How to Maximize Sales From Missed Calls

A property owner saw your ad or postcard or other marketing outreach, and called you to talk. But you missed their call — how can you maximize the odds of closing a deal with them?

Go through the following workflow to boost your chances of buying, and therefore the ROI on your marketing efforts. 

Did the Lead Leave a Voicemail?

If the lead simply called to tell you to stop contacting them, mark them as a dead lead. You don’t want to waste marketing dollars on reaching out to them in the future.  

But otherwise, you want to call the lead back as soon as possible. (Cough cough: we have a nifty feature called Speed to Lead that helps with that.) Owners who call you are typically motivated sellers, and the faster you get in touch with them, the better the odds of closing a deal.

And the more information you have, the better you can follow up. 

Set Up Situational Drip Campaigns

You can create separate drip campaigns for scenarios where you know their name and the property address, where you know one but not the other, and scenarios where you don’t know either. 

Move the lead to the appropriate drip campaign, which will start on an intensive schedule of contacting them daily, then petering off to weekly and eventually monthly or bi-monthly if you can’t get in touch with them. 

These drip campaigns typically involve a combination of phone calls and SMS messages to maximize your chances of connecting with the prospective seller. After a certain number of months, you can move them to a long-term drip campaign for minimal contact.

Qualify the Lead 

Once you get the property owner on the phone, you can qualify the lead. Do they want $250,000 for a $200,000 house? If so, it’s likely a dead lead. Perhaps you can refer them to a real estate agent or bankruptcy attorney as appropriate. 

If the lead looks promising, you can book an appointment, view the property, and potentially make an offer. It doesn’t always work out that perfectly however. 

Sometimes you connect with the lead only to discover they’re not interested in selling right now, but might become interested in the future. You can put these sellers on a long-term drip campaign. 

Other times you connect with the seller initially, get their details, hang up so you can qualify the lead, but then struggle to get back in touch with them. When that happens, put the lead on a Seller MIA drip campaign to continue following up with them. 

Word to the wise: the first time you connect with a prospect by phone, collect their email address and home mailing address as well, if different from the property address. This gives you more avenues to reconnect with them if you can’t reach them by phone.

Optimize Your Funnel

The number of prospects drops off at each phase of your sales funnel. You can’t turn your funnel into a tube — but you can broaden it so fewer leads drop off at each phase.

Put every phase of your funnel under the microscope. How can you get more leads on the phone, when they initially reach out to you? Of those, how can you book appointments with more of them? Of those, how can you close more deals?

The more deals you close for every hundred direct mailings you send, the greater your marketing ROI will be. Minimize the number leads slipping through the cracks in your funnel, and you’ll find your business more profitable with less effort on your part.