IT ISN'T NECESSARY TO HAVE SYMPATHY FOR THE COLD CALLER. THE decision to practice PUSH advertising leaves the PUSHER vulnerable to having the person you called hang up on you. Sometimes it's the only way to stop the conversation. The COLD CALLER interrupts your schedule, keeps talking and when you say "good-by" and hang up the phone, they accuse you of hanging up on them. We're not hanging up. We're simply ending the conversation. The rudeness isn't on the part of the person ENDING the conversation. The rude behavior is from the person COLD CALLING you to sell you something.
It's a free country and if lenders want to risk calling folks to PUSH their loan products, fine. The Do Not Call laws are there for a reason. At least when real estate practitioners use cold calling practices, they are promoting THEMSELVES to the consumer. They are not asking other business people to promote their services for them. Real estate practitioners also respect the Do Not Call Laws. Lenders who COLD CALL agents are using us to get to the consumer WHOM THEY CANNOT COLD CALL without washing the telephone numbers.
PULL vs. PUSH
One of the most wonderful things about the Internet is that we can put information on line about a product or service and when folks contact you, you can be sure that they WANTED TO TALK TO YOU. The prospective customer or client may not use your services or buy your product, but at least you had the opportunity to promote yourself, your service or your product without being, what's the word? PUSHY.
What is PULL advertising? There are so many opportunities to promote yourself or your product without PUSHING yourself into someone else's space. Proven traditional ways of advertising are web pages, pay per click advertising of web pages, search engines, directory listings (on line and off line), Yellow Page ads
Some types of PULL advertising take a bit of a learning such as having a successful web site. Promoting the web site by search engines. Experienced SEO folks can help make the site successful so that when a person WANTS or needs a service or product, they will search for that product or service and they can then thumb through as many on line ads as they wish until they find one in the area or with the speciality that the consumer wishes.
Other types of PULL advertising include the good old tried and true Yellow Pages. Want to find a mortgage
company? Simple. Just pick up the Yellow Pages and call the ones in your area and you can bet your boots that someone will be there to help you. Or, contact your friendly real estate practitioner. We know good lenders because we work with them regularly. We know the good ones and we can vouch for that lender. Now you've just experienced the value of PULL advertising, the Yellow Pages, and the value of the testimonial, someone who has actually experienced the services of a particular lender.
THEN there is PUSH advertising. The most detested PUSH advertisers are the COLD CALLER and purveyors of SPAM. The cold caller simply is playing the numbers and relying on the human nature of the call recipient to be polite. Folks really like and try to be polite. It's not always easy to be polite when you are deep into contract negotiations and a telephone call comes in from a COLD CALLER PUSHING a service or product. Naturally, the COLD CALLER is very experienced and is very good at controlling the conversation to determine if you are remotely interested in the product or service they are PUSHING. If you are not and say so quickly, that should get them off the phone, shouldn't it?? Well, of course it should. But, it often doesn't because some of the very experienced COLD CALLERS jump immediately into their next routine and ask questions like, "Oh, so you don't want any Internet business?". Or, "Oh, so you aren't interested in helping your home buyers find a good loan?"
Insulting? Sure, but it's a part of their routine to put YOU on the defensive and, BECAUSE YOU ARE POLITE, you will often feel that you must answer their question, ridiculous as it may be. So, you politely explain yourself and BOOM, they've got another bite at the apple. They then have the "permission" they need to go to the next phase of their presentation, to either get you to let them display their software to you on the Internet, or try to get an appointment with you to meet with you, perhaps buy you lunch, meet with your agents, consider putting them in touch with YOUR CLIENTS so they can pitch their loan products.
HOW TO CIRCUMVENT THE DO NOT CALL LAWS
CONTACT THE AGENT THAT CONTACTS THE BORROWER.
Funny thing about COLD CALLERS these days. The Federal Trade Commission realized that they were just so intrusive in consumers' privacy that they can no longer contact the consumer directly if the consumer has taken the trouble of putting themselves on the "DO NOT CALL" list. So, if the caller is with, say a mortgage company, they can't call consumers of mortgage products the way they used to. But, they can call and call and call and call real estate practitioners because we are a business and not covered.
When I make a service referral, I not only recommend the lender, home inspector, etc. because I have used their services and know that they will perform at the highest level, close on time, have fair rates and fees. How could I, in good faith to my buyers, recommend the services of an "out of the blue" lender???
Now, rather than call during a family dinner, or the child's bath time or in the middle of Dad's favorite TV news show, they simply call the real estate agents during their work day while theyare interviewing a buyer or seller, preparing a contract, WAITING FOR AN IMPORTANT CALL, in conference with co-workers, trying to line up a home inspection, or the hundred other things that we do daily to run our business. Who knows, we may be waiting for a call from a trusted, known lender to discuss a buyer's financing qualifications. COLD CALLERS who pray on
real estate practitioners to promote their loan products to our buyers and believe that OUR TIME has no value are wrong. Our time has value and we are free to speak with whom we wish. It's our choice. Not the choice of the COLD CALLER.
PUSH:
advance, assault, attack, bearing, blow, butt, charge, drive, driving, effort, energy, exerting, exertion,
forcing, impact, jolt, lean, mass, nudge, offensive, onset, poke, prod, propulsion, shove, shoving,
straining, thrust, thrusting, weight
I AM POLITE. I don't hang up on lenders who call me. I simply lay the phone on the floor and go back to my computer to do my job.
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