I Want to Be Aggressive With My Follow-Ups But I Need Direction

[Jeff G.]

I've sent out my first major batch of mailers and I have no complaints about my response rate. Though, I do get a ton of hangups. I realize that the people who make it anywhere in this business are awesome with their follow-ups. Knowing this makes me want to be awesome with my follow-ups too. But, there are problems:

Problem One: This isn't my day job, it's my side job. I work a 50-80 hour weeks and then I come home and do this. I have a VA who runs my comps for me during the day, that helps a lot! When I get home I open up Podio, listen to the VM's and start calling people back. I triage, the people who leave voice mails get called back first. Hangups get VM's/texts as the night wears on.

Usually, at the end of the week there have been a about 5-10 hangups that I just wasn't able to call back because of day-job work load/wholesaler work load/sleep. I wish I could call all of my hangups back. I'm REALLY open to suggestions on how to follow-up with hangups in an automated way. What do the rest of you suggest?

Before anyone suggests it: no, I'm not going to quit my job. I love my day job. I'm wholesaling so that I can increase my income and start buying rentals as good deals come my way.

Problem Two: Okay, I've sent them a yellow letter. They've called in and.... well... they're just not a deal. They haven't told me to go pound sand or anything but they're not motivated to sell. This includes everyone I'm telephone tagging but never actually get to talk to directly or that calls in leaves a VM once and never ever responds to my return VM's/texts. What should I do now? Do I send another identical yellow letter? This seems wrong. Also, what about the "telephone tag" crowd? Do I respond differently to them?

Problem Three: Out of 720 mailers (give or take) I got about 80 calls, that's an ~11% response. All of them were pre-scrubbed for 50% equity or greater. Out of all of those calls, I've written ONE offer. I anticipate writing a second offer tomorrow. I'm clearly doing it wrong. To me that's just not acceptable.

In the case of that one offer letter I went to see a property and it was badly damaged by water and had lots of mold. I offered a low price point, he countered, I came up 5k from my low price point and then his realtor stopped calling me back. Soooo.... I sent a polite letter explaining why my number was as low as it was and then filled out a contract for my price point (complete with sign-here X and yellow highlighter) and invited him to have his realtor call me back. (She deserves her commission too. I'm not going to knowingly go behind a realtor's back.) Tomorrow isn't too different: it's a badly damaged mutifamily listed with a realtor. I expect to get it under contract at or near the price point I have in mind.

Wrapping it up

I talk to a lot of people and they just seem to want top dollar--which is their prerogative. But, two offers in 60 days (counting tomorrow) is pathetic and I know it! How can I do this differently? Do any of you send contracts with the figures filled out? Or, do you send a boilerplate offer letter? Any suggestions on how to get better at this? On balance, it looks like I'll get two deals out of this, eventually.

I have no intention of giving up. I realize that disappointment with myself and bumps along the road are all part of the learning process. I just expect more of myself. I've only just started and I'm falling in love with the industry. I'm not into doing things half-way. I really want to get good at this even with the constraints on my time. Any feedback is welcome.

[Tim Herndon]

@Jeff G.

In regards to problem one - hangups:  If they are mobile numbers you could try Slybroadcast 

http://www.slybroadcast.com

You can record one message and snet it to everyone at one. This service bypasses their ringer and goes straight to voicemail.  

It only works on mobile numbers and if you're not suure you can run them through Search Bug and sort them once you get the .csv file back. It's a $5.00 minimum but you can search something like 1,000 numbers for that price.

http://www.searchbug.com/api/identify-phone-number...

I developed this strategy on my own for FSBO's and it save a lot of time!