All Forum Posts by: Guy S.

@Austin Eschan 

you have the right strategy. @Allan Smith just gave you some good tools, consider Whitepages Premium as well, they are pretty solid with their results.

Remember to have your script in place and persist! Good luck 

@Samkied Vertus

You're right people are at work at these times. I'm guessing you were told that, as the neighborhood is more quiet at these times of day.

In my experience you will waste a lot of time this way. Best times to door knock are 5-8pm

@Samkied Vertus

Wow this subject is close to my heart, I did both for long time. Both methods are old school slow but very efficient.

Door knocking works. It's time consuming, energy draining, but a door knocking lead is the strongest due to a face to face contact.

Cold calling allows you to cover way more ground in the same amount of time, scale faster and outsource, but leads generated are less strong than leads door knocking produce.

Eventually in the short term, door knocking yields the best leads, but it's probably not sustainable unless you plan to hire an army of knockers (unless you are one of the few that actually like it)

@Isaac El Glad to help. 

Regarding the second stage - you need to have the right mindset - it's a numbers game. It's easy to get attached to leads if they are scarce and you don't produce enough of them. This mindset will lead you through negotiation. If an owner is not motivated enough there is not much you can do, he will probably ask for market price and maybe even above it (give me an offer I can't refuse). That's the reason why you need to go through many leads - isometime it can take around 40-60 warm leads to produce one GOOD deal.

***

If you want to get more practical, before we send cold call leads to clients we always remind them to have the conversation as long as possible before throwing a number. You accomplish two things this way:

1. You are provided with important information before making your offer
2. You build STRONG RAPPORT first - this way, you don't create antagonism in case you offer is too low

ask questions about the condition of the property, finance, layout, etc, anything that gets him to talk and teach you more about the property.

Then, depending on if you are local or long distance investor. If you are local go for a meeting - it's always more effective to negotiate face to face since the seller can't just hang up in your face. If you are long distance, give your offer. It's better to let them throw the number first by saying something like:

"Let's say I can pay cash and can close by the date of your choice, what's the best price you can give me?"  This won't always work but that's the general mindset.

If you need more specific information feel free to message me

Hey Zane, at first we went to Upwork. After not getting consistent results we started training our own callers, and use them for us and offer them to other investors as well.

 Hey Isaac,

Kevin is absolutely right, it's more about the general vibe than the exact words or scripts. We do cold calls for others professionally across many markets in the nation, and we learned that something just works everywhere.

1. First, you need to cover a lot of ground to produce results, since as you noticed, most prospects are not interested in selling.

2. Second, when you do encounter someone who's accepting, you need to have the right mindset - you are here not to sell anything, but to do business. This mindset is acquired only be systematical repetition.

3. Once you have this mindset don't be apologetic. It doesn't mean you need to be rude - just keep a professional tone and remember you have many more records in your pipeline. my advice to you is to put a sticky note on your computer screen that says "PROFESSIONAL TONE" or something of that sort to have in front of you, so it's visual during the entire conversation.

4. Regarding rejection - you can see a reply I gave someone on this thread: https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/432/topics/70...

 I don't know where you get your numbers from, but there is only one pretty straight forward solution for that:

Scrub your records daily against the national DNC list.

First, hope I'm not rubbing it in with this observation - I'm trying to come from a helpful place: could arguing with everyone here on BP has somewhat of a connection to getting stuck with the "how you got my number" hurdle? coming with an adversarial attitude rather than engaging.

To the point:

it's not what you say, but the general vibe. Is the prospect agitated? Just curious but still neutral\positive?

From my experience, this is a legit question but usually (not always) an indicator for a negative lead. First of all remember that a person that asks this question is probably upset with you calling, so now you have two problems - provide a sufficient answer, and then changing the vibe of the call, otherwise, you'll provide an answer and be told to delete the number from your lists.

When providing your answer try to be polite and understanding: "I'm sorry if disturbing, this is the number I was provided with". Try talking about the property again. If the owner insists on knowing the origin just tell them THE TRUTH, and DO NOT try to argue. It's no big deal and doesn't matter much. If this lead is on the negative side, apologize for disturbing, finish the call and continue with the next lead.

 From our experience, both can work with better results with cold calling 

 First of all, it depends on your definition of "Multifamily". 2-6 units? 6+ units? Commercial?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that what matters more is the ownership type. Individual (private owners) and Corporations require a different type of marketing.

- with an individual owner, you can easily locate their information on public records and market to them with all traditional methods (DMM, PPC, cold calling, door knocking, etc)

- with a corporate owner, you probably need to have a tighter game plan (network with commercial brokers, formal mailings)

the type of property will make all the difference with your marketing