The Cold Calling Myth

Myth: Get a BIG list and call any and every phone number you can find!

Let's face it, there are tons of people that will tell you to go find a BIG park list and start dialing as many phone numbers as possible when you're looking to buy MH/RV parks. They may even suggest you hire a few virtual assistants to speed up the process.

Hearing that, you run off and purchase a park list from one of the well known MH sites for a ridiculous amount of money. You recruit your buddies by telling them you'll cut them in on the deal if they simply help you cold call using your awesome new park list. Great! Your all set right....wrong!

Cold calling with good park information is already hard enough! Mindlessly cold calling a lot of random phone numbers from an overpriced park list simply leads to a lot of dead ends and even more rejection. Even worse it can lead to a lot of hidden expenses that can be easily avoided when you use the right tool!

To prove our point, look at the amount you would have to pay to purchase a park list for all 50 states from one of the big MH park websites, and then read our case study below.

Case Study: A Not So Free Park List

Name: Anonymous First-Time Investor

Year: 2018

Park Records: +40,000

Description: In exchange for attending a $4,000 MH/RV park investment seminar, a first time investor received a free complimentary digital park list which covered the entire United States. The list contained more than 40,000 park records. During the seminar, the speaker suggested they cold call as many phone numbers in the list as possible if they really wanted to be successful at park investing.

Problem #1: Because the investor had no preference to the location of the park, and the free park list contained more than 40,000 park records, he recruited a few friends to help with the cold calling process. In exchange for their time and effort he offered to pay them 1% of any deal they found which led to a successful closing.

Problem #2: Upon starting the calling process, the callers reported the list was consistently inaccurate! Many of the park phone numbers and addresses were missing. The phone numbers that were included often led to wrong numbers or instant hang-ups because the park's record didn't give the cold caller enough accurate information to start the phone call correctly.

Problem #3: The investor asked the callers to update the records by Googling the parks that were wrong. This way they could have an accurate list to use in the future. This led to a higher workload and slower call productivity. The additional workload also caused the investor to have to raise the incentive pay from 1% to 2% of the deal, but felt it was worth the cost so he could have a reliable list in the future.

Financial Consequences: After roughly 5 months of researching and calling, the investor was able to finally secure a mobile home park deal for just over $1.2m. The sale led to the investor losing focus on updating the park list while also paying the recruited cold caller $24,000 for his efforts.

The hidden cost of "time" that comes with poor park records must also be acknowledged here. While difficult to calculate, since the recruited cold callers had to perform additional research prior to making their introduction calls, one must assume it considerably slowed the cold calling process.

For example, if the park records were inaccurate by 20% we can safely assume, rather than taking 5 months to find the right deal, it should have only taken 4 months with the right park information. Thus if the purchased park's revenues were $15,000/mo, the "free" park list also cost the investor an additional $15K in one month's potential revenues.

Solution: Cold calling effectively should be about quality over quantity! Think of it this way, if you have to spend an extra 2 minutes on 500 individual calls, you have just added 16.7 hours to your workload.

Spreadsheets are difficult to filter and manipulate to get the correct outputs. This causes a lot of investors to have to go through EVERY park record in their list. The alternative is to import the spreadsheet records into a SQL type database such as MS Access. The problem is that being able to query data won't help you much when the park's data is simply wrong.

But how do you know it's wrong? Afterall, spreadsheets and databases won't give you a visual aspect to reference without converting them to a KML or KMZ file to view them on a map. This means more time, more effort, and possibly even more money!

Using an existing mobile home or RV park solution that allows you to easily track your calling process, lets you easily filter the park records, and allows you to visually verify that the park is truly a park can be a game changer! Not only will it dramatically improve your calling efficiency, but also free up wasted time and money working on the park's data!

But let's also be honest! Park information changes every day throughout the U.S. There is no one perfect solution that is 100% accurate, 100% of the time. So the solution also needs to provide you the ability to quickly perform additional research (without having to blindly Google for it).

Click the video to learn our solution!