Joe:  Hey, guess what? Let me tell you something. Money loves speed. So, if you want to make a lot of money, you need to be quick in this business. Whether you're doing houses or land doesn't matter. If you want to make a lot of money in this business, you need to learn this principle of being fast, okay? Money loves speed. And so, I don't get it sometimes when somebody is spending thousands of dollars in marketing and a lead comes in from a postcard and you don't call back the hangups. Or you get a lead and they leave you maybe a voicemail, but you don't call them back and talk to them. Maybe you're doing PPC or PPL, pay-per-click or pay-per-lead, right? And a lead comes in and you don't call them back within like five milliseconds. I don't understand why, why, why, why? You are just literally burning money. You might as well just throw it down the toilet. This is so critical and important. I'm going to real quick give you five reasons why it's critical that you call every single one of your leads, whether they hang up or if it just comes in, you have to call them right away, right back. So, give you some context of this.

We have some coaching clients that I'm working with and I'm helping them do their marketing, giving them leads. They're paying for the marketing. I'm doing the marketing for them, giving them a bunch of leads. And some of them are just not calling the people back. And one of them actually said, well, they haven't given me permission to call them back. You don't have to have permission to call them back. They called you, they got your postcard. You should call them back right away. You answer the phone if you can, if you can't, if they just hang up, they don't listen to your voicemail or they listen to the voicemail and hang up, call them back. So, one person in particular had about 40 new leads that came in that were hangups and had not called them back. And some of them are over a month old. And I was politely fuming inside. I guess maybe is a good way to put it. I don't know. It's like, oh my gosh, I don't get it. Why? So, I showed this person, let me just show you how easy this is. In Freedomsoft, you just click on their phone number and you start calling them. So, of the 40, I picked one at random and I called the seller and he answered the phone and I started talking to him. And guess what? He had some land that was for sale. The realtor didn't sell it. So, he let it expire and he was very motivated, very interested in an offer. And so, I talked to him for 10-15 minutes, got some information about the property, told him I would do some research and told him I would call him back. I think we even, while we were on the phone, walked through some comps. I was trying to get a number out of him. He told me what it was listed for originally, what they dropped the price to and kind of what his bottom line number was. And if I remember correctly, I looked up some comps on Zillow and I said, well, you know, I'm seeing some things in this price range. Is that going to work for you or not? So, anyway, the client got the point and was like, ah, okay.

You don't need permission to call them back, number one, right? If they hang up, call them back, every one of them. And so, this is something in my coaching agreements, we put on there. Like, when we give you a lead, you have to call them back, all of them, even the hangups. And you need to call them back at least two or three times a day for at least two or three days. Okay, unless you hate money and you don't want to make any money in this business.

So, let me give you five reasons why that this is important. Number one, they've raised their hand. This is why I love direct mail so much, right? Especially with vacant land. You can target specific properties that you want and that you don't. You can not target properties you don't want. Unfortunately, with PPC or PPL, you only get leads anywhere in the country. They may be junk properties, they may be in areas where nobody is buying land. But with direct mail, you can pull a list of people who own specific size properties in specific areas that you want that don't live in the area. They've owned it for over a few years and it's a certain size and it could be like, you can pull a list of properties that are not landlocked, are not floodplains, wetlands. So, you can get a very good list of potential properties and send the owners of those properties who have a very good chance or likelihood of being motivated to sell, like they live outside of the state or whatever. And you can send those specific owners a postcard. Now, when they call you, they're raising their hand. They're interested in maybe selling the property, maybe getting some more information. That's a phone number that's 5,000 times better than any skip tracing. Do you know why? Because you're sending it to the owner on record and the owner on record or somebody that knows the owner on record got the mail and is calling you back. That is the perfect phone number to get. Does that make sense? So, really valuable. And we're spending 75, 80 cents a postcard. You're spending a lot of money to get these phone numbers. Call them. Okay.

So, that's number one. Number two, most investors will not call them back. The secret to doing a lot of deals is doing what your competition is not doing, right? So, number one, they're not doing consistent marketing. Number two, they're not talking to sellers. They're not calling people back. They're not answering the phones live, right? They're afraid to talk to people. Number three, they don't make offers to every single lead and that's a whole nother podcast, right? You've got to make offers to every single seller that calls you, no matter what they say. I don't care if they say they want $5 trillion and it's a landlocked property in a floodplain on the side of a cliff. You send every one of them an offer, even if it's for 100 bucks, in writing, in the mail. And the fourth thing that people, most people don't do is they don't follow up. So, number three reason, timing matters. This is important to understand. Sellers often call in this quick moment of motivation and that window can close fast. Maybe they got your postcard, they're walking to their car, they're calling the number on the postcard as they're busy and they're in the middle of something and it's just like, or they get interrupted right away. So, timing matters.

And then this relates to my number four point, they might have been interrupted or they're nervous, right? So, a quick follow-up just shows professionalism and builds trust. And number five, these are often your easiest deals. Warm inbound leads convert way higher than cold outreach. This is why, again, I love direct mail. These are the best leads in the world. They're calling you, they're raising their hands. And so, when you call them back, the positioning is so much better. It's like, hey, I saw that you called, I'm following up, how can I help you? I saw that you called, I saw that you left a voicemail or whatever, I'm just calling you back. The positioning is way better than interruption where you're texting them or cold calling, which everybody hates. Nobody enjoys getting a spam text or a cold call. So, these are the best stinking leads on the planet. So, why would we not call them back? And that's the other reason why you want to send every one of these sellers an offer in writing.

So, I know sometimes you're new and maybe even you're interested in land because you've heard me talk about, well, you don't have to talk to sellers and that appeals to you, right? And it's true, you can do deals without talking to sellers, but you can do more deals if you do talk to My challenge to you is why not? You spent this money on direct mail, you've got the most targeted seller leads, why not call them back? This has happened to me over and over again. And I've seen this in my own business and this is why I'm so passionate about it because I hire these acquisition managers, even my kids at times, right? I'm like, all right, so I'm going to do, I'm going to spend a couple thousand dollars in direct mail, this is the rules, this is what we're going to do. Do you got it? You understand? Okay. And then I listened to the calls and usually they do a pretty good job of calling the leads back right away, but they sometimes don't do a good job of sending them an offer. And they're going to be like, well, Joe, the seller said they've already rejected offers that are going to be higher than what we would ever offer. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. Send them an offer anyway. They've done studies on like how often does a deal close, whether it's no matter what kind of sales it is, right? Most of them happen after the seventh to eighth touch attempted follow-up after two to three months is when most deals actually happen. So yeah, it's critical and important. All right. So that's all I've got. I'll see you later. Take care.