When I first started cold calling I didn’t pay for anything. I was literally going on whitepages.com, which is a website you can use to look up homeowners phone numbers, it was the most manual thing and it took me forever because I had to get the addresses off the MLS and then look up the tax records to see what the person’s name was, and then go to Whitepages.com and see if that matched, and then started calling because they had a phone number.
It was a process, but that was all I had at the time. So that’s what I had to use, but I got my first listing from doing just that. It was a crazy listing experience. The real question is, what happens when you actually start getting leads from cold calling?
We have to follow up, and one thing that I’ve gotten really good at is following up. Follow up is the secret sauce to conversion. You can generate a million trillion leads, but if you don’t follow up with them, you won’t have anything. Learning to follow up will work out to your best benefit. I gave an example earlier about being comfortable and, talking to people that you’re comfortable with saying things that you’re comfortable, your follow up can be like that too.
It doesn’t have to be a very stuffy follow up, one little script that I use whenever I’m following up, whenever I’m talking to the past clients or just people, is the FORD script, F O R D. The F stands for family. The O stands for occupation. The R stands for recreation, and the D stands for dreams.
Those are the things that you talk to people about. That’s how you can follow up and make it comfortable. A way that I like to follow up in my business is through theme days. It makes it kind of easy. Theme days, are Monday through Friday where you are choosing a different type of call to make on those days.
Mondays will be for your, new leads. These are leads that came in over the weekend. Tuesday can be your current client day. You’re calling people who you’re currently doing deals with. Wednesday is your past client days. This is where you’re just checking in with past clients.
Thursdays are your referral partners day. This is where you call your lenders, your insurance agents, builders, etc. Lastly, there’s Friday. Friday can be your cold call day for new business.
Just to make it easy on you do this week after week after week, and put people on a schedule so you are reaching out to them at least once a month.
You can accomplish this with those theme days. An easy way to get started is to break up your contacts letter by letter. In the first week, you call all of the names that start with A, B, C, D, E, F, then the next week you called the next set of letters. That way you’re putting them through a rotation and you’re reaching out to them once a month.
Another way to follow up with people is through client appreciation events. This is something that I have once a quarter. Another thing you can do is get lenders and insurance agents to help pay for it. When you have client appreciation events it’s a way for you to stay in front of people, and it’s a fun way to follow up. People like to come out for a happy hour and have a good time.
Use these strategies when you are crafting your follow-up plan and watch your business and referrals grow.
