the truth. Identifying the barriers to our success many times means facing and overcoming our fears, our old beliefs and often our limiting view of ourselves. Every step of the way, the inner critic is going to be fighting us. That rascal’s sole job is to maintain the status quo. It accomplishes this by damning you if you do, or if you don’t.

I heard a story a month or so ago about an agent who informed her dentist that she was going to be looking for a new family dentist. The dentist wanted to know if there was a problem. She informed him that in the ten years that her family of five had been using his services and in spite of the fact that she had recommended his services to dozens of friends – he had never referred one person to her.

The dentist asked her to give him a week. She closed over 20 transactions in the next year referred from that one source. She also talked to her account, financial planner, and everyone else she knew to let them know she was in the referral business – as a giver and a receiver. She now lives referrals and is a mega-agent at Keller Williams.

Here is the point I really want to make – our sphere of influence are the people who will not only be the most forthcoming with referrals, they will also be the people who will support us the most to become experts at asking for referrals and the most forgiving as we learn.