Need Help With Pre-forclosure/Forclosure Cold Calling Approach

[Chris Eastvedt]

Can someone help me with my script for approaching pre-forclosures/forclosures?

I start off simple- Hi, I'm Chris. I'm doing field studies on foreclosures and heard that your bank might be trying to take your house...

I quickly follow with- I'm not here to bother anyone or make trouble, but I was wondering if you would be interested in discussing your situation to see if there might be a better solution for you...

The problem is that as soon as I mention the word "foreclosure", the person immediately shuts down and tries to end the conversation as quickly as possible.

Does anyone have suggestions for a better word for foreclosure, or a better way of saying it? Or a more successful script when approaching a cold calling situation? My goal is just to book an appointment to have an actual conversation. TIA!

[Johnny Kang]

@Chris Eastvedt

I've done short sales, door knocking, cold calling, and post cards to people in foreclosure. 

People in foreclosure don't want to face the reality, so people hanging up on you, slamming the door on you, getting angry etc is normal. You can say the 1st portion of how you started off, but I wouldn't necessarily say you're going to help them keep their home since some people might be willing to short sale; they might've not known who to talk to. So I'd say "My partners and I work with homeowners to create custom solutions that help them with their current situation." (which might entail doing a short sale). You can say you're an investor if you're talking to people with equity, but I would not say I'm an investor on foreclosure leads. They interpret that to mean "I'll be getting your home from you free."

Cold calling & knocking on doors would be considered outbound marketing. Easier way to get people in foreclosure to talk to you is to do in-bound marketing. 2 ways you can do in-bound marketing are online & offline. Online would include having a website and doing SEO/PPC, content video/article marketing). Offline would include as @Frank Spaulding suggested, sending out letters/post cards. I personally didn't send letters to people in foreclosure, because of the fact that you're dealing with people in denial, so why spend $1.40/letter when you can spend $.50 cents/post card. That way you reach more people with the same marketing budget. I only send letters to people with equity. 

If you're marketing consistently, then it just becomes a #s game. But I wouldn't just target foreclosure leads. That market existed in abundance few years ago, but not anymore. You might also want to target equity leads as well. 

Hope that helped.