When you’re trying to make good money as an investor part of your success hinges on how well you communicate with the home seller. Communicating effectively with the home seller includes a lot of basics that most of you are already familiar with, such as building rapport. You need to get the home seller to want to sell their house to you instead of anyone else who is trying to buy it. This is why having good phone game is so important for real estate investors. Through a simple phone call that is laced with some good game, you can make yourself stand out from the competition while you educate the owners of distressed properties what their options are and what will happen if they don’t take any action.
Use phone game to overcomes objections
In our business, good game over the phone includes the ability to overcome objections. Through a phone call you can overcome objections that other marketing mediums such as direct mail can’t even begin to address. For example, a lot of owners of distressed properties believe that they aren’t able to sell the property because the bank owns it. They think that the property went into foreclosure so that they no longer own the property. When you have good phone game you are already prepared for such an objection and how to overcome it during your phone conversation.
Another common objection that you can overcome through a phone call is when the heirs of the property don’t know (or they don’t believe) that they have any interest in the property you are trying to buy. You need to be prepared to overcome these types of objections. Knowing what the common objections are over the phone and how to overcome them while you’re on the phone is imperative to having good phone game.
Use the phone to put skeptics at ease
It’s really important to know how to add credibility to yourself as a reliable home buyer who can get the job done. Phone callers with good phone game are prepared to demonstrate their credibility to any skeptics they may be talking to.. For example, while you’re on the phone with a skeptic you can direct them to your website or you can tell them you’re approved by the Better Business Bureau. The key is that you are prepared to nullify any skepticism you face during any phone call.
Good phone game isn’t just about what you do or say over the phone. It also involves what you don’t do or say over the phone. Below are some examples of bad phone game that you can integrate with rei skip tracing:
Don’t tell the homeowner you’re an investor
It’s poor phone game when you risk referring to yourself in a way that the home-seller finds offensive. It may not be a turn off to every homeowner, but we’ve had plenty of experiences of losing potential deals because one of our callers would tell the homeowners that we were investors. As soon as they heard that we were investors, they would say something like, “Oh, your investors? I don’t deal with investors”. Click….
We also usually don’t tell people that we’re cash buyers. Instead, we tell the homeowners that we buy houses in their area. By using the right terminology on the phone you will differentiate yourself from the shady people in the real estate business who lowball homeowners and aren’t able to close many of the properties they get under contract.
Don’t ignore the homeowners pain points
Part of your job as an investor is to solve the problems other people have. Distressed properties are often a problem to the people who own them, and it’s bad phone game when the investor fails to demonstrate over the phone that they are actually trying to help the homeowner by buying their property. You can convey that you’re trying to help by making the owner aware of the pain points associated with the property they own.
If you’re talking to a homeowner who lives in another state from the property you’re trying to buy and the property has tax issues, make the seller’s pain clear: Let them know that If they don’t do something with the property it will continue to accumulate taxes and become more and more of a financial burden.
If you’re talking to someone who owns a distressed property and they want retail (or close to retail) for the property, make it clear to them what their options are and how painful and expensive it will be for them to repair the property so that they can list it at retail value. Let them know how much time that whole process can take and that as time continues the distressed property will become more of a financial burden.
If it will cost the home-seller more money to repair a property and pay off any liens or taxes on it than it would for them to sell the property to you, then educate the home-seller of the pains that are associated with the distressed property they own. Educating the homeowner while you’re speaking with them over the phone is good phone game.
Don’t waste time calling the wrong leads
Some investors have great phone game in all areas but one: they spend too much time calling the wrong leads. You may have a list with thousands of leads on it that you want to skip trace so that your team can call the whole list, but some of the properties on your list are going to have more distress signals than others (not to mention more equity), so why not prioritize your list so that you can spend your time going after properties that are the most likely to become deals? If you’re spending a lot of time calling the properties where the numbers won’t work even if you did get the deal, then you are not best utilizing your time on the phone and this is poor phone game.
Don’t give up if you can’t reach the seller!
Perhaps the poorest of all phone game is when investors who do cold calls give up when they call the seller’s phone numbers and aren’t able to reach them for whatever reason. If there is a nice equity spread and the property has a lot of distress signals, we don’t hesitate to begin calling the owner’s relatives until someone gets us in touch with who is in control of the property if we can’t reach the owner. Our skip tracing experience has also showed us that the harder it is to reach the person the greater the likelihood there is of getting a deal, so giving up too soon is really bad phone game when an investor is trying to lock deals up over the phone.
Create good follow up systems
Acceptable phone game needs a good follow up system. Getting homeowners on the phone can put your business on steroids, but you need to create an efficient follow up system because you may need to make several attempts to reach a homeowner before you contact them. You also should consider sending text messages when no one returns your messages or when your calling phone numbers with a full mailbox. In a nutshell, if an investor just calls a homeowner once or twice and then gets discouraged and gives up on that lead because they weren’t able to reach them, they are demonstrating poor phone game.
Our experience is that skip tracing is a much better marketing medium than direct mail, but skip tracing also requires more strategy. In this article we have referred to this type of strategy as, “phone game”. We had to go through a lot of trial and error before we developed the best phone game, and we openly share what we have learned about the nuances that are involved with skip tracing during our weekly coaching calls. If you’re interested in mastering the art skip tracing and cold calling leads so that you can close the best deals and take control of your destiny, click here to view our plans and pricing.
