Best way to find Long Term Lead Generators?

Question

I know there are tons of solutions when it comes to hiring a lead generator, someone to fill the roles of making outbound calls to sellers. Let me explain what we've tried in the past, what's working for us now and who we're looking for currently. Previously we've tried:

Paid Craigslist Ads: The return was almost nothing as we didn't want to pay to post the listing multiple times a day, our ad just got bogged down amongst the rest of the spam.

Paid Indeed Ads: We've posted ads with various and numerous filters (even asking for a video) and although we've received a decent response most of the applicants have been "hit and apply" leads and weren't really qualified for the position.

International VA paid hourly Managed Professionally: This was great in terms of having a set schedule every week that we could count on someone to be making dials out. It was professionally managed so most communication would go through the manager and they trained their VA's for a total of one week before assigning them with an investor. They held 4 rounds of interviews total with 4 different VA's before we chose our gal. They did allow us to personally train her outside of her calling schedule we paid an additional $6 an hour. We trained her for a min of 1 hour a week and had her on for a total of 3 months. During that time we received a steady flow of leads, somewhere around 6-7 leads a week however 1 out of 10 were an actual qualified lead. Had we had longer to train her or had someone with a bit more experience in this field and who's previously worked for another investor we maybe could have made it work. However at the time we were spending near $800 a month and after 3 months not one lead converted to a closed sale. Also she was managed by the company so if we wanted to work with her privately she would have to have gone against company rules and left her position with them to work with us. I'm not against hiring out a 3rd party VA to lead generate but at this time we're looking for a more personal relationship.

Warm Market: Through mutual friends and past working relationships we've hired the two lead generators working with us currently. One has been with us for the last 6 months and has shown tremendous commitment to the process, loyalty and desire to grow. He takes our training and consistently gets better after each call. He lives 2 hours outside of LA and does not come to our office but works from home multiple times a week and and held accountable to a training and calling schedule. The other lead generator has just joined recently and he is following a similar schedule and is also being trained weekly, he also lives an hour or two outside from LA. They both have a strong desire to be in real estate and want to be in this business long term and they both hold full time jobs.

What we're looking for... Ideally: Someone who has a previous interest in real estate and is looking to grow within our company for at least 1-5 years. We virtually wholesale in Tennessee and it would be great if we could find someone that lives in the states we market in however they do not need to be local to us or in our office to make the calls. Someone that has a stable income and can dedicate the time to a calling schedule and commit to replacing their W2 income with real estate income. This person would understand the long game and is seeking for a team to help them get to their goals. Someone is is more than willing to start off in a commission only role and who has the tenacity to progress and scale up within our company to a more stable and rewarding position.

My question to all of you that have tried all of the above and more, how do you find this type of person to work with your company and how can you incentivise them without paying them a base or salary for at least the first 3-6 months? We've been looking for quite a while for the right person but I figured who better to ask than others who have probably already been in our shoes.

Thank you in advance!

Jerryll Noorden · Answer

We are having a hard time with this as well. I also have inquired constantly how to get this done.

And the answer I keep getting is the same. You find people, interview them hire them, fire them and repeat till you find a rockstar.

I hate firing people and I hate disappointing people so this is a nightmare for me. So what I did is I hired one rockstar all around guy with an amazing attitude. I don't care if he has any experience. He just needs to be bright, intelligent and eager to be part of a winning team. Then we train him train him train him and we make HIM fire the new people that don't cut it :D

Smart huh!

Also, I know you know of me already and I know you know I am heavily into SEO.

And I know you know what I will say next.. but I will say it again.

You really should drop the paid craigslist ads and all these other forms.. believe me when I tell you, they do not work. People get lucky all the time sure, people build systems around these methods that do get them deals here and there and when you pump enough money into them sure you will get regular deals but you have to pump significant money into this and it is very inefficient, tons of work and you will need a lot of resources to operate this.

So only those ALREADY succesful will be able to sustain these efforts. Everyday people... not likely.

You seriously should focus on a website and making it credible. The invest in PPC and facebook ads and calculate your cost/deal and then go crazy.

When you make your first $100K you invest into hiring a rockstar and you pay him what ever it is he wants. With a rockstar on your team you WILL make a fortune. Surround yourself with A-players and NEVER try to turn a B-player into an A player. Doesn't work.

That is what I would do... actually that is what I am doing!

So the lesson here is...

It is not about (just) a lead generator.. it is about having a well lubricated full on machine that

• Generates leads
• Handles leads
• Closes leads
• Makes money
• That is scalable

As we do in engineering...

"If you put in every single screw in correctly, and design the system for each screw to be in the perfect place in the end you will end up with an amazing machine".

In other words you need to make sure EVERY SINGLE element in your system (machine) is perfect, and in the end you don't have any other scenario left BUT a perfect machine (system).

Focusing on "lead generators" is inherently flawed.

The better system of course would be  not investing in ways for you to go after leads. Ideally invest in a system where the leads go after you every single day 24-7 like clockwork. Yes I get it that it takes time. While you do that as mentioned before go do PPC and facebook ads. Those are the only reliable lead gen methods that will give you predictable results (that I know of).

Any other lead generating methods you mentioned are fair game... once you have the others mastered and put on automatic. But go for the certain success generators first. Then when you have a steady flow of income coming in, go experiment absolutely. But making money is something that needs to be done now!

Bradyn Melser · Answer

If you have a strategy, but just need someone to do the grunt work of calling and messaging, you should look at Qore admins - www.qorevirtual.com - not the cheapest lead generators, but you can find great quality, practically native sounding English speakers, and still get a great value on the cost!

Mallie Messri · Answer

@Jerryll Noorden You're awesome! I appreciate all the advice! We are just few days away from hiring 2 VA's and I'm super excited to start growing this way. It's a learning game and even if they aren't phenomenal we can learn from bad hires too!

We're trying :) Lol thank you! Take care and best of luck to you!

Jerryll Noorden · Answer

Anytime (BTW that was meant to be Gurlfriend, not Hurlfriend.. damnit).

Yeah that is how it starts and  one day you wake up and you are at 6 figures/month and you wonder how fast that went. Hiring is the key!

Will keep an eye on you two. Exciting!

Jerryll Noorden · Answer

Hey Hurlfriend.

Yup, you are right. You do want someone dedicated to answer messages. You should be focusing on bigger and better things that will scale and automate your company.

Just be sure whom ever picks up the phone does not have an accent, like me... (a lot of Americans are not ready for accepting foreigners as "credible" yet... sadly), and that they can handle seller objections, and have a full understanding of seller concerns, your market and the workings of your business.

But yes, I agree with you.

Looks like you all are getting really serious and successful. Way to go!!

Mallie Messri · Answer

Hey! @Jerryll Noorden I didn't even see that you had responded! Thanks for the lengthy response as always :)

Ha! I love that, super smart and it's outsourced now. Does that same VA do the hiring for the new recruits or manage the current ones in any way?

I would have to agree with that, I'm finding that the most important thing when it comes to a VA is not necessarily experience or skill but willingness to grow, coachability and personality. You can mold someone into a rockstar as long as they're willing to learn and become that person.

Yup we've definitely had the SEO conversation and I still agree with you. I know it's super important to start investing into our branding and build our reputation more. We've focused so heavily on just acquiring new deals and on the cold calling front that the SEO and brand building has fell to the wayside although we have enough of a site to keep seller's satisfied when they visit. Right now we're working on expanding our cold calling team with the help of VA's and plan on creating a VA chain to manage that entire force. Sounds like the opposite of what you're suggesting which is to focus on FB Ads and PPC first then market on the phones. The way we decided to build this way was because we didn't generate enough income (close enough deals) in the beginning to invest money into PPC or FB ads and we had done all of our deals over the phone. When we moved markets from LA to Tennessee we continued those efforts and saw triple the results. That is NOT to say that PPC and FB Ads or SEO couldn't be total goldmines as well in our market, I actually know of a few people killing it using those systems.

However we'll still need people to answer those phones or inbound messages. Right now we're finding that there's only so much our team of 3 can handle, with one partner focused mainly on acquisitions and HR, the other on acquisitions as well as system implementing, list pulling and all the technical stuff and myself in the full time dispositions role (plus two lead generators) we need more people on our team to qualify and close these leads. That of course will take time and implementing the right people, I don't want just anyone talking to our leads. Eventually we'll move our VA's to the junior acquisitions role and them potentially to the senior acquisitions role. Or like you said pay someone a great salar who's a rock star! In my opinion that person would be a killer on the phone, great at sales and negotiation, experienced in real estate sales, super personable and is even better at closing our deals than we are. All that said, that's just the cold calling system and team we want. SEO, PPC and FB can all be done through VA's as well in a different more technical role.

We eventually do want to have a fully paid staff down to the very least significant role and we do want to have people that will be working with us for years and can grow within our company. I know we'll always have turn over but I want to limit that as much as possible by choosing the right people (the best we can). I believe that comes with time and experience hiring the wrong people until you realize the qualities you actually need in a long term team member.

Fully agree on having a well lubricated machine! It's a systems business and can be fully automated with the right systems in place. I love the the desire to strive for a perfect system driven machine, I don't know if we'll ever have it all the way at 100% but if we can be at 95% I'll take it. Thank you for the reminder and the great advice! We'll certainly be tapping into the online marketing game this year with the help of our 4 cold callers we'll soon be able to invest a decent amount into long term SEO and in quicker returns like PPC and FB. Actually super excited for this and can't wait to start building our brand and content, it's one of my favorite parts of the business!

Best way to find Long Term Lead Generators?

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