Pick Up The Dang Phone!

After you’ve sent out direct mail campaigns and leads are calling in… when your phone rings, do you answer it?

Or...

Do you let it go to voicemail?

Have a Virtual Assistant answer it?

A call service?

Well, let me lay some truth on you - it is critical to answer those calls live.

Why?

I can tell you from my own personal experience... answering the phone live is a game-changer.

When my team started answering the phone live, we started doing more deals.

Now, I have a Virtual Assistant from the Philippines who speaks English really well to do it. But I know investors who use the call services like Pat Live and / or local assistants, so you do have options.

My VA usually answers 10-15 calls a day, and she puts all the info from every single call into Podio. And, she sends the warm responses straight to our acquisitions manager and he calls the seller back.

Every lead who calls in should be treated like gold.

Maybe you’re thinking, “Well, Joe, your business is huge and you have the money to hire people to answer calls live…”

And to you, I say: If you think you can't afford it, I think you can't afford NOT to do it.

Here's why...

If you only ever send seller calls to voicemail, many sellers won’t even leave you a message, and just move on to calling the other guy who’s sign they saw the other day. :-/

For those who leave you messages, often a terrible game of phone tag ensues...

Time goes by and you finally connect with the caller who tells you they called because they simply want you to take them off your mail list... or they’re not really ready to do a deal... or maybe the property is in a market you’re not interested in...

Now you’ve wasted time and energy on following up in this back-and-forth struggle. It’s costly. In so many ways.

Stop. Chasing. Hang ups…

There's money in answering seller calls live.

I’d suggest you start by answering the phone yourself for awhile—if only to get your process figured out—and then decide the best method going forward, for the long game.

So…

When you or your people do get a seller on the line, what are some of the preliminary questions they should ask?

(My advice: keep the questions short, simple and to the point.)

You don't need to find out every little detail like square footage, # of beds/baths, etc. on the first call... you just need to capture the basic info:

• the property address
• seller’s contact info
• when the best time to reach the seller is

Fewer, better questions.

There are 2 other important questions too that will save you time and money:

1) Is the house listed with a Realtor?" If they say ‘yes,’ I’m done. It’s not a deal for me. I definitely follow up with them, but I move on.

2) Are you looking to sell this house today, or are you just looking to test the market? If they say that they are interested in selling today - you’re good. They have urgency, so that is a good lead. And we send those directly to my acquisitions manager. If they say they’re not ready today, we still enter their info into Podio and send it to our acquisitions manager who takes a look at the property info, and then decides whether to call them back or not.

But, we still send written offers (letters of intent) in the mail to ALL leads that come in.

For the leads who are really motivated, our VA actually schedules an appointment for our acquisitions manager to meet with them.

Folks, answering the phone live is the answer. It’s what I teach my students because it works.

One of my coaching clients, Chris, told me that he followed my advice to get an assistant to answer all the calls live - and get this - in his first 5 weeks of doing deals, he made $47K and was on track to make another $30K in the next few weeks…

He took my advice and kept it simple.

Look, this business is not complicated... as long as you consistently follow a few, simple, very important steps.

The biggest is to answer the dang phone!

I also teach the 3 Ms to being successful in this business:

1. Marketing
2. Momentum
3. Mentoring

See, just taking simple steps consistently over time will start building massive momentum... and those leads will start turning into deals... and those deals will start turning into money.

And make sure you have a mentor or coach to help you along the way!