Guide to Real Estate Cold Calling Service for New Realtors

What is Cold Calling

Cold calling is the term used in business when a salesperson seeks to drum up business with people whom they had had no prior contact with. Real estate cold calling service is a technique to persuade individuals to purchase the salesperson's product or service. Although the term commonly refers to business solicitation by phone, aka telemarketing, in recent years, cold calling included personal visits, as door-to-door sellers do.

Real estate cold calling service can be a critical help in creating warm leads. Leads are classified as cold - people knowing of your brand for the first time, warm - those familiar with your brand but not yet customers, and hot- people who have encountered your brand and are ready to be your customers. So multiple real estate agents do real estate cold calling to turn an individual from a cold lead to a warm lead, or if their prospect is a warm lead, to transform that person into a hot lead. For additional read, check out What is Real Estate Cold Calling.

Purpose of Cold Calling in Real Estate

To sell real estate successfully, many real estate agents count cold calling among the elements of their marketing strategy processes. What are the particular reasons for most agents making cold calls, anyway, you might ask.

Lead generation This is among the first to be cited. After making the initial contact through a cold call, whether first or follow up call, you can put forth your sales pitch with the sales skills you have learned as a new agent.

Relationship building. Deals are closed after several follow-up calls which lead to a relationship between you and your prospect. Your prospect real estate contact, from one or repeated calls of even a few seconds, can then transform into your client in the near future. A new agent would sometimes pre-arrange the call with an appointment for an in-person meeting or even a gift basket. Furthermore, establishing a relationship with even just one contact who transforms into a potential client, s/he will point you to more leads, his or her friends and family!

Conversions. Doing almost or around 100 cold calls in an hour, everyday, can convert your prospects from contact to clients, or at least into potential clients in just a few weeks. Looking at this process in numbers, if you get the right person in a hundred calls, that's 1% and you get a commission of $10,000 --- that's an earnings potential of $10,000 in an hour! That will show you how this is worth your time and effort.

Elements of an Effective cold call

The primary purpose of making a cold call is to engage a contact or potential client (buyer or seller) on the benefits or advantages of working with you. Your call must include these basic features.

• Introduction. Who you are, what or who you represent

• The why of your call. Give a reason for them to hear you out, the WIFM (what's in it for me).

• Give a referral or two. Gain your contact's trust and underline your credibility by mentioning someone known to them.

• Get the next step, an appointment. Ask for more time to explain your services and the WIFM for her/him.

How to Make a Real Estate Cold Call

Real estate cold calling service has long been an essential part of the processes in transactions in the national or local real estate market. This part is among the challenging tasks faced by new real estate agents. In this computer and digital era, questions have arisen if cold calling is still relevant and effective for the success of a real estate company. Read on to know how new real estate agents can make a successful cold calling and be successful in their profession.

7 steps in real estate cold calling service

1. Study your real estate prospects list

Expectedly you first draw up a call list of prospective individuals for your phone calls. Do research on them, if their profiles show resemblance to previous clients or even past potentials. The resemblance will make it easier for them to be your real estate leads. Also, check out the prospect's connection to any current clients you have, in their jobs, professions, locations, or anything that could help you arrange your offer. This doesn't have to take a long time, you need to find information sufficient for your cold call pitch that that prospect can relate to and understand.

Where to draw your list from

• Get the list of expired listings from the MLS, it will not cost you anything but time to collect information. This is a time-consuming and quite old method but is still being done by many agents, who find success in getting the phone numbers and calling expired listings.

• If you find having to download real estate listings manually tedious, you can subscribe to a service to have these lists. It would cost you money, yes, but it is also proven to be an effective way. There are around 6 service providers for these real estate listings which are dispensed as a side product of an autodialer. There are autodialers for real estate agents. Get in touch with Barry Jenkins - Better Homes & Gardens Real Estate | Real Estate Agents in Virginia Beach, VA to learn more about automation.

2. Create your script

Prepare what you will say in your cold call. Make a short script of 3-4 sentences that will introduce who you are and what you do, and what you can offer. Then make or request an appointment - Not to disclose significant information on your offer, but to get and receive the opportunity to sell to that prospect.

3. Anticipate objections

While preparing your cold call script, mentally prepare yourself to hear objections. Write them down and prepare your responses to handle these appropriately. It won't be hard to imagine those objections, those are the common questions and objections to any sales cold calls. Hearing objections and having to handle them are among the pain points in cold calling. You need to anticipate them in order to handle them properly, almost automatically, and then, ask for that appointment in the near future! Making an appointment is the point of handling any objections well.

4. Positively start your calls

A positive attitude is important and significant in any situation, not less in real estate agents. Making sales or purchases is the bottom line for any real estate agent and in real estate cold calling service, starting off feeling (and therefore, sounding) positive sets you off to a good start. You must feel the confidence that you have the ability to give something of value to be more inspired to start making phone calls. Communication is an essential skill for becoming a successful real estate agent. With the right mindset, you'll feel the confidence that enables you to communicate better when doing your real estate cold calling.

5. If necessary, leave a message

A real estate agent doesn't despair and lose eagerness when encountering a voice mail. Real estate cold calling service can get you directly in touch with the prospect individual, or to an answering machine. If you do, leave a message, as brief as possible but containing your script details. Don't set an appointment, though, instead say you will call again, give a specific date and time, and that you'd appreciate a callback, too. So on your repeat call, if your prospect is still not around, tell the secretary (or whoever answers the call) that you had been calling the person, unsuccessfully yet, and so would like to know when it would be a good time to call, i.e., s/he would be available to take your call.

6. Handling objections

When you are doing your cold calls, experienced real estate professionals themselves will tell you that you will get at least one, but usually more, objections. When they arise, respond to these appropriately and repeat your request for an appointment and prepare for the next call. If you get more than 3 objections, though, you can assume that your prospect is not likely to make an appointment with you. Then just thank him/her for his/her time talking with you and end the call graciously.

7. Make your cold call process daily

For effectiveness and success among the ranks of real estate professionals, you must devote at least an hour each day to getting two appointments. The quicker you can get these appointments, the sooner you can end your workday. Make this your habit and you will definitely fill up your calendar with qualified prospects sooner than expected.

How to Improve Cold Calling Skills

Research

Research is a must before your call. Any strategy for reaching out must always begin with research on the prospects' key information, so that you can get and hold their attention and make your calls worth their time. Without research, you won't have any background information on the prospects which would otherwise make them feel you invested extra time and effort for that call which would be appreciated by opening up to your call or at least hearing you out.

Research Checklist: recent announcements, news, events, professional background, mutual connections, leadership and story, mutual investors, job description, recent activity - promotion or job change, opinions, interests, hobbies, education, organizations.

Be motivated by rejection

Emotional (or psychological) pain is not easy to forget and can easily make you discouraged. Working in a real estate company will expose you to rejection more than once or a few times. To be successful in your real estate career, you must have a positive attitude, and not be fazed or weakened by rejection. Instead, be optimistic, pick up the phone again, make a new call and continue learning from mistakes.

Know the best times to make your cold calls

An analysis of more than 25,000 sales calls showed that the best time for cold calling is weekday afternoons. Most calls that take more than five minutes take place from 3:00 to 5:000 pm on Tuesdays or Thursdays.

Utilize trigger events

Calling a prospect who has just closed a contract with a rival agent leaves you with zero chance of a successful call. Knowing when they enter the market for a new realtor and make contact before they even begin their search, your call would seem to be a welcome coincidence for them. This "perfect timing" can easily be identified. Called Trigger Events, you can get these opportune moments from information that's publicly available every day online. You can access them from Google alerts or other channels that mention new executive hires, large customer announcements or winning large contracts, company expansions, mergers & acquisitions, funding, etc. People going through these events would be more open to new possibilities, lifestyle upgrades, etc.

Keep it positive

Positive thinking is proven by science, time and again, to be good for mental health, which greatly helps develop skills and thus, work improvement. Do not allow rejection, loss, etc. set you off to negative thinking and get you down. Look at any and each mistake as a learning opportunity, an opening to the room for further improvement.

Frequently Asked Questions

• How many cold calls should I make a day in real estate?

  The experts say that around 60 calls in a day, which will include callbacks from your prospects, or 3 hours of talking time, have made them win over prospects, outsell their peers, and outperform their competitors.

• Does real estate cold calling service still work these days?

  Realistically, in the new millennium, much less 2022, cold calling in its original form is not going to do anything for your business. In this digital era, one can read or hear that cold calling is no longer effective because it is obsolete. However, a 2021 study showed that more than 50% of

  • buyers took calls from new companies in the previous year

  • senior-level decision-makers and buyers would rather be contacted by phone

  • buyers agree to meet with salespeople who manage to reach out to them first

  • buyers doing research on improving their businesses are interested in hearing from salespeople

  • buyers say they wish for a salesperson to reach out to when they're dealing with a business problem

  In addition, from 30-50% of successful sales are achieved by the business that reached out to the prospect first.

  Some 27% of sellers believe that cold calling is one of the most effective methods of getting new clients. It is safe to assume that that belief was born out of their experience where cold calling worked five to ten times more effectively than emails

• Does cold calling still work for real estate?

  Real estate agents and realtors make cold calls in order to make new leads, that is, to make contact with interested or potential homebuyers or sellers and set meetings with them. The aim is to turn them into customers or clients.

  As the numbers presented in this article show, cold calling is still an effective sales method in real estate.

• When is the best time to cold call?

  Another recent study resulted in the findings that the best time for calling is from 4:00 pm to 5:00 pm in the prospect's time zone. At this time people are ending their workday so they would be more amenable to taking your call. Second-best is from 11:00 am and 12:00 noon.

• What is the average success rate of cold calls?

  The average success rate of cold calling is from 1-3%, seemingly comparatively low, beside other selling methods. But, as numbers keep showing, it is still effective and therefore, must not be taken out, instead be combined and merged into your marketing overall plan.