Please Stop Calling, I'll Call You If I Want It!

No, I am already on the first page of Google, thank you.

David- I always find it amusing, when they tell me they've seen my site and they can guarantee to get it on page one of Google.  If they had actually looked, they would know its already there.

David, I get soooo many of these calls!  At first, it made me crazy because they are an exception to the "Do Not Call" laws.  Then, I started to play with them.  I act like I'm ready to bite then it's "Whoa!  You want me to actually pay you fof these leads?"

David, I just signed up on AR about a week ago and I am already getting phone calls saying they saw me on ActiveRain. The hard part is that we do a large relo business so we have to answer those out of town phone numbers.

I think it just goes with the territory - you answer the call, sometimes it's someone you want/need to talk to, sometimes it's not. With our 800 number, 2 phone lines and 3 cell lines, something's always ringing around here!

I wrote a blog recently on how to best deal with these unwanted callers (search under "Telemarketers" - one post was even from someone that used to run a telemarketing company).

But on that blog, I forgot to add the trick I use if somehow they sneak in and I start talking to them and didn't ask if they were telemarketers. 

I bought a little telephone magnet years ago, that when pressed, sounds just like a telephone ringing. You have to space the rings just right, but suddenly you have "another call coming in that you just HAVE to take". Goodbye telemarketer!!

And no, I don't EVER use it on legitimate callers - they're our bread and butter. Now, the family members or friends that tend to get a little longwinded when I'm trying to get my work done...well...I have to confess, maybe a few times LOL!

Barb

I have a great service on my cell phone that acts like caller ID and tells me the name of the business or person that is calling and if they are calling on a cell what cell phone provider they use.

This has stopped almost 95% of the phone calls I answer from tele-markers. The others are calling from a home number, but it gives me a chance to call them back later in the week and waste their time like they did mine.

Is this not the same thing we are doing when we call expired's, FSBO's, follow up with open house visitiors, etc...  Are they saying the same thing about REALTORS.

I told one to send me the literature that I never buy anything over the phone.  His response, "Never ordered a pizza?"

David - That's the dark side of popularity. It's inevitable - companies and people do their job. We are in sales, too - not in such aggressive, not in such annoying sales but still in sales. The problem is that we pay for their attempt to do their job of selling something to target audience - us! I'm glad they don't do text messaging on the numbers where I don't pay for unlimited texts - that may be real expensive!

There are so many ways we could spend our money inside our business, but very few actually lead to a reasonable return on our investment.  Especially right now, we need to get right about how we spend our money, and stop doing what doesn't work.  So many ancillary business look at our real estate commissions and see opportunity to grab at it!  If you take a close look at your spending, and make a concerted effort to cut out unneeded spending, you could save yourself thousands.  Whether it be advertising dollars, money on websites, the split we have with our brokerage, or driving around unmotivated clients who waste our time and gasoline... there is much savings to gain.