"ONE RINGY DINGY....TWO RINGY DINGY" If you know that phrase, you will get my point! It's all in the VOICE!
PART TWO: This is the second in a series of posts regarding the changes we are faced with in real estate. Hopefully, with dialogue, we can overcome some of the stumbling blocks that have come our way since the pandemic.
Do you remember the famous comedian, Lilly Tomlin, as she sat at the switch board of a big corporation, pre-1990's, and said her most memorable line? Those were the days of the telephone--no one could do business without it. No one could get through a day without spending hours on cold calls or making phone call responses to an interested consumer or potential client.
In this brand new world of brand marketing, have you ever wondered what has happened to the phone calls that we used to HAVE to make to do business?
You may or may not know that here in New York State, during the pandemic, we were forbidden to make "Cold Calls", by law! Until January 2025, ...of this year, the Governor was persistant in her requirement that real estate agents specifically, were NOT to make calls to anyone without their permission! Yes, since 2020!! Thats right, try to make a connection for the first time when you can't make a cold call! Try to get business rolling in when you can't just make a call.
IN SPITE OF ALL THAT!
We survived! And it was not even shocking that such a state department law was conceived of, much less strictly enforced.
In my humble opinion, the telephone has become the most useless and out of date mechanism you can use in today's world of marketing, especially real estate marketing. If you are lucky enough to find a human to answer your call, you are a rare bird!
THINK OF IT:
- A pandemic comes along, no more cold calls
- unrecognized phone numbers automatically identified as spam...by a third party!
- Blocked calls because of persistant unsolicited pitches--politically speaking!
- A.I. taking the roll of receptionist with no idea or care that you want to talk to a human.
- Concern over the use of cell phones--esp. with 5G (warrented or not).
- Endless loops of connections to get to the correct party--all through A.I.
- Text messages have made the cell phone another monster to deal with--everybody is getting more unsolicited text messages that they have to block--report and then delete...
- How much more do we have to do with our phones? Time consuming, mind numbing activity with these devices, just to clear clutter, has become almost overwhelming.
MAYBE IT IS TIME TO RE-THINK THE WAY WE USE OUR CELL-PHONES IN REAL ESTATE
Now, if you have the patience and the time to manage this contraption, a phone can be the difference between making it or not in real estate. I have had my most successful first-conversations on a phone regarding a property. I have also been better able to qualify a buyer, or identify a questionable character through a phone call.
So, you ask, "what about all the sharing you can do on your phone?" Well, then use it for that but don't always expect a response. To me, a phone was always a vehicle for verbal communication and it loses something in it's use as a replacement for your computer.
Think of it: You dial (or press) a number and a person answers! It does happen, believe it or not. That is a real door-opener! It opens up some form of communication--much better than sending out an email just to find it never gets opened! In fact, unread, an email is more apt to be deleted than ever viewed by human eyes...
Nothing can replace the auditory sensebility that comes to you through a genuine or fraudulent conversation on the phone. It can't happen in a text. Most texts are lacking in emotion or convincing knowledge anyway--too short and impersonal--and can be very irritating if you don't know the texter.
It is rare that an email gets read by a recipient if you are an unknown sender. Not only that, it takes time to reach out in a businesslike written format. But that is where most of us end up when we send a text or an email:--deleted.
You can't so easily hang up on a person on a phone call but you sure can cut them off or offend someone in a text!
Maybe, with patience, we can once again be able to use phone calls for business without the difficulty of non-human disrupters or looped connections that take forever to overcome in order to reach those irreplaceable consumers and clients.
Maybe one day the phone will become the best source for reaching out to strangers, even if it means you leave a voicemail message--at least an auditory message can be saved to hear later... And that may be your very next client!
Reinvigorating your phone as a marketing tool is a smart way to reach out to new clients. Just make that phone call instead of a text or email.
Your voice is the unique way you start to build trust! Try it!
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