The Science of Flipping - Fortune Is In The Follow Up

Episode Date: January 18, 2021

Fortune Is In The Follow Up

What is up, everybody? What is up? Welcome back to the Science of Flipping podcast. I am your host, Justin Colby. And if you have not yet listened to this podcast, it's all things real estate investing. We go over all the tools, the systems, the processes, strategies to make you a successful, but more importantly, a profitable real estate investor. Also, I drop one of these bad boys every single day right here on iTunes, Spotify, and all the platforms. As well, if you have not yet, jump over to my YouTube channel, Justin Colby. Search for me, youtube.com forward slash Justin Colby. I drop a YouTube video a day. It is all things real estate investing, business, and entrepreneurship.

So make sure to jump over to YouTube, maybe even right now, and go subscribe to my channel, Justin Colby, as I'm trying to deliver on all platforms. With that said, let's talk about follow-up. It has been said for as long as I've been in business, fortune is in the follow-up. And if you're a real estate investor, you are likely doing cold calling or text messaging or PPC or direct mail, bandit signs. I have a student right now absolutely crushing it on bandit signs. So bandit signs absolutely still work. So if you are contemplating it, I would tell you it does still work. Well, with that said, let's jump into the topic at hand,

which is fortune being in your follow-up and what should you be doing to follow up with your seller leads? Now, I think it's interesting when people say that there's just like one follow-up format. And I don't necessarily agree with that because each marketing strategy is different. Okay. And so what I mean by that is the motivation on PPC and direct mail is much higher than it is on cold calling and text messaging. Now that doesn't mean that you're not going to have a highly motivated seller from cold calling your text messaging. So do not misunderstand me there.

But what it does mean is I am going to be much more aggressively following up with someone who came through my pipeline from my PPC marketing or my direct message marketing. Now, again, don't misunderstand me. It doesn't mean I'm going to go easy or not follow up for cold calling and text messaging. So my point to saying all that is simply, there's not just one way to do this, in my opinion. A lot of that has to do with what type of conversations you had with the seller so far. So for example, if you are doing cold calling or you are doing text messaging, whether it's you or a virtual assistant or a team that you've hired to do for it, you are already in engagement with that seller. That has already happened. You've already either

talked to them about why they're selling, why they're, you know, interested in having further conversations when they want to sell. There's some level of engagement. Now, based around that will change slightly how we want to follow up with them. Now, here's my rule of thumb with my team in my office. We have roughly 16 cold callers. I think we just upped it, but we have roughly 16 cold callers. I think we just upped it. But we have roughly 16 cold callers. The second that lead hits my acquisition specialist desks, they need to call them twice that same day if they don't get ahold of them. Okay. So the lead comes in from my call

teams. It lands on Podio. I use Podio as a CRM. And in fact, I'll probably do a CRM episode here, but they use Podio for a CRM. The second it does, they call them. If for whatever reason that lead does not pick up, then they are expected to call them again later that day. Okay. From there on, they're calling them once a day for the first week. Here's why. They've already, that seller has already talked to my team. Okay. So there's already a level of engagement. They've already talked to my cold callers. So I want to make sure we are on them, right? There's already notes in my CRM of why they're selling, when they're selling. I want to make sure we are on them, right? There's already notes in my CRM of why they're selling, when they're selling. I want to make sure we are 100% on them because if I'm calling them, so is 50 other investors,

okay? Now, from that point, if let's just say they ghost my acquisition team, they don't answer, then I'm going to call them once a day for the rest of that week. Okay. If that doesn't work, then I will also actually, by the way, with calling, I asked my tech, uh, asked my acquisition managers to follow up with the text. Okay. So you call them and text them. That's only if they don't respond to your first call or second call the first day. So you have the next five days that you're calling and texting. And the text message is super simple. Hey, this is Justin.

One of my team members spoke to you about selling your home. I was just following up with you to have a quick conversation and seeing if we could be a good fit. Something that simple. I allow my acquisition managers then to kind of create some version of that the rest of the week. Hey, this is Justin. Just following up with you one last time, right?

Hey, I don't want to be annoying. You know, if you are interested in sell so we definitely want to speak with you and then, you know, let that lie from the first week, the second week, I want them to call at least once, uh, preferably twice. And then every week they're on afterwards, they're, they are set to task themselves to give them a call. Right. And so if they have literally been ghosted for two weeks, I don't want them to call them again for another two weeks, okay? The thing that I believe to be very true is follow-up should be done via person, not automation. Now, so what does that mean? That means I want them to call them or I want them to actually text them themselves.

I don't want them to leave it up to automation to do that. Now, let's talk about text messaging. If you are text messaging using Launch Control, by the way, I use Launch Control. I love Launch Control. If you're not using Launch Control, go to launchcontrol.us. When they ask you to fill out a form,

simply put, you heard it from Justin Colby or the science of flipping, they'll hook you up. Okay. Launch control is amazing. Use launch control. And when you fill out the form, say Justin Colby or the science of flipping, they'll hook you up. Anyways, with that said, the same level of follow-up is enforced with text messaging, right? You're already engaging with them. So in our office, the second two text messages go back and forth. My acquisition team is, is, um, set to call them. So they got to call them, get them on the phone. Now let's just say they don't get them on the phone or what have you, or the conversation dies. I want them to continue to follow up in a very similar manner. Now, the only difference is you're actually already texting and it's not a lead handoff from like

a virtual assistant team. And maybe it is. So if it is a lead handoff with the virtual assistant team, I'm doing the same exact version, right? Two calls the same day, a call and a text every day for the remainder of the week. And then the next week, they're set to call a minimum once, if not twice. If they do not respond to you after that, then you set up a follow up, like I would call, you know, once week three, and then, you know, skip a week and then call in text again. And the reason being is because things happen. You're going through life, right? And so everything needs to be scheduled. So I love Podio because you can set yourself tasks. I do not rely on email at all for my follow-up. I stick to calling and text messaging.

If they're in the pipeline for let's say nine months, then yes, sending emails, things of that nature, absolutely. But within that first 60 days, not a chance that they're in an email follow-up format. It is all call, all text. Now let's jump over to other prevalent marketing strategies like direct mail and PPC. They are still amazing. They just simply are more expensive. So what we will do with those is something very similar. Now, the difference being is my team hasn't talked to them yet. Right. A direct mail person is calling in from the mail piece or a PPC person is calling in from the website. So I need to get in front of them fast. So I am all over them for the first week. I'm calling twice the first day. I'm calling twice the second day. I'm calling twice the third day. In combination with calling, I'm going to text message them.

Now, remember, that seems really annoying, really does, right? But remember, they literally raised their hand by calling you back from a piece of mail or calling you from your website. The interest level is high enough for them to say, yes, I'm looking to sell my home. I want to talk to you. So if for whatever reason you don't get on the phone with them, the first three days is annoying. It's meant to be that way because I care. I care about my business and I care about being a value to that seller.

Now we can't always be a value to the seller, but I do care. At that point, obviously, I slow down a little bit. You know, I start calling just once a day. Then that moves into, you know, twice a week, etc. And then the follow-up needs to be dependent upon have you had a conversation with this person. If you have, your follow-up may be different, right? Like someone might say, hey, I'm selling at the end of 2022. Okay, well, I'm not calling this person every week or maybe not even every month, right? That's literally two years from now. But they also might say,

hey, I'm selling at the end of February. Well, that's only six weeks from now. So am I going to be pretty rambunctious to keep in front of them? Absolutely, right? Like I will check in every couple of days. Hey, you know, uh, we had a weekly meeting. You're on my follow-up board. I just wanted to reach out, see if everything's good. If anything's changed. No. Okay, great. You know, like I want to be in front of them. Hey, can we schedule a walkthrough, uh, next week? I'd love to just meet you, shake your hand, or maybe if you're virtual, Hey, can we just discuss a little bit more about, you know, the condition of the home? Like I want to be around them. In fact, uh, if it

is like six week out in your virtual, a nice little follow-up thing we do, we'll actually send them a thank you letter. Okay. Because we're virtual. So we literally can't go see the home. So we'll go send them a thank you letter. If you believe that it's in a warm or hot position to sell, I promise you this, you will be more remembered by the thank you letter than anyone else. Now, the tens of thousands of people listening to my podcast right now, now might pick up. But you know, I will tell you that has been a secret sauce in our follow-up. At the end of the day, the point on my follow-up is I can give you an exact plan right now for every single one. It always comes down to have you talk to this person.

If you haven't, then be hyper-aggressive on week one. Be pretty aggressive on week two. And if they're still ghosting you, I would start following up, you know, once a week, once every other week via call or text until they tell you to F off. I hope you guys found this well. Again, if you have not yet gone to my YouTube channel, go to YouTube forward slash Justin Colby, subscribe to my channel. I drop a video every single day about real estate, business, and entrepreneurship. Hope this finds you well. Talk to you soon. Peace.