Last week was a long week and unfortunately I didn’t get much real estate related stuff accomplished. Memorial day weekend ended with my wife getting some severe side pain and going to the emergency room. She could not get into a comfortable position. Luckily they took her in quickly and after trying two separate pain killers, they gave her morphine which finally took the edge off her pain. 2 hours later they found she had kidney stones. Needless to say they admitted her and she spent the next two nights on heavy doses of pain killers. On Wednesday the stone finally moved into the bladder and her pain went away so they sent her home to pass the stone which she promptly did 5 seconds after we walked into house. Crazy right!? She is doing good now, but has to get some other kidney stones broken up in a couple of weeks.
So for the remainder of the week I spent it with my wife just spending time with her and got nothing else accomplished. Not a big deal cause the wife comes first and I never want to see her in that kind of pain again. I about swore off getting her pregnant anytime soon.
Call Responses
The mailing I sent out 3 weeks ago from my Feb-March list started producing some calls. Here are the stats…
- 86 Letters Sent
- 7 total responses
- 6 Call Backs
- 1 Repeat Call
- 1 “Get A Real Job” letter response
- 2 People telling me to take them off the list
- 2 People interested in selling
- 1 Person told me to just call them back and nothing else.
I was quite happy with the response rate of about 8%. I am getting frustrated though because I’m having a terrible time keeping track of people who called, their phone numbers and trying to find them amongst all my spread sheets. This pretty much proves to me how much I need my LeadTracking program. I’m really looking forward to uploading all my spread sheets and then easily searching for a lead by name, number, address or one of many other searchable data. Even though that will only be one feature of many it will be worth the time it took to develop it.
After all the responses, I’ve got to get in contact with the 2 people who are “interested” and see what they are all about. I will say the month I didn’t send mailers and that momentum I lost has set me back in my confidence in talking with the callers again. What the Hell!! But I’ll get over it and get back up to speed.
Lead Tracker
Things are going well with the program even though I was slowed down last week and didn’t get much chance to work on it. I’ve added Contact Information section where you can keep track of phone numbers and email addresses…
The other part I’m still working on but just about done is the section where you would keep track of the lead’s property information. My goal here was quick entry and flexibility to later add or delete fields very easily. For right now it’s only going to keep track of one property per lead, but I’ve designed it so that after the initial testing phase I’ll be able to add the ability to store multiple properties. I just want to keep it as simple as possible for right now.
The features I’m going to be working on this week are…
- Exporting the Lists into an excel file
- Printing off a Lead Sheet
- Quick Search
- Flags to mark off leads for various things such as if they Responded and Asked to be taken off the list
On or about June 18th, 2010 I’m going to ask 10 people to test out installing the app on their computers so I can iron out the process as best I can. Once that happens I’ll release the first beta version and setup a forum so we can discuss errors, improvements, new features and future releases.
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Comments 10
Scotty, I'm sorry to hear about your wife but so glad to hear that she's better! I laughed out loud at your pregnancy comment.
I've been doing my tracking in an old fashioned massive binder with tabs to categorize the status of the leads ranging from HOT to dead leads. I only throw away the dead leads of the person was a real jerk. If there's any chance I think they may change their mind in the future, I still hold onto it in the binder.
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The software is looking pretty good man.
Fascinating the woman who worked at IBM for years and years writes leads in a binder? Was your big chief tablet to dusty lol
lol Scott you're so cute with the pregnancy comment!
I feel your wife's pain. I had kidney stones and had to go the E.R. at 3am (of course, I thought it was gas lol the doctor had to tell me what it was.) They loaded me up with percocet, gave me a strainer, told me to drink lots of liquid and sent me home after a bit. I passed it shortly after getting home.
They told me I have more stones but as long as I stop drinking tea, soda, stuff like that and drink lots of liquids they should stay where they are and not move down where they will cause me issues.
You're wife should be good to go now that she passed it. Perhaps give her a lil time THAN think about the pregnancy thing lol
The lead tracking is looking pretty good. When I was a full-time agent I kept all of my leads in a binder like Shae mentioned. It actually was pretty easy. Now, as an investor tho, I use excel. That's kinda easy too. Of course it uses less paper tho. 🙂
I need to be more organized with my probate list. When it comes to making updates on callback, i'm pretty lazy. Maybe your lead tracker will help me with this. For now, I use excel and a whole bunch of papers to scribble on. Glad you wife is feeling better.
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Wow, that's a pretty good response rate Scott – 8% definitely beats the average direct mail response rate of 1%. Sounds like you're doing the right things!
I have to hand it to you, you seem pretty organized using the lead tracking program and all. When I first started, I tried to do things electronically as well using excel spreadsheets. Though, it just didn't work out for me – I'm really a paper and pen/pencil kind of gal.
Even now, I still write everything down – I go through notebooks like crazy, I have both a buyer and a seller notebook. It just works for me. I guess I've learned that everyone does things differently, the key is finding a system that works for you.
I'd definitely be interested in hearing about your progress using your lead generation system, thanks for sharing – the visuals are great!
p.s. Shae, you're soooo much more organized than me – the binder with the tabs sounds pretty neat! 🙂
I usually use random scraps of paper to scribble on or a note book, but in either case I have a hard time finding what I wrote down when I'm looking for it.
the 8% has been my best response on a mailer to date. Nothing has come of it yet, but we will see.
I'll definitely keep everyone updated on how my lead tracker software is working, I'm very close to having it up and running for myself.