Chapter 2
Prospect, Prospect, Prospect
I remember being at a Rutgers football camp my junior year of high school when Greg Schiano stood before us and said, “men, get comfortable being uncomfortable”. As I teenager my first thought was, what the hell is this guy saying. Then, I thought about it. Get comfortable being uncomfortable. Life isn’t always easy, you will deal with adversity, you will deal with tough times but we are 100% in control of how we handle these situations. Etch this phrase into your memory and you will be wildly successful in this prospecting game that we are about to discuss.
Be thankful when someone curses you off and hangs up the phone on you in five seconds. Be thankful when someone slams a door in your face when door knocking (full disclosure I’ve probably knocked on 10,000+ doors and I can count on one hand how many times someone has actually slammed a door in my face. People aren’t nearly as tough in person as they are on the phones).
Why am I saying this? Which would you prefer, a nice lady talks to you on the phone for 20 minutes and at the end of the call she tells you that she has no intention of ever selling and will only leave that house in a box to meet Jesus or a mean nasty lewd man curses you off in five seconds and says never call me again? Personally, I prefer the latter. Why? I have the ability through a power dialer to call up to 360 numbers an hour, therefore if someone is keeping me on for 20 minutes and we’ll never do business together that is a lot of lost opportunity time where I could’ve kept ripping through calls and dialed upwards of 100 people in those same 20 minutes. The guy who curses me off and hangs up after five seconds will be comical to me, it’ll make me have a good laugh and immediately my dialer will auto dial three more phone numbers. Emotionally, the nice old lady may make you feel better but efficiently the asshole cursing you off is so much better for you. Get comfortable being uncomfortable.
There are so many different ways to get in front of people prospecting. There is what I like to call proactive prospecting and reactive prospecting. Proactive prospecting is when you are actively reaching out to people and engaging them live whether it be over the phone or in person. Reactive prospecting is throwing ads out there and hoping people see them and reach out to you. We’ll talk about both however I am a much bigger fan of proactive marketing as it is way more effective and also less expensive. More effective, less expensive? Sign me up.
Proactive Prospecting:
1. Phones
2. Door knocking
Reactive Prospecting:
1. Handwritten Follow-ups
2. Online Advertising
3. Just Sold Mailers
Let’s start with prospecting over the phone and door knocking. Going back to chapter one it is essential that you first subscribe to a power dialer service like
Mojosells.com. Everything that I am about to discuss is under the assumption that you have a power dialer. There are five main targets when prospecting over the phone. Those are as follows:
1. Circle Prospecting: To put it bluntly, these are just straight up cold calls. Some call this, “farming”. You are essentially just mapping out neighborhoods through your power dialer and just calling every single house in those neighborhoods. The language, tonality, and verbiage you use on these calls is very important. You also must have a reason prepared for why you are calling. Are you calling because you actually have a client looking in that neighborhood or are you calling because you’ve noticed on your company’s website or even public real estate sites that there seems to be a lot of traffic and views on homes in that neighborhood indicating that there are droves of people trying to get into that area? Keep in mind, you do not want to always play the card of, “I have a highly qualified buyer who would like to buy your home”. If you do this you either
A. Better be telling the truth
B. Better hope if they agree to allow you to bring that buyer direct that your buyer will proceed and purchase
Do not put all your eggs in one basket. It is okay to let them know you have someone interested. It is also okay to be transparent and honest and let them know, you can’t guarantee that they’ll buy their home. This way if the buyer doesn’t offer, you don’t blow the chance of getting the listing. I am going to go through my script below to show you the very simple script to use.
Keep in mind that when using a power dialer, you will have the list in front of you of the three numbers currently being dialed. Let’s now role play a woman picking up who’s last name is Smith and lives on Main Street:
Mrs. Smith: Hello?
You: Hello, Mrs. Smith? (Tone inflection is key here)
Mrs. Smith: Yes, may I ask who is calling?
You: Hey Mrs. Smith! This is Kyle Kovats from XYZ realty, how are you? (The tone you’re going to want to use here is a tone as if you are talking to someone on the phone or in person who you just saw/talked to for the first time in five years and you’re excited to see/talk to them)
Option 1: Mrs. Smith: Hi, I am good. (If you were good with your tone inflection it’s one of those scenario’s where the person on the phone responds almost in a confused manner while thinking, “do I know this person”)
Option 2 Mrs. Smith: Hi, can I help you?/ Hi, who are you? (This is if your tone inflection either wasn’t great or they’re just not having it)
You: Hey, I was just wondering, by any chance are you interested in selling your home on Main Street? (this will be your response regardless of whether she goes option 1 or 2. Again, your tone inflection is HUGE here. Ask this in a really questioning and inquiring type of tonality)
Option 1: Mrs. Smith: Oh no, we’re not interested in moving at the moment, thanks for asking though.
Option 2: Mrs. Smith: Well why do you ask?
You: Well, the reason I ask is because we currently have a lot of buyers visiting our website looking for homes in town but as I’m sure you’ve seen, there’s just not a whole lot hitting the market so I just wanted to see if you’d have any interest in having qualified buyers brought your way.
Option 1: Mrs. Smith: Yeah, I’m sorry were just not interested but best of luck to you.
You: Option 1 Response: I appreciate it thanks Mrs. Smith. Just one more question. By any chance do you know of any neighbors that may be interested? And trust me I promise not to tell them you told me. (Say this is a very friendly almost laughing tone at the end. If you feel they are a cordial person maybe even sneak in a ‘any neighbors you’d really like to see move that you want me to call’)
Option 2: Mrs. Smith: Well that’s interesting. We have discussed selling but we’re just not sure we’re ready yet. We’re not really sure what we could even get for the house.
You: Option 2 Response: I totally understand. I’m pretty much right around the corner and would be happy to swing by for a quick walk-through to give you a free estimate of value. I could even come by later this week on Friday afternoon or even over the weekend on Saturday, which would work best for your schedule? And Mrs. Smith, I wouldn’t be coming over and shoving papers in your face or anything, merely just to meet and do a walk-through and if afterwards you feel the number sounds about right we can at a later time discuss perhaps working together. Fair? (try to end sentences with fair, no one ever responds with, “that’s not fair”)
2. Just Sold Script: This is arguably my favorite cold calling script. Why? It is the easiest one and the one that in my opinion generates the most quality leads and opens up the lines of communication. The point of the just sold script is to call homeowners within a reasonable radius of a home that just sold and let them simply know that a house just sold and share the information about it with them. The goal of this call is to hopefully find people who are intrigued by the story that you are laying out and get them to open up about being interested in potentially selling their home as well.
Here is the beauty of this script, the house you are calling them about doesn’t necessarily have to be one either you or even your firm sold. Sharing information about a home recently sold and the number it sold for is public information, making the opportunities endless to use this script. Ideally, you’d like to find homes that either sold in a very short period of time or for above asking price as these are the stories that pique homeowners interest the most and leave them wondering how much they can get for their home and if they should consider selling now.
Let’s role play through a script now. Let’s make the following assumptions. Mrs. Smith picks up the phone and she lives on Park Street and a house around the corner on Court Street was listed for $500,000 and just sold for $525,000 after only being on the market for six days.
Mrs. Smith: Hello?
You: Hello, Mrs. Smith? (Similar tone inflections...