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scotty205

Answering all the calls

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If I market right, the phone will ring. I have a job and not alot of funds to pay people to answer my calls when at work. I was thinking about using a VA to screen sellers to see how much they are motivated. I'm not to worried about T/B'S, I can send them to fill out a form. I just hate sellers calls going to voice mail. Any thoughts...

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If you're on a budget, Scott, the first rule of any business is to stay within that budget. You'll know when you need some type of assistance answering calls. But until you get that busy, I'd have the calls go into voice mail if you can't answer them directly. Any serious homeowner is not going to mind leaving a name and number. Besides, paying a VA to answer calls will require you train them what to say and it is impossible to have them prepped for every question and every personality on the other end of the phone. If I had to bet, my money would be on you losing more potential deals with an inept VA than with an answering machine.

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I agree. I was told when I first started out that you always have to answer the calls, but I disagree. Yes, it's nice if you can answer the calls as they come in, but as MC said, if the seller has ANY real motivation they'll be fine with leaving a voicemail. Now there's too approaches you could take, you could record the message just like a regular ol' voicemail so they call and it sounds like they're leaving a message for just a regular ol' person, or you could present yourself as a company and maybe even go over some information about what you offer as a way to pre-screen leads. If you go that route, it's probably not a bad idea to mention the fact that they'll be calling a recorded message on your marketing material. Some people may like this better actually, because it allows them to listen to what you have to say and leave a message if they want rather than calling and talking to someone not knowing what to expect. Besides, if you've got caller ID (it's 2011 so i'm sure you do) you can call back everyone including the people that don't leave a message :-)

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Okay...I am going to play the side of having a VA. I am in the process of putting a training together for another business that I have for someone working the phones. Strictly inbound calls. It is not rocket science to have someone fill out a lead sheet or a property questionair.

 

Now, I am going to be paying between 2.10-2.45 per hour for this work and it is more complicated information.

 

So even if you do it part time, it would be a help.

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Scotty, I just started marketing and receiving calls. What I can tell you is that people definitely leave messages. I didn't think they would but they do. They leave messages like they know you, "hey mike, saw your sign and was just giving you a call. I've got a 3bedroom house, etc,etc give me call when you get a second".

 

It's nice.

 

The other thing I was going to point out is that I've learned a lot from personally taking calls. MC suggested to me a bit ago that I take my own calls prior to training someone else to take them. I have to say the advice was spot on. I will say that when I quadruple my marketing, I will be hiring a VA. It actually takes a fair amount of time to screen a call.

 

The only potential problem I see with a VA taking calls is that they don't know anything about the business. So, if a seller is very inquisitive about how the process works, what to expect, etc, they may become turned off by the fact that they speaking to "bob" from India and not me. This is pure speculation though, I've got no data to put behind it.

.02

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MC suggested to me a bit ago that I take my own calls prior to training someone else to take them. I have to say the advice was spot on.
Hey, even a broken clock is right twice a day. :blush:

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Okay...I am going to play the side of having a VA. I am in the process of putting a training together for another business that I have for someone working the phones. Strictly inbound calls. It is not rocket science to have someone fill out a lead sheet or a property questionair.

 

Now, I am going to be paying between 2.10-2.45 per hour for this work and it is more complicated information.

 

So even if you do it part time, it would be a help.

 

Jonathan-

 

How has it worked out for you using a VA to take your calls? Do you have any recommendations for sites to find VA's or call centers to take all of your incoming calls? I have been having all seller calls go to voice mail as Michael and others have suggested and I have found it very time consuming to follow up with sellers that do not leave their phone number, property address, etc. in the voice message. I have begun thinking that if I were to expand on my marketing efforts and have an increase in seller leads calling my number, it will be hard to keep up with it all. Like Jonathan said, it's not rocket science to have someone fill out a lead sheet or questionare and I am considering using a service like this if I can find a good one at a reasonable price.

 

I was wondering how some of you that have a consistent inventory of properties and leads coming in handle all of your incoming calls?

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Okay...I am going to play the side of having a VA. I am in the process of putting a training together for another business that I have for someone working the phones. Strictly inbound calls. It is not rocket science to have someone fill out a lead sheet or a property questionair.

 

Now, I am going to be paying between 2.10-2.45 per hour for this work and it is more complicated information.

 

So even if you do it part time, it would be a help.

 

Jonathan-

 

How has it worked out for you using a VA to take your calls? Do you have any recommendations for sites to find VA's or call centers to take all of your incoming calls? I have been having all seller calls go to voice mail as Michael and others have suggested and I have found it very time consuming to follow up with sellers that do not leave their phone number, property address, etc. in the voice message. I have begun thinking that if I were to expand on my marketing efforts and have an increase in seller leads calling my number, it will be hard to keep up with it all. Like Jonathan said, it's not rocket science to have someone fill out a lead sheet or questionare and I am considering using a service like this if I can find a good one at a reasonable price.

 

I was wondering how some of you that have a consistent inventory of properties and leads coming in handle all of your incoming calls?

 

With my other business it is going well. It is a training process and I had to go through 2 VA's to get the one that I like. I have not set it up yet for the real estate as I tend to handle those myself as my call volume is low on the SELLER side of things. All Buyers go to 800# or they have direct access to website for where the property is. If they wish to speak to someone then they can connect to me directly.

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