When Should You Leave a VoiceMail in Prospecting for Listings? - Kevin Ward

Hi there, it's Kevin Ward with yes Masters Real Estate Success Training, helping you get more yeses and more successes in your business and in your life. And today I want to talk to you about a question that I get all the time in email, and that is, should you leave a voicemail when you're prospecting? So when you're calling somebody and they don't answer the phone, should you leave a voicemail? And a lot of you have been taught that you should never leave a voicemail when you're prospecting. The only time you should ever leave a voicemail is when somebody's expecting your call. For example, if you have somebody that you're following up with a lead and you told them, I'll call you back next week or I'll call you back tomorrow or whatever, then you want to leave a voicemail because they're expecting your call and you want them to know that you're keeping your word, that you are following through like you committed to do. That's true. So that you definitely want to do that. However, a lot of things have changed over the years in terms of how you connect with potential sellers with prospects from the way it was back in the 1900s. So a lot of you were taught and the training typically was that I was taught was you never leave a voicemail for anyone because you want to talk to somebody live. And that is true. You want to talk to somebody live. That's the ultimate goal. Leaving voice messages is not going to get you appointments. However, some things have changed. So the question is, should I leave a voicemail when I'm prospecting? And the first answer is, it depends on who you're calling. It depends on who you're prospecting and who you're talking to. So there's really the way I look at it, in prospecting, there are four different categories of prospecting. One is when you're calling your personal circle, that's people that you already know. That's people that you have a relationship with. This would be your past clients. What's typically called your past clients, your sphere of influence, your Mets sometimes called your Mets. In other words, it's people that know who you are and you know who they are. And then the second category are expired listings. Whenever a listing is expired, do you leave a message with them? The third category are for sale by owners. And the fourth category is what I call random calling. Traditionally, a lot of times this is called cold calling. You're just calling people you don't know. It's random. There's not a specific reason, at least from their perspective, for why you would be calling them. And so this would be in a lot of. If you're doing notice of defaults or distressed sellers or probates, they would fall more in the long of the lines of these. So here's the. Here's the angle on how you do this. First off, on personal circle. If you're calling your personal circle, that means people that you know when you call them and they don't answer, yes, the answer is, do you leave a message? And the answer is yes, you always leave a message. Why do you leave a message? Because I'm just connecting with them. And it's weird if this number keeps calling them. Especially if you're calling from your cell phone and they know who's calling you calling them and you're not leaving a message, they're kind of like, why are you calling me? And if you're not willing to leave a message, they go like, why would you not leave a message? Is this like, are you trying to scam me? Or now it becomes a. Like a solicitation feel. So it's personal. So when you call somebody doesn't answer, Just leave a message. If it's somebody in your personal circle that you've connected with and been talking to and they know why you're calling, you know, you just leave a simple message, say, hey, Bill, it's Kevin Ward here. Just wanted to touch base, see how things are going and see have talked to or bumped into that's looking to buy, sell, or invest in real estate that I can help. If you have anybody or run across anybody, please let me know. If you're looking to do anything, always give me a call and we'll talk soon. And that's pretty much a simple voicemail that you can leave now. If you're talking to somebody and you're calling them, do you leave a message every single time? Well, if I was calling somebody that I'm my goal is I want to talk to them four times a year, let's say once every quarter. And so I call them. The first time they don't answer, I leave a message. I want to call them again in about a month or less because I'm still trying to get in touch with them. I actually want to have a conversation. So the first time I call them, I would probably leave a message. The second time I call, I may not. It just kind of depends on how you feel about that relationship. The third time or the fourth time I called again, then I would probably leave another message and say, hey, just want to touch base, see what's up, see if I can do anything to help you and make it real simple, real short, real brief. Leave a message and move on. The value is in a live conversation. However, this just lets them know when you call, if they don't answer who it is, if they. In case they don't know, and if they do know who it is, then it doesn't seem weird because why are you calling me all the time and never telling me why you're calling? Because people don't like to call you back when they don't know why you called them. And so that's your personal circle. So, yes, leave a message. Now, I'm going to put it this way. You always leave a message the first time you call, and maybe after two, three, and let's say your third or your fourth, you leave a message as well. I wouldn't leave a message every single time I called. If you called him once, left a message, call again a couple of weeks later, a month later, you may not leave a message. And then the third next time you may not. The fourth time you may leave a message or whatever. If I call somebody for like a year or six months and they never answer, never respond, I'm not going to call them as often. I'm going to kind of push them down a little bit. What I teach my coaching members with personal circle, you have an A team, B team and a C team. A lot of time, a lot of that has to do with how frequently do you actually call them. Second, then are our expired, our lovely expired listings. Do you leave a voicemail when your prospecting expires? And the answer is always yes on the first call, every single time you want to leave a voicemail on the first call. Now, there's several reasons for this. Used to, I was taught not to do this, and back in the 1900s it made total sense. But things have changed since the 1900s. Number one, people answer their phone less often than they used to. Caller ID is what it is. But a lot of people don't even have caller ID on landlines, Even if they have landlines, they have answering machines and they use their answering machines to screen calls. So if they are screening their calls, they're sitting there, phone rings, they're not going to answer it, then let it go to voicemail, and they're wanting to see who's calling me. And so if you leave no voicemail, you have no shot of getting in touch with them all. So you leave a very simple voicemail that simply identifies who you are and why you're calling. And the voicemail goes like this. Hi, this is Kevin Ward, I'm a local real estate agent. I noticed your house came up on the MLS or on a computer system that it's off the market. If you're still interested in selling it, would you please give me a call? Again, my name is Kevin Ward. Here's my phone number. That's the voicemail. Simple. Takes 15 seconds. You leave the voicemail, and if they're there and they're listening, a lot of times they will pick up. Now you say, well, what if they don't want to talk to me? They're not going to pick up. And if they don't want to call you back, they're not going to call you back. You leave a voicemail on the first call, then I'm going to make a second call and then I'm going to make a third call. I'm not going to leave a voicemail on subsequent calls until probably the fourth call, and then I'm going to probably leave another voicemail. Now, here's how you do this first day, this is day one. So if I'm calling for expireds, I'm going to call the new expireds. I'm going to call them day one, I'm going to call them again. Day two, I'm going to call them again. Day three, and if after that I will probably call them on day four, if I'm getting a phone that's ringing and then it's going to an answering machine, that tells me there's somebody on the other end. Now, if you're getting voice, if you're getting cell phones, which is great, and a lot of times you're getting those, then same strategy applies. First time, maybe after the third day, if I'm not going to call, if I'm going to move them after calling them three or four days with no answer in a row, I'm going to. I move them into what I call my warm my old expired folder. And that means now I'm not going to call them every day. I'm going to probably call them a couple of weeks or maybe a week from now. And then I will put them where that if I'm doing a weekend prospecting session where I'm calling on a Saturday, or I'm doing an evening prospecting session once a week or whatever, then I may call them during that time again, if I've called them, if I've left a message recently. I'm not going to leave another message, but every third or fourth call I'm going to leave a message. All right, so that's your expires with for sale by owners. For Sale by owners. Do you leave a message? The answer is no, not on the first call. And the reason is for sale by owners have given a number in their marketing. If you're finding them wherever you're finding them, if you're using a lead service or if you're finding them on Craigslist or online on one of the buy owner websites, they've given a phone number where they want to be contacted and so you know it's a good number. However, I want to talk to the for sale by owner live just like with all these others, I but they're not screening their calls as likely, number one and number two because you know it's a number they've given that they want you to call them at. So it's probably a cell phone number. You can't screen a call on a cell phone number. You can just take the it goes to voicemail, they leave a message, they listen to it and then they decide if they want to call you back or not. But I really want to talk to them. So the first two times I call I'm not going to leave a voicemail. Then on the third time I am going to leave a voicemail on call number three. Then I'm going to leave a voicemail. I've tried to call them twice. They've not answered. So maybe the voicemail approach will work. Leave it very simple again, it's a very simple script. Hey, this is Kevin Ward. I'm a local real estate agent. I noticed your house for sale by owner. I was wanting to want to find out if still available and see if I could do anything to help. Here's my number. Kevin Ward. Call me. Straightforward conversation. I do not don't do any BS crap that like I may have a buyer for your property. When you don't, that's total bs. And all you're doing when you give them and this is for another training video. If you've watched any of my other training videos where I talk about a lot of the BS scripts that real estate agents have been taught or that they use is whenever you act like you have a buyer for a for sale by owner, all you're doing is training them that their hallucination is correct and their hallucination is I don't need to hire an agent. You'll bring me a buyer if you have one. And when I pretend I have a buyer, then all I'm doing is training them to not want to list with me. Because they're like, why would I list with you? If you go find a buyer, when you find out you're going to bring them. You already told me that. Why would I ever think about listing with you? They don't understand how the system works. So don't buy into or don't feed their hallucination by acting like you are calling because you have a buyer. Does that make sense? So hope that does make sense. Then on random calling. So on the third call, I'm going to leave a voicemail. Fourth and fifth call, probably not. And then on about number call, let's say number six, six or seven. Then I may leave another voicemail. And these calls are probably the first two or three days, I'll call every day. After that I'll go back, I'll go to calling maybe once a week for a while and I'll do that for another three or four weeks. Now, there's other. If you're also sending them emails or if you're sending stuff in the mail, that's awesome because you're giving them kind of the one, two punch. But the conversations are the best. Everything is better when you're talking to people at the door. This is strictly about phone calling right now. Now, the fourth category is what I call random calling. I just don't like cold because cold is an expectation of pain. Cold is just like it doesn't feel comfortable, right? So I don't expect. I'm not going to be cold when I called. I don't expect them to be cold when they answer. So I don't. I call. It's not cold calling. Everything I do, if I'm talking to people I don't know, it's all warm. It's all warm calling. But this is a special kind of warm calling. This is just random. They don't see any reason why I'm calling them. I'm calling with a hot market script just to give them an update on what's happening in the market. I am calling them to maybe invite them to an open house or whatever. I don't really love this whole approach of random calling. I think it's the lowest return on investment and the most painful type of calling. And however, if you're gonna do it, this is the way to do it. Do you leave a voicemail and the answer is no? You never ever, ever leave a voicemail. Vm you never leave a voicemail when you're calling somebody randomly because the chances of it being somebody who has any interest in talking to you are so low that leaving a voicemail is just a big waste of time. It just takes a lot of time to sit there, wait for the phone to ring, wait for their greeting to get through and then you leave the voicemail. And that, that period of time, I'm going to let it ring three or four times. As soon as the fourth ring starts, hang up, dial the next one. Now one exception to that, if you are using a dialer. So let's just say that you are using a dialer like mojo or Vulcan 7 or one of the programs that's actually an automated dialer where it's dialing two or three or four numbers at a time. It's just grinding through numbers and a lot of those have programmed. A dialer has a program voicemail that if they don't answer it automatically goes into the voicemail and the computer, the dialer itself goes ahead and it's continuing to dial more numbers and it's not spending any of your time and it's leaving a pre recorded voicemail that you made that it just automatically leaves to any phone number that you call that gets voicemail. If you're doing that, it doesn't take any of your time and it's just a matter of chunk. It's just you're just shoveling a lot of numbers out there, shoving a lot of junk voicemails into people's voicemail server systems. The return on investment in terms of that, in terms of how many callbacks you're going to get is going to be very, very low. But if it doesn't take, it costs you no time, it costs no money. Then if you want to leave those voicemails, it certainly doesn't harm anything. So if you're doing it automatically, works out perfect. But you got to understand there's not a one shop and a one stop answer for every single situation. Every person has a different, there's a different scenario for each one. Let me share with you this last thing on the old the expireds, the reason you leave a call on the first time is because there's also with expired you have an urgency, an urgency that you don't have with anyone else. You see, these people are not probably not planning to list today. On an average day these people are most likely a for sale by owner is not going to list on the first day with the first agent that calls the random calling. They're probably not going to list with you on the first day when you call. Just doesn't work that way. But expireds are different. Expireds have had their house on the market and there is a very high probability that they will set a listing appointment today. And you can get that listing today. So you don't want to wait around to try a few times before you leave a voicemail. I want to try everything I can to get in touch with them, to talk to them. Day one, because urgency, the urgency is very high because this is a high, high quality prospect and I want to do everything I can to get in front of them on day one. Now everything is supplemented with, especially with these two right here and this. You're going to be way better off when you're actually knocking on the doors, getting in front of them, having that face to face conversation. You get way further than when you're just talking on the phone. But when you're talking on the phone, know when is the right time to use a voicemail and when is the right time to hang up and go on play to win. I'll talk to you soon.