Marketing Miracle or Marketing Mistake?
Realtors & Investors have more Key Tasks to complete and moving parts than any other industry.
It's one of the reasons that not everyone can do it and do it well. As you grow one of the most important, but often under focused, tasks is identifying what is worth your time and what could, should be a delegated responsibility. If you haven’t, complete a Pareto 80/20 Analysis and honestly, do one about every 2 months. This will help you stay on track by finding inefficiencies and eliminating them and finding strengths and multiplying them. (Focusing on Key Revenue generating activities instead of getting side tracked)
One of the items most decide to outsource or hire an assistant for is Lead Generation. This is a great step but needs to be a careful one.
The good news here is, cold calling in the industry works, a lot! The bad news is over 90% of “Cold Callers” or “Virtual Assistants” Dive right into the “pitch”. It is a high-volume game but more importantly, believe it or not, this is a form of Permission Based Marketing. Why?
Because you cannot offer anything to anyone (yes, even cash for a home) that is not ready to hear it. I believe in today’s fast paced world the best way to find the best deals is by cold calling or something direct. Cold calling accompanied by Ringless VM, Mailers, ads etc etc. Placing PPC ads is great, as a secondary landing page method, however it is waiting for someone to take their time and find you out of hundreds or thousands of other ads. This misses most of the Sellers out there and in my opinion creates crazy and unnecessary competition because if they called me, they’re calling others as well.
David Ogelvy said, “On Average, 5 times more people read or listen to a headline or your first 10 words as read the book copy. When you’ve written your headline, you’ve spent 80 cents of your dollar! “If you offer your pitch too fast, you just spent 80 cents of your dollar and lost the deal”!
Did you get married on your first date? Would you want to? The answer is obvious, no. So, if sellers are human beings with real emotions and real lives, why in the world does every Lead Generation Company, Cold Caller or VA think they can decide if a seller is motivated in a 5 minute or less phone call? It is because they were trained with outdated techniques! Maybe screaming I have CASH in 2010 worked or We Close in 30 days, no closing fees or We buy it as is, etc. But studies show that a prospect is 10X more willing to respond to you or "buy" from you if they feel they are learning rather than being sold to. (Rapport, respect, and listen to them) Being SOLD to results in a feeling of being taken advantage of and is automatically rejected. It is simple logic that tells you these "high" call volume LG companies or cold callers are wasting their time and your hard-earned money. They have no idea on how or when to present the solution to the prospective seller.
Example:
Let’s say (TIM) is in the market for a new car. He’s ready to buy and has his money saved. He’s ready to test drive a few versions of his selected car. The “salesman” is only trying to shove his “best price” down Tim’s throat when, at this stage, Tim is going to buy… but he wants to test drive a few versions first… Tim gets annoyed with the salesman, leaves and goes to the next dealership. You see, the Salesman was overly eager to close a quick sale and lost his prospect completely by not knowing how and at what point to present his offer to Tim. Anyone “selling” (buying in this case) needs to thoroughly understand “HOW” to present offers and solutions and more importantly, “WHEN”! This way our prospect doesn’t run away like Tim in the car dealership.
