The real estate industry can be challenging, even for many experienced professionals.
For small real estate businesses with a limited workforce, managing all responsibilities can be difficult and tedious. Some of these tasks involve lead generation, organizing open houses, legal document filings, maintaining a client base, and other admin duties.
At times like these, small real estate business owners turn to outsourcing to pick up the slack, and augment their operations.
Business owners can delegate any of their operations to third-party service providers. However, outsourcing cold calling services is among the most common reasons why they do so.
What is cold calling?
Cold calling is a marketing strategy wherein salespeople call potential customers who may have previously shown interest in their product or service.
While cold calling often invokes the image of salespeople dialing random people all day, cold calls aren’t exclusively done through phone calls. It also covers in-person door-to-door sales.
In the real estate industry, this is one of the most used tools for lead generation and creating new client connections.
Real estate agents go over properties listed for sale or lease in markets and look for potential buyers, sellers, leasers, or renters.
Once they find potential property buyers or sellers, they’ll then initiate contact and begin the cold calling process.
Like other marketing strategies, the art of cold calling has evolved and been refined through the years. Techniques that are no longer viable were discontinued and replaced with more innovative and timely methods.
Types of cold calls in real estate
Competent real estate agents don’t subscribe to the “spray and pray” method when making cold calls.
Instead, they utilize tried and tested scripts proven to garner better results.
While no single cold calling technique is guaranteed to work 100 percent of the time, the methods below are among the most effective at bagging properties:
Expired listing script
Expired listings are properties put up for sale in the market but failed to sell before their listings’ expiration date.
These listings give real estate agents a wealth of potential leads, provided that they know how to utilize them properly.
Expired listings scripts work by having agents scour market listings for properties past their expiration. These agents then call the property owners and drop their pitch, setting themselves up as the property’s realtor if they succeed.
FSBOs script
For sale by owners (FSBOs) are properties put up in the market by the owners instead of by real estate agents.
Like expired listings, these properties are a goldmine of leads up for grabs by skilled agents. However, unlike expired listings, realtors are assured that these properties are intended to be sold and are still available in the market.
The most common obstacle real estate agents will encounter with FSBOs are owners adamant about selling properties on their own to save money.
Voicemail script
Voicemail cold call scripts are the real estate industry’s innovative way of overcoming the marketing wall presented by voicemails.
Instead of being hindered by getting directed to voicemails, agents use this opportunity to potentially turn cold calls into “warm calls.”
Agents using this script open a conversation starter that encourages recipients to call them back rather than leaving their pitch in the voicemail.
FRBOs script
For rent by owners (FRBOs) are similar to FSBOs but are much easier to handle.
These real estate opportunities are low-hanging fruits for the agents that find them. The landlords that put these up in the markets are more business-minded and open to an agent’s pitch.
Realtors pursuing FRBOs have fewer competitors as landlords aren’t a common market target.
How does outsourcing cold calling services benefit real estate companies?
Outsourcing cold calling services gives businesses numerous advantages over keeping the function in-house.
Below are some of these advantages:
Reduces operating costs
Entrusting cold calling functions to an outsourcing company significantly lowers the operating costs of real estate businesses.
They can save up to 70% on labor costs. Business owners also no longer need to purchase equipment and rent facilities where their cold calling agents will work.
Access to skilled real estate agents
Outsourcing firms’ staff augmentation gives real estate companies access to a vast pool of highly qualified and experienced real estate professionals.
With a cadre of skilled agents cold calling on their behalf, they can are assured that the only direction their sales are going is up.
Access to premium industry tech
Outsourcing cold calling services also gives businesses access to the industry’s latest technology these agents use.
In real estate, this means – hardware and software with auto-dialing capabilities, customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, all-in-one (video conferencing, voice calls, emails, chats, etc.) communication platforms, call recording functionality, and other features useful for cold callers.
