Is anyone still cold calling?

[Mike Schorah]

I tried hand dialing. The first 25 people I called (took an average of 4-5 phone numbers per person) went through fine and I had pretty good results with people picking up. One even led to an appointment. I got a strange message with some of the second 25 that I did and only 2 of the 25 picked up (which meant I dialed over 100 numbers just to get through to 3 people). I have a feeling that my phone is now being marked as “SPAM”.

Is anyone else still cold calling?

[Cornelius Garland]

@Mike Schorah I cold call exclusively to get my deals. It works, but there are some best practices to follow to ensure you're doing it properly and maximizing your call time. I don't do the calling myself. I outsource it and I encourage you to as well. Cold calling yourself is the equivalent to handwriting postcards yourself. There are so many companies out here that do this for a reasonable price. I've had up to 40 cold callers dialing for me at one point this year. From 2019 - 2020, I worked with a company in Charlotte and they cold called primarily to get their deals. We netted $1.7M in assignments during that year while I focused exclusively on monitoring our cold calling campaigns.

It works still and it's not going away anytime soon. So how do you optimize it? Regarding your point about your number being marked as spam. You can check if your number is flagged by going to https://nomorobo.com/lookup/. After the "lookup", type your outbound number. If you see a message saying "XYZ Number is a robocaller" then your number is flagged as spam. You'll need to change it immediately. This small issue can actually really hurt your ability with getting in touch with sellers. I would encourage you to check your number for spam every morning and a few times in the day.

I like cold calling because I can pull a list of sellers I want to specifically dial and reach out to them. No randomness or junk leads will come through because I determine the parameters for who I consider a lead. Anybody that comes through will have equity and as long as they have motivation, I'll be able to wholesale the deal or take it down myself. 

Do you have any other questions regarding cold calling? I'd love to answer them for you. I nerd out on this stuff!