In this solo masterclass, Christian Osgood explains the exact phone strategy he uses to secure owner meetings for multifamily acquisitions, a technique that has enabled him to purchase hundreds of rental units. He begins with a brief career overview, tracing his path from apparel sales to land advertising, then to CoStar and finally to real‑estate investing, emphasizing that real‑estate is fundamentally a sales, marketing, and negotiation game. Osgood then breaks down his call script step‑by‑step: (1) identify a very specific property to reference, (2) open with a general, non‑salesy greeting, (3) quickly share a relatable personal story that creates a connection, (4) ask an open‑ended, advice‑seeking question to generate momentum, (5) listen and respond positively to the owner’s reply, and (6) at the peak of momentum, execute a soft close by proposing a brief coffee meeting and securing a calendar invite on the spot. He stresses the importance of ending the call while the owner is still engaged, warning against extending the conversation, which leads to deferrals and lost bookings. Osgood shares operational metrics—about two calls per day, ten per week, one coffee meeting per week, resulting in 52 meetings a year—and explains how this low‑time, high‑efficiency approach fuels his real‑estate portfolio growth. He previews upcoming episodes that will cover the in‑person meeting, deal negotiation, and closing, but stresses that without mastering the booking call, the later stages cannot be reached.
Chapters
Now that they're talking, the mission is how fast can we get off the phone? Your odds of booking the meeting go astronomically up if you are the one to end the conversation while there is still momentum. Buckle in, today we are sharing the secret sauce. This is how I can book a meeting with anyone. I actually spent my entire career learning how to do this. I have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars of commissions, millions of dollars of sales to learn exactly this. This allows me to buy hundreds of rental properties. I use sales, marketing, and negotiating strategies in everything that I do in this business. In this episode, I'm going to share a bunch about sales, specifically how I booked the meeting every single time. Now, a little backstory on me. I actually started selling apparel for a group called the Sandmarc Group. I went from that to selling land advertising, which got bought by the CoStar Group, who owns Apartments.com, Homes.com, LoopNet, a bunch of other websites, basically all of the commercial real estate data, which is how I eventually ended up in real estate. However, real estate is a sales, marketing, and negotiating game. And if you can learn these skills, which are very easy to learn, you can absolutely crush the acquisitions part of multifamily real estate. Today's episode, we're talking about how I booked the meeting. Now, this took me from a sub-six-figure earner to making over a quarter million dollars a year in my sales job every single year. I learned how to get a yes to the meeting every time. See, I never had a big problem with closing. And yes, I'm going to go into closing and negotiation. In future videos in this series. I'm going to go super in-depth, but you don't get to that phase unless you get more pitches. When you're doing a sales pipeline, you need to get the optimal number of pitches, and then you can work on, okay, out of these pitches, how do I get more meetings? Are these meetings— how do we close more deals? We're not there yet though. I want more meetings. How do we actually get more meetings in the door? You need to learn how to get a yes on the phone. The owner meeting, when you call someone who owns a piece of real estate that you do not yet own. Here's the strategy for this. I believe I have just about perfected this. First thing you're going to do is you need to find something very specific to call about, to have a very general conversation. Let that sink in for a second. Very specific to have a very general conversation. Your goal is to ride the momentum and be the first one to end the phone call. Let me explain. Specific. When I was calling and I only owned a couple duplexes and I wanted to buy this 38-unit building, the phone call starts like this. Hey, this is Christian Osgood. I was calling about your 38-unit building down the street. Their first answer almost every time, well, I'm not selling it. Awesome. I'm not buying it. Couldn't if I wanted to, actually. I just spent my last dollar on a duplex. Recently became your property neighbor. Oh, that's interesting. Notice we have no momentum yet. Here's the next thing I say. Something relatable that's true about you. That is your story. Why are you actually calling them? For me, I'm trying to retire my wife. I bought two duplexes. I learned that is not going to retire her as fast as I want to. She just got injured. I am looking at the business that you've built. I drove past this building a few days ago and I keep thinking about it. I do not know how to get to the business that you have already built. How do you do it? Now, You may get a cold response to this, but usually you start to get them a little bit warmer. Okay, so I'm not calling to sell them anything. I'm not calling to buy the building. I have a pretty basic question. I have a reasonable reason to call them. They've done something that I have not done yet. They'll usually give you either some advice and start opening up here, or you have to ask one more question. Example, I'm trying to retire my wife. They'll respond with, that's great. I'm not sure how I can help you. I saved up for years and years and years. I bought a bunch of duplexes. I sold them. And eventually I got into larger multifamily. Okay, perfect. Respond positively to what they're saying. Perfect example. That's awesome. If I was trying to follow the same pathing, I'm only 2 duplexes in. Would you, if you can go back in time, continue to just buy duplexes like I am and scale up slowly? Or is there a way that you have found where I might be able to jump from where I'm at to where you're at in a faster timeline? I don't believe that small multifamily and single family is the path that I'm trying to do. Now, usually around this time, the response I'll get is, you know what, I did learn that later in my experience. And then they share a story with you. You know, I was buying the small properties. Once I learned to buy the bigger ones, I really did scale out of that pretty quick. You're learning this early. They'll give you some encouragement. But here's what you're waiting for. And this is any meeting you're booking. This is for a sales appointment. This is for an owner meeting. This is for selling ad space online. It's all the same. The calls start out cold because it is in fact a cold call. You're not calling to sell them anything. You're calling to get a warm response. By the time you get them to open up, there's now momentum. Now that they're talking, the mission is how fast can we get off the phone? Your odds of booking the meeting go astronomically up if you are the one to end the conversation while there is still momentum. You dive in, hey, that is absolutely perfect. I want to learn how to do this. I love the business that you built. This is something I'm trying to do. And honestly, you're the first person who's taken my call. Like, I appreciate this a ton. I'm an owner in your market, but I'm a really small fish in your very big pond. I am— and then give them something specific. Actually book the meeting on the call, and then you're done. Hey, I'm in town on Wednesday at 3. I'm not sure if you live anywhere near this property, but is it possible to get coffee when I'm in town next week? Now, often I actually do look up before the call, and I do know that they live in town. But either way, a soft close. Don't be a creep and say, okay, I looked up your home address. I know that you live down the street. Just say something normal. Hey, this is super helpful. You've done that. What I want to do— favor to ask— can we get coffee for 15 minutes? Now, when momentum's high, it is super awkward to tell you no. It is awkward to have a casual conversation with someone where you are now opening up, and the next thing they say is, hey, I appreciate this, are you able to meet? Now, here's what a lot of people do wrong. They keep going in the conversation, they add another relatable point, and now the conversation's gone on for 5 minutes. Now they've talked about what they want to talk about. They've got some applicable advice from the seller and they're like, okay, they gave me what I called for. Now when you ask for a meeting, they're like, I'm not sure that we have anything else to talk about. It's easier, natural to deflect or say, oh, shoot me a text. I'll check my calendar. Hit them when the momentum is high. That one trick, tell them a specific story that is true about you. I am trying to do X that you have already done. I have a very basic question about X, but it's an open-ended question. Once you can get them talking, now your mission is to get them to stop talking and continue the conversation over coffee. I did this in CoStar and got booking after booking after booking after booking. In my first half of the day on Monday, I'd book out my entire week, and the rest of my week was actually selling, or we could focus on the actual closing and negotiating piece. That is sales and marketing. You do not get those at-bats if you do not learn these skills. Specific point into a general topic. When there is momentum and they go from a cold call to someone who is actually engaged, you now switch from, hey, I'm trying to open up the call, to I'm trying to end the call as quickly as possible. If you end the call without booking the meeting, you lose. Now it is once again easy to say no or defer. So you get stuck in the endless cycle of, oh yeah, I'll shoot you a text. You text them, they don't text back. You text them again. Oh, let me check my schedule. You get stuck. If you can book the call on the meeting, hey, shoot me your email address. I will send you a calendar invite. It's now booked. It's on the calendar. They should end the call being like, wow, I liked that person. Also, did I just book a coffee meeting? I never do that. That's what that should feel like. Now in our next episode, we're going to talk about what that meeting actually looks like. So stay tuned for that. But we're going to talk about what it looks like when you actually meet with them. How do you go from, hey, we just met on a phone call to, hey, we're talking about doing deals, we're talking about buying real estate, transacting, and I'm learning actual applicable things to build this relationship and build my business. How do you get someone else to help you move you forward? We're going to go into that. But you do not get that at bat if you do not land the call. By the way, I do about 2 calls like this a day, maybe 10 calls a week. Acquisitions take me about 15 minutes of time on the phone every single week. These are short, quick calls. And I meet with 1 person for coffee every week. By the end of the year, I've met with 52 people. If you wonder why I might own more real estate than you, which is true of most people, if you're bigger than me, you can disregard this. You have your own styles, your systems and processes. You can do however you want to do this. If you have less rentals than me, this is how I'm doing this and this is why I'm as successful as I am. This takes me unbelievably little time. It is ridiculously effective. And I get a bunch of relationships who know where I'm at, where I'm going. They're bought into the story. We have a meaningful interaction. We have an actual real relationship. And they've taken a meeting with me that they're not taking with anyone else. This is how you play the game. This is a masterclass on sales communication in real estate, episode 1.
