Wanna stop talking to cold leads in the real estate closers. You'll discover how to stop sourcing deals and start closing them. After working with hundreds of wholesaling businesses, Samantha and David share how you can build systems that give you motivated sellers on autopilot. And now here are your hosts, Samantha and David.
(00:26): Hello everyone. And welcome to this week's episode of the real estate closes this week. We're gonna be discussing setting realistic expectations for your marketing campaign. Hugely important that your realistic, right from the outset, you're not getting disappointed because you set yourself an unrealistic objective. You, you lose motivation, you or your staff lose motivation. Your VA loses motivation. It's just not turning out how, how you expected. So really, really important that you start off with the right expectations for your business. So you get the right results. The first thing we're gonna be discussing is do your research. So researching your area, you know, where are you going to be working? Which, uh, state is it going to be focused on? What states that you really want to market to it's it's often a good idea, especially if you're new to the real estate investment business, you're just starting out, do it in a state that you understand.
(01:26): It might be this state that you live in. Currently. It could be a state that, you know, very well, you've got a lot of contacting, but just make sure that first area that you're going to be looking at the first aid, your marketing in marketing is an area, you know, very well. You feel confident about what's gonna work well there. And so you can put the right spanning blades and just do the right things, execute the right things throughout the campaign. So hugely, usually important. The other thing is to make sure that you're pulling the right lists for, for, for your, for your area. So you've done your research. You know, what properties are you gonna be looking for? What are the types of properties there? What are the properties that people are looking to sell that Herman is looking to sign in that area?
(02:06): What sort of list do you want to give to your VA? And what are the sorts of, you know, marketing are you going to be doing? So it, this all comes as part of the research, looking at all these areas, types of properties, types of campaign, what is it, your specific looking for? What are your expectations set? Your target sets your goals, and then you should have plans to achieve those in line with realistic expectations. The other thing is what is your marketing plan? So are you going to be just cold calling? Are you going to be doing texting? Are you running direct mail campaign? Are you gonna be driving for dollars? What are the key strands of the marketing plan that you are going to be operating for your campaign? I think what we've said previously, if you haven't got the right data, you haven't set up your team properly.
(02:55): You haven't got the right VA. If you are using a cold call or a lead manager or an acquisition manager, or all three, if you haven't got these things set up as part of your marketing push, and as part of your total campaign operation, you're not going to get the results that you want from the campaign. So setting real expectations, realistic, you know, sometimes you will go on some of these, um, you know, courses with these gurus, these experiences, uh, real estate guide. You'll go to some of their seminars, don't get me wrong, all very experienced or successful. They wouldn't be doing what they're doing now, if they weren't successful, but quite often they will be a little bit over optimistic in terms of telling you what you can achieve in your first month. For example, you don't want to be going in there thinking that you're gonna be closing 10 deals in your first month and then get all disappointed when you don't, that is not gonna happen.
(03:49): Um, unless you're very, very lucky or you're very experienced. And, um, you know, you've got a huge marketing campaign and you're working with a number of different states with a huge team, be realistic about how many deals you're gonna be closing. Uh, and, uh, and, and what you're looking for. So do your research, get the right lists created, you know, what are the properties you're looking at and then understand clearly what your marketing is for that area. You know, texting, is it cold calling? Is it, you know, is it, uh, Derek marketing? Is it all of the above, but just be very, very clear and manage those expectations. Very, very important in those areas. Now in the fir in, in the next point, I think Samantha is gonna be talking about other important aspects, budget. What is your budget? How much money have you actually got available and planned to make sure your campaign is successful and again, managing those expectations. So, Samantha, perhaps you could tell us a bit more about that side of things.
(04:50): Thanks, David. So what exactly do we mean when we talk about budgets? Well, often a lot of clients that come to me, they have set budgets, but they're not careful with it. Let me give you an example. If you are looking for lead generators, because you don't have high volume of leads yet, definitely what you want to be doing is focusing on hiring a cold caller or maybe two, but no more than that. And you certainly don't need a lead manager or an acquisition manager. If you're just starting, you really wanna be doing those things yourself. Why? Well, if you're not generating enough leads, then don't overstretch your budget by trying to hire more staff. Then you really need the reason why I say this is because I've seen clients do it in the past. They hire a huge virtual team, but they're not actually doing any of the closing themselves, but they haven't generated enough leads initially for them to actually hire a lead manager or an acquisition manager.
(05:56): Now, it really depends on the size of your organization. I'm not saying it's never a good idea to do this, but you really need to understand what your strategy is. So if you are someone that is working full time, maybe you don't have enough time to really close the leads yourself. Then sure. You can get a lead generator and get a lead manager or an acquisition manager to close those deals for you. However, I would recommend doing a lot of those things yourself, because how can you expect a VA to know the inner workings of your business? If you haven't yourself worked in those areas. So you understand the inner workings. Now, if you're just starting off again, as I said, I think it would be ideal to hire probably one cold caller. Then once you see results, once you get your first deal, then you can scale up.
(06:54): Cuz another thing that is quite common is for investors to have a budget they overhire, and then they don't see the results as quickly as they had initially expected. And they scale down, you don't want to scale down, you want to start slowly, get this, the team that you need. And then once you get your first deal and start getting successful, then you can scale. You wanna start from the bottom and scale up, not going for whammy and then having to scale down. Another thing that you wanna really be focused on is what are your key metrics? What are your KPIs looking like now? What are some examples of these metrics or key performance indicators? Well, in, in terms of revenue, how much monthly revenue are you expecting? What is the time period looking like for when you expect your first deal to come in and when you're hiring a VA, how many leads do you expect them to bring in?
(08:01): Normally on average, what we do is we set for the cold callers. We set an ambitious goal of one hot lead per hour. However, across the board, we do see on average, usually one lead every two hours, which is a little bit more realistic. So if you have a VA that are cold callers, that's calling four hours, you can expect them to bring in ideally one to two leads. If they're full time, then it would be double that, uh, ideally they'd be getting three or four, but that is really dependent on the data and how high quality it is now for lead managers and acquisition managers. Then the metrics are going to be different because they're not doing outbound campaigns, but you would expect once you're building up the pipeline. And when I say building up the pipeline, if you are starting a campaign, any marketing campaign, whether you're doing Facebook, whether you're doing Google ads, whether it's telemarketing using an agency like ours, you've gotta stick at it for at least three months.
(09:15): Why? Well, the first month don't expect much. You're still building up the pipeline. If you're hiring a new virtual team, you're still getting used to them. You need to train them on the inner workings of your business. Uh, you can't expect to bring people in and have them suddenly understand everything within such a short amount of time. So really month one is building up the pipeline, getting your systems organized and getting your VA onboarded. Then from month two and three, that's when you're really starting to, to get those deals for month three, that's when you should really start to see results month four. So I would do a forecast initially month, one to three, very conservatively. And then from three month, 3, 4, 5, and six, really start to think big. A lot of our clients set different types of goals depending on where their market is.
(10:12): So if they're in a competitive market, then they might set a goal of two deals per month. I have a client based in Atlanta and he invests a lot of money in his leads. So his goal is one to two deals a week, which his acquisition manager is actually doing. He's hitting his goals very nicely, but again, you have to be realistic. And from there, it's really important to set short term goals. But what are your long term goals? Where do you see yourself within the year, two years? What's your five year plan for your business? Are you going to diversify? Are you going to have different exit strategies? If you are a wholesaler, are you going to try and buy and hold more or do flips or maybe learn about creative financing? And then as I was saying, it's super important to just really be realistic set.
(11:15): Initially when you start set achievable attainable goals that are kind of bite size pieces, don't try to be too elaborate. If you are bringing on a VA, keep it simple, onboard them, train them, show them your systems and, and create goals that are achievable. Then once everything is coming into fruition, then you can start to think about more far reaching strategies. I'm gonna pass the next topic on to David. Who's going to talk in more detail about how to bring on a virtual assistant and how to avoid disappointment and lack of communication and misunderstandings, which can happen when you bring on a virtual team. So David, please shed some
(12:12): Yes, absolutely. This area is hugely important as you rightly said, Samantha, and I think it's something you touched on in the last episode, talked about where we were talking about the three pillars of success for a campaign. Communication was that third one hugely important. So it's not just about the training and the coaching it's about then constant communicate, uh, communication following of further coaching sessions, ongoing training because our VAs are all highly trained. For instance, just using no, as, as an example, they're all trained for instance, our core callers. They understand how to dig for motivation. They understand what to look for. The buying signals for somebody who's looking to sell. They understand to ask the right questions about the condition of the property, for instance, the timeline, what sort of offer, uh, would they accept what sort of price they would they were looking at.
(13:08): They understand how to do those things. Our lead managers very, very well trained in terms of, you know, the key aspects of, of managing those leads, nurturing them following up, you know, making sure that those leads are actually rock solid before passing them through to the acquisition team. And, our acquisition manager is saying, sending out contracts, closing the deal, making sure that the client is, is, is really brought in the homes. The homeowners really brought in to the deal wants we go ahead. So they're all things that we deal with. Know we've got, we've got a database of hugely experienced people in all those for different roles, but every client's business is different. So your business is different from the contact you might have into the states. A lot of you go to the mastermind groups. I can guarantee that everybody in that group, although you are in the same industry and your objectives are roughly the same, you will operate your business and do things differently from, from your friend.
(14:08): Uh, who's sitting in the, in the chair next to you at the mastermind meeting. So our VAs or anybody's VAs that you're taking on for support, they've got to understand how you do things. So they've got their training, which will, will actually seamlessly link in, but they've got to understand, you know, what systems do you use, how our VAs are very, very confident with using a number of different CRMs, for example, but they're very confident with using a different dials, a wide range of them. They're very, very familiar with how to hand over leads in either by email or through a CRM system or however you want to do it, but you've got let your, this is how things are done in my, my business. Do I expect your VA to understand how, how you like things to be done in all aspects of your business?
(15:00): Yes. Um, as I said before, you're trying to do this, you know, you're all trying to do the same as a real estate expert. It's about closing deals. It's about generating revenue, but how do you do that? Can be very, very different to how better contacted in the same industry might do it. So really on board and train. So we will hand them over as I like to call above and ready the turkeys ready for the effort, but you know how you cook the Turkey and what seasoning you add to it, what spices you add to it, how you want that Turkey to be cooked, um, that, that can be very different. So they're all ready to go. They're onboarding them, getting 'em used to your systems, your way of doing things, the culture in your organization, how things work in your states in terms of the homeowners and how they like to be spoken to, you know, what sort of scripts you use, all those things are hugely important.
(15:53): And, and they, they pretend very particularly to your business and how you do things. So we can't really say strongly enough and highlight that enough, that that is so, so very, very important. Don't expect your VA just to sit there, start from day one and, and know everything about your business. You've got to help them with that. And then if you do that, you'll get success. The VA will be successful far quicker. They'll hit the ground running, they'll start generating leads. For example, managing leads for you, better acquiring if they're acquisition managers, because you are given a good briefing of what you expect in your business, how your business operates, how things work in your state, and everything's just gonna work fast, you know, more smoothly and far more quickly, and you'll start generating revenue much, much quicker. So I would say just looking at what you know, we've gone through today.
(16:48): So number one that we spoke about, obviously it's all about setting real realistic expectations of your marketing research. Do your research understand what it is you're trying to achieve? What is your focus? What are the states? What are the properties you're looking for? What's the marketing plan. The second topic that the budget, the Samantha covered, what is your budget? What, what do you expect you're going to have to spend to achieve the, the, the objectives, uh, that you've set yourself. What are the key metrics? So what time period, you expecting deals to close do expect them to close in the first month, all of them, but not going to those, those of you are experience, know that you've been through that pain barrier. You you've got the video, you've got the t-shirt, you've got the scars to prove it. That is not gonna happen. Very rarely.
(17:40): It may happen now. And then through look but long term, that is not gonna happen. Look at your goals. What are you not just your short term goals? Great. So we've had a, a successful campaign. Great. But where's your next campaign? Is it in another state? Is it looking at different properties? Is it a completely different approach? You've got to have that next plan, that, that, that next blow, that next objective to keep your business and the revenue turning over nicely. And then what I just spoke about on the last topic was train your VAs. Don't expect them to know exactly how your business works and communicate with them back to what we spoke about in the last episode, Samantha was talking about how important communication is communication with your, your provider, like nobody else, but very, very importantly communication with your agent, your BA what is it that they're doing?
(18:29): And, and talking regularly day in, you know, weekly meetings, daily meetings captures as, as Sam, I think described them as huddles, regular huddles. Are they on track? Are they following things the way you want them? Are they following the scripts? Are they bringing the amount of leads? You know, is it going the right direction board and train them effectively? He's, he's very, very important. And just your expect them to know everything about your business from day you've got help them with that. So with that, I'm gonna hand to Samantha, who's just gonna wrap things up little bit to you, sir.
(19:04): Thanks so much, David. Um, just to finish, we really hope that you enjoyed today's show. We really, really hope that you'll tune in next week. And please take a look at our website. If you feel up to it, it's at WW dot Noma, doc.com. There you can actually contact us directly on our contact form through our landing page. And you can even, uh, click on the WhatsApp button, a big green button on the site that will go directly to me. If you feel like sending me a text, also check out some of our client testimonials, where you can have a listen to some videos from happy and satisfied clients. All right. See you next week. Bye bye.
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