In this Real Geeks Coaching episode, Greg Harrelsoon and Abe Safa of Century 21 The Harrelson Group tackle the answer to, “Why You Should Spend 2+ Hours A Day On The Phone.” As seasoned real estate agents who spend at least that amount of time daily on the phone, Safa and Harrelson are uniquely qualified to share insights on how those two hours can change your life and business. 

Simply stating, “efficiency” as the reason for spending a two-hour block on the phone, Safa expanded on the idea saying, “We can’t make any revenue without some kind of generating.” Harrelson agreed but he also brought up the importance of tracking each contact, especially if you are bringing them in through Facebook ad campaigns. Harrelson was particularly concerned about Facebook as just before going on the show, he’d discovered that Facebook had made a change that was impacting his ROI for mobile users. "When they make changes, it can change the performance of the ads,” Harrelson said. “You need to check your campaigns, if you're not getting consistent results”

Outgoing Phone Calls Are Predictable and Duplicatable

As other platforms can make changes at any time that can affect lead generation, agents need to take action on the items they can control. "You've gotta find a way to generate to have a successful business," said Safa, as he explained that real estate agents are not like a donut shop business that gets walk by traffic. He finds that picking up the phone is the perfect answer, and Harrelson agreed. "I don't know of another low cost activity that we control that's predictable and can be duplicated,” said Harrelson.

Harrelson went on to explain that the main business building concept that's missing in a lot of agents’ practice is consistency and duplication. He suggested agents recession proof their business by being predictable and duplicatable. Safa said that two hours a day of outbound calls achieves that for him.“You have total control,” said Safa. Harrelson added that if all agents all did that and tracked the numbers, call to contact ratios could be established, making the effort predictable and repeatable. “Every dollar you make, every sale you have, originated as a contact,” said Harrelson, “that’s why you call.” Harrelson suggested reviewing call ratios every 30 days through logging results. “After 90 days,” he suggested,  ‘use the last 30 days as the new baseline.” Those are your ratios, he explained.

Sharing that “right now is the perfect time to build a database,” Safa said. He encouraged all agents to take the opportunity “even if you’re getting a lot of nos right now,” build the database. He went on to say that, “Inbound calls are more expensive than outbound calls,”and further suggested that being heavy on inbound calls can be detrimental, because you need a balance of both. Safa said he gets six listings a month from inbound calls, which makes up about 40% of his sales. These lead sources are from emails, workflows, and referral services. Harrelson added that agents have to do outbound calls in order to have inbound leads. Further clarifying, Harrelson said, “Outbound is usually to build a seller database. Inbound are usually to build a buyer database.” He went one to add, "If they're all selling, then they're all going to be buying.”

Your Results Won’t Be Perfect and That’s OK

In terms of specific lead generation techniques, Harrelson suggested doing a welcome call to the new owner as they won't be on record yet so you'll be the one with them in your database. Harrelson said he worries when someone tells him, “I list 90% of appointments,” because it means too few appointments. In an analogy,Harrelson said this idea is similar to a designated hitter with a 500 average and that to him it signaled that the agent was not trying enough.

When asked how he would get started, Harrelson suggested the following: “If everyone would start calling, and add 2 evenings (M-TH), from 6-8 pm, and a Saturday, from 10am-12pm for 4 weeks straight, you'll see an increase and momentum. Then make it consistent. You need to reach the people who aren't available in the morning so you need to switch your call times.

"There is no question that that's the best time to call," said Safa, as he referenced making evening and weekend calls, "but it's also the hardest time to call."