YesTalk-238 - LEAD GENERATION SECRETS: Why I Don't Recommend Cold Calling

Welcome to Kevin Ward's Yes Talk for Realtors. This is Kevin Ward. Why doesn't cold calling work anymore? Okay, now wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Before you get all upset, for those of you that are radical cold calling fanatics and cold calling advocates, let me just say this. Yes, cold calling works, I admit, totally. If you do enough of anything, you're going to get some results. So why do I not recommend cold calling as a lead generation secret as a lead generation strategy? And here's why. Because for most real estate agents, cold calling in terms of effectiveness is kind of like walking to work every day when you've got a 20 mile commute. Okay, now you can argue that walking is a legitimate commuting strategy. It will work. Work, yes, but it's probably not the best way if you got to commute 20 miles a day. Cold calling, same thing, cold calling works. It's just probably not the best way. Now let me just tell you a couple of things. One, let's define cold calling and then I'm going to talk later in this video. I'll talk about for sale by owners and expireds later in the video and my perspective of them and it may surprise you what I actually believe about calling and prospecting for so many owners and expireds today. Now here's what I. Here's how I define cold calling. I define cold calling as randomly calling people you do not know to solicit business, regardless of the approach, regardless of the script, whether it's, you know, just listed, it just sold, an offer of something, a free market analysis or whatever it is. It's often called circle prospecting where you're just calling in a geographic area and you're randomly calling people you do not know without any knowledge about who they are other than the fact that they live in a specific area. Now here is why I'm going to tell you why I don't recommend cold calling and then I'm going to tell you what I do recommend that you focus on as an effectively generation strategy today that will work. So why do I not recommend cold calling? Number one, it's the wrong audience. Meaning that 95 plus percent of the time you're talking to people who are not actively interested in buying or selling a house. One in 20 of them may be thinking about doing in the market, but for the most part it's the wrong audience. You're talking to people who are not interested interested in buying or selling. And it's an audience that doesn't know you, they don't trust you, they don't want to talk to you, and they're not interested in the service you are offering. Now, you may be offering the right service. You may even being using a great approach. It's just the wrong time. So number one, it's the wrong audience. Number two, it's the wrong approach for 2021. It's the wrong approach for a number of reasons. One, it's a one size fits all. It's kind of like that shotgun approach. I'm just going to, if I shoot enough, fire enough shots off, I'm going to hit something. And it's that approach that is just a numbers game. And if I call enough people, I'm going to find somebody that will talk to me and somebody who is actually interested in moving. But again, it's a long. It's just a shotgun approach. And the efficiency of it is very, very low today for a number of reasons. One is because I'm trying to convince somebody before I've even connected with them. Because when you call somebody that does not know you, they're not looking for your services. They. You only have moments to get their attention and to get their interest. And trying to convince somebody before you've connected with them is very, very difficult in today's day and age when people tend to be very distrustful and to be skeptical. So you're trying to offer them a service, you're trying to get them to have a sales conversation with you when you have no credibility. And as I'm going to talk about in a minute, trust is the crown jewelry. Getting someone to hear you, and even more importantly, getting someone to hire you. So it's the wrong audience, it's the wrong approach. And because of that, number three, it just creates too much of the wrong outcome. In other words, for most real estate agents, cold calling is just going to give you a massively high failure rate. You're just going to have to take and call and rejection after rejection after rejection after rejection after rejection after rejection. And it makes most real estate agents so jaded and so fearful of rejection, they don't want to talk to anybody. It makes us just completely want to avoid talking to people at all. Because we can't take the constant barrage of people hanging up on us, yelling at us, threatening us, saying bad words to us. It just is like, that's more than I can take. And so that outcome over and over and over again just basically burns out and wears out most real estate agents. So what's the alternative if this is not going to work for me? What Should I focus on? So I'm going to give you three things to focus on in today's world if you want massive success in a way that is profitable, duplicatable, predictable and fast. All right, number one is turbo leads. Number one, focus on turbo leads. Now, I define a turbo lead as somebody who has already raised their hand and announced or somehow disclosed that they need or want to sell their home. So it is a seller lead generation approach and it's talking to people who've already said, I need to sell my house. So we're talking about primarily expireds and for sale by owners. This would also include probates. It would also include people who are in distress, like notice of defaults or stuff like that. Now, why do I focus on them? Because they've already exposed themselves. That says, I need to sell. I just need the best approach. I need the best agent who can get me the best result. And so I do not consider for sell by owners and expireds to be cold calling. Now for a couple of reasons. One is I consider them to be hot calling because they are a hot prospect. They've already demonstrated they need to sell their house. This is what I do. I help sellers who need to sell their house actually sell it and get a better result than they can do on their own or than they got with a previous agent who did not get their house sold. So I don't consider that cold calling. I consider that hot calling. Now, I like Zig Ziglar's approach to it. He said anytime I call somebody, it's always warm calling because I'm warm and I expect a warm response. So that expectation makes a big difference. But we're also adding into that that we're calling people who've already demonstrated that they are a high probability prospect that could be turned into immediate business for me and I can help them get an immediate result. Number one is who you focus on, and that is what I call turbo leads. Number two is the way you approach them. And that is focus on mma. What I call MMA is a mixed method approach to lead generation, which means gone is the day where you can just pick up the phone and easily and quickly count on using the phone to call somebody and set appointments. I did that. That's when I started back in the 1900s. I used to just pick up the phone every day and I'd call and I'd get an appointment almost anytime I wanted. If I was willing to talk to 20 or 30 people, I, I could get an appointment. And it's gotten Harder and harder. One, it's gotten harder to get them on the phone. Fewer people have landlines, more people have cell phones. They don't answer their phones anymore. Even if they know who it is, they don't answer, much less when they don't know who it is. So it's gotten harder to connect, to get people on the phone. And then it's harder to get them to engage with you in a conversation on the phone because the distrust level is so high. And so it takes phone is still great, but it takes a mixed method approach. So I'm talking adding phone, but not just phone. Now add text messaging, voicemail, video, door knocking, direct mail, email, social media, Internet, online platforms that you can get people to come in and add value to them and offer them something of value for free. All of that when you come from different angles is I'm going with a mixed method approach of getting in front of somebody, getting their attention, getting their interest, having an opportunity to let them check me out, to build credibility, to use testimonials and reviews from other satisfied clients. All of that coming in at different angles to increase your chances of getting a hearing from somebody who is interested in selling. So one is a talk to people who already announced I need to sell my house. Number two is how I approach them is it's not just a one shot, you know, one trick pony. That is just one shot. I call them and they either talk to me, they don't. I've got multiple ways that I can approach them. And then number three, and this is back to the crown jewel of lead generation. And that is focus on building relationships. Focus on building relationships now, even with for sale by owners and expireds, focus on connecting before trying to convince. Focus on building the relationship, building trust. Understand, they may not give you an appointment on the first call. It may take more than just a phone call. It may take a video, it may take direct mail. It may take multiple approaches to get in front of them to get a hearing. So focus on building relationships comes with multiple angles. So focus from first on building existing relationships and focus on building new relationships. So if I'm hiring, if I'm talking to a for sale by owner or expired, I'm not just going after the deal, I'm going after the client. I'm going after the relationship. Now here's the reason this is so important, because trust. Now pay attention to this. Trust is the number one factor in getting anybody to hire you. Trust, that is the asset of value. It is the number one determiner of when Someone is going to decide to hire you, they have to trust you. And so if you are not great at getting people to trust you, especially people you already know, then that's something you got to look at. And I'm going to break this down this way. I talk to a lot of agents who say, well, you know, I just, I'm more comfortable calling people that I don't know than calling people that I know because, you know, I'm young or I've got, you know, I'm new or, you know, I've done some things in my past and maybe made some mistakes or because of what I did in the past or the job I had, I can't, you know, whatever. And it's like, I don't want to talk to the existing relationships. I want to go after new people. Well, I'm going to do. This is a really straightforward, honest conversation that I want you to listen to and take a deep, hard look at. If you are not a master of getting people who know you already to trust you, it's probably time to do a little self analysis and go like, okay, why in the world can I not get people to trust me that already know me now? There's several things that can be a reflection of one past. I get it. Sometimes you're gonna have to heal some relationships, sometimes you have to rebuild some credibility. But it can also be a reflection of I don't trust myself. And so I'm like, if I go out with strangers, there's not as much at risk. But if I go to go to people that I know and they turn me down, that really hurts. And I like, I don't know if my self image can take that. My friend, this is where growth is critical. And that is if I can learn to build credibility and trust with people that already know, it's way easier to do it with people you don't know. But it also means first you have to learn to trust yourself. You've got to develop the skills, the strategies, the competence and the confidence for you to be able to have conversations with people you know and people that you don't know. Because listen, even the people you don't know before they're going to hire you, they're going to know you, they're going to check you out, they're going to check you out on social media, they're going to check you out on Google, they're going to check out your reviews, people are going to check you out. So you've got to be a person that is worthy of trust. Are you today the kind of person that people will trust with the big things in their life? Because when they have a half a million dollar asset or a 2 million dollar asset, you're asking them to trust you in the cell of it, my friend. Building relationships, learning how to build trust and credibility and build and fulfill on relationships is the highest value skill set as a real estate agent in today's world. It's more important than technology, it is more important than determination, it is more important than strategy. Learning to build credibility and trust is the magic key that will open the door to to massive success with all of your lead generation. So who you focus on, the approaches that you take and building massive relationships with a lot of people and building trust and credibility and understand to leverage that. That's where the magic is. Now I want to hear your thoughts. I want to hear your thoughts about cold calling. I want to hear thoughts about what I've said about what to focus on Now. If you have questions and you want more, post those questions down below. However, if you like, this is what I need, what I've been looking for, what you've talked about resonates and this has hit a note with you. This has really hit you where you live. You're like that's what I need more of. I'm going to give you two things. One, if you want to really dive deep into the skills, the strategies, the tactical steps and the systems to create massive effectiveness with this kind of lead generation. Building relationships, talking to for sale by owners expireds, learning a mixed method approach that will work. I want to invite you to join me at Agent Mastery Live. Agent Mastery Live is a three day deep dive event where we're going to lay out the exact strategies and everything A to Z on how do you build a listing based business with these approaches that we've talked about on this video. Now if you're brand new to me and you're this is your first time here and you're going like who are you? I don't know if I trust you or whatever, then I'm just going to invite you to get a free download of my core lead generation scripts that have worked for me and for thousands of coaching members just to generate huge amounts of business with my agent listing power Pack. That link is also down in the description below. You can click on that link and you can download it's completely free as my agent listing power pack which is all of my course scripts and some other bonus content, a CMA cheat sheet and all kinds of really good stuff that will help you master lead generation and lead conversion in today's market. So you can get that free download below or you can come join me for the deep dive at Agent Mastery Live. Whatever you do, play to win and always expect yes.

Hey there, it's Kevin. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast. Are you tired of getting no after no when you're out there trying to get listings and trying to inspire sellers to say yes to you? Then I'd like to invite you to download a free copy of my no BS listing presentation. This presentation will guide you through exactly what to say that will have motivated sellers saying yes to you over and over again. Stop getting stumped with skeptical seller objections or the famous we need to sleep on it, eliminate the resistance and have sellers ready to hire you and give you the listing before you even finish your presentation. To get a complimentary copy of my proven listing presentation, go to yes masters.com forward/download. Again, that's yes masters.com forward/download to download.

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