Learning how to get highly qualified residential and commercial real estate leads can feel like a huge win. You have a long list of contacts who have shown some interest in buying or selling property. Now, someone has to get on the phone and reach out to those contacts.
Not everyone enjoys cold-calling potential clients. You know what it feels like for a phone call to interrupt you while you’re having fun or relaxing at home. You don’t really want to put other people in that position. Still, cold calling gives you one of the fastest, most effective ways to start building relationships.
Eventually, you will become better at cold calling — just like you get better at other activities you practice. Until then, you can rely on a few tips that will improve cold calling scripts for residential and commercial agents.
Identify Who You Are and What You Want
Americans get billions of cold calls and robocalls per year. The number always seems to increase even as the government imposes new penalties on organizations that do not follow the rules. To make matters even worse, spammers use a technique called “spoofing” to hide their real phone numbers. With spoofing, an incoming call from anywhere in the world can look like it comes from a local office.
Consumers know that spammers target them, so you need to get ahead of the fear by identifying yourself and telling your lead why you’re calling. Be as straight to the point as possible. Something like, “Hello, is this Mr. Wilbur? I’m Jessica Laflac from B2B Real Estate calling to ask about the interest you showed recently in buying a new home” should work well. It acknowledges:
- Who you are.
- What company you work for.
- What you want to discuss.
Within just a couple of seconds, you can lower the other person’s hesitation.
Reinforce That They Contacted You First
This tip only works if you have a contact list of people who reached out to you first. It doesn’t have to be a conversation, of course. Any interaction with you will help establish your call as a legitimate inquiry. You’re not interrupting them. You’re helping them because they asked!
You can adjust this tip for contact lists that you get from third-party sources. For example, you could mention that you found their name on a list from ProspectNow and want to talk about how you can help them lower their housing costs. (This assumes that the owner has had financial trouble and needs a way to save money. Again, you’re offering help!)
Have the Information You Need on Hand
Any decent cold calling script includes blank spaces where you can fill in specifics that depend on your potential client. Go into each call with the information you need for that individual person.
Ideally, you have CRM (customer relationship management) software that can help with this. A great CRM will track things like:
- Whether the person has shown an interest in commercial or residential real estate.
- Whether the person wants to buy, sell, or invest.
- When someone from your agency last spoke with the caller.
- How you collected the person’s contact information (e.g., they visited your website, responded to an ad, took part in a survey, and so on).
- How much property in the person’s area typically costs.
Unfortunately, no CRM is psychic, so you might have to ask questions to get the information that you need to start forming a connection. For example, you might ask what motivated them to visit your website or what budget they think will work for them when choosing a new house.
You might not make a deal today, but you can collect information that makes your next attempt more successful.
Use Real Estate Prospects to Pique Interest
Once you know the basics of what the person wants, you can choose real estate prospects that might interest them. Depending on your level of knowledge, you can offer general or specific information.
For example, if you recently looked at a two-bedroom house for sale at $300,000, you could mention that as a good place to start exploring options.
If the person shows interest in investing, you might offer a general suggestion, such as “we’ve seen a lot of investors grow wealth by getting into mobile home parks recently. They’re inexpensive and in high demand.”
Again, you might not know what types of options will get the caller interested. Take notes so you can add them to your CRM and improve your strategy for next time.
Practice Confidence to Become More Confident
Renowned motivational speaker Tony Robbins has several tips for improving sales confidence. Not all of them apply to cold calling, but his advice can still help you sound more confident on the phone.
Mirror the Other Person’s Language
Robbins recommends mirroring the other person’s body language, but you can’t do that on the phone. Mirroring the ways people speak can give you similar benefits.
Pay close attention to how the caller talks. Let them set the bar for how formal or casual the conversation goes. You don’t want to come across as an overly uptight person. That can sound insincere to some. You also don’t want to sound overly friendly. Some people will interpret that as disrespectful behavior.
Identify and Change Your Feelings
The best cold callers usually sound relaxed on the phone. There’s a good chance that you will not feel relaxed when you start using cold calling scripts. You might feel apprehensive or nervous. That’s okay. Acknowledge how you feel. Once you name your emotional state, you can train yourself to feel more comfortable. It will take time, but you can learn to change your feelings with enough practice.
Use an Alter Ego
Does it seem impossible to identify and change your feelings? What if it weren’t you cold calling potential clients? What if you had a confident alter ego who excelled at calling people and starting conversations?
It’s not as wild as it sounds. Creating an alter ego makes it easier for you to get outside of your head when reading cold calling scripts. You gain a new perspective that helps you view situations objectively. From there, you can conform to evolving scenarios and take notes on how to improve your performance in the future.
Use ProspectNow to Find Accurate Contact Information
Finally, make sure that you have accurate contact information about people who might want to talk about residential or commercial real estate. Without accurate contact information, you will waste time and feel frustrated.
Start a free trial with ProspectNow to get correct contact lists for residential and commercial property owners. ProspectNow can even give you the names of real owners when companies use their corporate names to protect their assets. The database also uses an algorithm that identifies owners likely to sell their properties based on public information like bankruptcy filings, marriages, and liens.
Get your free trial so you can see the benefits of a cold calling list that puts you in control.