Tips and Tricks for Lead Follow-Up During the Holidays

Dan Austin: [0:00] Hey there, welcome back to another episode of the Collecting Keys Friday Focus. You have me here today again as your host, Dan Austin. If you're new here, these are the episodes where Mike or I like to take a deep dive into a specific topic, go on a rant, or just talk about something that we care about, and hopefully, you all listening enjoy these sorts of things, and that's why you're here. And if you do enjoy these, if you get one like little thing that you're like, that actually kinda helped me think differently about this, go and give us a five star review, and a rating, or a comment wherever you listen to your podcasts. Apple, iTunes is a great place to do that, and I'm still giving away shirts. If you don't like our swag, but you know somebody that will, you want a Christmas gift, literally just take a screenshot of you making that rating and review, send it to me on Instagram at investormandan, or wherever you do social media, you can find me there on that handle, and I will literally send you, no shipping cost, no cost at all, a free collecting key shirt of your choice. Got a lot of cool swag on the store, we make no money on this stuff, we just like to see these shirts get out in the wild, because it's so cool to be able to walk down the street and see someone wearing a BDE shirt, or a collecting keys podcast shirt. So anyhow, it helps us grow, so if you don't mind just taking a few minutes to do that, it literally takes less than thirty seconds, I would appreciate it. So thank you so much for listening and following us. Alright.

Dan Austin: [1:14] So today, I want to talk about follow-up and marketing systems during the holidays, and how you can literally make a lot of money during this time of year, and also set up 2024, or that next January as like the most epic, right? Because what we find is the holidays, you know, through Thanksgiving and Christmas, the work you put in during the last six weeks of the year are what sets you up to have an epic first week of the following year. All too often people in the real estate industry for some reason, they shut down. They say nobody wants to move, nobody wants to sell their property during the holidays, absolutely. I don't disagree, a lot of people aren't that way, but there are also a lot of people that don't care, They're landlords. There's landlords out there, and we've done deals like this. We bought an eight unit like this, where we closed on December 31, because the landlord needed to sell it for tax purposes by the end of the year. He called us in December, and we made that thing happen. So there are people that do wanna sell properties, there are people that do wanna move, but also you're trying to set up that January, you're trying to set up after the holidays to be the very first person that they think about when they make that decision, or have that call scheduled with. Because like I said, all too often people in our industry decide that they want to shut down during the holidays, and that's great, you know, take six weeks off, you know, this thing's gonna air December 1, if you wanna take the next four weeks off, that's great, recharge your batteries, but just know, people like Mike and I, we're gonna be out there, we're gonna be hustling, we're gonna be using our systems.

Dan Austin: [2:38] And here's how I think about it. If Coca Cola or Pepsi, would they like, these major companies, would they just stop marketing during November and December, because we don't think people wanna buy our product as much. Absolutely not, right? And so, if you just stop marketing in December because it's the holidays, you're literally giving up one twelfth of your potential revenue. And mind you, a lot of businesses in the consumer world do most of their business during the holidays, because that's when people are in the mood to spend money, they feel like they have to. It might be different for us in real estate, however, I will say that literally, if you're shutting down your marketing system, then you're gonna give up again, one twelfth of your potential revenue. You're at least gonna give up a large percentage of your potential revenue. Other companies aren't doing it, why are you justifying that you should completely shut down your business during this holiday? So if I was to say diving into the marketing piece, one of the things that I like to say is like, just don't shut it down, keep it going, but be strategic about how you are going to do your marketing. We do direct mail. For us, we strategically place when those mail drops are going to happen. Typically, just send, every Friday we send out our mail, so it hits Monday or Tuesday. What we'll do is we'll strategically order our direct mail, so that it will not land on a holiday, because let's be honest, as you get closer to the holiday, people are traveling, people are less likely to check their mail, and then it just builds up, and they've got a pile, a stack of junk mail, and we just fall into it. It's just less likely that they're going to pick up the phone and call you. They might save your card though, so it is worth mailing, but just try to be strategic around it.

Dan Austin: [4:03] So like for December, we will do three mail drops instead of four, to try to work around that Christmas holiday. Cold calling and texting, same thing, keep doing those. You can do those all the way up until the holidays, don't be gross though, don't, it's tacky, don't cold call, don't text them on the holiday. If it's Christmas, give them some time. If it's Thanksgiving, which I know we're already past, but just don't do it, it's just kinda give them their family time, give them their space. But definitely as you get closer and as you work up to those holidays, it's a great time to continue to market to these folks. And like I said, you don't ever, in any circumstance, want to reduce your funnels operational capacity, so keep your marketing, keep your leads coming in to your business, so that you can continue to work new leads, and be ready to rock and roll after the holidays, if not during the holidays. When it comes to follow-up, keep doing your follow-up. And here's a good example of why you need to keep doing your follow-up. So last week was Thanksgiving week, one of our sales guys was doing his follow-up, and we were watching kind of our response rates, they're tanking, they're kinda going down lower, lower throughout the week, as we got closer to Thanksgiving holiday, and we expect that we know we're gonna get lower lead responses during the holidays, and we know we're gonna get lower follow-up responses from our leads during the holidays, and that's okay.

Dan Austin: [5:14] Because as he was getting too close to the end of the day on Wednesday, he was able to finally get ahold of a seller that he had been following up with for a couple weeks, and he was able to sign a contract with that seller at like three, four, 5PM, I don't know, was the end of the day, right before Thanksgiving, signed a contract, and we'll be closing on that deal in December. Had we not done that follow-up, four days would have gone by Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, maybe nobody would have called them, maybe another wholesaler would have called them on Saturday or on Friday, and would have got it under contract or next week, or maybe would have never got the seller back on the phone. We don't know, but we do know doing that follow-up during that period of time, it does help, because we've signed so many deals. Another example of a deal that we signed, this was a couple years ago, we signed an eight unit property, because the seller needed to sell this property before the end of December. He kinda procrastinated, kinda waited. Anyways, got into December, we were following up with him, we got it under contract, and then we closed on that property, literally December 31 for him. That property ended up netting Mike and I a couple $100,000, so it's definitely worth operating. Just that one deal alone for most people could totally change their trajectory of their life, or trajectory of their business. So, that's just another good example of why doing your marketing, doing your follow-up during the holidays will really help set you up. With the follow-up stuff, I will say that again, you're going to see like lower response rates, but that's okay, just keep hitting up your calls and your texts.

Dan Austin: [6:37] If you get to a point to where you have sellers that just aren't answering the phone, here's a good tip and trick that we use is like, just leave a voicemail and then text them, just say, hey, you know, Mr. Seller, this is so and so with whatever your company's name is, like, hey, I know you're probably super busy, I'm sorry, I'm trying to get ahold of you during the holiday season, I bet you got a lot going on, Can we set up a time to just chat after the holidays, we'll get through this stressful time, blah blah blah blah, kinda go on that way, and set up a time with them, and that'll sometimes get them to say, you know what, that's cool, yeah, two weeks, they'll set it out in the future, they'll respond that you stop calling and texting them, so that's a really good tactic. Also, as you're talking to these sellers, when you do get them on the phone during this holiday season, if they say like, hey, I'm just too busy, I'm kinda stressed out, or I just don't have time right now, talk to me over the holidays. Respect that. Just put them out there on a follow-up sequence to come in in January, once we get through the holidays. But here's another tip and trick on how to do this. When they say that, say, absolutely mister and missus seller, I would love to do that, kinda give you some time to think about this, and to get through the holidays, it's always a stressful time of year. Can I follow-up with you on whatever day, January 3, how does eight or 9AM sound?

Dan Austin: [7:44] Or if they're working, hey, how does this time sound? Like, when can I call you? And really lock in a specific time as close as you can. They may say, hey, I don't know what I'm gonna be doing, just give them a generic time that you're going to try to call them, and then call them on that time. What that does, is that shows them that you are willing to do exactly what you say you're gonna do. It builds a little bit more trust, builds a little bit more rapport with these sellers who don't often get that from a lot of people they work with. And so, by doing what you say you're gonna do, January 3 comes around and you call them at 9AM and they answer the phone like, holy cow, I can't believe you actually said that, and you did it. And that really starts the conversation off really well, and it gives them some responsibility because they've kind of agreed to set an appointment, and people are less likely to miss an appointment or not show up to an appointment that they've set, right? If you just say, hey, I'm gonna call you on this day, good chance they they might not answer, because they just don't have that same responsibility, they don't feel like they owe you anything, because they they didn't necessarily agree to anything. So, that's just another tip and trick here on the follow ups.

Dan Austin: [8:40] I'll just close out this quick episode with summarizing like marketing, don't shut down your marketing funnel during the holidays, save a few bucks, because all the marketing you do in November, and really into December, is going to set up your January to have a ton of leads, because people will hold on to those cards, they might not wanna make a decision now, but they will call you in January, if they are motivated to sell, they have New Year's resolutions, they have some time around family, they just make these decisions, say, you know what, it's time, enough is enough, I'm gonna sell my house, I wanna do this, I wanna do that. They also might call you and say, I need to sell right before the first of year for tax reasons, divorce reasons, whatever those reasons are, so definitely keep marketing. And then continue to operate your follow-up systems as you would with some adjustments to accommodate people for the holidays, setting appointments for post holidays with people, and being really rigid on your follow-up once you do get post holidays. Don't just kinda get nervous, or don't just kinda get lazy, actually January comes around, hit those phones like you've never hit them before.

Dan Austin: [9:36] Text these clients back, get them on the phone, do whatever you can, because everybody's going to be doing that, and the new year, new me type attitude is perfect opportunity to take advantage of that with a lot of your leads. So, I'll stop there, remember marketing and follow-up systems are absolutely critical during this time of year. If you found this valuable, hit me up wherever you do social media, investormandan. If If you you didn't find it valuable, I'd love constructive feedback as well. Just let me know what you think. Other than that, I will catch you next week. See you.