What actually separates a real estate sphere of influence, or SOI, from an ordinary contact list? Mauricio Umansky, founder of his own global brokerage, put it bluntly: "I've gone to a lot of coaching. Use your sphere of influence. Great. Well, what the hell does that mean? How do I actually do that?"
This guide answers that question directly. It covers what belongs in your SOI, why it out-converts paid leads and cold outreach, and how to organize, nurture, and grow it with a system instead of guesswork.
A 30-60-90 day plan is included, so you can start this week.
Key takeaways
- SOI stands for sphere of influence: the people who already know, like, and trust you enough to hire you or refer you.
- Referrals and repeat business decide the majority of real estate transactions, according to the National Association of Realtors.
- Not every contact in your database belongs in your SOI. The line is whether the person would recognize your name and vouch for you.
- A real estate CRM like Luxury Presence's AI CRM turns a static contact list into a working pipeline by segmenting, scoring, and surfacing who to call and why.
- Growing your SOI matters less than most agents think. Nurturing the one you already have, consistently, matters more.
What is SOI in real estate?
A real estate sphere of influence, or SOI, is the network of people an agent knows personally or professionally who are likely to become clients themselves or refer business to that agent.
That includes people the agent has never sold a home to and may never sell one to directly. What qualifies someone for an SOI is not a transaction. It is recognition and trust.
Your real estate SOI typically includes:
- Family and close friends
- Neighbors and people in your immediate community
- Past clients who bought or sold with you
- Other agents, lenders, inspectors, contractors, and title professionals you work with
- Colleagues and business contacts from a previous career
- Members of clubs, religious groups, alumni networks, and local associations
- Community leaders and local business owners
- Social media followers and email subscribers who actually engage with your content
- Contacts from professional networks such as LinkedIn
A contact list becomes a sphere of influence only once the person on the other end would recognize your voice on the phone and mention your name to a friend who is buying or selling. That is the filter. Someone who filled out a form on your website last week is a lead, not yet an SOI member. The work between those two states is what the rest of this guide covers.
SOI vs. COI: is there a difference?
Some coaches and brokerages use sphere of influence and center of influence, or COI, as if they describe two different groups. Most of the time they are talking about the same network. If you want a distinction worth keeping, treat your COI as the tier inside your SOI who already sends you business on a regular basis: the past client who refers three friends a year, the lender who hands you every buyer who needs an agent.
Your SOI is the full network that could produce that outcome. Your COI is the slice already producing it.
That distinction matters operationally. It tells you where to put your highest-touch attention first while you build the rest of your SOI toward the same behavior.
Why your SOI is real estate's most valuable lead source in 2026
The National Association of Realtors' 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers found that 66% of sellers found their agent through a referral or by using an agent they had worked with before, and more than 9 in 10 buyers said they would use their agent again. Referrals and repeat business, both of which live inside an agent's SOI, decide the majority of real estate transactions before a single ad ever runs.
"You've got a lot of people in your sphere of influence and in your contacts that you're just not talking to," says Lauren Henss of First Team. "I see so many people putting tons of money in leads. They get the lead, but they don't even know what to do with it. Learn the basics first." Her fellow panelist Ryan Coyne, Serhant's Chief Experience Officer, compared the typical agent's scattered lead-gen efforts to "the little girl in the movie Signs, with all the half-drank glasses of water": most agents would be further along if they finished what they started instead of chasing the next lead source.
Matt Breitenbach, a Compass broker, puts the same idea in blunter terms: "Call your database your power base. You can do all sorts of marketing and do all sorts of anything, but it's all contacts and relationships."
His underlying philosophy is even simpler: "It's not a transaction. It's a person." No two agents share the same sphere. Yours is shaped by years of your own relationships, which makes it a source of business no competitor can copy or outbid.
The four layers of a real estate SOI
Not every name in your SOI deserves the same attention. Splitting your sphere into layers gives you a clear answer to who gets a phone call this week and who gets a quarterly email.
- Core circle. The people who would drop what they're doing to help you and vice versa: close family, your best past clients, your two or three strongest referral partners. This group deserves a call, not an email.
- Warm circle. People who know you well and have referred you before or would if the topic came up. This is your COI. A personal note, a pop-by, or a direct ask belongs here.
- Extended network. Acquaintances, community contacts, and social followers who know you exist but haven't been tested. Content, events, and light social engagement keep this group warm without demanding your time.
- Rising contacts. New leads and connections who aren't proven yet. This is the pipeline into your SOI, not your SOI itself. Move people up as trust builds, and be honest about who never will.
How to identify and organize your SOI
Start with an audit of every contact in your phone, email, and social accounts, then bring them into one place. As Luxury Presence's own Kyle Scott put it to a room of agents building out their own systems: "CRMs are hungry. You put information in, and it keeps asking you, I want more." A CRM built specifically for real estate workflows, like our AI CRM, flips that by sorting contacts by type automatically, separating Sphere, Past Client, Active Client, Lead, Agent, and Vendor so you can see your actual SOI instead of a single undifferentiated list.
Scott described what that automation catches in practice: a client with thousands of contacts "completely missed" a notification that one of her contacts had changed jobs, a classic buy-or-sell trigger. "The CRM told her. She reached out in her brand voice, she approved the message, it went out... a week later she shows up, does the listing appointment, gets the listing."
The specific tool matters less than agents assume. On a Luxury Presence panel, Jonathan Spears and Maria of Spears Group made the case for keeping it simple: "You don't need to invest in tools for the sake of tools. You need to invest in platforms for the sake of solutions."
A basic CRM that gets used consistently, whether it's a brokerage's internal system, Follow Up Boss, or something as inexpensive as Pipedrive, beats an elaborate one that sits half set up.
Newer agents typically have a smaller SOI than agents who have been in the business for years, but the size of the list matters less than the consistency of follow-up. An agent with 150 well-nurtured contacts will out-produce an agent with 1,000 names sitting untouched in a spreadsheet.
How to nurture and invest in your SOI
Give value between transactions
Share content your SOI actually wants: market reports, home maintenance checklists, neighborhood guides, investment tips. Distribute it through email marketing and social media so contacts think of you before a transaction is imminent, not only during one.
Keep a cadence you can actually hold
A monthly or quarterly newsletter, a birthday note, a home-anniversary call. Frances Katzen has run the same newsletter since her first day in brokerage: "It's been that way forever, and it has a really nice viewership... it's a way to be in front of people." Her advice for new agents building the habit: "You have to spend money to make money, and you can't afford not to do it."
Automate the busywork, not the relationship
Tools like Smart Actions and AI lead nurture can flag a home anniversary or a life event and draft the outreach, but you still review and approve every message before it sends. The system finds the moment. You still make the call.
Track who's actually listening
| SOI engagement metric | What it tells you | Action to take |
|---|---|---|
| Email open rate | Whether your subject lines and send timing are working | Test new subject lines for segments with open rates below 25% |
| Click-through rate | Whether your content is relevant to the recipient | Adjust content topics for segments with click rates below 3% |
| Response rate | How engaged and trusting your contacts are | Move high responders to a higher-touch cadence |
| Referral count per quarter | Whether your SOI is actively sending you business | Thank referrers personally and add them to your core circle |
| Event attendance rate | How connected your SOI feels to you in person | Increase event frequency if attendance passes 20% of invites |
Segmented email campaigns produce a 14.31% higher open rate than non-segmented ones (HubSpot Marketing Statistics). Across hundreds of contacts and dozens of sends, that gap compounds.
Host events and do pop-bys
Client appreciation nights, seminars, holiday parties. Every one gives your SOI a reason to see you outside a transaction. Pop-bys cost little and leave a lasting impression, from a bottle of wine to a branded notepad someone keeps on their desk for a year.
Show up where they already are
Like, comment, and share your SOI's posts. Encourage happy clients to post about their experience and leave a testimonial on your website, then repost it.
Shelton Wilder, a top Los Angeles producer whose business runs almost entirely on referrals, reframes what social media is even for: it's "a communication tool, not an advertising platform," a way of staying genuinely connected to people through every stage of their lives rather than a billboard for new business.
That framing matters, because referrals prove trust and a current, active feed is often what a referred prospect checks before they call.
How to ask your SOI for referrals
Even agents who run almost entirely on referrals admit the follow-up habit doesn't come naturally. Ben Belack's first listing came from an attorney who was a regular at the restaurant where he worked and who, in his words, "knew I was getting my license and was rooting for me."
His advice for new agents is to make sure everyone in their sphere knows immediately: "Hey, I got my license, this is what I do, and I can help." He's also candid about where he still falls short: "I've been pretty bad at following up with my database. I think I like the excitement of calling someone new... I'm not ashamed to admit that."
If a top producer struggles with the follow-through, a script that makes the ask easy to actually send matters more than a perfect one. A few to adapt:
- Text message: "Hey {name}, this made me think of you: {a listing on their old street, a rate change, something specific to their life}. Hope you're doing well. If you or anyone you know ever starts thinking about a move, I'd love to be the first call."
- Phone call: "Hey {name}, I've been meaning to call, not for anything real estate related. I just wanted to hear how {something specific and real, a kid's graduation, a job change, a trip they mentioned} turned out." Let the conversation actually happen. Near the end: "Before I let you go, keep me in mind if you ever hear anyone talking about buying or selling. I'd love the introduction."
- In person or at an event: "It's so good to see you. {A specific, genuine follow-up on something from last time you spoke}." Later, naturally: "I've been focused on {neighborhood or niche} lately. If it ever comes up with anyone you know, I'd love to be who you think of."
The ask works best when it follows genuine contact, not when it replaces it.
How to expand your real estate SOI
Expanding your SOI means meeting new people and earning trust in a context where trust forms naturally, not collecting more names. Networking, community involvement, and volunteering put you in front of people who aren't yet in your sphere. Every open house sign-in sheet is a chance to add a new contact and start the nurture process. Partnering with local businesses puts your name in front of an audience you couldn't reach alone.
Roh Habibi built his referral network the same way, deliberately: "I created authentic relationships over time with these people, many of which have turned into referral pipelines and business collaborations from all of my main feeder markets... I want to have such a powerful referral network that if I ever want to send someone a referral in New York or Miami, I know exactly, based on this person's personality, who to send it to."
Habibi's background in wealth management shapes who he prioritizes in that network: the CPAs, wealth managers, and attorneys who sit closest to a client's biggest financial decisions, cultivated until, as he describes it, they're not just a contact anymore but someone who makes the introduction the moment a client is ready to buy or sell.
A 30-60-90 day SOI action plan
Days 1 to 30: organize
- Audit every contact in your phone, email, and social accounts.
- Import all contacts into a CRM built for real estate. If you don't have one, our AI CRM is a starting point.
- Segment contacts into at least four categories: past clients, active prospects, referral sources, and professional contacts.
- Set a follow-up reminder so no contact goes more than 90 days without hearing from you.
- Archive contacts who wouldn't recognize your name. They're leads, not SOI, yet.
Days 31 to 60: activate
- Send your first segmented newsletter with content relevant to each group.
- Engage with SOI contacts on social media at least three times a week.
- Send five handwritten notes to past clients thanking them or marking a home anniversary.
- Schedule one in-person or virtual event, such as a market update webinar or a client appreciation happy hour.
Days 61 to 90: measure
- Review email open and click-through rates in your CRM.
- Identify the ten contacts who engaged most with your outreach.
- Move those ten to a higher-touch cadence: monthly calls, personal check-ins, coffee.
- Reach out to your five most engaged contacts and ask directly who they know who's thinking about buying or selling.
- Set your next 90-day plan based on what you learned.
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