Quote from @Anthony Lynch:
Quote from @Jonathan Greene:
What do your postcards say? If you are sending generic marketing like most people trying off-market acquisition for the first time, it's probably going in the bin straight away.
When you say you went through 3k leads, what do you mean? What's your follow-up structure there? You don't get deals right away. It comes from building relationships with anyone who doesn't hang up on you.
What's your pitch to them? Are you pitching every seller the same way with a script or are you trying to get to know what their problem is so you can solve it? In 7 months, how many direct appointments have you gone on?
Hey Jonathan. Thanks so much for responding. Your questions got me reflecting on some things that we're doing. And sorry, yeah I should explained each of the things better. As for the postcards, I listened to a BP podcast before where a person had success when the put a picture of an animal on front because the thought was people warmed to it better. Got a better hit rate for them. I tried something similar with a dog with a sign as if they would be interested in selling their property. Then back has the contact details and a little to explain about myself. I'm not sure if thats in line with what you think is generic? I wanted to try something different because I receive a lot of similar letters and postcards for all my properties, that doesnt catch my eye much.
For the cold calling, we use mojo dialer which has a built in crm and the power dialer. So when I say over 3k leads I mean that we have hit over 3k homes with owners. Now still going through that list to re-attempt them but around 1k of them were hard no's of people who owned the property and just not interested. I know its a numbers game but I would have thought at least 1 may have been interested.
As for the script. Usually its starts with "Hey is this John Doe", Or "are you the owner of property 123 main street". If they say yes, then it would be follow up with "Would you be interested in selling your property". We have tried playing with words here but hard to make it so its less invasive or impersonal. I have watched videos on callers, and they seem to follow a similar approach. But not sure if its entirely the right way. I guess the solving the problem is a good question you ask here. My naive thoughts here are that people are motivated to sell or not based on certain situations and its matter of striking the right person at the right time. I guess how you handle the person by building a relationship is key here. To add we have had 2 people that entertained the call. Asking us what we would offer. We tried pulling a number from them but they refused to give us one. We eventually gave a number and they then gave a number way over market price even. Tried to call out to their property but they just wanted an offer over the phone. Do you have any suggestions with how you would tackle the pitching? Would you do things differently?
Also to answer your last, we have gone to appointments set by wholesalers/agents but not cold calling yet. We have made offers on many. Nothing sticking yet. Definitely because of the higher bids.
@Julie Muse I love your quote on jack of all trades. I was beginning to think if we should pivot to something else from cold calling. But I think patience for me is key here in that I need to stick at it and continue on the follow up process. I am on the same thoughts of agents and wholesalers. Driving for $'s is something I havent done yet. I have a company that I run during the week that eats on time, thats why cold calling is easier to spare an hour a day to tackle it. Same with my partner. But weekends I need to start doing that as well
I run a call center for real estate and we do a lot of calling for investors. Let me try to "debug" whats going on here. What kind of list are you calling? If you were calling the phone book, normally 1 our of 30-50 people will say they at least have SOME interest in selling their home (usually a retail sale). If you have 3K number you've dialed and just two people were somewhat interested my guess is that you're doing it wrong. That's also not a ton of numbers to dial on Mojo, that would probably take you a week or two to call through, maybe 30 days if doing only a couple hours per day. What have you been doing the other 6 months? You need to be calling and refining your pitch. It actually IS as simple as calling them and asking if they would like to sell, but you need to say it better than that. Generally:
1) you need to call a list of LIKELY motivated sellers like high equity, seller/property of a certain age, inside your buy box, notice of default/liens/etc.
2) You need to make an enticing pitch, "Hi Mr Seller, I'm Gus and I work at ABC Solutions, a local family owned business that helps sellers get cash fast for their homes, would you be interested in an all-cash offer for your home? As is condition? close in 7 days?". Try to avoid giving them a number over the phone, try to get your foot in the door and take a look at the property first.
3) Follow up. Most folks won't convert right off the bat. Even the 2 you spoke to you should call back in 30 days, hell even the 1K that said no you should call back in a few months (unless they requested to be removed from your list), if the list is worth it. Its a follow-up game, some sellers take weeks/months to convert. Follow-up monthly with your list of potential sellers.
HTH
