<<Chris... two guesses, for "more impt than script":
Smile? Just do it?
MJ & MB told not to participate... who's MB?
It sounds like you have a great system, but I am a bit confused as to how you are doing such a massive number of calls.... back when I did them, I did 50-100 (seldom hit near 100 calls), and thought I was doing rather good.
Your numbers are astounding.
I use Skype, too, and I'm trying to figure how you do this.... :
So you pull up a scrubbed list on REAgentdialer or mojosells... and you enter the streets or zip codes you want, and then call each one on Skype.... is the web-site integrated with Skype, to where it is a single click, or do you have to actually key in each digit?
you use a head-set?
Do you use blank paper for notes, or a pre-printed form? (May sound like a silly question, but I've found that the pre-printed form, what we use to call a "prospect sheet", would help me ask pertinent questions I might otherwise have neglected to ask.)
Lindy in Houston
>>
Hey Lindy,
Nope - neither of those are the correct response, although they are both pretty darned important.
Here's how it works, with REAgentDialer.com, as an example. Here in Ontario, every brokerage is required, by law, to subscribe to a service that provides scrubbed-against-DNC phone look-up. The company my office uses provided many things as part of the package, however, I just use the scrubbing service. It is not legal for them to allow us to export the lists of numbers, so we have to do a work-around.
I enter the street name, zip/postal code and the program pulls up every number on the street. I tell it to scrub the list, then copy and paste the numbers into Excel and save as a CSV file. I then import that file into REAgentDialer.com and save it with some kind of category.
When I'm ready to make my calls, I choose the category I want to call, then I call into REAgentDialer.com on my Skype (yes, I use a good Logitech USB headset that cost me about $70Cdn, or $105US). Once I'm connected into REAgentDialer.com, I just click 'Start Dial Session' and off it goes.
What happens next is up to me - I can choose to set the system to let the phone ring until a person or vm picks up, up to 25 rings; I can choose to have it try up to about 10 rings for a live or vm response, or I can have it let the phone ring a maximum of 4 times before hanging up and moving on to the next number.
Let's say a live person picks up, I just start speaking, and then I can enter my notes directly into the basic CRM feature of the program, or I can handwrite. Once the conversation is over, I can label the person as HOT, Do Not Call, etc. then click continue and it moves on.
However, and this is cool, if a VM picks up, I click on 'Leave Voicemail' and it leaves the voicemail I called into the system and recorded (or uploaded as mp3). The awesome part is that the instant the system recognizes a voicemail system is picking up, a box lights up on my screen that says 'Leave Voicemail', I click it and while the system is dialing the next number for me, it is also listening to the outgoing vm, then leaving my vm.
BUTTTTTTTT, here's a change I made this past week . . .
I am now using the system on the 'wait for 4 rings only before auto-dialing the next number' mode if I am doing pure cold-calling. I'm finding that if I don't leave a message, about 15% of people are calling me back at the Caller ID # that is displayed on their phone, and I get to engage them and THEY CALLED ME. When I was leaving voicemails, 5% call-back was exceptional. So, leaving no messages allows me to burn through numbers faster, only speaking to people who answer in 4 rings or call me back.
As to blank paper or pre-printed, I use a spiral bound student notebook and scribble highlights in it then enter into Agent Office when I'm done calling. I used to use pre-print forms, but found that, like so many scripts and as MJ said, the people on the other end never learned their side of things, so I found it very confusing. IF I were not as confident in my ability to remember what to ask, and my ability to recall what they said to me, I might find a form helpful.
The biggest challenge for me, still, and something I'm actively working on, is not sounding so surprised when they respond to 'Do you wanna sell your house?' with a resounding YES!
Real Estate trainers always teach us how to handle objections (aka buying signals), but they rarely put 1/10th of the effort into teaching us how to handle positive responses. I am changing that tomorrow, as part of my Scripts class.
Just as an afterthought, when I first re-started cold-calling this year, I had to weight-train to pick up that 5,000 pound telephone, and I celebrated even making one dial, even though I hung up before they had a chance to answer. My palms were sweating, my pulse flew up to about 300bpm, and I was literally shaking I was so scared! Stoopid, eh?
It had only been about 18 months since I'd stopped doing 3 hours a day of hard-core dialing, but that was long enough for the crippling fear to re-install itself in me.
Now, I don't even get to take a break until I've done 100 dials (it was every 50 dials), and if I can keep my pace going, I intend to get to a consistent minimum of 300 cold dials a day plus 100 follow-up and database dials a day, for a weekly total of 2,000 dials.
BTW, I have a friend who, on his own, is doing 750 dials A DAY, 6 DAYS A WEEK. He's using technology to it's best advantage.
http://REAgentDialer.com has a free 15-day trial (sign up for the unlimited minutes) - folks who are thinking of cold-calling should go there and watch the demo, and then sign up for the trial. If you have questions about anything to do with cold-calling, you can feel free to email me off list - I'd say call me, but there's not much point given my teaching / coaching / real estate / kids sports schedules.
Just a note - there are 12 different types of prospecting fear that people can be categorized under, according to research I've recently read. The #1 fear of Realtors when it comes to prospecting? Telephone Terror!
Again, if you want info on overcoming any of your prospecting fears, e me off-list.
And, in a final read before hitting send, this occurred to me in answer to Lindy's question of how I can do such a massive number of dials - I think it is probably partly because I am absolutely determined to do a big number of dials, and I am not in the least bit interested in anything other than the person who answers their phone and says 'yes', or 'not yet'. If they don't say one of those 2 things, I'm off the phone and on to the next phone so fast I leave a trail of dust swirling behind me like 'Meep Meep' being chased by Wylie Coyote. I am VERY focused on what I want on the phone, with the promise that NOTHING is going to derail me from that.
Newell
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