I’ve been done strictly mailings only for my marketing this past year with some success, but I have come to the conclusion that if I want to increase the number of deals I do on a regular basis that I am going to have to start door knocking and cold calling.
So, in your opinions and experiences, what times do you think are the best for door knocking and cold calling?
I thought since the majority of people get off work around 4-5pm that from 4-6pm during the weekdays would be best. I also thought during the day on Saturdays may be successful, too. What do you think?
Just don’t call at 8am on Saturday, I get cold calls every weekend that early and by the time I get to the phone I’m irate. Waking someone up doesn’t put you in their favor to start.
“Just don’t call at 8am on Saturday, I get cold calls every weekend that early”
With the exception of mattress testers, people sleeping are not making money! If you are laboriously working X number of jobs and don’t even get to bed by 0500 on Friday night (Saturday morning), you just don’t get to sleep between sun rises!
My rule is if it’s not dark when I wake up, I double workout for the day. I don’t do sissy pilates either!
The timing isn’t all that important, what matters is that you make a LOT of calls, and do it consistently. And the best time for that is when YOU are most likely to do it, whenever that time might be. It’s much easier to call 14 people every day than it is to call 100 people on Saturday. You’re likely to speak to more people that way too because everybody has different schedules nowadays.
To illustrate the need to make calls every day: I’ve made calls at times you would think people would be home (evenings, weekends etc.) and got NO ONE. At the same time I sometimes get to speak to 80-90% of the people I call on a weekday morning around 11am. Go figure!
Oh, use a spreadsheet to keep track. If you tried at 5pm on Friday and got no answer try noon Saturday or 8pm Sunday, etc until you catch them. Record all attempts and keep trying different times until you catch them.
Cold calling and door knocking are pretty tacky ways of marketing. I can’t think of any person who lets a telemarketer finish their speach before abruptly hanging up. EVERYONE hates telemarketers. I’m sure when one is off work, they even hate to get calls from telemarketers. During the recent mid-term elections, there was one candidate who I was going to vote for, but his stupid recording called me 5 times a day. Needless to say, he didn’t get my vote.
Door knocking is for girl scouts, fundraisers and Jehovah Witnesses. There are better ways of marketing, WITHOUT being cursed at 99 times out of 100.
I don’t completely agree with that Danny. While I do agree that I think it is kind of tacky nowadays to try and SELL something to someone by door knocking or cold calling I don’t agree about trying to BUY something from someone by those methods.
People have homes that for whatever reason they want to sell, but never take the initiative to actually do it. Even if they get something in the mail about selling the property they still don’t get motivated to do it. If I have to knock on their door or call them on the phone to get them to sell it then that’s what I’m going to do.
It depends on the property and the situation. I only knock or call certain ones. It’s mostly owners that have a vacant property that they don’t live in or late stage occupied pre-foreclosures. Most other situations such as probate, near expired listings, early stage occupied pre-foreclosures, etc I still do mailings to.
Danny, that’s utter nonsense! Calling people who are ADVERTISTING their properties for sale is not the same as telemarketing to the general public who don’t want to hear from you.
I certainly don’t get “cursed at 99 times out of 100” but then again I get right to the point. I ask: “Are you willing to sell your property on a lease purchase basis? No? Ok have a nice day.”
I get a somewhat aggressive NO maybe 1 call in 50. Everyone else is very pleasant and thanks me for my call even if they’re not interested.
From personal experience having used just about every form of marketing mentioned on this site. I can say without a doubt that telephone prospecting is by FAR the most productive form of marketing there is. I’m not talking percentages I’m talking orders of magnitude. But I do use other marketing like direct mail because not everyone can be reached by phone.
For me personally, I don’t distinguish what a telemarketers intentions are. If they are selling something, wanting to buy something, or giving a harmless survey, it doesn’t matter to me. If it sounds like a shpeal, I hang up. I’d also venture to say that a lot of people feel the same way, which is why they put the pressure on the government to start the DNC registry.
Now if your calling a person or knocking on their door because you would like to speak with them specifically about their situation, that’s totally different. I would not classify that as cold calling or door knocking. Going down a public list and calling everyone is tacky to me. Everytime I start a new company, I get 30 calls from merchant account services trying to get me to buy their credit card equipment. If I got 30 calls from investors wanting to buy my house because I made it to an embarassing public list, I would be just as irate as Rich being woken up at 8 o’clock on Saturday.
Your misunderstanding my point Doug. Calling people who you want to speak with is nothing to be lynched for. I call owners of vacant property all the time if I am specifically interested in purchasing their property, that is not cold calling. People responding to your newspaper ad is not cold calling.
In personal selling, cold calling is the processing of approaching prospective clients, typically via telephone, who have not agreed to such an interaction.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_calling
Cold calling is a very unprofessional way to do business. People hate it, therefore it’s ineffective and damaging to your company. Even if your not directly selling anything, to be associated with telemarketers in anyway (statistically one of the most hated professions), could be devestating to your cause. This is the reason why people automatically say “NO” after your first sentence without even asking what a lease option is. It’s no secret that our society hates telemarketers.
I don’t think cold calling has to be unprofessional. I know some agents who call to tell neighbors that the house next door has been listed and to see if they want more information. Most like having the information and he is a really friendly guy.
Danny, did you think we meant randomly knocking and calling people?
If so, that’s not what I meant. I meant knocking and calling specific people who own specific properties or are in specific sitautions. I wouldn’t just randomly start calling numbers in the phone book or randomly knocking on people’s doors without any certain reason why.
Danny, did you think we meant randomly knocking and calling people?
Randomly knocking on doors and calling people IS door knocking and cold calling. They don't call it COLD calling for no reason. Maybe [b]warm calling [/b] would be better for your approach since the potential lead isn't stone cold.
That would all change if you call a list of preforeclosures straight from the legal newspaper and asked if they’d be interested in selling immediately to you. Then, it’s cold on your end, because YOU might not even be interested in purchasing after seeing the property. I don’t consider using a telephone cold calling at all. Just when the approach is indiscriminate or undirected.
Danny, noone I call says no because they’re unhappy about the call. The only ones who say no are those who have to sell before they can buy another house.
For the record, over the last 2.5 years the numbers have stayed very consistent, 50% say no, 30% say yes, 20% are sold or off-market.
From your website and posts it seems that your calling classified ads of FSBO’s and similar methods. I would not consider that cold calling. Cold calling (hence the name) is calling cold leads, not people who are advertising their property for sale. If you open up the phone book and go down the list to ask if people would be interested in a lease op, that is cold calling, and you will not make any friends like that.
Using a telephone is not automatically cold calling! Responding to ads is not cold calling! From what I have gathered, you don’t cold call! Ofcourse their not unhappy to receive a call from their ad, that’s why the ad included their phone number!
