Sphere, Past Clients & Referral Engine
A continuous system that keeps past clients and the sphere producing business, with owners, reasons and timing rather than a monthly newsletter.
- Tier
- Flagship
- Build order
- 6th of 7 for real estate
- Shape of it
- 9 steps, 1 stop rule
- At launch
- Built against your stages, then proven before it runs alone
The problem this solves
Past clients and sphere are the cheapest and highest-converting business in real estate, and they are the least systematically worked, for specific reasons:
Contact stops at the closing gift.
The database contains everyone the agent has ever met with no distinction between a past client, a friend, an open house visitor and a cold portal lead from 2019.
Contact is a monthly market newsletter that is identical for a first-time buyer and an investor with four properties.
The referral is never asked for explicitly, because asking feels awkward and nobody scripted it.
When an agent leaves the team, their sphere leaves with them, because it lived in their phone.
Life events that actually predict a move, a birth, a job change, a divorce, a child finishing school, an inherited property, are visible on social media and nobody watches for them.
How it works, step by step
Every wait, threshold and branch below is a value we set with you during the build, against your stages and your language. None of it is a default we impose.
- What starts it
- A stop rule, so nothing closes itself
Step 1Trigger
The database is segmented properly: past client buyer, past client seller, sphere, referral partner, and lead. These are not the same and must not receive the same contact.
Step 2
Every past client has an owner and a contact rhythm that survives the agent leaving.
Step 3
Contact alternates: genuinely useful property-specific information, a human check-in, and an occasional market update. Not three market updates.
Step 4
Anniversary contact is automatic and personal: the purchase date, with something relevant to their specific property.
Step 5
The referral ask is scripted, scheduled and owned, at the points where it actually works: after a smooth closing, after a positive review, and after a successful help with something unrelated.
Step 6
Referral partners, lenders, attorneys, contractors, inspectors, are worked as their own segment with reciprocity tracked.
Step 7
Life-event triggers where legitimately observable produce a human prompt, not an automated message. A machine must never message somebody about a divorce.
Step 8Stop rule
Past-client property value updates are sent where genuinely useful and suppressed where they would be noise.
Step 9
Reviews are requested only from transactions that closed cleanly.
How it gets built
Built inside what you already run
- Follow Up Boss
- kvCORE
- Sierra
- Lofty
- or whatever your office already runs on
Nothing to log into and nothing to license. If a system needs a record your platform does not hold, we add the field to your platform rather than starting a second one beside it.
This is the actual build order, in the phases its own steps fall into. It runs in supervised mode first, with you approving what goes out, until you are happy with the tone.
- 1
Build
Segment the database. This is a week of work and it is the first month of value on its own.
Built inside the software you already run, against your stages and your language.
- 2
Build
Assign ownership that survives agent departure, and put that in the agent agreement.
- 3
Build
Build the alternating contact model with the team leader.
- 4
Build
Build anniversary contact with property-specific content.
- 5
Build
Script the referral ask with the team leader and rehearse it. This is a coaching artefact as much as an automation.
- 6
Build
Build the referral partner segment with reciprocity tracking.
- 7
Build
Build life-event prompts as human tasks only, never automated sends, and agree the boundaries explicitly.
- 8
Build
Connect review requests to transaction outcome with exclusions.
What changes after it goes live
How it runs today
Past clients and sphere are the cheapest and highest-converting business in real estate, and they are the least systematically worked, for specific reasons:
After this one is live
The database becomes segmented and therefore usable. Past clients hear something relevant rather than a newsletter. The referral gets asked for on purpose. And the sphere becomes an asset of the team rather than of the individual agent.
How to measure whether it worked
Your arithmeticRun with your numbers, not ours
Three numbers: transactions traceable to past clients and sphere, referral rate per closed transaction, and the number of past clients who transacted with somebody else, which is public record and is the number that changes the conversation.
We agree the baseline before anything is built, and we do not take credit for things that were going to happen anyway. There is no figure on this page claiming what we have produced for somebody else, because there is no verified figure to publish.
What we will not do
This is from the same delivery document as everything above it. It is on the page because a supplier who has not thought about it will not tell you, and you would find out later.
Agents are independent contractors, and this shapes everything. A system that requires behaviour change will fail. Every system here is built to work whether or not an individual agent cooperates, and anything that cannot be must be flagged to the team leader as a people problem rather than sold as a systems solution.
Fair housing is not negotiable.
- No automation may segment, target, exclude or personalise on race, colour, religion, sex, familial status, national origin, disability, or any protected class under federal, state or local law.
- Life-event triggers are the specific risk. Familial status is a protected class, so an automation that targets people who have recently had a child is a fair housing violation. Life-event prompts in System 6 are human tasks only, never automated messages, and the boundaries must be agreed in writing with the brokerage's compliance officer.
- Geographic targeting can constitute steering. Any farm-area or neighbourhood campaign needs compliance review.
- Advertising rules apply to automated messages exactly as to any other advertising.
Licensing and disclosure.
- Automated messages must comply with state licence disclosure requirements, which vary and often require the brokerage name and licence number.
- Team names and advertising are regulated in many states.
Messaging.
- TCPA and CAN-SPAM apply in full. Consent per number, quiet hours in the recipient's local time, immediate opt-out honoured across every system.
- Portal leads carry their own consent terms which are not the same as a consumer opting in on the team's own site. Treat them as a separate consent category.
- Replies route to a monitored human queue.
Data.
- Transaction files contain financial and personal information. Access controls and retention rules apply, and several states now grant deletion rights that reach a CRM.
Nothing here is legal advice. Fair housing law, state real estate licence law, brokerage policy and MLS rules can each add requirements, and fair housing in particular carries personal liability. Every template requires review by the brokerage's own compliance function before it goes live.
Nothing here is legal advice. Rules in this area have moved more than once recently, and every template that states a commercial term or a guarantee goes to your own counsel before it goes live.
Seven systems forreal estate.
We build one at a time and prove it moved before starting the next. The tiers are the dependency order, not a price list.
Tier 1Foundational
Nothing arrives late or unowned. These come first because everything above them assumes they are true.
Tier 2Growth
The recoverable money. These work the pools the foundational systems have made visible for the first time.
Tier 3Flagship
One connected system end to end, plus what the owner reads on a Monday. Only once the pieces are proven individually.
- 5The Complete Client JourneyThe flagship, once the pieces are proven.
- 6Sphere, Past Clients & Referral Engineyou are hereSphere and referral, which depends on the clean client records System 5 produces.
- 7The Team Leader's Morning BriefOnly meaningful once there are systems to report on.
The tiers are the dependency order for real estate, not a price list. Most firms do not start at the first one, because the order is a default and the call is where it gets changed.
A note on sequencing this trade
Sequencing note. Systems 1 and 2 together usually pay for the entire engagement within a quarter, because the appointment-set rate is the highest leverage number in a real estate team and almost nobody measures it per agent.
Back to the real estate overview for the stage map and where these fit.
Is this the oneyou need first?
Often it is not. On the call we look at what is actually costing you most right now, which is frequently a different system from the one that brought you to this page. If there is nothing worth building yet, we will say so.