Uncomplicating the Call

No matter how good you are, how likeable you are, or what your marketing says...if you aren’t reaching out to enough people, there won’t be enough in the pipeline.

Complicating phone calls destroys promising careers in real estate.

A simple phone call to update local property owners on market movement has become a complicated mesh of training and scripting. Phone calls that don’t end in appointments are seen as failures instead of the opportunity for future business and all that pressure piles up and turns into pain. Pain that we would naturally want to avoid, but at our own peril.

Prospecting is oxygen for agents. No matter how good your area knowledge is, how likeable you are as a person, or what your marketing says about you...if you aren’t reaching out to enough people, there won’t be enough in the pipeline to sustain a successful career in real estate.

So given that it IS humanly possible to “just pick up the phone”, why is prospecting the one activity that cuts down the potential of so many would-be real estate stars?

Here are the top 5 reasons that agents don’t pick up the phone PLUS what you (and RiTA) can do to uncomplicate those calls.

REASON NUMBER 1

You don’t know where to start. Every real estate agent starts the day with the same fundamental business problem...of everyone who I could contact, who SHOULD I contact today?

You sit there and you stare at the CRM wondering where the answers are. You gaze at a list of overdue ‘follow up’ tasks searching for inspiration about what you could possibly follow up with and then maybe you just start clicking through different screens, hoping to find the right ‘list’. 

SOLUTION: CRMs are powerful warehouses for storing and organising data. Agents have been really good at collecting data but in terms of prioritising or optimising that data - it can be challenging for agents, unless they also happen to have degrees in computer science. 

RiTA has been trained by agents AND lots of computer scientists to use her artificial intelligence to solve this problem. She uses data from multiple sources to deliver powerful lists to agents each day about who they should call - especially the people you might not think to call. She even finds things for you to talk about so you’ll never be lost for words.

Brendan Coburn of The Agency says, “During the COVID times, it's been fascinating, the people that have rung that I wouldn't normally have rung, but RiTA popped them up. They're not even living in their house.”

“I've got three or four people that are, during the COVID lockdown, that have moved to the coast and thinking of not coming back. And I wouldn't have rung them only it was RiTA put them up on the list.”

REASON NUMBER 2

You don’t have the time. It is true that everyone has the same 24 hours in the day as Beyonce, but I’m guessing Queen B has a team to help her out with productivity. Minutes are money and so productivity is a game changing advantage for real estate agents. 

There is no getting ‘out’ of prospecting. It is very hard to make money in real estate if you aren’t talking to people. The trick is to make sure you are talking to the best people and finding ways to leverage your capacity so you are doing the most valuable work and the rest is being taken care of.

SOLUTION: Squeezing more time out of the day is a big mission and so it requires a varied approach. RiTA’s list creation helps because she is automatically putting the best contacts in front of you, the agent, to connect with each day.

Buyer enquiry is normally one of the first things to drop off with the time crunch, and realestate.com.au estimates that up to 48% of buyer enquiry simply goes unanswered by agents. RiTA can act as a first responder for all buyer enquiries, automagically responding and taking steps to qualify the people you should reach out to personally.

Finally, don’t be scared to ask for help. There will be a large segment of your database which could be mined for appraisals - but maybe it is not the best use of your time as an agent. There are lots of clients who use our AiRE sourcing Service to call their data, combining RiTA’s superpowers and local human telemarketers to find qualified leads hiding in their data. 

REASON NUMBER 3

You don’t have enough data.

Data is capitalistic in nature, meaning that within an office there will be a mix of haves and have-nots when it comes to accessing opportunity from the data. In a ‘closed’ database model, there is normally a segment of data that is not under personal management of an agent - this is called the ‘orphanage’ or office data. 

Without changing ownership RiTA can mine this pot of data and assign it to agents who have no data, or to agents who need a ‘top up’.

SOLUTION: Most business owners are surprised to find that around 80% of agents don’t have access to enough property owner data to make 10 phone calls a day. RiTA’s powerful analytics help to visualise the distribution of data which enables informed decisions about how to best match agents and contacts. She can even help suggest the most appropriate agent for each contact in your ‘orphanage’.

REASON NUMBER 4

You associate with other agents who don’t prospect. We tend to take on the behaviour of people around us who we think are ‘like us’.

When you have at least one agent in the office who says, “All my business is referral these days, I don’t do any prospecting,” it is hard to convince other agents to monkey see, but not monkey do. 

For many established agents, who have lots of data and a long service history with a lot of local property owners, prospecting looks a lot more like “having friends in the area” - it is where good relationship focussed prospecting should aim to finish. But it is not where you start! So unless you are satisfied with the volume of listings that are organic and inbound - there is probably more work to do in terms of calling out.

SOLUTION: There is a big lift in results from personal fitness programs when you take on an accountability aspect. Just like exercising in a boot camp will generally yield better results, prospecting with some kind of social dimension will reinforce the benefits and the behaviour. 

With RiTA, you can join group call sessions with your teammates, armed with your Ai powered call lists. During the session, RiTA will keep you updated with a leaderboard so you can see how you are tracking against one another. Unleash your competitive side and unlock opportunities in your data.

REASON NUMBER 5

You don’t know what to say.

Maybe, just maybe...you are overcomplicating the phone call by trying to be:
A. too clever;

1. too much of a ‘closer’; or
2. too focused on promotion rather than information.

I’ve seen agents spend days and thousands of dollars trying to find ‘the right script’ - only to discover that scripts make them feel awkward and sound like robots.

A much better idea is to focus on the information that your customer will find relevant - things like recent sales and listings of properties that are similar and nearby their own homes. 

SOLUTION: Much better than a clever ‘script’ is simply having something interesting to say. RiTA finds market events such as new listings and recently sold properties by looking at both your listings and your competitor listings in your core market. She will give you links to what she has seen so if you are not familiar with the property you can quickly see the relevant information and have it handy to send to clients.

Uncomplicating the call starts here. You can meet RiTA at https://www.getaire.com.au/meet-rita