When Are Good And Bad Times To Call Back Leads?

When Are Good And Bad Times To Call Back Leads?

Joe: Hey, it’s Joe. I’ve got another question here. This one is from Carl Randall. Carl says, “Hi, Joe. I was wondering when the time of day or the days of the week, in general, is a good time to call back leads, and when is not a good time? Regards, Carl.”

Joe: The time to call back leads is now. Now. As soon as you get the lead, call it back. Because as soon as it comes in, that’s when it’s most likely to be, they’re be will — the most likely that they’ll be there to answer the phone. So try to call the leads back as soon as they come in. The longer the lead sits, the less likely it is they’ll remember why they called you back in the first place. So call them back immediately.

Joe: There’s not a particular time that I find. I used to try to figure this out, too. It’s like, okay, maybe if I call them, you know, not, you know, ten o’clock in the morning, that would be before they were, on their way to work, and before they got to lunch, and, or I call them in the evening after seven, after dinner, none of that matters. None of it matters. What matters is look at your schedule, when can you make the calls, and how soon, how close to the time that that lead came in can you make that call? Because that’s what’s most important, that you call them quickly and you get on the phone with them and you talk to them intelligently.

Joe: Now, you need to be in a place where you can be quiet and you can listen and you can pay attention to their answers because if you’re not paying attention to them, if you’re not trying to solve their problem, if you’re not trying to understand what they’re options are based on their circumstance, then you’re not going to be able to solve the problem for them. You’re not going to be able to help them and they’re not going to trust you to solve the problem for them. So, you have to be in a place to be able to listen and that’s what’s more important than picking this perfect time to do it.

Joe: You know, we’ve, back when I was a realtor, many years ago, we would call for sale by owners, realtors, it’s a great lead for realtors to, because 85% to 95% of for sale by owners don’t succeed. They don’t sell their properties themselves. They either take the property off the market, or they list it with a real estate agent. We’re giving them another option with the for rent method that says, hey, we can do it this way and it won’t cost you a dime, you know, as far as the realtor goes. So we’re giving them a better option, I believe, than a realtor would be, and certainly makes them more money and can be a more successful way to do this.

Joe: But we used to call for sale by owners right after they did their Sunday open houses and a lot fewer people are doing open houses, but there used to be a list in the newspaper that would have the list of open houses and, you know, usually they were over by five in the afternoon, so you call them at six and you’d talk to really despondent for sale by owners because they spent all day, you know, trying to clean up their house and baking cookies and, you know, trying to make it look nice, and people would come in, and they got three people that came in and nobody wanted to buy it and they don’t understand why. And it’s just because they don’t understand the dynamic of the market and how they sell.

Joe: Because if you want to sell your home and you want to get cash, you want to put it on the MLS. When I sell a property for cash, we just closed a property the other day that I sold on the MLS, it’s a property that we bought and, you know, we bought it through a foreclosure situation and we fixed it up and we turned around and sold it and made a profit off it, and we sold it through the MLS. I’ve got a license so it’s a little cheaper for me to do it, but I still have to pay a coop fee to get to get it sold. And, so, we still made a profit, but you sell it quicker because the people that have cash or can get a loan to buy the property are all working with realtors, you know, so they, they’ll go and work with a realtor because a realtor’s free for the buyer. It costs money for the seller.

Joe: And all the sellers that are going to sell are going to be in the MLS. And you don’t have to, if you’re a buyer, you don’t have to deal with that seller at all. You just deal with your agent and they do the negotiation back and forth with the other agent and they do things right. Most of the lawsuits that have to do with real estate are between for sale by owners, not between agents. You know, you think, oh, agents, they’re not going to take advantage of me. They’re not. They’re going to follow the code of ethics most of the time and they’re going to do a good job for you, or they’re going to do the best job they can. Try to get somebody who’s experienced.

Joe: But what the biggest problems, the biggest lawsuits happen when you have a buyer and a seller who are dealing with each other in a for sale by owner situation and neither of them have a license and that’s when lawsuits start to happen. So try to stay away from that situation. So I kind of got off on a tangent there, but, call people when the leads come in. That’s what your, what’s most important in this process. Just get on the phone with them as soon as you can.

Joe: All right. Hope that helps.