Telemarketing Your Way to
Great Real Estate Leads

Part of the Professional Real Estate Agent Handbook Series

Generating leads for your real estate business takes on different forms. Some do door-to-door, others building a network of contacts and referrals. But the most extensive method by far is telemarketing.

You may already be familiar with the concept of telemarketing, the most common form of which is making phone calls inquiring whether the person is interested in buying and/or selling property. Since many calls can be made within a short amount of time, it is a choice preferred more by those who want to reach hundreds to thousands of prospects in a given period.

Cold calls (the kind of telemarketing described above), however, are gaining unpopularity both for the prospect and the marketer. Prospects complain about being called at inconvenient times of the day, or simply cannot be bothered by a call they don’t want to receive. The government has responded to these complaints by enforcing the DNC (Do Not Call) Rule which compiles a list of people who’ve expressed they do not want telemarketers to call them. Telemarketers who violate this rule are subject to heavy fines and penalties.

However, there are other ways to telemarket successfully if proper steps are taken. More and more, cold calling is being replaced by response marketing. This is an integrated approach of ad placement and telemarketing.

What one does is place an ad in a magazine or newspaper indicating a phone number (usually toll-free) that readers may call for concerns about real estate. Callers may get to talk to a live agent or listen to a pre-recorded message. Live agents can answer the caller’s question and may eventually turn that call into a solid deal.

Some callers, however, prefer not to talk to a live telemarketer on the first call. They may not want to feel pressured into doing something they’re just considering for now. When this is the situation, a pre-recorded message works better. The caller can listen to a brief message stating how you can help them and even choose to have information like brochures faxed to them – all done automatically.

Telemarketing systems of this kind can identify the phone number of the caller, which becomes very useful for you when you start following up the calls. Another advantage of this kind of telemarketing is that if the caller has initiated the contact, you are allowed to call back that person without violating DNC rules in your state for a given period (check your local DNC rules for these).

No matter what kind of telemarketing method you choose to generate leads, always practice courteousness and handle all calls with both enthusiasm and respect. That new lead just might be your next big deal.