Why Cold Calling Doesn't Work for Most Agents...And What Does Work - Kevin Ward

Foreign. Hi there, it's Kevin Ward. I'm answering a question today that I got from a real estate agent that is. Was watching one of my YouTube videos and this is their question and I think it's a great question that I want to talk about. I am now cold calling for five hours a day. Five. Five hours a day and not getting any leads. And then he's got a big frown face. What am I doing wrong? So that's a great question. I'm calling five hours a day, not getting any leads. What am I doing wrong? Well, you're doing something wrong. So the question is, what is it? And now, frankly, with that little information, there's so many variables that it's impossible to know exactly what this agent is doing wrong. So for example, I'm calling five hours a day. Well, how many times are you actually dialing the phone? How many people you're actually talking to? Where are you getting your phone numbers and so forth. So there's a lot of questions that I don't know the answer to in that. So I want to address what would be the most common things that would be making a cold calling effort like this, not get any leads. Another issue could be if you've only been doing it for two days, and I mean cold calling five hours a day for two days or one, or I'm planning on it or something like that, you're not obviously going to get results from just necessarily get results when you've tried something only a couple of times. So first it's cold calling. That's the number one problem is cold calling is probably the least effective method of lead generation on the planet today. Now there's a lot of people out there still doing it and it does still work. And so does newspaper advertising, so does bus bench advertising. It's just not the best. It's one of the least effective for a number of reasons. One, because you're talking to total strangers. Two, because you're talking to total strangers with no indication that they want to move. And three, you're talking to them when they probably don't want to be talking to you. And that's all of that combines for why we call it cold. Cold just feels uncomfortable to me. I never, I never enjoyed cold calling because it just as an agent, because it just felt painful. And so it's, it's not the most effective way of lead generation and it is a painful way of lead generation and it's, it's worse now than it used to be because we live in a society Today, in a world today where one, people are less trusting than they used to be, two, people don't answer their phones anymore. A lot of them don't even have home phones. If they do have home phones, they're on a do not call list. And if you do call them anyway, they're mad about it and they use their phones to screen their phone calls, or they don't have a home phone at all. So it's harder to find somebody that actually has a phone that will actually answer it. And when they do answer it, one, if they answer, they're unlikely that they're ready to buy or sell right now. In other words, what are the odds, it's one in several hundred, that if you call any one person, randomly talk to them, that they're planning on listing their home or selling their home and moving this month or in the next two or three months, Just the odds of that are fairly low. So if you're randomly calling people, cold calling, you got to know that the chances are I'm going to only talk to people that I could. That could be future business for me, not immediate business for me right now. They don't know you. So because it's cold, they're less likely to talk to you. And people, frankly, people aren't as kind today in the world as they used to be. And what I mean by that is used to people kind of had a respect for salespeople, and they would hear you out to decide if it was something they were interested in or not, to see if you were kind or not. And they would just. There would be more courtesy than I think there is in general today. So people are more likely just to hang up on you and not have a conversation. So people aren't patient. They're busy, all of that. So that's one of the issues. Second big problem could be how you sound. And that is a real. Here's what people are listening for. When you call, you call and they answer. The first words out of your mouth are very critical. And so if you sound like you're not certain or not confident or not having a great time, if you sound like you're nervous or you're apologetic, then people are turned off by that. If you go to the other extreme and you sound too excited and how are you today? And, well, you got a, you know, if you're overly excited, that turns them off. How you want to sound is a couple of things. One, you want to sound friendly and you want to sound interested in them, and that's the Perfect mix. If you can sound totally friendly and totally interested in them, which in a sense means be yourself, be totally natural, but excited. But it's got to be a real excitement because if it's a fake excitement, people can tell, so it turns them off. So it could be how you're sounding and the third thing, it could be what you're saying. And if it comes across as a sales pitch, as a you're soliciting business so you know, do you want to move it just, it's hard to say the right thing. So here's my suggestions and what I recommend that you do. One, get off the phone if you're just doing cold calling and get out and talk to people. If you're going to talk to random people that you've never seen before, don't know you're going to be way more effective when you're actually talking to them face to face at their door than you're going to be on the telephone. Having said that, even random door knocking is going to be hard. And by that I mean it's going to be a low return on investment activity. Now, if you're doing it consistently and you're out door knocking two or three hours a day, every single day, you're going to get business and, and as you get better, you're going to get more business. But mostly you're going to get better, more connections. And the key here is building relationships. So if you're going to approach your business of building it by talking to people you do not know, you have to have a long game approach, not a short game approach. The short game approach is I need a listing today. Do you want to sell today? No. Then I don't want to talk to you. That would be a short game approach. A long game approach is how long have you. Do you have any plans to move? Nope, I don't have any plans to move. Great. How long have you lived here? And now I just strike up a conversation now in the Book of Yes, which is my book of scripts called the Book of Yes. You can buy a copy of it on Amazon or you can go to my website, yes masters.com and you can download some of the key scripts for free, including some of these prospecting scripts. One is what I call the hot market script, which if you're door knocking and you don't have any other reason to knock on their door, it is a much better approach than a lot of the cold than the cold call or cold door knocking approaches. My favorite random door knocking approach is Open house event invites, which means you're having an open house event with a seller and you're inviting people to come to the open house. And that script you can get as a download is a free download of my book of yes scripts on my website or you can go and get the entire book on Amazon. The book of yes by Kevin Ward. I believe the best approaches for generating business today is talking to people. If there are people you don't know, focus on finding people who haven't indicated a need or a desire to sell their house. So I'm huge on for sale by owners and expireds and even in markets where there's not a lot of them today, and in a lot of markets, they're highly high seller markets, low inventory. There's not a lot of for sale by owners expireds. But where they are when you, I mean, when you do find one, they're awesome. They're high probability. Expireds are 50% of them are going to relist with a different agent within 30 days. For sale by owners high probability that they are eventually going to hire an agent if they're, if they're actually going to sell, if they're motivated. And I love for sale by owners expired probate listings, distressed sellers, if they're behind on payments, notice of defaults, divorce situations and so forth. And it's just a matter of finding the relationships or the subscription services that can help you find those people. And then you've got to be intense and proactive about going out there, talking to them and so forth. The way you're going to get results with them is mastery. You got to be good. You got to be good at what to say, how to say it, how you show up. I've got an entire training called FX Extreme Training for how to work with for sale by owners and expireds. And you can check it out on my website. FXXtreme. Yes masters.com FX extreme. This is not a, this is not a sales pitch. It's just saying if you're going to be great with any of this, you got to get a strategy and you got to get skills and an approach that actually works. And my approach works. So face to face, get face to face, number one. Number two, get in front of people who have indicated a need or a desire to buy or sell a house. Now there's a lot of other ways you can do it. Open house events are great. You're going to get people in there that way. If you're doing Facebook marketing and social media marketing and online marketing, really is effective at generating prospects. The key with that is now the skill of converting them into a lead and converting that lead into an appointment, and having the ability to nurture that relationship, nurture that person along until they are ready and motivated to do something. Because a lot of agents spend way too much time trying to find somebody that that's thinking about, maybe we're gonna do something someday. And then you spend the next six months trying to convince them that they should move now. And all you do is you turn them off and make them not want to talk to you anymore, because you're trying to push them to do something they're not ready to do yet for your own benefit. And when you're trying to do something for your benefit, people can tell you just want a listing. You're just trying to get a sale. Leave them alone, build a relationship with them. And until they are ready. Well, how do you build a relationship with them? You need a system. So that's why I train and coach is I teach agents how to do all of this. The book of yes is going to have a lot of it. In a nutshell, if you want more in depth training, come to one of my events, get to my coaching, or sign up for one of my online courses, or all of my online courses, because they cover a lot of those different areas. But here is the big magic, okay? The big magic is this. Relationships. That's where the business is. The future of real estate is going to be in the relationships. Trust is at the lowest point it's ever been in our society. So when people don't know you, they're skeptical. And it takes a long time to bridge that trust gap. When you have a relationship, the business that you can get from them, the referral business, building that network, all of that is very, very powerful. That. So a lot of agents are like, well, I'm new. I don't want to talk to my friends or talk to people I know because I'm new and I'm nervous. You got to get over that. You got to figure that out and go like, okay, I got to get them on my side and say, look, I need your help. And you've got to develop the skills and the mastery so that you're not afraid to ask them for business. And you can do that fast. It's just that most agents don't know how to do it. Most agents come in, they're amateurs. They're not trained. They don't know what's going on. They're. That's why I Have a coaching company is to help agents get that that don't know what to do and don't know how to do it is to get you ready fast to do it. You can watch my YouTube videos. Just watch all the free content and study that stuff and then get out there and start taking action and start talking to people. Don't be afraid of the mistakes you're going to make. That's how you learn, that's how you get great. But when you show up authentically, face to face is going to be way better. Look for people that actually have a need or express that to buy or sell now and and then be helpful. But understand sometimes you got to build the relationship what I call your personal circle until they are ready to do something and then you're going to get a result. If you're going to be successful in real estate today, I believe it requires a long game approach and it requires an approach that is client centered which means I'm here to help you when you're ready and if you're not ready I'm okay with that because I have a of lot lot of building relationships and you got to go out there and build enough relationships fast enough that you can make money to stay in business. That's one of the reasons I'm really big on for sale by owners and expireds and getting in front of those people that have expressed a need or desire to sell their house because that's your immediate business. Open house events a great way to get in front of people that are looking to buy or sell right now. And when you do an open house event, if you knock all the doors around that open house like 100 or 200 doors and you invite them all and then you say by the way, when do you think you might be looking to make a move? You're going to get some great connections on that. Again, all of that is in the book of yes. I'm just giving some answers to this guy's question of I'm cold calling. I'm not getting any leads. What am I doing wrong? There's a better approach to do it for sure. And don't give up. Keep going, keep working toward mastery. And you can always expect yes. So if you like the video, give it a thumbs up, share it with other agents that you know need it and make sure you subscribe to the channel for more great training videos right here.