Epic Real Estate Investing - School of Cold Calling - Alyssa Rispoli | 438

Episode Date: August 6, 2018

Today on the Epic Real Estate Investing Show, Matt Theriault interviews Alyssa Rispoli, a cold calling specialist! Find out why cold calling is the primary deal-finding resource for her team, who they call, and how they find numbers. You can also enjoy our new podcast segment, Epic Field Reports, and find out how a property can be bought for $30,000 and sold for $42,500 in just 30 days! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Epic Field Report. Hey, Josiah. What market are you in again? I'm in Austin, Texas. That's right. I remember now. So I noticed your follow-through Friday post inside of the Epic Pro Academy's private Facebook group.

I just want to ask you a few questions about these deals that you got. Most definitely. Okay, cool. Well, congratulations, first of all, because it looked like it was a very busy week. I'll go ahead and read it really quickly here. And I want to have a couple questions.

Put the same property under contract. due to the seller not willing to negotiate due to the market, quote unquote, lower than expected appraisal. It took her a week, but she's back and accepting your price. So congrats on that. You put four lots under contract for $3,000 total, met with the person who was interested for owner financing at $20,000 and found out that they own a couple houses in town. So there's a big win.

This folks on his last one, you closed on a property that made $4,000, and you made $4,000, and on your two partners each made $3,000. And then you bought and sold that within 30 days. So let's talk about the one that closed and maybe come back to talk about the other ones when they close. So this last one, how did you find this deal? That was actually through a wholesaler. You found it through another wholesaler. How did you meet that wholesaler?

That one, I get wholesalers who call me a lot through my Craigslist ads that I have. So I hit Craigslist ads in multiple different markets. And I'm the only one I think who's very consistent with it. So I get a lot of wholesalers who call me and add me to their list. That's awesome. Yeah, everything works as long as you do. Consistency is key, so congrats on that. What's your planned, well, what was your planned exit strategy?

Was this just a quick wholesale deal that you did? So we actually closed on it with cash. We bought it, took it in possession. I was going to put it up on the MLS. I'm a realtor as well. And somebody, as I was putting my signs in, they wanted to see it. My contractor was cleaning out the property. So like, okay, we can offer this much.

And it's like, all right, we're going to make this much money. And without doing any work, all we did was clean out the property. is like let's just sign it and walk away. We don't have to make anything more. We're good. Totally. Fast nickel beats the slow dime. All the time.

Right? And so what did you actually walk away with on that one? So we bought it at $30,000 and we sold for $42,500. So I walked away with a little over $4,000 myself with the profits what I have with the partners. Because we all threw in 10K each. Great. So what would you say is the biggest lesson that you've learned in this, transaction.

Show up, make an offer. They didn't like my offer at $25,000 and kept negotiating. It's like, okay, where does it work for you? My numbers look good. And like, okay, well, let's tackle this one. It's a no-brainer, so let's go for it. So just keep going after it may be the lesson, right? Yeah.

Awesome. Keep going after consistency, make offers. Yeah, it's pretty straightforward. So let me ask you, how are you going to celebrate? We actually just bought with the money we're going to Puerto Ranzas. in a couple weeks. So we're going to the beach for two days. Fantastic.

That sounds way better than Disneyland. All right, buddy. Thanks for your time. Keep doing what you're doing. And let me know if there's anything I can do for you. Okay. Very good, Matt. All right.

Take care, bud. Thanks. Bye. This is Terrio Media. Yo. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash phone. You didn't know home. We got cash more.

Yeah. Welcome to the epic real estate investing show, where we meet here each and every week to help everyday people escape the rat race using real estate. And thank you. Thank you for listening to the show. Thank you for supporting the show. Thank you for sharing it with your friends and your family, turning them on. And we just wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you and you doing that. So thanks for spreading the good word.

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is getting a little bit bigger and we're going to turn them all into badass investors at the next Epic Intensive. So if you'd like to join us, go to Epicintensive.com for all the details. Grab your seat and I will see you in Boston. I got a very special show for you today.

What's kind of was once old has become new again and it's been an extremely effective strategy for people finding deals and finding off market deals and finding them before their competition. So there's someone that's making a lot of headway in this and doing this strategy really, really effectively. It's probably been nine years since I've actually made a cold call.

I just prefer fishing with my marketing and having those leads call, call me first. But boy, that's how I cut my teeth was just picking up that phone and dial in every single day. and it's interesting that that's like it's being treated as it's this new strategy. But, you know, in a competitive market, depending on where your market is, it could be necessary or maybe just, you know, give you a little bit of an advantage on the people that won't do it, you know, because anyone can call call. Not everybody will. And indeed, there lies an opportunity there.

So I thought I'd bring this person on to discuss and kind of share what they're doing and how they're doing it and what their numbers are and what their results have been. and potentially see how they might be able to help you do the same. So please help me welcome to the show, Ms. Alyssa Rispoli. Alyssa, welcome to the Epic Real Estate Investing Show. Thank you so much for having me here. Yeah, you bet. And forget how we cross past.

I don't know if you send me an email or I saw you on social media or I got introduced to you because we have a bunch of mutual friends. It doesn't matter. We're here now. And you're kind of heading up a topic that's really popular right now inside of real estate investing and locating motivated sellers before anyone else and having to do with cold calling and how you guys do it and you're really effective with it. And I want to share that with the audience. But first, can you just kind of bring us up to speed with what you're doing just before you got

involved in real estate? Yeah. So before I got involved in real estate, I was in college. I got my business marketing degree. And when I graduated, that's when I started. I found a really awesome mentor, Jason Palliser, and I got a couple of partners. They're actually sitting here with me, Gerardo and Josh, and the three of us kind of hit it off, and we started cranking out some deals. And a big part of the deals we get are from cold calling. So we have a lot of fun doing it. Sweet.

So how long have you been in the business then? Almost two years now. Two years. Okay. So not too long. And what market are you in? We're in the St. Louis market. Okay.

Would you say co-calling is your primary deal finding resource? Yeah, it's one of the best ways we believe in what we do to get, you know, off-market properties really before anyone else. I mean, right now it seems like across the country, it's a very hot market everywhere. There's a lot of investors, a lot of wholesalers, a lot of people are doing, you know, direct mail, bandit signs, and we do that as well. but we feel like we have advantage by happening on the phone and cutting through all of that and just getting direct to the owner. Super, super.

So let us start at the beginning. Who are you cold calling? So we are cold calling vacant properties that we have either bought lists on or that we have found driving for dollars. And we have quite a big bird dog army here in the St. Louis market. So we are calling anyone that has a property that looks vacant, abandoned, distressed, or has some sort of motivator behind it. We'll hop on the phone and call up the owner. So, okay, so through lists, driving for dollars, what is your resource for finding the phone numbers?

So for finding the phone numbers, we use a couple of different sources. We are good friends with Larry Higgins with Skip Jeannie. So we use Skip Jeannie a lot. We just had him on the show last week. So, perfect. Okay, awesome. Yeah, where's an awesome guy? Cool.

So I thought this would be good to kind of have you guys here back to back. So I think your two services go to what all together. Yeah. So you're skip tracing them through there. Great. So once you get them, once you start calling, what's your approach? Do you say, hey, do you want to sell your house? Or do you have a sneaky way or a tactical way or a strategic way of doing that?

Yeah, so we have a bunch of different scripts. I mean, we call on pre-foreclosures, probate properties, and we kind of approach every single one a little bit differently because some leads that we're calling on can be a little more sensitive. But generally speaking for like a vacant property, we'll call them up and we'll just ask, hey, can I speak to Mr. Bob? And he'll be like, yeah, this is Mr. Bob. We want to make sure we're talking to the right person first before we, you know,

because sometimes there's a bunch of numbers or sometimes it's the wrong number. So we call up and say, hey, can I speak to Mr. Bob? And he's like, yeah, this is Mr. Bob. And I just let him know, hey, I know this call is completely out of the blue, but I was driving around the area the other day. And I saw a property I think you're the owner of. And I just wanted to reach out to see if he'd be interested in letting us make an offer on it because we'd really like to buy it.

Sweet. So pretty darn straightforward. Yeah. Cool. So how many, what does your regimen look like? How many cold calls? How many numbers are you dialing a day? Well, it depends really on the list.

And we have, we have hired a couple of callers as well. Okay. So we use Mojo dialer for the big list. And then for the, like, driving for dollar leads or any, like, really hot leads, we will hand dial those. And we're trying to, I mean, each person on our team is trying to, to talk with at least 20 to 30 different homeowners a day. So each homeowner might have five phone numbers attached to it.

So the actual number just kind of depends. But we're trying to talk to at least 20 to 30 different homeowners a day, each of us. And then our cold callers are just hammering it out, making hundreds of calls. So got it. So 20 to 30 sellers a day or property owners a day. Do you have any kind of numbers on that of what kind of deal? production that you get out of that number? Yeah, I actually have, we track all of our KPIs,

like the number of calls we need to make to get a walkthrough. And then from there we do, you know, how many properties do we need to walk through to get a deal or to get an accepted contract? And then from there, we just know, okay, this is how many calls we have to make to get a contract. And I am trying to pull up my Excel sheet because our KPIs are constantly fluctuating,

I would say. Okay. And we kind of do a running count, but I'm pulling that up right now. So I'll be able to give you that number. Cool. And our numbers have definitely gotten better, you know, over time with practice and being able to handle the different objections. Right. You know, compared to when we first started, it was really bad.

And sometimes we still mess up. But I mean, when we first started on phone calls, it was terrible sometimes. We'd be like, uh, I don't know what to say. and, you know, hang up and move to the next. Right. I remember those days. Kind of. Yep.

Terrified to pick up the phone. And then it just be, you throw a bunch, enough repetition in there, and you're right. You get better and your numbers start improving. Yeah. So overall, as a team, because we put all of our KPIs, you know, we track individual KPIs for every person on the team and then a team total. And right now, our team total is we have to make 12. we have to talk to 12 homeowners to get a walk through.

Okay. And then we have to walk through six properties to get a contract. Got it. Those are good numbers. So it's very, can create a very predictable business for you guys. So it's good. Yeah,

we try to do targeted lists. Right, right. Instead of just blast and out lists. So I think our responses are a little bit better because the lists you are calling have, you know, motivators on them. It's not, we're not just calling a high equity list and, you know, having to talk to 300 people to get a walk through.

Right, right. Good. I have to play a little bit of devil's advocate that, I used to be a cold calling cowboy. I used to do that all the time, and that was probably, oh, gosh, nine, ten years ago. And I just pounded the phones all day long. And then the, that was kind of like the emergence of where the do not call list came out. And so everyone kind of stopped doing it. that, but apparently everyone's doing it again. So, you know, do you have any concerns?

Or have anybody ever brought anything up with the do not call list? Yeah, so we scrub our numbers against the do not call list. There's a couple different software that we use. And then I'm pretty sure you can also just use dnc.com and upload your list. So we try to be 100% compliant and we'll scrub our numbers against that list. And then if we talk to anyone that's not on the do not call list and they ask us not to call them, we make sure to add them to the do not call list. I mean, we want to be respectful and we want to follow the law. Sure. I wish everyone was like you. I'm on like 17 different people's lists and they call me every single day. I get it too. I was like, what happened to that do not call this? That

used to be a big thing that everyone was terrified of and obviously not anymore. But you guys are playing by the rule so that's good. Gosh, I mean, is there something here I'm supposed to ask? It's pretty straightforward. It's kind of funny how, you know, what was old is now new again. saying this is the cool strategy to do when this is kind of how it's been done from the beginning of time. What am I supposed to ask or what else should I know about what you guys are doing that makes it unique or different or is there anything? I mean, I think some of the biggest things for any of your listeners or any of your followers, whenever you're making cold calls, the biggest thing is to when you're calling people to not come across as Sammy. We don't call

people and say, hey, this is Alyssa from 1-800. You know, we're not trying to sound like we're coming from a call center. We're trying to call people and sound like we're neighbors. We're here in the community. We're trying to make the community better and we're reaching out to see what we can do to help. I mean, there's sometimes where we call people and they don't want to sell their house, but they might have a family or a friend that needs to sell their house. I mean, we're just putting ourselves out there and letting people know that we're willing to help whether or not we buy their house or not. Because of that, people really like working with us. Sure. No, I can imagine. Yeah. So people should definitely go into it with that attitude. And also, I mean, you get a lot of angry people

sometimes. And that was something big for me when I first started making calls. At first, I was kind of offended by it. But then you really have to just do kind of a mindset shift and understand that they're not mad at you. The people that we're calling are in distressed situations. And, I mean, you shouldn't take it personally. You kind of just moved to the next. And we've had a lot of people call back and say, hey, I'm sorry, I was rude on the phone, you know, and then they tell you the situation they're in, and it all makes sense. So, awesome. And I got to get thick skin. Right. No, totally. Okay, so good. Yeah, I think being authentic and transparent, being helpful, I think that's the new sales strategy of today, just being a good person. I think that's the best approach.

Yeah. And then one of the things that we were talking about, or we just kind of exchanged in email, was you, you're doing this for your own team. You're doing this for your own market and you're doing it for your own investing, but you have a service of some sort that making it available to help other people do this as well. Can you talk about that? Yeah. So when we first started in our first year, we did 50 wholesales and four rehabs. So we crushed it. I mean, especially coming straight out of college, we knew nothing about real estate at all. We didn't even know what an ARV was. We never even bought our own house. And so, I mean, we had a huge learning curve, but we did really, really well. And I think a huge part of that, obviously, is because we had a mentor, which like I said, is Jason Pelliser,

who just guided us and taught us everything he knew. That was one of the most helpful things. But then also, we were making calls. So a lot of people started asking us, like, hey, can you tell us how you're getting these deals? Like, what are you doing? What are you saying? And so my team and I, we put together a course that teaches people how to do cold calls. It gives you all the objections. It gives you the best time to make calls, how to track the number of calls you're making, how we set up our codeo and our CRMs, and it has all of our scripts and just all different things we put together in this course. It took us probably six months to put it all together. And then we recorded a ton of live calls and put those in there. And so we have this course that we made.

pretty much that we wouldn't have to keep teaching people. They could just go to the court and they could dive right in and learn everything that we're doing with our cold calls. Got it. Sweet. All right. So if people wanted to learn more about that, what would be the best way for them to do that? They can go to start cold calling.com.

And that is where our course can be found at. And we had, we went back and forth on pricing, you know, some people are charging $3,000, $4,000, a couple thousand dollars for courses. We wanted to make it as cheap as possible, like less than the price of what it would cost to do, a direct mail campaign or a bandit sign campaign. So we really struggled because we wanted to make it completely free, but we put so much time into it and as well as all the softwares we use to keep it up. Got it. Sweet.

Cool. So start cold calling.com. you guys set up a special link for me epic cold calling so uh for the epic listeners if you go there just so alissa knows where the traffic is coming from and then uh it pays us a few bucks to help us keep the lights on so appreciate that um alisa it's been an absolute pleasure uh what's in your future what are you excited about most oh i'm excited about everything i mean uh our team and I are, we're growing, we're having a blast doing it, we're making sure every day we're having fun and helping people. So we're excited to see what comes next. All righty. So what's the, what do you see in the market in St. Louis right now? Like, what are your predictions for the future?

St. Louis is a crazy market. It is super hot right now. It's a great place for rental properties because the cost of living is low here. So cap rates are amazing. And for the future, I think apartment complex. multi-family seem to be on the rise quite a bit. Millennials are taking over in 2019, 2020. So it would be exciting to see what they do with the real estate market as far as either buying or renting. St. Louis is such an amazing market.

I mean, I think three of my five best clients, my most successful clients are all in St. Louis. You seem to be doing pretty well. A good friend of mine, Jeff Garner, he's had his business there forever. Like there's a lot to go around in St. Louis. Apparently. Yeah. Yeah, I know Jeff.

And Jeff's an awesome guy. And yeah, I know St. Louis is amazing. We've got a lot of really awesome wholesalers, rehabers. And we try to all work together and help each other out. There's an abundance. So that's the great thing about real great. Totally. And it just comes down if you're doing the work.

The opportunity exists in any market. So good job for you guys. Congrats on your success. Thanks for sharing with us, your strategy and how you're, doing what you're doing, and let's stay in touch. All right. Thank you so much. You bet.

Take care and say hello to your team. Hopefully I'll cross pass with you guys soon. All right, absolutely. Come out to St. Louis. We'll take you to a Cardinals game. We'll do. Take care. Bye.

All righty. God bless to your success. I'm Matt Terrio. Let me go. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. You didn't know home poor.

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