According to Investopedia, cold calling: Is a sales practice in which individuals are contacted who have not previously expressed interest in a p...
According to Investopedia, cold calling:
A 2020 LinkedIn report helps put some interesting context around the “failure” rate of cold calling. The report said:
What? Those numbers suggest that cold calling works! Well, only if you dig a little deeper. The study found that, on average, a sales person had to make 18 calls to connect with a buyer. But the problem is, the VAST majority of sellers give up after only 4 calls, never getting a sale.These stats validate something we’ve said repeatedly in this blog: if you want to have success with real estate cold calling, you need to be persistent, dedicated, dogged, determined, focused, or any combination of these qualities.In today’s post, we’re going to look at cold calling real estate. Specifically, we’ll look at the psychological and emotional barriers to making a real estate cold call. We’ll discuss how advanced real estate lead generation software (i.e. Espresso Agent) is helping agents overcome these barriers on the way to incredible financial success. Finally, we’ll review tips that can help you be a real estate cold calling superstar.
Sellers grapple with call reluctance for any number of reasons. Let’s look at some of the biggest reasons:
If you’re wondering what behaviors manifest as call reluctance, consider:
Before we get into specific strategies for mastering cold calling real estate, let’s look at three psychological tips that can help get your head in the cold calling frame of mind:
Technically, the answer to the above question is: a real estate cold call is no different than making a cold call in any other sales position.UNLESS…Your real estate prospecting approach is built around the use of advanced real estate lead generation software and CRM technology like Espresso Agent?As we mentioned in the previous section, the number one reason sellers dislike cold calling is their fear of speaking to a stranger. But what if you could call someone knowing their situation, knowing their potential “pain point.” While that prospect would still be a “stranger,” Espresso Agent gives you the kind of accurate information that helps you empathize with the prospect, automatically moving your cold call to a “warm call.”If you want to know how to cold call real estate, how to move a call from cold to warm, how to connect with homeowners who are ready to sell, you’ll want to focus your efforts on cold calling homeowners with an expired listing or who are For Sale by Owner. Let’s look at each of these cold/warm calling categories.
Most top-earning real estate agents stick to a straightforward strategy for success: prospecting expired real estate listings. These leading agents understand three simple truths about homeowners with an expired MLS listing:
Here are a few noteworthy stats about expired listing homeowners:
Here are a few tips for prospecting expireds:
As with expireds, FSBOs represent a tremendous opportunity for success when cold calling real estate. That’s because, in the majority of cases, FSBO leads have an immediate need to sell. But because 90% of FSBOs are going it alone to avoid paying a real estate commission, you need to have a more patient and nuanced approach to prospecting these independent-minded homeowners.Here are a few noteworthy facts about FSBOs:To that end, here are a few tips for working with FSBOs:
Expireds and FSBOs represent the lowest hanging fruit when it comes to real estate cold calling. But as an Espresso Agent client, you’ll also have access to other lead sources that will help you expand your pool of potential listings, including:
to focus on real estate investors.
homeowners who may want to sell quickly to avoid foreclosure when they are behind on payments.
The Espresso CRM allows you to organize and maximize outreach to your SOI.
As we’ve suggested above, making a real estate cold call is not for the faint of heart. Having a lead generation platform like Espresso Agent goes a long way toward helping you engage homeowners based on your understanding of their needs/situation. Calling expireds or FSBOs, for example, becomes more of a warm call than a cold call.But even with the best technology, you still have to know what to say, and how to say it. That’s where cold calling scripts real estate come into play. Mastering a cold calling script for real estate helps you to control the flow of the conversation. Also, script mastery helps you to sound natural and confident, which goes a long way toward building trust with your prospect.Espresso Agent provides access to a broad menu of cold call scripts real estate to guide your phone prospecting outreach with expireds, FSBOs and other prospect target groups.Let’s take a look at two script examples from Espresso Agent partners:
Courtesy of Tom Terry, here is the kind of script you might want to use when working with expired listing homeowners:
As you can see, by controlling the flow of the conversation with open-ended questions, the agent is able build initial rapport with the prospect, and gain insights as to the homeowner’s goals and dreams.
Here is a FSBO script used by our friends at Keller Williams:
What’s great about this approach is that the agent is providing value, a service that might be attractive to the FSBO. And it provides a strong call-to-action, which is for the agent to deliver the guest log in person. As we’ve said countless times in our blog, getting in the door for face-to-face time is critical if an agent wants to build rapport and trust.
OK, if you become an Espresso Agent client, you’ll have all of your tools in place:
That leaves the final step in your journey to cold calling mastery: practice!The top-producing real estate agents in the country are dogged about daily practice to keen their prospecting skills sharp. Most use one or both of the practice strategies below:
Here’s the bottom line: the best path to earning a lot of money in real estate is to be a listing agent. And, if we’re being honest, the only way to be successful as a listing agent is to phone prospect, without fail, every day. COLD CALLING REAL ESTATE!However, if you follow the plan above, you can transform cold calls to warm calls, and learn how to build rapport with your prospects. By building rapport, you also create trust, which goes a long way toward turning the person on the other end of the phone from a complete stranger to someone who is excited to have you list their home.Now get out there and start dominating your market inventory!
Doug Spak joined Espresso Agent as a Content Marketing Specialist in 2016. Doug brings nearly four decades of experience as a copywriter, blogger, and screenwriter to his role with Espresso. Since joining our team, Doug has actively updated website content, published more than 300 blogs, and created countless social media posts.
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