On this week’s Master Series, we spoke with Jim Manning, a real estate investor and client of smrtPhone, to get his advice on cold calling and best practices for using smrtPhone as a real estate investor. Hear from him below!
How to Approach Cold Calling as a Real Estate Investor
The first step in approaching cold calling is simply having self-confidence. Investors make thousands of dollars every year by cold calling, so it’s having a belief in yourself that this can work.
The next thing to consider when cold calling is that people will get upset. You just have to remember that there are people out there who need your help, so it’s worth sifting through the hard calls to get to the person who needs your service. You have to remember that a lot of times, motivated sellers won’t actually reach out, so you have to take on the heart of a servant and go out to find them.
Best Practices for Training Staff on the Phone
One of the best practices for training staff is roleplay. Let’s take a professional athlete for example. They don’t just go into the game and expect to perform again every other professional athlete without putting in the work and practice to get there. It’s a similar thing when it comes to training your staff. It’s important to role-play with your trainees every single day and practice scripts so they feel ready to have conservations with motivated sellers.
Is It Important to Monitor Staff Calls?
If you have the ability to listen to your team’s recordings, that’s as important as role playing because you can give them feedback on how they sound and how they make the other person feel.
It’s very difficult to listen to yourself talk and they probably won’t enjoy it, BUT this is one of the best ways to grow your skillset as a professional. If you have a mentor who’s really great at cold calling, have them listen to your calls and get their feedback. Ongoing coaching is always a plus.
Tips on How to Get the Most From Your Autodialer
One of the biggest benefits of an autodialer is the numbers, right? You can dial out hundreds of numbers during the course of a week. It’s efficient and makes it easy on your team to handle large call lists.
When it comes to autodialers, keep it simple. Create a simple workflow and process for your team and make sure you’re blocking time each day to use it. The hardest part of using an autodialer is being disciplined enough to actually use it. And when you do, it’s totally invaluable.
Closing a Deal Over the Phone
When it comes to sales, there is definitely a misconception of what sales people are like. They think of a used car salesmen with greased back hair and persistent nagging. But a quality salesperson is actually the opposite.
They ask the right questions to understand the pain point and the actual problem is. They listen and try to understand the type of situation the person is in. Once they know these things, they can dive into exact ways to help solve their problem. You have to remember you can’t solve a problem if you don’t ask the right questions.
Questions also help you build rapport and build trust with the client. You might be able to guess what their problem is, but it’s always best to hear it firsthand from the client, and people just genuinely like to be listened to.
What Makes a Good Follow-Up Sequence?
A good followup sequence is absolutely critical. When I first started out in real estate, I would go to a property, write an offer, and then wait for them to accept or walk away. If you’re doing your job right in real estate, over 70% of your deals should be done through at least 30 days of followup. This is from the time you send them the offer, to following up, and to closing the deal. So the biggest mistake I made starting out was lacking a follow-up sequence.
There’s a saying that the money is in the follow-up and for real estate, that is absolutely true Just because you send an offer to someone on day one, doesn’t mean they’re motivated enough and ready to accept it right then. Let’s say in three months they have another life event that happens and they’re now ready to sell. If you’re not following up, they may forget your name and someone else will come along and buy their house.You need to be the guy that’s in the right spot at the right time. And the only way you do that is through proper follow-up.
How Do you Approach Text messaging as a Sales Tool?
A lot of people ask me about the rules regarding texting leads, and there’s no precedent in the court yet regarding this topic. I know a lot of investors that are doing deals through texting. I recommend doing your homework and understanding your risk tolerance when it comes to texting as a method of cold calling.
Some people are even starting to replace cold calling with texting. We fall more on the conservative side when it comes to this and only use texting during the follow-up. We get that first contact with the lead, get a relationship started, and then we leverage the heck out of text messaging. When it comes to events, we’ll also use texting to get people to our happy hours, so it can be a really great tool.
How Important Is It to Have Your Phone and Text Messages Fully Integrated Into Your CRM?
One of the things we love about smrtPhone is having all of our calls and text messages automatically integrated within Podio, our CRM. Having everything in one place is incredibly useful. It saves our team a lot of time and helps with training because can save all recorded calls within smrtPhone.
They also have a great autodialer which will store all the data and information for you right into Podio. It’s nice to have one phone system that integrates right into our CRM rather than having a million different systems and logins.
