If you’re a real estate agent, chances are you’ve grown to hate cold calling. It’s time-consuming, frustrating, and rarely leads to anything productive.

But what if there was a better way to generate leads than cold calling? One that took less time, helped you get exposure from more people in your market per day, and cost a fraction of the price of a hired cold caller?

Are you tired of cold calling leads?

Of course you are. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t have clicked on this blog post.

Let’s be honest, cold calling is a soul-sucking activity that very few people enjoy. And yet, real estate agents continue to do it because they feel like they have to in order to generate leads.

You have been taught by sales experts to cold call a certain number of people per day because that’s what has always worked.

You’ve also probably internalised various cold calling tips, memorised stacks of so-called effective cold calling scripts, polished your canned sales pitch and got small talk down to a science.

And while cold calling can result in a credible lead, the amount of time it takes you to dial 100 numbers, and the amount of abuse you have to put up with to get that lead, is simply not worth it.

Is it really a good use of your time?

Is cold calling dead?

No, it’s not dead. It’s simply outdated.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, there were only a handful of sales techniques real estate agents could use to find homeowners (newspapers, TV, radio, flyer drops and door knocking).

The phone, however, was the most time efficient way to source new leads: you could pick up the phone book or a list of potential customers and simply start dialing. Even making individual cold calls beat door knocking in efficiency.

It stood the test of time...for the next 20 years!

But with the advent of online search engines like Google and social networks like Facebook, it made reaching thousands of potential leads per day (instead of just a hundred a day) truly possible.

And it is not only the incredible reach you can enjoy when you leverage these online traffic sources, but the cost and time effectiveness they provide.

How long would it take you to cold call 10000 people in a suburb?

That’s a rhetorical question.

Maybe a better question is how much money would it cost you to either cold call 10000 homeowners yourself or hire someone to do it for you?

If we’re being conservative, probably in the region of R20 000 or more.

And of those 10000 people, how many would gladly allow you to provide them with a complimentary CMA (or desktop valuation report)?

Again, another rhetorical question.

But I hope you see the point: if you want to spend hours of your productive time being abused by strangers then cold calling is perfect. Or if you want to spend thousands of rand on a hired cold caller (and pay over a percentage of your commission to them if they get you a listing that sticks), then cold calling is perfect.

Want to say goodbye to cold calling forever?

Successful sales teams are already using a new way to generate leads that takes less time, helps them get exposure from more people in their market per day, and costs a fraction of the price of cold calling.

3 things you can do today (that require zero cold calls)

1 A Blog vs Cold Calling

A blog is no longer a journal for your thoughts. Your mindset needs to shift from a blog being about writing, to being about making money.

The money flows when your blog is helpful and answers your markets’ burning questions. Remember, question’s need answers.

It also grows your online reputation exponentially. How many real estate agents do you know who have their own blog?

Exactly...not even a handful.

But here’s the thing: your blog should be optimised for Search engines like Google so that it’s easily found.

This is how you attract organic traffic from people who are actively looking for information on real estate.

Total Cost: around R3000 for a domain name and year’s worth of hosting. We personally recommend GoDaddy’s Hosted Wordpress package because the support is great and the interface is easy to navigate

2 Facebook Ads vs Cold Calling

Once your blog is live, you can start driving traffic to it by running Facebook Ads.

You could target people in your city who are interested in buying or selling a home, for example.

The other benefit of Facebook ads is that you can target right down to a mile around your farming area or even combine areas in a single ad.

A tip for Facebook ads is to not boost a post from your business page’s feed. Always use Facebook’s Ads Manager.

Remember though that Facebook ads can deliver you leads, but the leads you will get will more than likely not be ready to sell right away so will require a bit of nurture from you (which you can automate using a tool like Property Funnels to keep prospects engaged with you and your brand).

Total Cost: This depends on how aggressively you want to target your audience, but could be as little as R50 per day (we recommend around R4000 per month for an ad that runs every hour of every day of the week).

3 Google Ads vs Cold Calling

Google is great to target people who are searching for real estate terms on Google.

For example, someone who searches for "How to sell my Sandton home" shows their intent is to sell in the very near future.

Just like Facebook Ads, Google Ads allows you to target by city or by a radius around your farming area so your can also advertise to your local market.

A trick with Google Ads: you can analyse the keywords people are using to find your ad right down to the actual search terms. Use these search terms to create new blog posts for your blog!

Total Cost: R50 per day (we recommend at least R3000 per month)

If you’ve been cold calling leads and not getting many results, it’s time to switch up your strategy. There is a better way to generate leads that takes less time and is more cost effective.

Combining a search-optimised blog with Facebook Ads and Google Ads will grow your reputation, enhance your reach and influence, and result in more leads than you could handle.

Outbound calling simply cannot compare!

And you know what happens when you have more leads than you can handle? You hire an outsourced sales team with years of sales call experience to help you set up appointments with homeowners who actually want to work with you.