Raise Your Income with Cold Calling - Real Estate and Technology News for Agents, Broker

Raise Your Income with Cold Calling

Raise Your Income "There's Gold in Calling Cold" writes Bernice Ross, Real Estate Coach and author. "Only a small number of agents earn $250,000 per year. A common path to success that has worked for years is cold calling."

How much do you earn per hour? Let's say you made $100,000 last year. You worked 40 hours a week and 50 weeks during the year.... That calculates out to $50 an hour. Not bad.

What can you do to raise that hourly wage? "Would you be willing to repeat the same monotonous task for 15 hours per week in order to earn (more)?" asks Ross. "What if the task was a simple as picking up the phone and repeating the same script over and over?"

The question is, does cold calling still work in today's web-based world? A new study from Baylor University researched this issue using real estate agents across the country:

"134 agents from 10 different geographic areas were divided into two groups. Each group was asked to set aside a different hour each day, for seven days to make cold calls. They used the same script and were asked to record the results of their calls in an online form so that the data could be collected in real time. For this study, cold calling was defined as dialing random numbers, from a certain farm area not previously marketed to by the agent. The result was 14 hours of lead generation over 14 days."

The results were that 28 percent of the calls connected with a live person and of those, 14 percent were not interested but 2 percent asked the agent to call back. (71 percent of the calls either were non-working phone numbers or no one was home.)

All in all, the agents set up 19 appointments and received 11 referrals. To sum it up, "for every 60 people the agent actually reached, the agent would either receive a referral or schedule an appointment." says Ross.

No one said it was easy.... Ross figures that if an agent can make 50 calls per hour, one appointment will take 6 hours of cold calling. For every 2 appointments, you usually get 1 listing. "That means for every 12 hours of calls, an agent can expect to achieve 1 listing; and if an agent's commission averages $4,641 that equates to a return of $386.75 per hour."

So, how did the agents in the survey feel when they were done? Fatigue set in. "By the time the agents had spent 11 hours cold calling, all 134 had quit calling." says Ross. "Yet the data showed that it takes 12 hours of cold calling to generate a closed deal. In other words, the agents quit one hour short of reaching the 12-hour goal."

How can you utilize this in your Business? One point to come from the survey is, the best time of day to call. "If you are cold calling, the data suggests that you will achieve the best results if you call between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m." writes Ross. "The least effective time to call is after 5:00 p.m."

"Readjust Your Mindset." says Ross. Most consumers dislike cold calls but this survey proves that 12 hours of cold calling gets results. The Baylor study concludes with this important point: "Spending 3 hours a day, cold calling, Monday through Friday can potentially yield $290,063 in total commissions in a year."

Adding good old-fashioned cold calling to your lead generation goals could be just the boost your business needs this year.

Not everyone will see this article and think, "Oh! I'm starting this tomorrow!" But, says Ross, "For those who have the persistence and the discipline to make those calls, the win for their business can be substantial."

Posted on May 17, 2012 12:28:34 by Blog Author