DGS 17: Cold Calling FRBOs for Property Managers With Daniel Madison

Learn how Daniel Madison, CEO of 4M Property Solutions, a residential property management company uses the techniques he mastered as a corporate sales manager to cold call For Rent by Owner prospects and close the deal.

In this interview with Daniel Madison, you’ll learn why cold calling is an essential tool for property managers, how to get over the fear of getting told no, and what to say in your conversations with your prospects.

You’ll Learn…

[01:15] Why is cold calling important?
[03:00] How Daniel got his first 50 doors with 4M Property Solutions
[04:13] Identifying the pain points of for-rent-by-owner prospects
[05:10] Why picking up the phone and calling people is the best way to generate revenue
[06:48] Daniel’s fool-proof script for cold calling prospects
[09:06] The best way to get over the fear of interrupting someone
[10:30] How to overcome the biggest challenge in cold calling: Finding a source of information
[13:00] Ideas for types of questions to ask your prospect to identify their challenges
[17:30] The importance of giving value to your prospects
[17:19] They personalize the details of your maintenance call-handling with you
[19:08] Daniel’s number-one goal when cold calling a prospect
[21:38] Getting into the groove of cold calling
[22:13] Why you should create (and stick to) a follow-up process for your clients
[24:17] Techniques for keeping track of A-grade tenants
[27:07] Advice and tips for new property managers
[28:20] Lessons learned from hearing “no”
[30:34] How to inspire your team to have the right attitude for cold calling
[32:55] Power phrases to know and use
[36:40] Convincing a DIY- landlord that they need your services
[41:30] Getting started in cold calling

Tweetables

Resources

Get a free trial and 25% off FRBO lead services: https://pmleads.com/doorgrow

Free download of Daniel Madison’s cold calling script: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1bo76y1mf3ARFNXMVMzX3lBSjl3cFJlT0RyZVo3bzNXNzFz/view?usp=sharing

Want more from Daniel Madison? Give him a call at (864) 640-8877 or send him an email: daniel@4m-propertysolutions.com

4M Property Solutions: http://www.4m-propertysolutions.com/

Transcript

Jason: Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to The DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors and expand your rent roll,  and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to grow property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build a awareness, expand the market, and help the best property managers win.

If you enjoy this episode, do me a favor, open up iTunes, find The DoorGrow Show, subscribe, and then give us a real review. Thank you for helping us with that vision. I’m your host, property management growth hacker, Jason Hull, the founder of OpenPotion, GatherKudos, ThunderLocal, and of course, DoorGrow. Now, let’s get into the show.

This is episode number 17 of The DoorGrow Show. In today’s episode, we’re talking with Daniel Madison of 4M Property Management. We’re talking with him about For Rent by Owner leads. How to get them? What to say to them? How to prospect? How to basically do the thing that most property managers avoid, which is cold calling.

If you’ve been avoiding doing cold calling, if you’ve never done cold calling in your business, I recommend you do that. In fact, that’s probably the first marketing or prospecting that a property manager should do because it forces you to learn how to promote. I’m really excited for people to hear this, get into this. We go through some scripts and different ideas. I hope that you try it out for at least a little while. Let’s get to the show.

Alright. I am here with Daniel Madison of 4M Property Solutions. This is Jason Hull. Daniel, how are you doing?

Daniel: Hi. I’m doing great, thanks for having me on.

Jason:  The pleasure is mine. Daniel, your company is called 4M?

Daniel: 4M Property Solutions.

Jason: What I found interesting is that you’re doing some of the tough stuff that almost everybody avoids, the scary stuff. For a lot of people, for some reason, it’s scarier to do cold calling, or cold prospecting, or to interrupt people’s day than to have their business fail.

Daniel: I agree with that.

Jason:  I see property managers struggling. They’ll call me up, and they’ll say, “I need doors.” Well then, go out and get them. Go out and do the work and get them. They’re like, “Whoa. What do I do?” Tell us about how you got your first 50 doors?

Daniel: We started back in 2013 and as I was getting started, my background was running  a corporate sales team. The only thing I knew to get a market and to get a market quickly was cold calling. Identifying who the prospect was, which is pretty simple in today’s technology world, it’s easy to find homes that are for rent and so it’s just a matter of finding someone that had a home for rent.

We found that through multitude of different ways, had a script that was ready and understood that if they had a home that was listed, they had an immediate need, and that need was to rent a home and they have an immediate pain, which was their phone was ringing, their email was going crazy, and they were spending a lot of time showing the property likely.

With understanding that need and that pain, it gave us an opportunity to introduce ourselves and have an opportunity to pursue the home and to be able to be of service at that point. I started out day one picking up the phone off of Craigslist, by day two I had my first house and that just developed from there.

Jason: How did you figure out the pain and what they want?

Daniel: The pain is that understanding that they have a house, that they need it rented, for one reason or another. They need the revenue. They need to cover out mortgage. There is a reason that a home is being rented. That was pretty simple for me. It’s just understanding that they got to rent this thing and that they can see it cost a lot of money.

Number two, my entry point was being able to say that we did ‘tenant placement only’ services, that kind of opened the door for me. My goal was never to really do ‘tenant placement only’ but then I needed something to get in front of them so I used that pain to open that door for opportunity, which allowed me to get in front of them, which at that point I could start the sales process and get started working towards actually getting the contract.

Jason: A lot of people, like I mentioned at the beginning, don’t do cold calling. They don’t do it. Why the hell did you decide that you were going to do that when most don’t?

Daniel: A couple of different reasons. My background was such, that was the environment I came from. I came from a background that was a very fundamental sales background. I’ve grown up doing cold calling one way or another.

The other reality of it was I didn’t have a huge marketing budget. When you’re starting out a company and you open the doors day one, you have absolutely no revenue, you have an abundance of time, and are full of a lot of ambition. The quickest, easiest way to generate revenue, in my mind, was to pick up the phone and call people to generate that revenue. It’s scary and it’s not something I enjoyed doing per se, but I was very comfortable in that and that’s why we got started.

Jason: Nobody views cold calling as comfortable. How do you get over that hurdle to do that or how would you recommend others do?

Daniel: Yeah, you gotta suck it up. What you realize when you’re cold calling is the first five calls are really difficult. Having a good script, understanding who your prospect is, what those pains are, what those needs are, having a script that you can utilize with a [inaudible [00:06:30] so to speak to then go out there to be able to open the door for opportunity and then having a good sales process once you get in front of them so that you’re not wasting their time or your time, and so that you can have the best opportunity of closing that business.

Jason: What is this script that you’ve been testing out? Give us an example. How does a call typically go?

Daniel: Let me pull up a script here really quick. I sent you over a script as well that you’re welcome to share with your audience if you desire to do so.

Jason: Okay, cool. We can slide that in on the show notes.

Daniel: Yeah. I’d simply call on them and introduce who we are, “Hey, this is Daniel Madison. I’m with 4M Property Solutions. We’re calling about your home that you have for rent at 123 Main Street. We’re just calling to see if you’re the property owner or the property manager for that property.” We get a lot of answer in our marketplace that are not posted properly and as a result of that, we get a lot of real estate agents, a lot of property managers who are posting and not listing themselves on the add-ins.

Once we identified that they are a property owner, what we’re doing is we’re asking some simple questions. We’ll start out with, “Have you been able to rent the home yet? Are you willing to consider our service?” Nothing fancy, nothing over the top. We’re not spending tons of time creating these scripts. It’s just really conversational.

The key that I find in cold calling is just that you got to pick up the phone, you got to dial, and you got to do the numbers. If you don’t do that, then you’re not going to get results. I don’t care how good or how bad your script is. At the end of the day, if you don’t make the calls then you’re not going to get results.

Jason: With doing sales, the more you just do it, the better you get at it. The better you get at uncovering people’s pain. the better you get at asking the right questions. The better you know your target audience. You just have to do it. Just like Daniel says, “You just have to do it, suck it up.”

Something I like to tell my kids, I tell my coaching clients, I say, “We all start at the level of suck.” That’s where everybody begins. If you’re not willing to suck or suck it up and just do it, you’re not going to get to the gold. You’re not going to get beyond that stage where it feels incredibly awkward, and strange, and whatever.

The other thing that I’ve noticed about cold calling or doing sales, you just have to be willing to interrupt people, that’s what selling and doing that is all about. A lot of people, that’s kind of the scariest thing, they’re afraid to interrupt people. Have you kind of gotten over that mindset?

Daniel: It’s not something that you can think about. Business hours for business hours. People get calls all day long with today’s technology. You’re going to accept the call or you’re not going to accept the call. We’re all busy and we’re all doing a gazillion different things through the day. It’s just not something that we give a lot of thought to. We don’t mean to be disrespectful of anyone’s time but the reality of it is if you have a home in the market, you’re getting a bunch of calls. I’m just one of several that you’re getting to hear in the next 10 to 15 minutes because your home’s listed.

Jason: They’re already getting calls from a bunch of terrible prospects. Something else that was pointed out to me by one of my clients is that one of the number one targets for scammers are houses with really terrible looking DIY for rent signs used For Rent by Owners.

You’re also providing, I think, some real value as a property manager, and you’re helping protect them from falling prey to some of these scammers and whatnot. How do you find your leads? Where do you get these leads?

Daniel: You got to find a source and that’s maybe the biggest challenge in cold calling. No one wants to do the cold calling but really the challenge is not the cold calls, it’s getting the source of information. We started off with Craigslist. We’ve used Zillow or Trulia. We’ve used tax records to see primary, non-primary kind of homes. It takes a little bit of research. It takes a little bit of time to dig through to some of those things.

We’ve also used off-market listings. As a listing is coming off the market for sale, call lenders, start asking and giving them another option as opposed to selling their house. We don’t do any real estate sales. We only do single family property management. We are calling them with an opportunity to maybe solve their problem by not selling their house and to give them another option.

Again, finding a list is key. That’s really the biggest challenge, is having a good list. There’s a lot of ways online which you can do that as well and then from there, it’s just a matter of picking up the phone.

Jason: I actually got in touch with a company called pmleads.com several months ago and was talking with them about their service. They actually have FRBO, For Rent By Owner leads, you can subscribe to their service. If you want to get a discount, they set up a special landing page for me. If you go to pmleads.com/doorgrow, you can start a free trial and try it out for two weeks and then you get I think 25% off of what their normal pricing is if you start with my URL. It’ll redirect right back to PM Leads, I’ve noticed, but it has our logo and stuff at the top. It stores it via a cookie or something but you’ll get a discount.

I guess they data mined Craigslist and several other channels in each rental market and they add markets so you subscribe by market. It looks like a really cool service. I recommend, everybody, check that out as a source to get leads. It’s probably a little bit easier than doing your own data mining through Craigslist. If it saves you an hour, it’s probably worth it, hands down.

Before you can sell, you need to know what their challenges are, you mentioned, and you need to know what it wants. It’s pain and pleasure in sales. I found that just asking questions can be really effective. I’m going to share some of my ideas I came up with. Are you ready for this?

Daniel: Ready man.

Jason: Alright, starting out, it’s great to be up front with who you are. That disarms them especially if you’re going to start asking questions, “Hey, this is so and so with such and such property management.” And then, “Is the property still available?”

I got this idea from John Xepoleas, one of my clients. The other day, he mentioned, just asking, “Is the property still available?” And saying, “I may have a tenant for you. Would you be willing to pay a referral fee?” Just asking them that sort of question, “If I bring you a tenant,” and if they say, “Yeah, I’d consider it.” Then he would bring up getting to property management or talk about what he does. But then, what he said what I would do is, “Typically, I’d charge this amount to place a tenant, but what if I gave you the tenant for free if you did a management contract with me and let me tell you about management.” I thought that was a pretty clever idea. What do you think of that one?

Daniel: Yeah. I like the spin that he’s done with that and it’s nicely done. That’s very similar to the kind of language we use when talking with folks. We approach them with, “We’ve got tenants. We’ve got the ability to rent your home quickly.” Then on the back side, I really like that with the management spin on it.

Jason: Cool. Another idea is, first, you want to qualify a potential prospect. You want to find out where they’re at so it’s great to know in general what people’s challenges, and what not are, but you want to find out their specific challenge.

I liked how you had mentioned asking if the property is vacant. I would ask how long has it been vacant, because the longer it’s been vacant, the bigger their pain. If you hear, “Oh wow, it’s been vacant for three weeks? Oh wow, that’s almost four weeks. That’s like a year of our management fees. We could’ve had it rented out and been taking care of the whole thing for you for an entire year.” I think qualifying upfront helps you know how to sell.

Another great question I saw on some real estate scripts where they do For Sale by Owners or target FRBOs to convince them do real estate and list the home with them is to ask, “Did you buy the home as an investment property or did it end up as one through circumstance?” And then after that to ask, “Do you have any other rental properties?”

One cool idea I got from Steve Murray of REAL Trends is he had mentioned that if you have four rentals or more, you typically are tapped out as a real estate investor and that’s generally when they need property management. That’s another great way of qualifying them. You know the more properties they have, the more hassle and difficulty they have in keeping the management going, the more they would probably want or need your services. After about four, I think, it’s pretty much inevitable they’re going to use a property manager. What do you think of that idea?

Daniel: I agree. I’ve heard those same stats. We see a little bit of both for that. Sometimes, we get the folks that have 4-10. They think because they’ve been able to do more than the average, that they know it all. It’s a matter of cracking through that code and helping them understand what they don’t understand.

For the folks with 1 Cs, 2 Cs, a lot of times, they know that they don’t know quite yet what’s going on. Sometimes, they’re a little bit easier. I do agree that as you get more, it certainly gets more difficult, there’s more opportunity. Obviously there’s more return for us as well, but most investors understand that. We’ve actually had more success with the 1s and 2s than we had with the larger portfolios to our cold calling aspects.

However, we’d get into those multiples, we usually ask them, “Just allow us to take one or two of your properties and prove ourselves. Let us show you what the difference is that we can bring to the table. If we do a good job for you, then obviously, we’d like the opportunity to earn your business with the others.” That builds trusts. It shows that you’re willing to put your best foot forward and to work in order to earn the business, that you’re not just expecting them to handle that overall to you.

Jason: Yeah, I love it. I think a fantastic principle is to be helpful. You give value first. It lowers that trust barrier, hurdle that you need to jump over. It also opens them up to believing that you have some intention to benefit them, not just yourself. I love that. Give value first. In that line, have you ever thought about offering some sort of value to come out and meet with them and see if the property like a free rental analysis or rent ready inspection to help them get more rent?

Daniel: I want to get to the property. We don’t take every property we look at. When you’re doing this type of prospecting, you’ve already narrowed down your search. You’ve already flushed out a lot of the crap that you’re going to see and so you’re kind of already in a sweet spot.

But even being in that sweet spot, you don’t know if the owner is at a place that you want to work with them. You don’t know if the property is in the right condition. Pictures can be deceiving. Getting there is super important to both understand the owner’s goals and objectives and to see if their philosophies match with our management as well as understanding the property and whether the property has value as well.

We want to get there. Our hunt there is tenant placement services is what usually opens the door. When we get there, we use the sales process that starts with asking questions and providing rental analysis as part of that. We take a full rental analysis that we’ve prepared prior to that to them and start with a lot of questions before we even present that to them to help understand the property and its real value.

Jason:  First, you find the leads then, you call them up. You need to be curious, be helpful. What’s your number one goal when you cold call somebody during that phone call? What’s the main outcome? Is it to get a time set to go see the property?

Daniel: Absolutely. I want to set an appointment. On our good day, a good week, our numbers, if we’re cold calling, if I get four appointments a week out of our cold calls, that’s what I’m working on. Four appointments per week, we’ll produce 1 ½  houses a week by doing that. There’s going to be some people that cancel before the appointment. There’s going to be some houses that are not a good fit. Owners that are not a good fit. We’re going to get a no, [inaudible [00:19:53] business there as well.

We understand that if we get four appointments a week off of our cold calling activities, that we’re going to net 1 ½  properties per week through that effort.

Jason: Let’s work this backwards with the numbers. If you want to close a door or so a week, you’re saying you need to have probably about four appointments?

Daniel: That’s correct.

Jason: If you have four appointments, how many cold calls do you need to connect with or make in order to get those four, typically?

Daniel: We’re saying about 60 calls in a week to get those four appointments, that’s about the average to get that. Some of those calls are regurgitated from the week before where we didn’t reach somebody, some of those are new listings and so it’s a combination of where those calls comes from, but they consistently see that effort.

A few years ago, we were seeing a much higher return rate. We will get 60%, 65% response rates to our cold calls. Today, that number is much, much lower than what we experienced a few years ago but nonetheless, it’s still an effective means and understanding those numbers is going to help you get to whatever your goal is.

Jason: That doesn’t sound too crazy. [inaudible [00:21:06] 60 like, “Whoa, but for four?” That’s only what, 10 phone calls a business day, roughly?

Daniel: Yeah. If you break it down to a daily basis, we usually break it down to two or three days a week and make 20 calls in a day or so. You can make 20 quality calls in a two hour time block. That’s not too bad. You’re going to go get a cold drink and sit down, put a headset on, and just kind of buzz through them.

Jason: Yeah, I love it. Chunk out some time, have your call list. You can crank to them pretty quickly. Just do it, just get in to it. After you make that first phone call, I’m sure it gets a little bit easier on each one.

Daniel: Good question. It takes usually about five or six to kind of get into the groove. Once you get 5 or 6 behind you, usually by the time you’re at 10 to 12, you’re kind of groovin’ at that point. Really focus on what you’re objective is and get your goal for that day. It really helps you along. We do some fun stuff in the office. We’ve got a bell that we rang for appointments and different stuff that we do just to make some fun of it.

Jason: When you go out to the appointment, this is my recommendation, is those listening, make sure your goal is to find the win-win or when you’re on the phone find the win-win. What if we both could win and help each other out? I help real estate investors win without the headache of being a landlord. This kind of a thing. Figure out what they want. Help them win.

The other tactic in sales that I think is critical, Grant Cardone said this is like this number one sales secret, is follow up. What’s your follow up process like with these cold leads that you’re calling?

Daniel: We maintain contact and we’ll follow that lead if we’re not getting a hold of them several times a week, for several weeks before we end up flushing it out. We maintain a database of that though because if they had a house that was available on May, there’s a good likelihood they’ll have a house that will become available on May again next year. Those list compound themselves and you can go back to them and get some good information from them as a result of that.

Our process is pretty simple. We start off by just using spreadsheets. We’ve gone to using some different database systems now for some work flows and some of different things that we can utilize with those as well.

Jason: I highly recommend property managers leverage a CRM to keep track of their leads and prospects. There’s some great CRMs out there. It stands for customer relationship or contact relationship management. A good CRM can really help you keep track your deals and leads, especially, I love the ones like Kanban pipeline stages, stuff like that, that you can follow through and set your stages up. Base is a great CRM if you’re doing a lot of cold calling. It has phone stuff built into it. Contactually is a really great CRM for helping you initiate follow up.

Here’s a really cool tactic. Here’s another idea. Let me know what you think of this idea.

Daniel: Alright.

Jason: I heard this from a guy named Travis at Lighthouse Property Management. He’s near Atlanta. Travis told me that he had this idea, I thought this was a cool idea. This idea is to keep track of A-grade tenants, so when you do tenant screening, you don’t place them all.

Daniel: That’s correct.

Jason: There’s a stack of them in the CRM. When you get this A-grade tenant that has great credit, they look amazing, they’ve got a job, all this stuff, they look nice, whatever the qualifications that you consider an A-grade tenant. Keep track of them in the CRM, you can’t place them, you know they’re probably, maybe, looking for property a year from that time, roughly. When some other place you talk to, “Oh, we got into another place, another management company or For Rent by Owner, whatever. No problem, I’ll follow up within a year and see how you like you’re place still and see if you they’ll need upgrade. Oh, okay.

You keep them in your CRM and then you can drip out stuff, or you can just call them, but you’ve got this list eventually built up of all this great tenants. When you follow up, you’re going to then have a list, eventually, of tenants that are looking again, or open to looking for another property, because you’ve emailed them and asked them and said, “Yeah, yeah. We’re looking for new place.”

Obviously, this would take time. But if you have these list every month of A-grade tenants that are coming due that are ready to look for a new place or interested in a better or newer property then, how powerful it would be to cold call somebody that has no tenants and say, “Hey, I’ve got three or four A-grade tenants that are looking for properties right now that meet your specs?” Right after you asked them the specs from the property. What do you think of that idea?

Daniel: I think it’s great. There’s a lot of technology today that can be able to compile these lists. It is one of the hooks that we use when we’re talking with owners. They usually want to know, “Do you have anybody that’s interested in my property right now?” Being able to get back to them and go, “Yeah, we’ve got several hundred people that are leaving bad properties who are active in the marketplace today. We have eight A-grade that already meet your criteria that are looking for a property in that general area,” allows you to, again, to get a foot into the door, all you’re looking for, in my viewpoint, is to get the foot into the door because you can’t dig much on the phone. You got to get in front of them, and you’ve got to build up a relationship, and you’ve got to provide value to them.

By getting your foot in the door, you can start that process of doing so. I love that. I think that having a good list, knowing what your numbers are on those lists, you don’t have those compromise that when you’re talking about, they realize the value of what you do.

I was told very early, when I first started doing this, I was talking to a friend and I said, “Man, these owners know as much as I do. I’m brand new into this business. Here I am cold calling them.” He said, “You have to remember that you see more in one market than any honorable CNA in their whole time of any property.” That really changed my perspective when I was cold calling early on and it really made an attitude difference as I started getting a few properties under my belt in [inaudible [00:27:40].

Jason: That’s a fantastic mindset shift or perspective for property managers starting out. There’s always this voice in anything that we do as a business owner or in any role, we think, “Who am I to do this? How am I qualified? Am I good enough to do this?” That’s a great point for property managers, even if you’re just starting out, in a single month, you’re going to see more action than an owner of a property typically of one property would see in entire year. Maybe seven years. Love it.

This is, I think, a really valuable question to people. Many are afraid of the no’s, getting told no, because cold calling you’re going to hear probably a lot of no’s, or I’m not interested, or whatever. What benefits have you noticed or changes in yourself in experiencing these no’s in terms of resiliency or any other benefits?

Daniel: Getting a no really helps you polish what you’re doing. When you get no, after no, after no, it does a couple of things. It builds your stamina in what you’re doing first and foremost and secondly, it allows you to polish your skills.

By being engaged with cold calling, you get to be answered with the owners, and landlords that are in the marketplace, you get to hear what’s going on with them, you’re going to inadvertently be engaging with other management companies and agents as well that are listed there and you get an intimate knowledge that you really can’t gain in any other way, fairly quickly.

For me, what I find is it really gives me the opportunity to polish my skills and it allows me to, when I’m in front of a potential client, to really come across with a lot of information as relative about what I’ll be doing on as well as what’s my knowledge base is. A no is certainly a part of it but it’s not something that gets us really off track of what we’re doing, it’s just a lost. That’s a part of cold calling.

Jason: Kind of what you’re describing is this process, almost like making a sword. It’s this pounding, and this pressure, and this difficulty, and resistance that you’re getting makes you stronger and better at what you’re doing. If you’re not challenged in sales, you’re not going to get better at sales.

A lot of property managers aren’t even really selling, they’re just taking word-of-mouth, leads business, and they’re just answering questions, and then trying to get signatures. I think it makes you a better seller. People that are really great at sales, how did they learn? Just by doing it, by being told ‘no’.

Ray Hespen of Property Meld, we’ve had on the show before, he’s got a question and he says, “Daniel, I heard that cold calling success is a direct correlation of attitude towards cold calling. How do you get your team to have the right attitude?”

Daniel: It’s about building fun into the successes because it is hard. For me, I didn’t have a choice. It was survival for me. I had to make it happen regardless of what the no’s were. When you got a team, training the team and working with the team they don’t see that the same way that you see it.

You got to build fun into that atmosphere. I find that 20 minute blocks of time or good blocks of time, take a drink break, talk about what’s going on, celebrate the victories. Again, we use a bell to celebrate victories in the office. Everytime you hear a bell go off, you know something good happens and then also, keeping them engaged.

A lot of times, when folks are cold calling for you then, you’re out there and getting deals done and it’s exciting to you but you sometimes forget to let them know what the end result was. Let them know, in participating that, that they have a much better buy, they’re attitude seems to change a little bit. I’ve got somebody that calls for me today. Honestly, he’s a much better cold caller than I’ve ever been. But it’s just straight on the phone, but he enjoys his success. He likes to know, not just that he got an appointment, but he likes to know what happens through that appointment and what the end result was for our company as a result of that. There’s a sense ownership through that and through that ownership, that builds pride in what we’re doing and that the attitude tends to change.

Jason:  To engage them, they need to know that there’s some wins happening. Celebrate the wins, make sure that there’s some closes. As business owners, that’s great advice because a lot of us don’t celebrate the wins. We’re so focused on all the challenges and difficulties and when there are successes or wins, we really need to take time to celebrate it. We’re often more willing to do it for our team than for ourselves, but that’s some great advice that I got from some coaches in MET courses, to make sure and celebrate those wins.

I’ve got another idea, I want to share some power phrases. Are you ready for this?

Daniel: Ready for it.

Jason: Alright. These are some power phrases that help, I think, with the cold calling conversation or it could. One of the phrases that I like to use when I’m on my cold first initial call, because I call any first initial call, a cold call, because there’s no relationship there. It’s not warm. Some people think it means just calling somebody else and interrupting them, they call me, that’s still cold call in my universe.

One of the phrases that I like to use is, “most of my clients”. You could say, “Oh, most of my clients start with a property manager for these reasons or they came to us for these. What’s your situation like?” This phrase “most of our clients” says one, that you have clients and it’s kind of this bandwagon mindset, they want to be like these people.

Another phrase is “I find the most savvy investors”. This is the phrase that you could use or “the most savvy” I would say, “The most savvy property managers that have done this from my experience. This is what the most savvy investors do.” They get this property, and they get another property, they do this, whatever because they want to be savvy. It’s a positive thing. That’s another power phrase.

Another power phrase I wrote down before our show is “I talked with a guy a week ago that… or before that did this” and share stories, horror stories and success stories, when you’re talking with people on the phone. People love stories because you can say, “We’re going to do this for your property, and we’re going to do this, and we’re going to do that, and this,” but linear methodical people can’t really grasp it sometimes and so, I find stories to be really powerful. I love sharing stories, or experiences, or things that I’ve heard, from other property managers, or stories of different clients that I have that are good or bad. That’s very powerful to share a story.

Another power phrase or idea I had is, “I help an owner in your exact situation just the other day.” What you’re doing is what’s called future pacing. You can say, “Well, this is what we did for this other guy that was in your same situation.” You’re painting this picture, this possible future for them of success that you’ve already done.

Alright, What do you think of those ideas?

Daniel: I think they are great. The biggest thing with cold calling is being able to relate to be able to have a conversation. Any of those power phrases that helps you relate to them is going to get that conversation going. Once you got that conversation going, everything else kind of flows.

Everybody is scared to pick up the phone, everybody is scared to make that call but no one’s scared to have a conversation, traditionally. It’s just a matter of breaking the ice to get to that conversation. Some of those power phrases work really well with the ability to break into that and start that conversation.

I find it, like many sales items, once you get someone talking, then you do a lot of listing, you do a lot of question asking and they walk away from the conversation  with a very positive viewpoint of who you are and what you do. Doing so, and again, the more they talk, the closer I know I’m getting to an appointment, or the more I realize that they’re not a good fit for me and I don’t want the appointment anyway and so I stop making the call.

Jason: Have you ever use the tactic of mentioning the liability? Kind of showcasing some of the fear. One of the questions that I got from somebody was about, how do you convince these DIY landlords that they need it, when they say, “Well, I’ve rented it out several times and it’s never really been too difficult.”

Daniel: This new hood ruling that has come out that we learned through NARPM back in Vegas, was they’ve used it a lot, but people just don’t know what it is. They don’t understand it is very, very scary.

Jason: The new head loss and the fair housing, stuff like that.

Daniel: Correct, yeah. We’ll kind of sting them a little bit with, “Are you aware of the new ruling or have you heard about…” Most folks realize that they haven’t heard about and then it’s a scary process. The scarier they get, the more they want to talk to you, the better the resource you could become in doing that.

I don’t like a scare tactic per se, but I like to educate folks and I want them to be educated. I want people to operate in the marketplace and operate in a high standard and a high professional level. By having these conversations, it’s not necessarily scaring them, but more into educating them and making sure that they will operate in a way that lands itself to success for them and traditionally, it will open a door because we become a resource at that point.

Jason: Alright. Here’s a phrase that I came up with. You could be saying this to them on the phone, something like this maybe, “Sure, you could do it yourself. Most of my clients were like you, doing it on their own before. They just got tired of finding, and screening tenants, and showing the property, and handling maintenance issues, and dealing with evictions, etc. With the recent HUD and Fair Housing laws, comfort animals, scammers, all these stuff going on, most of my clients were glad to avoid the potential lawsuits, criminals etcetera that are targeting DIY landlords.”

Daniel: We’ll kind of scale that in a little bit and we’ll use that in a phrase, we’ll come back to them and say, “Based on some of the challenges that we’ve seen in the marketplace, there’s new rulings we find that it’s becoming too much of a liability for individuals to maintain this on their own.” Most people that own a home are somewhat conscious to liability so they want to understand how to minimize that risk as we start to talk about liabilities. You see their ears for perk up a little bit and you can start down that road with them and start that education process.

Jason: Yeah, fantastic. Another idea that I came up with that I think will be useful is having some sort of lead magnet, “Hey, could I send you an email with the top six landlord tenant laws that most landlords are failing to stay on top of, or enact, or practice.” Something like that and they’d say, “Yeah. yeah.” Then you can showcase some of the reliability that maybe they are not aware of.

Daniel: Excellent idea. A lot of times, when we can’t get an appointment on the phone, we’re getting shut down, we’re getting that ‘no’. That ‘no’ for us is an opportunity to capture information. We’ll ask them, “Can we send out some information to you about how to better your property as a future self landlord.” We kind of tell them that, “Hey, it’s okay. Do it yourself. That’s cool, but let us give you some information, some free education pieces. If we can ever be a resource, we hope that you’ll fall back on as a resource.”

We just finished a video series. That’s an eight part series that we’re using in conjunction with that as a means of touching those people more and having an opportunity to get back in front of them and when we get back in front of them, it’s a little bit warmer than that first call we did. We’ll tell you in a year about how that’s worked out.

Jason: Yeah, I love it. The eight video series. What are the videos about?

Daniel: Videos are anything from what it makes ready, how to select the best tenants, why a property manager and then, just all the general list that that walk on there. What that does is that it helps them understand this is what’s my house needs to look like to be ready to rent. These are the things I need to be thinking about, working out when I’m talking to tenants. These are a type of resources I need in my marketplace in case I hit a snag. It just kind of goes through all that. The very last one is about log property management and of course, it’s like completely self promotion for us and the reason why we need to be their source.

Jason: Fantastic, love it. This has been some really great advice, great ideas. For those out there that are looking to get started with cold calling, how do they start?

Daniel: You need to find a list, whether that’s Craigslist, Zillow, whether it’s the vendor that you talked spoke about earlier. You got to find a list. You got to find the opportunities and you do need a list. You don’t need just one or two. You need as many as you can compile in order to start making those calls. Go think a simple script. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Think about what those normal objections are that you’re going to get and have a response for those.

Have a script and then understand your market. If you’re in property management and you’re just getting started, then you understand the basics of what that market is so you can get a market with that. But then, make sure that when you get in front of them, that you’re fully prepared. Have a good process, be a value, asking questions. It’s not all about just getting another house. For us, it’s about building a relationship. Making sure it’s a good match, a good fit and then, getting the business from there.

Jason: This doesn’t have to something incredibly sophisticated. They don’t need to analyze over this too much. Put together a quick and dirty script, make a list, and just start making the phone calls. Really, really simple.

Daniel, I love a lot of the ideas. I appreciate you coming out. How can people find you?

Daniel: The best way to reach me, phone 864-640-8877. Email is daniel@4m-propertysolutions.com. I’d love to connect with you guys.

Jason: Perfect. Daniel, thanks for coming on The DoorGrow Show.

Daniel: Thank you. I appreciate you having me.

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