All Forum Posts by: Cornelius Garland

@Daniel P Buteau Most direct mail companies that specialize in real estate have templates that you can use. I wouldn’t be too concerned about being impersonal. If you write content that’s specific to their situation then it may offend them. For instance, if you write on your mail piece “I know you’re behind on payments etc…”, it can make the seller feel like you’re invading their privacy. Unless I have a probate or inherited list, I’m not going to let the seller that I’m aware of their situation. I’d mail them as if I just included them in a mass mailing. No need to switch up your message. As long as you’re doing high volume, your message doesn’t matter that much. That’s the experience I’ve had with doing direct mail to various niche lists.

@Craig Brandt Dude, I was doing the same thing until my sellers told my cold callers that the number was flagged as spam. That was embarrassing lol Definitely add nomorobo in the mix before you start calling. Keep us posted with your numbers. It sounds like you have a good thing going there.

@Tim Lee Absolutely! I'm glad this helped out. I think a big issue is that we, as investors, don't know what we should be aiming for. It's very difficult to call a campaign "successful" if we don't know what a successful campaign looks like. I'm confident in the benchmarks I've shared. Of course, there will be outliers in your super competitive markets (e.g., San Francisco). However, those benchmarks I shared are what you should be aiming for when conducting your cold calling campaigns. 

@Craig Brandt You're welcome! Yes, your metrics are solid. It does seem like you have a nice process in place, so whatever you're doing keep it up. As long as you're adding in fresh records every month, you should consistently see a similar return.

The nomorobo thing I learned about after having several weeks where my lead flow dropped down significantly. It turns out that the issue was with my dialer settings in Five9. It was prioritizing inbound calls over outbound calls so our VAs weren't able to get as many dials in per day. During my troubleshooting, I realized that monitoring the numbers as spam was important. Usually, I would just change the numbers once per month. They go bad really quickly depending on your market and how many numbers you're dialing. Glad to help, Craig.

@Stephen Brown Great question, Stephen. I started out by hiring VAs from onlinejobs.ph. This worked alright, but I had to train each cold caller every time they came in. I use vendors now that source the cold callers for me, like Rocket Station. They know my processes, so I just have to give the callers a quick week of training when they come on board. I actually have a project manager and trainer that handles this for me. The most important thing I would do is to brain dump to one person. Once you feel they have a hang of it, have them train their subordinates. Make that first hire a manager and you're off to the races. I have them monitor themselves. I listen to their calls sometimes, but I leave this to my team to handle. If someone is slacking, the others will let me know.

Haha honestly, I just hire Filipinos. No need to get someone American. I do a lot of volume with cold calling, so I'm not super concerned about how they sound on the phone. Their primary goal is to qualify and then sent the interested leads to my lead manager. This person actually has a better accent and I spend more time training them because managing the leads and following-up with them is where you make your money.

@Jerryll Noorden Man, I'm always open to learning. This is why I'm here. To help out where I know I can but also to listen. BP is how I got my start in real estate, so I never think I'm above learning. I do appreciate the dialogue and I'll check out your site. :)

@Craig Brandt Absolutely, Craig. I'm glad to help. Your metrics don't look too bad. Based on my experience, I would say this is performing above average. Typically, I am at one contract per 10k records per 30 days. If I get 2 contracts out of a 10k record list, then this is a bonus.

When I started calling heavily back in 2019, I wasn't sure what my benchmarks should be. Over time, and after calling sellers in most of the active investment markets, I know what my benchmarks are and also what I'd consider a successful campaign versus an unsuccessful one. A big point I noticed is that I needed to do a lot of calling. It almost seemed like I was doing too much calling. However, we need to cast a wide net when cold calling because these prospects are colder than cold sometimes.

What you consider contacts is what I consider are leads. If the seller expressed some interest in selling but aren't interested today, then I'd put them in my CRM regardless if they're cold, warm, or hot. I'm very hesitant to mark a seller as "dead", though. Really, I only consider them as "dead" if they sold the property or if they threaten some sort of legal action against me. If I were to remove everybody that says they're not interested today, I'm closing the door on any potential to work with them in the future. Life-changing events happen unexpectedly. In the US, alone, our mortality rate is around 8%. You can bet within a year, of those 138 dead leads, something will happen to a portion of them that affects their lives to the point where they need to sell. These guys, I'll usually put on a 3-6-month follow-up. As long as they pick up then they're keeping the lines of communication open.

I'll indicate which metrics I track for cold calling. The graph below is for one week of calling through Xencall. The first metric I track is "call attempts", which is any dial regardless if it's a bad number, connect, voicemail, etc. This is listed as "calls" on the graph below. I know it may seem like a lot, but this reflects the triple line dialer going through all of the records. We hit this list up quite a bit, so usually, the call attempts aren't that high. The next one I track is how many people answered out of those call attempts. This is what I would actually consider my connection rate. Typically, I'm around 20%. This is anybody that picks up but may hang up immediately, get a voicemail, or converts to a lead. This lets me know if I'm dialing a list of healthy numbers. If I'm below 20% with my connection rate then I know there may be an issue with my list or the phone numbers I'm dialing. The next metric I track is my calls to connects. This includes how many calls it takes to get someone live on the line. This should be at or below 25. I'm at the tail end of dialing this list, and if your calls to connect are over 25 then this is definitely an indication that you need to pause your list. Give it a break for a month or two and then continue redialing it. Your calls to connect should go down and it'll be as if you're dialing a new list. I don't know what causes this to happen, but it's like magic. I can pause a list and then call it several months later and it's as if it's a new list. This is why I'm a big proponent of rotating out several lists throughout the year. Once you get an indication that your lead flow is slowing down, pause your list before you abuse it.

A quick way you can tell if your campaign is performing well is to look at how many hot leads or interested leads you received during a given call block (e.g., over a week or month). For instance, if you have 5,284 numbers that you've dialed then .2% - .4% should be truly motivated sellers. In your case, this will be 10 - 21. You're at 18 leads that you either have under contract, interested in selling soon or selling at a future date. It may seem like you should be getting more leads and contracts, but this is what I've observed are the averages when it comes to cold calling as investors. I've managed cold calling teams of around 20 - 50 callers at any given time. When I scaled up to this volume, I was concerned that we should have been getting more leads or contracts, but these are how the numbers shake out. I would consider your campaign a success. You can either rotate your list out and pause it, or continue dialing until you start seeing a steep decrease in leads per day.

Also, please make sure you're monitoring the health of your outbound numbers/DIDs through nomorobo. I have my team do this daily. In some markets, I need to change my outbound DIDs every day. This is important, as we don't want our calls showing up as "spam likely" when we're calling sellers. Using the link, replace the current 727 number with your outbound DID. If it comes back with "XYZ NUMBER is a robocaller" then change your number before you start dialing. If it says "404 File Not Found" then your number is clean and can be dialed from. If you want to monitor multiple numbers and be notified when they are flagged instead of having to manually do this, then check out Caller ID Reputation. I think it's like $98 per month to monitor 10. It's not necessary, but this is useful for the investors that are trying to do a lot of this themselves and might forget to check the numbers every day. Let me know if I can answer any other questions for you. I've literally driven myself crazy going down this cold calling rabbit hole. Lol. I think I've figured it out, though.

@Jerryll Noorden Great work, man! I encourage you to continue doing SEO if it's working. Kudos to you for "cracking the code".

@Jerryll Noorden I must point out a logical fallacy on your part, Jerry. You said, "the following is a fact". However, what you indicate is what's true for you and assuming this is true for all. This is a fallacy of composition. Unfortunately, this is common these days. I would not have pointed this out if you had not said "the following is a fact" especially without citing sources to support your facts. I only see empirical evidence presented, which, unfortunately, is a fallacy of anecdotal evidence. 

I do see how SEO is a solid marketing strategy. However, declaring it's a better all-around marketing strategy for everybody is a stretch. There are limited top spots on Google. There are hundreds of investors in some markets. It is very difficult for new investors to rank for the top search terms in their given markets. I'm looking at this from the angle of what at is best for the majority. If I was a new investor just starting out, what makes the most sense? Several years ago, if you told me I needed to make a website and push out content (which I did) to get a deal, I wouldn't have gotten a deal for years probably. Doing this properly takes work and a lot of time. A large portion of investors are not tech-savvy nor do they want to spend the time doing this. They just want to talk to sellers, contract properties, and close deals.

Also, we're on a cold calling thread. I can't speak on SEO because I haven't done it to the extent you have. I've only dabbled in it here and there. However, after speaking with a lot of new and intermediate investors over the years, I understand this strategy is not best-suited for new investors that want to be proactive about breaking into the investment space.

Lastly, I encourage everybody to outsource the cold calling instead of doing it themselves. Nobody should be cold calling manually. This is work for Filipino virtual assistants to do and not the owner of the company. Yes, cold calling can be annoying, but this is business. I get that it's not for everybody, and there are plenty of other marketing channels out there that investors can do if they feel uncomfortable with cold calling. I like how quickly it can get you deals especially if you are targeting the right zip codes and properties.

I'm glad this SEO is working for you, my friend. Keep crushing it!

I worked as the marketing director for an investment company based in Charlotte, NC from OCT 2019 to SEP 2020, and we crushed it with cold calling. When I started with them in October, they already made $478k doing it. Their next profitable marketing channel was text messaging with $93k in assignment fees. While I was on board, they pulled in $1.5M in assignments while being in 3 markets. The majority of their revenue came from cold calling.

There is a way to abuse any marketing channel. I think the issue with cold calling is that investors are not targeting their right avatar. You must eliminate zip codes and neighborhoods where the primary demographic will never be interested in your offer. You must go to distressed zips and areas where people can actually use your help. I'm sure many commenting on this thread would not be against cold calling if they weren't personally affected by the number of spam calls they receive. I can see parallels between cold calling and Facebook and Instagram these days. I'm not nearly as frustrated when I see an IG ad when viewing my stories as I was back in 2015. I would get ads for really random stuff, and it annoyed me. They've really tightened up their targeting and as a result, when I get served ads now, I usually download the app recommend or bookmark the ad's website. When it comes to marketing to sellers, we have to make sure we're only going after those that may likely be interested in our message within the year. You're still going to get a lot of "nos"; however, the majority of the ones that say "no" to you won't be as bothered because they understand why you're calling.

Outbound marketing is needed. Even though someone may want to get rid of their property, they may not be prompted into action until someone reaches out to them. There is a portion of the population that genuinely thinks nobody would even be interested in their house, so they don't try selling it. They assume it's not worth anything, almost like a junk car. These people require an investor to reach out to them and help them with their situation

I do not disagree with those that say cold calling is "outdated" or "old fashioned". This is precisely why it is so effective when optimized properly: The type of seller we target is in their 60's or older. This demographic is used to doing business over the phone, and they actually would prefer it. Additionally, a motivated seller will really appreciate the call especially if they need to get rid of their house quickly. I was amazed when listening to a call recording of one of my Filipino cold callers with a thick accent talking to this really southern guy with a country accent. The gentleman expressed great gratitude that we called and he had back taxes on it and was going to file bankruptcy. I encounter situations like this often because my list targeting is very precise. I, as much as them, do not want to be dialing the wrong demographic that will be annoyed when I call. This is what I'd consider spam.

As long as you're scrubbing your numbers against the DNC, taking people off your lists when they tell you, and maintaining proper list hygiene, I do not see an issue with cold calling. Honestly, if we take the approach of "sitting back and waiting for the sellers to contact us", how can we run a predictable business. Outbound sales, regardless of how uncomfortable it is to do, is necessary to scale an investment company today. I do think building brand authority is important, but relying on that, especially as a beginner will have you going nowhere fast.

I guess if your goal is to buy a few houses a year, then this isn't for you. The investors I see doing this are the ones bringing in over $100k+ per month in assignments or net profits from rehabs. One guy I know purchased a house in a very nice suburb of Charleston for $310k. He put about $7k into it and listed it on the MLS. Within the first week, he got an offer of $475k, which was $30k above his listing price. After all the fees were taken out (commissions, marketing, etc.), he said he netted $117k. This deal came from cold calling.

You must drill down your avatar. Too many people start cold calling with no idea what they're doing it. They're making it difficult for us that are following TCPA laws and best practices for marketing.