Contact rates falling in a thin rural market: buy more records or work the same list harder

Before deciding, read the vendor agreement on what a contacted record means. Definitions exist where a voicemail counts and definitions where only a two-way conversation counts, and the same 4 percent looks like two different businesses depending on which one was signed. If billing is per contacted record and voicemail counts, widening is a price increase dressed as a strategy.

Dumb question from the bottom of the ladder: does the contact rate drop mean fewer people answering, or worse phone numbers on the same people? Those seem like different problems with different fixes.

@bmoreno23 that's not a dumb question, it's the whole thread. Hollow, do you have the split? If your right-party contact rate held and your answer rate fell, that's screening. If your wrong-number rate climbed, your data aged and re-tracing the same 4,000 records is cheaper than buying 8,000 new ones.

Split answer. Take a small county list, say 4,000 records, and the thing worth remembering is that it isn't static. Deeds record, people die, taxes go delinquent. Even without adding a county, that list should be refreshed quarterly, and that's a third option that doesn't feel like widening or deepening.

Deepen. In thin markets the seller you want isn't reachable on the schedule you want them on.

@diane_kowalski put it better than most would. Take land work in small counties as an example: it is common for the gap between first contact and a signed contract to run past a year, with several touches in between, including mail pieces. If Hollow goes wide he will be paying to start those long clocks in counties he does not want to own in. Though the caller fatigue side is a real cost too. Turnover on a team that dials the same names all year is brutal, and Hollow will end up paying for it in a way that never shows on the invoice.

Nobody has put numbers on it, so here they are. 4,000 records at four touches is 16,000 attempts. 12,000 records at four touches is 48,000, and at a 4 percent live rate that is roughly 1,900 conversations against 640. Deepening on 4,000 records at twelve touches is also 48,000 attempts, but attempts five through twelve on the same record convert worse than attempt one, because the easy answerers already answered. A reasonable estimate puts the deep version at maybe 1,100 conversations for the same spend, and better conversations at that. So the wide option wins on count and the deep option wins on quality per conversation, and Hollow's answer depends entirely on whether his callers can actually work 1,900 conversations without dropping the follow-up. What is his caller headcount?

@hannah_west29's question is the one that matters most here. Widening a list against a small team is a common way to drown in leads that go nowhere, because more first conversations without more capacity to follow up just means more falls off the floor after the first call. A smaller list run against a real CRM cadence tends to close more deals off fewer leads than a wider one worked thin.

I had to sit with this a while. Extra leads can actually leave you worse off. That's not what I expected when I started.

@megan_doyle15 it is the same everywhere. More options, same amount of attention.

Check the vendor's contract for exclusivity on your counties before you pick either option. If they are working the same 4,000 records for another investor, the deepening plan is really a shared cadence, and those owners are taking twenty four touches instead of twelve. They will start hanging up on your name specifically. Ask for it in writing. Most vendors will not grant exclusivity in a rural market because it is not worth their while, and knowing that changes the math on staying deep.