Just a few decades ago, before technology brought us cell phones, caller ID, and the Do Not Call Registry; cold calling was done one-on-one with a single registered analog phone line. This was true if you were sitting in your home, office, or a company's large call center which used a large physical block of analog phone lines.
At that time, the only way for someone to know who was calling was to simply pick up the phone. While many may laugh at this old technology, these technical limitations allowed cold callers to take advantage of a much higher answer rate than we could ever image with today’s technology.
Back then, with a higher rate of answered calls, callers could start to nurture their leads based on their information about the call's recipient, the conversation, and even the recipient's feedback during the conversation.
With the evolution of digital phone lines, physical phone blocks have been almost completely replaced by virtual phone blocks and cloud computing. While this evolution has allowed the traditional telephone providers to scale down their physical footprint, it has also allowed a lot of smaller companies to enter into the telecommunications industry as mass calling providers. Essentially, allowing a single user to become mini call marketing center.
While there are different variations of these calling systems, the concept is pretty simple. Some offer the ability to feed your list of phone numbers into their app so it can start auto dialing numbers one at a time until a call is answered. Others offer the ability to auto dial 10, 50, or even hundreds of consecutive calls and the first call answered is the one you talk to.
With either method you can choose to pass over phone numbers that go to voicemail or that may be answered by an auto attendant system. Both of which are used quite frequently by individuals and businesses trying to weed out unwanted solicitation calls.
Sounds like a cold caller’s dream, right? Or at least that's what a lot of influencers and so-called coaches like to teach.
We see this type of short-cut employed in virtually every industry where a small company wants to solicit prospects over the phone. Afterall, we all gravitate to things that will automate and simplify the work that it takes to achieve our goals.
Unfortunately, the use of a mass calling system in the MH/RV park industry shouldn't be one of them. Simply put, it's like using a backhoe to plant flowers. Yes, the backhoe will dig a hole and pack the dirt around the flower. However, the hole will be too large, and the soil will be too hard for the roots to receive the nutrients that are required for them to grow.
Cold calling with a mass calling system has the same negative effects with park owners. This is because through the automated process you’ve effectively turned your cold calls into blind spam calls which have a very high probability of being flagged by phone carriers. Even when it isn’t flagged as spam, this method dramatically increases the rate of failure.
According to this article in GeekWire, the world received 73.6m unwanted calls per day in Q1 of 2023. They go on to say that in the U.S., one in every four calls from unknown numbers were flagged as spam or fraud.
Needless to say, that's a lot of “Potential Spam” calls. It’s also why most phone carriers have implemented software specifically designed to track names and phone numbers that behave more like a machine or computer than a real person that simply wants to call their friends and family. Here's an excellent article by Builtin.com that discusses it in much more detail.
Essentially, the phone carriers are now following a lot of the methods that email providers have done for years to reduce spam emails. By linking caller IDs and phone numbers to activities that simply aren’t the behaviors of a human, they’re able to preemptively warn and protect their customers.
For example, as humans with a real phone, we typically don’t dial 10 phone numbers in just a couple of minutes. We also don’t use a rolling blocks of phone numbers unless we’re in a large, registered business. Once these types of non-human behaviors are associated to a specific name or phone number, the phone carrier logs them as potential spam.
On the off chance that your calling system utilizes phone numbers that haven't been flagged as Potential Spam yet; this method still makes it hard to avoid sounding like someone that is just trying to call anyone and everyone. That’s because of the unpredictability of which your call is going to be answered.
Sure, you’ll know which record picked up the phone, but do you have any information about their park? Or are you just relying on your sales pitch and leading questions to get the conversation rolling? Hence, the phrase “blind call”.
As a park owner for 13 years, I can tell you the quickest way to get hung up on was informing me you were looking to purchase high quality parks like mine, while getting multiple facts about my park wrong. Even worse were the callers that told me how great my park was, but then kept asking even the most basic questions such as its location.
Cold Calling Success
According to many cold calling experts, the average cold calling success rate is as low as 2% even under the best of conditions. But what is success in the cold calling world of real estate?
If you’re looking to buy only one park in your entire life, then sure you can probably accomplish that using a mass calling system. But if you’re looking for any long-term career in the industry, then you'd be wise to use your cold calls to build bridges rather than just repeating snazzy sounding sales pitches to the first person that answers a phone.
Most experienced real estate agents and investors know that a successful cold call actually means you’ve begun an opportunity for a relationship. They also know that it IS NOT simply trying to find the one park owner that thanks god you’ve called so they can not only sell you their park, but finance it too.
Unfortunately, what most cold callers forget is that because the average mobile home park or RV park owner deals with so many occupants and tenants every day, they can sniff out B.S. better than most.
Quality Over Quantity
While it may sound old-fashioned and really inefficient, successfully cold calling prospects isn’t something that should be automated and rushed through. Nor is it hard to get your foot in the door with a park owner, when your able to discuss the right subject properly.
No, I’m not talking about how much money your fund has raised. The park owner doesn’t care as long as the check clears. I’m also not talking about how important you, or the people that sit on your board are. Honestly, names are only impressive to the people that are familiar with them.
The subject you actually should be talking about is…. drumroll please ….the park your calling about!
By simply taking two minutes to look at a park’s information before the call, you will empower yourself to ask specific questions that reinforce to the owner why you think their park is worth the call.
Even just glancing at the park with the integrated Google Map in Park Sites will at least give you a good idea of the park’s physical makeup.
No, you won’t know the park’s intimate details. But you also won’t be asking questions that make you look like you have zero knowledge of their park, while you’re also telling them you’re interested in buying it. Remember, that type of conversation is what gets you hung up on and why so many people simply burn through good leads.
Be Selective
Sure, when you are brand new and need practice, practice on everyone! But you typically wouldn’t call a Toyota dealership to buy a Chevy so why call every random park and owner’s number to see if they’re selling? It’s a huge waste of your calling time and does nothing but hinder the quality of calls you should be targeting.
Instead, be selective of the calls you make by using a tool like the advanced filter and Parcel Data in Park Sites. By spending more time talking with the owners of parks you’re actually interested in purchasing, and less time randomly calling parks that have no value to you, you’ll be able to focus on building those solid long-term relationships.
Take Notes Of The Call
For every call you make there’s a good chance that you’ll forget the conversation by the end of the week or even the day.
By using the Private Notes option in Park Sites during your call, you’ll be able to quickly reference the date you last spoke to that owner, the highlights of the conversation, and even the general feedback they gave you.
Believe it or not, referencing small specific details about a previous conversation you had with someone, is a great bonding practice. It may be something as simple as a joke you both laughed about, but it’s still worth mentioning. It not only highlights an experience you shared, but lets the person know your last conversation was important enough for you to remember it.
Follow Up Calls
The world is full of people seeking instant gratification. When they don’t get it on the first try, they quit. The cold hard truth is that if you’re one of those people, then I would strongly advise you to find something other than real estate as your career path. That’s because real estate and cold calling will never successfully be a one and done endeavor. This is absolutely true no matter what you may have been taught or falsely believe.
Think about it. When you've just met someone, it can take multiple conversations to build any level of trust. Cold calling is no exception!
For me personally, I like the phrase “Check-in Calls” rather “Follow Up Calls”. The phrase “Follow Up” gives the impression there is something specific to do or ensure something has been done. But in reality, you’re simply checking in with the park owner to see how things are going while gently reminding them you are still interested in their park. A simple, “How ya been?” goes a long way to building a bond.
To me this step is so important that unless you decide to never to purchase a park again, you should still make check-in calls even when you aren't actively buying. The truth is, they probably aren’t actively looking to sell at that moment either, but it keeps the conversation going.
That way when you’re ready to buy another park, you won’t have to hear that they just sold it to someone else because they haven’t heard from you.
Limited Opportunities
When you look at social media, it’s easy to get the false impression there is an endless sea of parks to contact and owners to call. However, even if we use the questionable park numbers provided by the U.S. government of 53K, it’s not hard to understand that a list of owners is actually a pretty small target in the total U.S. population.
In fact, if one owner represented one park, they would all fit within Georgia Tech’s Bobby Dodd Stadium. It's even more likely that because of your purchasing criteria, your calls will be targeted to a considerably smaller group of people.
This means no matter what cold calling method you ultimately choose to utilize, treat each call like the true limited opportunity it is, rather than burning the lead with a bad call. Afterall the people you are calling are humans and have the same expectations, and reactions, of receiving a phone call as you do.
Feel free to connect with me at gwigington@mhparks.com to see how our solutions can help you in your calling process.
