All Forum Posts by: Cornelius Garland

@Accario Trotter Hello Accario! Do you have an office? And what volume are you doing per month? A lot of the ones that have the solid numbers require a site inspection. Not all of them are created equally and a lot of vendors resell watered down data. Nothing is worse than getting a ton of disconnects when you think you're paying for good data. Please let me know if you have an office and I can provide more guidance.

@David Wurzel This is right up my alley. All we do in my wholesale company is cold call, and I stopped direct mail about a year ago so I have plenty of data, best practices, and insight as it pertains to multiple markets. We are currently cold calling our largest list of leads right now. It's a list of 9054 numbers in 6 cities spread across 3 states. We're targeting high equity absentee lists, code violations, and recently-divorced property owners. To bottom line it, it takes us about 2400 unique leads to get one deal. A lot of people may think it takes forever to cold call this amount of leads in any reasonable amount of time, and that's correct if you don't have the right systems in place. We have an army of trained assistants that tackle around 50-100 leads per day using a rapid dialer so they're able to get through more leads within a shorter period. Also, we expedite the time it takes to get through 2400 leads by sending out voicemail blasts through Slybroadcast.com. It's a great resource, and I use it every day. We have the leads that call back go straight-to-voicemail and if they leave a voicemail, then we call them back. I have an assistant that sits in the pocket all day sourcing these leads and generating offers based on a formula we generated by market. The combination of Slybroadcasting while cold calling is powerful. However, cold calling is something that needs to be done daily to generate great results. Unlike direct mail, your prospect doesn't have a physical reminder of your company so you need to have them on an aggressive followup sequence and/or VM blast campaign. We'll hit the same leads every week for 8 weeks straight and then take a break. This may seem like overkill, but you're only going to be able to touch 40-50% of your list by cold calling. We're currently averaging a 4% response rate across all markets. I'll provide my metrics for one week's worth of calling in our Charleston market below. 

So we placed 436 outbound calls during the week of 9-15 OCT 2017. We consider a response whenever we get connected with an individual and it's the correct number. In this case, we only consider a remove from list request and property for sell inquiry as connects; voicemails that we leave don't count. We received 6 connects and a total of 4 properties for sale, which resulted in a 1.3% response rate. Over the course of a month, this campaign will have a 5.2% response rate, which is way higher than direct mail's average 1% response rate. We'll likely receive one really warm lead that just isn't ready to sell. In this case, we'll followup with this lead every week and place them on an email and text followup sequence, and we'll get the deal under contract the next month.

One thing to note is that you have to cold call in volume and consistently. It takes us roughly 70 dials to get 1 connect! This is why I always, always, always, encourage investors that want to cold call to do large lists, just like you would in direct mail. A lot of them want to "dip their toe in" and "test the waters", but the numbers above tell the whole story. You can't expect to call a list of 100 leads and get a deal, even if it's a drive for dollars list with distressed properties. Please let me know if you'd like for me to clarify anything I stated or want more metrics. I'm a numbers nerd.haha. Monitoring my company's KPIs is my life.

@Vasant R. Yes, I would stay on top of your agent to ensure your offer is at the forefront of the seller's mind. You could always contact the seller's agent to get a gauge on where your offer stacks up with the others. That might be the better route to go.

@Jesse R. Confidence is so critical in this field. I discovered that as I became more knowledgable of the real estate jargon, gained experience speaking to sellers, and comping properties, that my confidence increased. I'm down in Charleston and invest in Columbia. I highly suggest shifting your focus to Richland county because there's more opportunity there and cash buyers typically don't purchase in rural locations. So you're in the completely wrong location to wholesale. If you're marketing to Clinton right now, you should stop immediately. I always qualify my zip codes to see where cash buyers are purchasing and then send out marketing to those locations. I like to see at least 30+ cash sales in the previous 6 months before I'd start marketing to a zip. Please let me know if you have any specific questions. Your motivation is there, but I just think you need to shift your focus a bit.

@William S. I highly suggest utilizing @Ray Lai and his company. He's an expert at direct mail and I've picked his brain on multiple occasions. Also, it's better working with a company that's like a hybrid direct mail/campaign consulting company because the larger direct mail companies don't offer any guidance. You just upload your list and hope that it sticks. Hope this helps.

@Vasant R. Regardless if you offer the lead first or last, you want to be the last person following up with the lead. Most investors will think that just because the offer isn't accepted initially that there's no motivation. True motivation is found around the 7th point of contact. Be aggressive with your followup to the point where the seller yells at you for calling them. Call them until they tell you to stop.

This isn't what new investors, or even seasoned investors, want to hear. If everybody accepted the offer on the first touch, then we'd all have portfolios as large as hedge funds.

Best of luck,

Cornelius

@Ivan Dudley That's awesome that you found a mentor. I really wish I had one when I got started because I learned the hard way. I do deals up in Charlotte and that's an extremely hot market. Tons of opportunity up there. Regarding your task for your mentor, I have a few questions. Does he plan on getting a commercial space in the near future? If not, I really think he should consider that.  A lot of the tools you'll need will require require a site inspection and won't let you qualify if you're working from your home. They want to see that you have a legitimate office. You have to think, if anybody can say they need phone numbers and can get access to these tools then this data can land in the wrong hands; that's why they have a screening process. Some of these tools include social security numbers and other sensitive data as well.

If you can't get access to that, then you could try one of the "freemium" tools like Spokeo or White Pages. Lexis Nexis might let you sign up, but a lot of these companies are cracking down on real estate folks accessing them. Additionally, the data flat-out sucks. There's no way to sugar-coat that. It's outdated information and derived primarily from open-source information that can easily be found by using Google.

If you need updated addresses only, try Family Tree Now. When I first started out, I found a lot of updated addresses on there and relatives; unfortunately, they don't have numbers though. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.

-Cornelius  

@Josh Pitts Hello Josh, I live in Summerville and doing a lot of wholesale deals across the tri-county area. My expertise is in marketing for off-market deals and negotiating with sellers. That's what I can bring to the table. I'd like to be included if you haven't completed the group yet!

@Leah Bonner I think the issue with emails is the deliverability rate. While your friend may have received the first email, the next couple of emails will likely go to spam. If you're using Gmail, you can almost guarantee these type of messages will to go to spam because their algorithm can filter out these types of unsolicited emails. Typically, you'll need a seller to opt in to your marketing in order to place them on an email funnel. This is great if you already have leads in your pipeline, but not good for generating leads. It can be possible to generate leads using this method, but you'll likely need to have tens of thousands of emails you're messaging in order to receive a decent response rate. I would say that over 70% of your messages will go straight to the trash folder. When doing email marketing, if you're sending messages out in bulk without the user opting in, it's considered spam.

Additionally, you'll need an email host that is willing to take a hit on their deliverablity rates because you're essentially spamming people. There aren't a lot of reputable companies that allow you to send out cold marketing without having an individual opt it because it hurts the deliverability rates of all their clients who use their domain. So if "xyz-email-sender.com" is getting a lot of their messages marked as spam by their recipients, then eventually all of the mail from that domain will be sent straight to spam. This is essentially how email spam filters work: your email provider allow the trusted domains' emails to get sent to your inbox, while the emails from untrusted domains get sent to your spam folder.

I also would consider if your target prospect is using email consistently. Most of the homeowners I buy properties from are older and using email is almost like rocket science to some of them. I target high-equity owners and majority of these individuals are over 60. So even if my emails delivered, I'm unsure if this is the best way to reach my prospects. 

I'm not saying that this won't work, but it just seems like a shotgun approach opposed to a targeted marketing campaign.

@Bill Manassero I apologize with the delay in getting back with you, Bill. When I work with my brokers, they are mainly looking to farm a particular neighborhood or demographic. Oftentimes, they provide the list for me and I use my methods to market to their prospects. I typically send the mail pieces out in my name or company's name because there are some things I can say that my clients can't. Specifically, I don't need to disclose that I'm a broker, and this can decrease your response rate if you're sending yellow letters. You want the letters to look as informal as possible.

 If I were to develop a list for a broker from scratch, I'd likely target specific neighborhoods they want to get listings and filter out the non-qualifying homeowners. For instance, I would only target homeowners who have lived in their homes for at least 7-8 years, have 20% equity or greater, and remove the corporation-owned properties. Since you're not attempting to purchase the homes at a discount, it's alright to have less equity because you only need about 17% to close. The seller will need to pay 6% in commissions and the remaining 11% will go to closing costs, seller concessions, outstanding taxes, and other costs of selling. I've had success generating leads for brokers using this criteria. Please let me know if you have any additional questions!