In this YouTube monologue, Leigh Thomas Brown answers a viewer’s question about whether modern real estate agents should still use cold calls and cold emails. She argues that both tactics remain effective, but they must be executed strategically. Brown emphasizes using "warm" calls—reaching out to contacts already in your phone or CRM—rather than random cold calls from directories. She stresses the importance of energy, active listening, and pausing to gauge prospects. For cold emails, she advises hyper‑personalized subject lines that reference local events or culture (e.g., the Cheerwine Festival in Salisbury, NC) to capture attention. Brown warns against buying leads and clicking suspicious email links, urging agents to rely on their existing network and personal brand. Throughout, she ties the advice to her new coaching program, "You Ask, Leigh Answers," hosted on Answers.RealEstate, inviting agents to join for further guidance. The video concludes with a call to action to subscribe, ask questions, and engage with her community.
Chapters
Do successful real estate agents still make cold calls and send cold emails? The short answer is yes. The long answer, well, dial in with me and let's chat for just a second. This question came in, by the way, on one of my videos and is the whole reason I'm starting a new program called You Ask, Leigh Answers, 'cause y'all, I will literally answer anything you want to ask. And the reason this is a complicated answer is because so many people out there, whether they are coaches or brands or just general talkative heads will tell you that it doesn't work anymore to call people and it doesn't work to send emails. It does. There's a reason all these scammers make so much money online, y'all. They send all these scam emails and y'all click on it and they call your house during election season and get all of your personal information. The telephone still works. Emails still work. The question is, how do you make it work for you? So first of all, you don't have to make cold calls as in out of the Yellow Pages. And for you young people, yes, we used to have Yellow Pages. What I would suggest is that you make warm calls. And a warm call is one where there is the beginning of a connection with the person on the other end of the phone. Those are the people in your contact manager. Y'all, I've said it before, I'll say it again. And until you do it, I'll keep on saying it. You have all the business you ever needed saved in your phone. You just don't talk to those people because you're looking for a silver bullet. You're looking for an easy answer. And real estate's not easy. It's hard. The hardest thing about real estate is taking the actions that nobody else will take, which involves picking up your phone and making outbound phone calls. So don't tell me that calls don't work unless you in specific have picked up your phone and clicked on the contacts and gone from A to Z and called everybody and said, hey, I'm Leigh Thomas Brown with One Community Real Estate. How you doing? And use your own name and company, but you get the flair of it. Too often we look for an easy answer. And if you want to know why real estate is being attacked on all fronts right now by every lawyer on the planet and by government agencies and elected officials, is it because we made it look too easy? And it's human nature to want things to be easy, but you can want in one hand and do the work in the other one. And which one's going to fill up first? Do the work. Now, how about cold emails? They do still work because I'll sit here during the day and get an email from myself that says, "Hey Leigh Brown, I need some gift certificates to the Food Lion." And I'm thinking, you people are spoofing my email yet again. And what did I do? I opened the email. I don't click on the attachments though. Never click an attachment and never click on the link. At least I'm smart enough to go to the little arrow at the top, hit the pull-down and see what the sender sending email addresses. It's usually something really shifty-shady. But y'all, if you continually reach out to people with telephone calls and with emails, you'll be surprised how much response you get back. Now, the amount of response has to do with a couple of things, and these are how you can make your phone calls work. First of all, have a little energy about yourself. Some of y'all sound about as interesting as dry Melba toast, and that is not what we want. I want to hear that you're excited about real estate. I want to hear that you're awake and engaged and ready to talk to me. I can also hear that when you actively listen, which looks a lot like silence. But I don't want you to talk the whole time when you call somebody. Ask them a question, and then if you hear a little bit of a catch, or if you hear their pause, it's like Stanley said on The Office, the pause will tell you everything. So listen for the pause. And then react to that. If you think they need you to do a care package, do a care package. If they need you to send a personal note, send a personal note. But when you call the people in your phone, there's already an opportunity right there. Same thing with your emails. Don't put a subject line in that sounds like everybody else. I am in Concord, North Carolina. The next big city north of here is Salisbury, North Carolina. And if you know Salisbury, then you know that is not just the center of Rowan County. It is the home of Cheerwine, which was founded in 1917, and the Cheerwine Festival's come May. So if you send out an email that references the Cheerwine Festival, you will have great accolades from the people in this area. Now, if you are from Kansas City, Missouri, you're probably thinking, Leigh Thomas Brown, nobody here has heard of Cheerwine. Exactly. So you can talk about your version of barbecue, which is not real barbecue. But your people think it is. And so talk to your people, talk to your area, talk to your expertise. That's what gets people to read your emails and respond. And maybe, just maybe, if you ask a few questions instead of just laying out their data and stats, you'll find that people have questions to ask. They may be reading headlines that have them confused right now. They may wonder if you've gone out of business. They may be wondering if they can still work with a buyer agent or with a seller's agent as the environment changes. You need to talk to people and tell them, yes, they can. And frankly, here's the magic reason all of this works, my friend. Here's the reason that phone calls and emails work. Because it comes from you. There's a certain segment of the population around you that only hears your voice because you're their real estate person. The people who respond to me, they know me, they've met me, they've hugged me, or they feel like they know me from videos. They've seen me at the grocery store. They've met me at the high school bingo night. We know one another. They respond. So the phone calls and the emails really become a way of cementing the you that they've already engaged and you they've already met. So embrace it. And if anybody tells you to buy leads online instead of calling the names in your phone, run, run far away and quit spending that money. By the way, friends, don't miss my brand new coaching program at Answers.RealEstate where you can have access to Leigh Leigh Thomas Brown, submit your questions, have them answered, meet like-minded professionals, have an entire library to help you build your business no matter what happens in the market. Get signed up today. I promise you'll be glad you did. Sign up for You Ask, Leigh Answers, and I'll answer more questions like this. Because if you want to know, I will tell you everything that's worked for me. Because why wouldn't we share in a business that grants us so much opportunity? Hit the bell to subscribe, ask me your questions, and I'll see you next time.
