9 Reasons You Should *STOP* Cold Calling IMMEDIATELY!

Are you “cold calling” to get clients?

If you are, I have 2 words for you…

STOP. IT.

Seriously.

And this goes for “prospecting”, door-knocking & “pop-bys” too…

Not good enough for you?

Need some convincing?

OK, then I’ll give you 9 reasons you should STOP immediately….

REASON #1 – You don’t want to do it. 

More accurately you probably HATE DOING IT. Yeah I’m sure there’s a few of you reading that may actually enjoy it but I’d say from experience that anywhere from 99 to 99.9% of you DON’T.  

Listen, life is too short to spend several hours a day doing an activity that you don’t like doing just because some “old school” broker, coach or “guru”, is telling you it’s the only way for you to “succeed”. Stop doing it. You don’t have to do it. There is a better way…

REASON #2 – My Mom always told me to follow “The Golden Rule”.

Here’s the deal most of you (I’ll say it again anywhere from 99 to 99.9%) of you reading this right now don’t like it when someone “cold calls” you. Am I right? Then why would you do something to someone else if you yourself don’t want it done to you…”do unto others as you would have them done to you”. 

REASON #3 – “Cold calling” is an S quadrant activity.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about here, this is from one of the best books I’ve ever read, Cash Flow Quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki. In the book Kiyosaki outlines 4 different quadrants of “cash flow”.

There’s E as in employee & the S as in self employed, which make up the left side of the quadrant. The right side of the quadrant is business owner (B) and investor (I). One of the biggest benefits of implementing what we call The Client Alchemist Way is to help you move from the left side to the right side…

If your business (& income) is predicated on you making a certain number of cold calls, prospecting calls, door-knocks or “pop-bys” every single day, then you’re nothing more than an “S quadrant” salesperson. If you want to build a “B quadrant” business (and I believe the VAST majority of you do) then listen.

The reason you got into this business is because you had an entrepreneurial fire to create more freedom by building an actual business. Well freedom does not come from being tied down to these activities every single day, such that if you stop, the business stops.

I’m going to dive deeper into this one in reason #9 but I think you get the idea. It’s an S quadrant activity, not B or I quadrant, and that’s where we want you moving towards once you’ve adopted and are following The Client Alchemist Way.

REASON #4 – ZERO competitive advantage. 

Here’s what I mean. There are lots of people in your market doing it. Which means even if you have the absolute best scripts & “objection handlers” there’s no competitive advantage here. You’re just like everyone else…every other salesperson, real estate or otherwise, which means you’re a commodity.

What happens with commodities? They are viewed and valued upon price alone and I don’t think you want that for your business. Do you want to be compensated as a “commodity”? Didn’t think so…

REASON #5 – It’s hurting “our” reputation as an industry.

Now this could be good or bad for you. If you adopt “The Client Alchemist Way” it could be good…if you keep trying to be like everyone else, then it’s bad.

Here’s what I mean. You can use this to your advantage by talking about it in your marketing, emphasizing the fact that you don’t do these types of activities and why you don’t. For most of you right now, until you’ve fully adopted The Client Alchemist Way and you’ve built an audience and you’ve built platforms, etc., this is a bad thing because we (you) get lumped into this negative reputation.

“Oh he’s just another salesperson. They’re cold calling and prospecting and they knock on doors and things like that. All they care about is making the sale.”

It just creates a negative perception about us in the marketplace. In fact, real estate specifically has one of the most negative reputations, which is sad. But when you change the way you position yourself, and make yourself more attractive to your ideal client, you can turn that on its head and transform it into a good thing for you.”

Here’s an example of this kind of negative publicity. The video is admittedly an extreme example but one that’s playing out to some degree in virtually every market…

REASON #6 – You’re DRAMATICALLY decreasing your chances of EVER getting referrals. 

 Why?

Think about it.

Let’s image someone became a client out of sheer exhaustion, from you “wearing them down” by continually chasing, begging and pleading with them to do business? How likely is that person to then refer your business? Especially if they simply gave in versus you creating a pleasant experience by which you’ve attracted someone to you on their own terms.

The opposite is also true. You dramatically increase your chances of not only getting referrals, but also having clients that you’ve attracted in this fashion to actually be advocates for you.

It’s much easier to create advocates when you attract them and take them through a process that is more pleasurable and pleasing to both them and you, so they will willingly go out of their way to be your advocate and bring you business. However, when you obtain them through being belligerent and just hounding them into submission, this will not be the case.

REASON #7 – It’s ineffective & inefficient.

Let’s face it, even if you’re really good at cold calling, prospecting & the like, you’re still going to be very inefficient and ineffective. In other words, even if you’re good at it, your success rate will be abysmally low.

SIDE NOTE: This is a topic we’ll dive into more in a separate post, but this idea that “every no gets you closer to a yes” is LUDICROUS. Here’s why: the coaches, trainers, brokers and the authors who perpetuate this nonsense are having you focus on the wrong thing (No’s). What you focus on expands which mean if you focus “going for no”, what are you going to get more of? No’s. Well I say NO thank you. (pun intended  )

We want you to get more “yeses”. We want you to attract people to you. People who’ve already decided that they’re going to do business with you so you don’t have to do any selling. All you have to do is serve them.

REASON #8 –  “Success” requires you to “master scripts”. (Notice the quotes).

For you to become “good” at it (which as we just covered, will still leave you inefficient and ineffective), you’re going to have to master scripts. Here’s the problem with that as I see it. When you’re working from scripts (how to handle objections, how to open the conversation, how to get them agreeing, etc.), you’re most likely not being your authentic self. And this comes through in the ears and in the minds of the people you’re talking with.

One of the greatest compliments that I receive from our community is that I often hear I’m authentic. And I share that not to brag, but to illustrate something that is incredibly important. The reason I am received as authentic is because I don’t use scripts. It’s because I’m speaking from my heart. I’m speaking from my passion and people can feel that in their hearts & their minds. I come off as authentic because I’m being authentic. I’m not trying to be something or someone that I’m not.

When I was cold calling and prospecting years ago, not only was I miserable doing it, I also wasn’t my authentic self. I was trying to be something I wasn’t and that’s just never going to work out in the long run. 

REASON #9 – It DOESN’T Scale.

This one goes hand in hand with number 3 (S quadrant activity). Here’s what some coaches and gurus (maybe even your broker) will tell you…Even though you only have so much time in a day, you need to grow your business so you can hire others to do certain tasks (maybe even an ISA, an inside sales agent, or a team of other agents).

Why would they want to do it if I just gave you 8 other reasons not to do it?

In theory, yes you could “scale” by having others doing this work, but I’ve already explained in great detail why you shouldn’t. Instead you should build a business (and scale said business if you choose) based upon the principles, the system and the process that we call The Client Alchemist Way.

Here’s how one of our students has done just that (in his own words):

I started real estate in 2010. The market was pretty low then, and I was fresh and ready to start. I had a rocky start closing about 8 deals in my first year. In 2011, I found you, or you found me, or a combination of those both with your marketing.

Since then I have grown to be the number one team agent in my area. I now have a big team. 4 buyers agents, a listing specialist, myself as the team leader, and two full time assistants. We closed 220 deals in 2015 edging out the previous big dog in the market by about 15 deals. Our average sales price in my area is $272,000 for 2015. Your members can do the math on that one.

My main lead generation techniques are the ones you teach. I wrote you a long time ago about how I sat down one day and followed them step by step. I blotted out a huge chunk of a day, and did every step in a row, without taking a break. By the end of the day, I was already generating foreclosure leads.

Funny side story… I was generating so many leads so quickly that the real estate board called me in to talk about how that wasn’t fair, and that I must be doing something wrong/unethical. True story. In one of my email blasts I said….”I’m excited to say that we have 800 people that have subscribed to my service…” Well another realtor from our board obviously was one of those people, and they complained that I was “marketing other brokerages listings” by doing the foreclosure page. Of course, our board rules say we can do that…. so nothing every happened. They just didn’t think it was fair that a new realtor was selling so much.

Anyway, I use your programs every day, and I have tweaked them to my own needs. Because of one I created… (Free list of Just New Homes in your area…) I have landed a total of 6 builders as clients over the years. One of those builders does 40 deals a year with me, and we have double ended a ton of those listings with your systems. They see that I am generating many leads, and they can get those leads if they hire me.

I know this is long, but I saw your post asking for stories. You have done nothing but boost my career, and my entire lifestyle since we “met” in 2011. I owe you a big debt of gratitude. So I hope my stories can help you inspire all of our members. – Justin Myer

As you can see it’s a much more efficient and effective way to scale and create culture as you grow your team. A team of people who actually want to be there.

Why bring people on and expect them to cold call, prospect, knock doors, etc. as a means of growing YOUR business and their business if YOU don’t want to do that? Why subject anyone to that? (Remember reason #2 “do unto others…”)

We’d love to hear your thoughts, feedback & comments below…and be sure to:

NEXT, CLICK HERE To Grab Your FREE Copy Of My Amazon Best-Selling Book ATTRACT: 4 Simple Steps To Engaging Your Ideal Client. (Just help cover the S&H)

*This post originally published on the Client Alchemist blog at: https://ClientAlchemist.com/blog