Are Dials Dead- What Happened to Phone Calls?
Phone calls have played an essential role in the world of real estate for decades, but is that role diminishing? The prevalence of text messages and social media messaging applications seem to be completely eliminating the need for phone calls in our everyday lives, and they are now making their way into the workplace. In a webinar by Hatch Realty, the question “are dials dead?” is asked and discussed by three real estate agents. They believe that dials might not be dead yet, but they are definitely dying. Below are the takeaways regarding the changing role of phone calls in the modern real estate agency, and how to survive and adjust your business management techniques to conquer this shift away from traditional calling methods.
Calling all Traditional Callers
Can you reach anyone on the phone anymore? Twenty years ago leads were converted on the phone, constantly. Agents were continuously calling to make connections and follow up with leads. But now everything, including lead generation, is done through technology, either online or in text form. In the past four years there has been a significant shift. Phones used to be a lifeline and unknown numbers meant potential business. However, now with robot callers and spam calls, people don’t answer the phone if they don’t know the number is calling them. The reason people don’t answer calls anymore is because phone calls are a commitment. You don’t know how much of your time you are giving up when you pick up the phone. Smartphones give the consumer more power, mainly, the power not to answer calls. The power of a phone call is disappearing. Five years ago 100 calls lead to 10 contacts. Now that same 100 calls might lead to 3 contracts. To compensate, many companies hire dialers to up the number of calls they make every day, just to make the same number of contacts as before.
How to Utilize Text Messages to Your Advantage
Now when real estate agents want to talk on the phone, the best thing to do is to pre-arrange the call via text message. Just in the past year, the percentage of arrangements made by text for real estate purposes rose from 40% to 70% and that percentage is continuing to grow. If you’re not mass texting your leads, you might become irrelevant. Some traditionalist real estate agents might ask, can you have the same level of conversation in a text message? Although you can’t hear voice inflections in a text message, you also create a sense of distance, so people are sometimes more willing to open up and tell personal details in a message. Communication patterns are changing so we need to learn how to communicate the way people want to be communicated with. Practice mirroring text style and asking more questions when talking via text message. Do not send information, because now that people can Google search for anything, they don’t want to read facts. Instead, send out messages to leads containing short, simple questions. Questions are more effective than statements. Even after people respond, use their response to form your next question.
Texting is the New Cold Call
Instead of calling leads, send engagement messages. Set up your devices to send out automated text messages to all and any contacts. Automated messages should be generic and open-ended. Texting is the new cold call. You can automate it in a way that is not possible with phone calls. Instead of spending time calling people all day, send an automated message to 500 people at the same time. When a lead comes in you should still try to call right away. But, anything beyond the second or third call will yield a diminishing return. If they don’t answer, then send an email and a text.
Whatever type of communication you choose to utilize, at the end of the day, it’s all about the art of getting people to open up so that you know how best to work with them. Follow the rule of “tell me more.” It’s not just about real estate, it’s first about making connections with people.
