Calls Calls Calls!!!

Scott Costello All, Blog, Probate Investing 14 Comments

I figured out the secret to getting your phone to ring off the hook from sending out mailers.  This is something none of the pros will ever mention, heck, I bet they don’t even know about it!  Do you want to know?  Well I’m gonna tell you.  Have foot surgery!   From Sunday evening to Tuesday afternoon I”ve had 6 calls from my mailers, yes 6 calls.  That might not excite some of you who are sending out 1000s of mailers, but from my paltry 180 pieces of mail (90 followup postcards and 90 new letters) I’m pretty ecstatic.

Ok ok, 3 of those calls were from the same person so I only got 4 distinct callers but das’ good.  I spoke with 2 of them so far, the 4th guy didn’t leave a message but I do have his number (how do I go about calling this guy and breaking the ice?).

Caller #1

He had two lots of land in Parsippany that he inherited.  From the start he didn’t sound to motivated.  He said he is not in any hurry to sell them, but got my letter in the mail and wanted to give me a call to see if I was a builder.  I told him I knew some builders and that I purchase properties  to sell to builders.  Mr Caller said he worked for the town and new how much the land was worth and if I offered him 250k he would chase me down the street with a metal poll swinging.  hahaha.  He said it jokingly, but something told me he wasn’t motivated.  As he was hanging up he said, “I’m sure I’ll be talking to you again.”  Not sure what he meant by that but I’ll be waiting for his call.

Caller #2, #4 and #6

He called while I was in the doctors office, for my post operation checkup, today.   For those that have never used google voice before, it transcribes voice mail messages and then sends you a text with the message.  These things are kinda funny.  Here are a couple of them from this guy…

Because tell my name is Dave, my wife never Barker received a letter from you in reference to some property up in New Jersey you could please call me at (843) ###-####. I would appreciate it. Thank you.

and his call back

Yeah, this is a test. This is Dave Parker get. If you could please call me at (843) ###-####. I’d like to discuss the but he said it’s on the House 65 Rosebowl. Thank you.

I’m going to work on getting the actual audio from these messages posted so you all can hear what a seller sounds like.  Anyhow, back to this caller.  Mr Coller #2 was pretty straight forward and I lost some control of the conversation and it ended before I could get all the information that I wanted.  I was able to find out that he lives in South Carolina and is definitely looking to sell the house fairly quickly.  He said he could close in as little as a week.  There is a sewer easement of 6900 that he will pay off and they will be up at the end of February to clean out the house. Another tidbit of information he threw out there was he had just recently had an offer of 195k (with a realtor) fall through because the agent wanted his 3% commission from the seller. Sounded weird, but i’m going to go comp this one out and see if 195k is a good price.

Caller #3

This fella left a message that he is indeed selling the house and if I wanted to take a look to give him a call back.  I took a quick look at the house on google maps and it actually appears to be a condo.  I’m not that interested in condo’s right now as they aren’t selling to well in this market.  I will however follow through and go through the paces with this guy just to get some practice.  He is on my list of people to call tomorrow.

Caller #4

There was no message left.  Now that I’m thinking about it I may have accidentally hung up on him.  Google Voice has this feature that if a caller is not in your phone book it will ask the caller to repeat their name and then Google voice will ring me and ask if I want to accept the call from “Dave Person”.  I remember picking up the phone earlier today and heard some garbled speaking and then what sounded like my voice mail message so I hung up.   I’m going to have to see if I can turn that feature off because it’s kinda annoying.

So how would you guys going about calling this person back?

Probate Leads

I have to admit that so far probates have turned up more action then foreclosures ever did in my area.  I can safely say this after just two mailings.  If you are having trouble getting people to call you I’d consider giving probates a try.  It might take a little more work to get the list, but it will pay off in more calls.

My Foot Surgery Update

Before I sign off, I wanted to give you all an update on how my surgery went.  I’m happy to say that it went well, the doc was happy with how it turned out, but said it was a bit more challenging then he had thought it would be.  Scare tissue from my surgery 15 years ago complicated things a bit.  It was an outpatient surgery so I’ve been home since last night, but I have to keep my foot elevated as much as possible.  This sounds easy, but let me tell you your leg gets tired and my foot keeps falling asleep on me.  If you want to see something funny, watch me try to wake my foot back up while trying not to touch it.  Normally I’d just bang my foot against the ground until it woke up, can’t do that here!

There are now 2 pins sticking out of my 2nd and 3rd toes, I try hard not to look at them cause it grosses me out but for anyone who wants to see take a look at this picture.

Picture of pins in my toe

Scott Costello
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Comments 14

  1. Glad to hear all is well with the foot.

    Wish I had the resources to get that many leads. At $5 per lead its rather difficult. I'm hoping postcards will get the phone ringing. LOL I called myself yesterday on google voice. “just to check the line”

    Good luck. Hope you get one.

    Reply

  2. Thanks Jason. The foot is going to keep me from visiting properties for about a month, but on the bright side it'll force me to get better on the phone.

    LOL, I've called my google voice line a few times myself. No shame in that

    Reply

  3. Ew, how bout im NOT clicking that link, but im glad your surgery went well and i hope you recover quickly. 🙂 You give me hope on the response from your mailings, that sounds hot! I did a test bandit sign run (just once) and got one motivated seller call and i was STOKED, so if I get more than one call from my mailings, ima think im bad or somethin (shut yo mouth lol).

    Reply

  4. hahaha, there isn't actually a picture at the other end of the link. It's a message telling people they are sick for wanting to look at the picture.

    So far so good with my mailings. The more calls I get the better chance one will turn into a deal. Try slightly modifying your mailings and see if that makes a difference. Sometimes one sentence or even a word change can make all the difference. Maybe even use different type of envelop or paper. Keep testing new things.

    Reply

  5. Hey there. I'm using google voice for my marketing tracking… Yes you can turn off that feature you mentioned. Just got the settings section, then click on “Calls”. You can turn off the call screening.

    Another tip is to have the google voice number show up on your cell phone's caller ID instead of the callers number. That way you know which type of marketing is calling you, and you are aware if it is appropriate at that time to answer the call.

    Reply

  8. I'm very excited about the potential here. It's also interesting to note that none of the callers have said anything of other investors sending them mail either. I like being the lone wolf in the room.

    Reply

  9. Hey Scott just call him back like you would any “strange” number honestly though he is probably sure that you were expecting his call and will call him back right away!

    Reply

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