Cold calling feeds the lead pipeline
To maintain a decent level of stock, Estate Agents need to maintain a healthy pipeline of leads. One way to do this is cold calling. Agents engage in cold calling to accomplish a variety of purposes that have both short and long-term benefits. These include:
- Generating new leads.
- Starting a relationship that can be nurtured.
- Initiating meeting in person with potential clients.
- Plus it can be a great source of referrals.
Cold calling is both daunting and time consuming
No matter how important it is, cold calling is time-consuming when done well. Significant amounts of time are spent researching prospects, making calls, reaching prospects’ voicemails and then phoning again, and encountering uninterested prospects to weed out those people who become qualified leads.
The answer lies in taking on an experienced VA
Taking on a Virtual Assistant who has experience in cold calling, lead generation and lead nurturing will not only level up your lead generation activity and improve on the number of face-to-face meetings you have scheduled. Their upfront work will also have you fully apprised with valuable information before you meet each client and will free up your time to focus on relationship building, signing business and closing deals.
Here are four aspects of cold calling your Virtual Assistant can take off your plate:
- Research
In addition to using digital marketing and social media to generate leads, there are “non-digital” lead sources that can be valuable to activate. For example:
- Expired listings already in your database
- Owners in targeted areas
- Fellow members in business groups like Chamber of Commerce
- People who are attempting to sell their own home
VAs with cold calling experience have the knowledge to source leads widely and then research to qualify which are the most appropriate people to contact. Not cold calling indiscriminately will preserve and grow your agencies’ reputation.
- Cold Calling
Every sales win started with a quality conversation. Making a strong first impression when opening the cold call and knowing how to listen deeply and ask the right open-ended questions are all essential for a good result.
Your experienced cold calling VA can compile and tailor a cold calling script to optimise results. As ambassadors for your business, they are adept at how to best instigate a conversation, overcome objections and illustrate value.
- Lead Qualification
Segmenting leads once you have cold called them helps to categorise them by location, property type and other pertinent criteria. In addition, leads can be given a score based on their level of interest, interactions with your website and other digital content.
Research reveals that it takes between 5 to 8 interactions to generate a meeting. Doing a thorough job of sourcing and qualifying leads is helped by digital marketing and social media. So, when it comes to sourcing prospects to “cold call,” some potential clients are already aware of your estate agency. Cold calling is an excellent tool for Estate Agents to nurture these warm prospects into active and qualified leads.
An experienced VA will not stop at just qualifying and scoring leads. They can also pre-identify specific pain points and needs, upfront, that you can address through further contact or meeting with them.
- Appointment Setting
Turning a cold call into a face-to-face meeting is helped by three things: Engaging with questions – in other words fostering a two-way conversation; offering value so that the prospect understands what’s in it for them; and mastering the soft close where the cold caller proposes setting up a meeting to talk further.
An experienced VA not only has the skill to reach the point of setting up a meeting, they will also oversee the important follow up with an interested prospect – sending an email to confirm the date and time and then confirming the appointment on the day. Representing your agency in this way displays your professionalism and attention to detail.
While cold calling does entail withstanding the people who will shut you down, before finding the few who want to take things further, it not a hit and run game. It’s more like farming. It is the first step in forging a relationship that can then be nurtured over time. Taking on a skilled VA to manage and oversee the process from start to finish is a great way to quality control your agency’s first interaction with new prospects and to optimise the ratio of meetings you land because of their skill and undivided focus.