Saying Greg Harrelson is a proponent of calling your leads more often would be the understatement of the century. We've written multiple articles breaking down his reasoning behind this tried-and-tested practice, and why it continues to be extremely relevant today (perhaps even more so).
Still, agents continue to be hesitant about calling their leads.
In this post, we want to explore why, and assess each of these reasons head on, so you can get out of your own head if you also experience caller anxiety.
If Greg's tough love approach allows you to start leveraging the opportunities you're otherwise missing, we'll be doing something right.
Spoiler alert though: he believes your reasons for not calling are wrong.
For those of you who don't know, Greg has multiple brokerages throughout North and South Carolina. So he's got around 300 agents working on the Real Geeks system, where he can monitor their interactions with over 400,000 leads.
Two things Greg's noticed through the years that have shaped his mindset around this topic:
With this in mind, let's explore some of the main reasons why agents don't call their leads (and address why they're ultimately wrong, as evidenced by the numbers).
By the way, Greg generates around 4,000 leads every single month within these companies. If you'd like to learn more about how he does this with the Real Geeks system, join his private coaching community, RGMastery.com for less than $200/month.
Now, this one is not a good or bad answer per se, it's just the reality of our industry.
"Calling your leads every day, calling them more frequently, and sticking with them longer is not something [agents] consider important," he explains.
And he goes on to say that agents should ask themselves where calling leads every day falls into their list of priorities.
Because if your priorities are organized by the impact they'll have on your business, according to Greg (who does over 1,000 transactions a year), it should be number one.
Calling your leads every morning before you do anything else should be a habit that's as ingrained in your life as brushing your teeth. Because it is the biggest differentiator between you and your competitors, and it is the single activity that will most impact your conversions.
While this reason ties into the previous one, they're slightly different.
And this difference is perhaps best illustrated in the conversations Greg has with the agents he coaches.
He'll ask them "When in your schedule do you generate through calls?", and the agent will respond with something like: "Well, it's not necessarily in my schedule, but I do it every day."
To which Greg will ask: "Okay, at what time did you do it yesterday?", and this is where the other shoe drops.
"Well, I didn't get to it yesterday…"
"Alright, I didn't mean every single day, but I do call them most weeks…"
"I was busy yesterday, but I'll probably make time for it tomorrow…"
Bingo. So, while these agents know that calling is important, and perhaps it is a priority for them, they're not actually treating it as such by having a designated time to do it every day.
"One of my coaches told me years ago: if it's not in your schedule, it does not exist," adds Greg, driving the point home.
He suggests you add calling your leads to your schedule, and early in the day. Ideally from 8:30am to 11am. You should allocate two to three hours a day when you do nothing but call your database.
Now, in the event that you don't have a huge database, consider using this time to generate new leads. We have several resources on different strategies for lead generation, but it might be a good idea to brush up on your conversational skills by cold calling.
If you're able to let go of the fear of cold calling, then you'll definitely be able to let go of the fear of calling your own database. Worst-case scenario, you don't get many new leads, but you become a better salesperson and let go of that caller anxiety, which will benefit you in the long run.
Everyone's leads are someone's old leads.
"There's no such thing as a 'new lead'," he says.
All the leads coming into your CRM have most likely been ignored by another agent who didn't call them because they were just "old leads" who didn't show interest right away.
Think about the few lucky times when you've gotten a lead who was ready to buy as soon as they came into your CRM.
That wasn't actually luck. That was a lead who had been searching through other agent's sites, but because they weren't ready for a transaction, they were ignored and classified as an "old" or "cold" lead. And because they weren't getting any attention anymore, they continued looking on their own, until they found your site and decided they were ready.
Then, you called them when they arrived into your CRM and felt lucky that they were ready to go. But that's not how they started their search.
And the same process is occurring right now within your own database. Leads you're ignoring because they're "old" or "not hot" are continuing their journey on other agents' sites, and they'll eventually be ready and someone else will be the lucky agent.
Don't let this happen. Continue paying your "old leads" attention, or they'll eventually be "new" and "hot" for someone else.
Real estate is a numbers game. If you continue calling your database and paying attention to everyone, you'll continue to find people who are ready to buy, even if they weren't months before. It's your job to guide them through that process.
"I actually think some agents don't call their 'old leads' because when they do, they're going to see how many leads they've actually lost," Greg adds.
Ouch.
"While I'll admit that in this calendar year there's less sales than in previous ones," he says, "there's also fewer agents."
And he's right – there's not as many licensed agents showing up and working on this every day.
This means the production available per agent working full time is really high.
Look no further than in your MLS. There's thousands of properties being sold.
"Most of you are doing five to twenty deals. Maybe some of you are doing over 50 deals. And there's thousands taking place," Greg emphasizes.
You really only want to add another twenty or thirty deals. And there's definitely enough demand for that.
It's not unrealistic that if you actually started calling your leads and generating every day that you'd be able to add another twenty or thirty transactions, when there are thousands happening in your market.
Here's another story we often tell ourselves.
But here's the thing: the market's known that interest rates have been high for two years.
Again, Greg encourages us to take a look at our MLS, as he states: "We are so past interest rates being a hurdle!".
This excuse, while it is a common one, is simply not true. At least not enough for your transactions to suffer significantly. And when you call your database, you'll see this, because you'll know how many people actually bought.
These people still bought on a high interest rate market. They just didn't buy from you, because you'd been ignoring them.
Nine times out of ten, low engagement is a result of the agent's actions (or rather, inactions).
If you start calling your leads, texting your leads, emailing your leads – like you said you would! – you'll see a change in their engagement on your site.
"Low engagement shouldn't cause you to stop calling. Calling will cause them to engage." Greg reminds us.
The chances of you getting someone on the phone tend to increase when you actually, you know, call them.
And the more attempts you do, the more you'll increase those chances.
Remember: 95% of all converted leads are reached after 6 call attempts. And 94% of salespeople give up after four attempts.
"We don't need to get everybody on the phone. Just because you made 42 attempts and only got two people on the phone – don't let that discourage you." Greg says.
In fact, he urges you to think about it the other way around: you got two people on the phone. Tomorrow you might get another two people. So in the span of a week, you've spoken to 10 to 14 people, and in a month you've spoken to 40 to 56 people.
How many more deals do you think you could close if you were speaking to 56 people from your database every single month?
Greg shares the experience of an agent he was coaching, who was averaging 10 conversations a day and now is doing over 20 because he started making calling his database a priority every single morning.
We've got to call our leads. No matter how old they are, or how disengaged they are.
Keep people from bouncing and go win them back over by communicating with them.
"You'll be amazed by learning how many people have already purchased, and if only you would've communicated with them, they would've purchased with you."
Remember, if you want more personalized coaching from Greg, join his private community for Real Geeks users, RGMastery.com, for less than $200/week.