The Best Time to Call Prospects Doesn’t Matter, Here’s the Recipe

There are many different studies on making sales calls. When is the optimal time of day to call someone? What day of the week do you have the best chance to contact a lead?

I’ve heard mornings before 9 am and evenings after 6 pm, or Tuesdays between 9 am and 4 pm. For those who are tasked with making cold calls then these numbers are worth looking into for sure.

But when you are in a real estate office, and have a lead generation system in place, the real answer is in the words of Bill Murray in the great scene from Meatballs… “It Just Doesn’t Matter!”

TIME KILLS ALL DEALS

The best time to call a prospect is when they are actively thinking about what you are offering.

Make the call when you are at the top of their mind. It could be at 10 pm or at 6 am, a Monday night or a Saturday morning, it doesn’t matter when. This is the moment when they are actively considering a purchase and most likely have questions.

Questions that go unanswered result in lost sales. Missing that precious moment can delay or even kill a sale.

And no, your prospects won’t always pick up the phone and call you when they have questions. They will wait, then get busy or distracted and forget the questions all together. This delays the purchase decision for months or even years.

The best sales executives understand this and make the extra effort to call. Need to pause Game of Thrones? Do it. Need to excuse yourself from the dinner table? Do it. Maybe not every time but definitely when a hot prospect is reading your sales presentation. Making the sacrifice is the difference between average pay and six figures.

There are those of you who truly value your free time. You will not be interrupted on your day off, your time away from work is your own time. Completely reasonable, just understand that you’ll sell slower and make less income than your counterparts, it’s just the nature of your business.

You’re job isn’t 9 to 5, you’re a sales executive and you’re more independent by nature. Your return for sacrificing occasional “me time” is more income than 90% of the workplace.

DEVELOPERS:: poor timing is the most common mistake in the real estate sales process. And marketing ROI goes down the drain because of very poor contact rates.

Our research says that less than 50% of all leads are ever spoken with by a salesperson.

Marketo’s study says only 27% of web leads are ever contacted by a salesperson. Much of this is due to poor lead response practices, mainly poor timing and poor delivery.

THE RECIPE FOR TIMED OUTREACH

FIRST: Send additional property information immediately, right when the prospect wants it. In the real estate world, this means an automated email containing additional “next level” purchase information followed by a phone call five minutes later if possible.

Big corporations invest big money on auto-dialers so they can reach out to new leads instantly and automatically. Why? Because they know there is a greater chance of making a connection with potential customers.

SECOND: Reach out when your prospect is reading your “next level” purchase information.

Again, this is when the prospect is thinking about you. Be professional, time the call correctly, engage, answer questions and build rapport before your competition does.

Today there are many systems that offer email tracking so you know when to time these calls, Yesware and Hubspot are good examples.

Then there is Clearview Elite, sales presentation tracking on steroids designed specifically for real estate development teams.

Clearview Elite tells you which leads to call and exactly when, dialing for dollars becomes a distant memory. Click here to read more and learn why successful developments all over the world rely on Clearview Elite every single day.

____________________________________

Clearview Elite creates a custom, next level web presentation for your property, delivers it instantly and automatically to new leads and sends real-time alerts when leads are reading them. Watch our video

About Eric: Real Estate Sales & Marketing veteran and Founder of Clearview Elite. Driven to make life easier for real estate salespeople. Very lucky husband and Dad, slightly above average golfer, food and wine fan. Lives in Boise, Idaho with wife Julie and kids Nicholas and Grace.

Would you mind sharing? If what you read was valuable and you think others might benefit from it please share with your network.