When a dispo list has sixty names but only seven real buyers, blast or call first

Question

Take a dispo operation with sixty names on a buyer list, of which maybe seven have actually closed something in the last year, and a contract landing tomorrow. There are two ways to work that list, and the reputation math behind each one deserves more thought than it usually gets. Option one is a single message to all sixty at seven in the morning. Maximum reach, fastest possible match, and the market sorts out who is real by who replies. That is roughly how the marketplace platforms operate, put it in front of everyone and let the fastest buyer win. Option two is phone calls to the seven, starting with the two who close most often. Slower to reach volume, but a call gets a decision and a text gets ignored. And those seven are usually the reason the business exists at all, so putting them behind fifty three strangers runs backwards on relationship logic. The harder question is reputation cost. Blast sixty and the deal is gone in two hours, and fifty eight people just received a message about something they never had a chance at. Does that warm the list because they now know real deals move through it, or cool it because they learn the messages are a lottery. Operators land on both sides of this, and the honest answer is that it depends on how often the list gets blasted relative to how often it gets a real shot.

jessreyes12 · Answer

What stops the 53 strangers from just calling the seller directly once they have the address? Is that a thing that happens, or am I inventing a problem?

aliyah_b · Answer

Compass it's absolutely a thing, which is why a lot of people send the deal without a full address until someone signs something. Costs you speed to withhold it though.

karen_whitfield · Answer

Sixty names where seven transact isn't a list of sixty. It's a list of seven with fifty-three people watching. Price your effort accordingly.

laurenkim53 · Answer

Rural markets are different enough to flag. In a small county an operator might have four buyers total for a given price point, and two of them are the same family. Blasting is meaningless there. It is four calls, and the caller usually knows before dialing which one will say yes, because they know what each buyer picked up in March.

priya_n21 · Answer

Hollow, that is the better business, and by a wide margin. Fewer people, more knowledge about each one.

gregpowell66 · Answer

On the reputation question, buyers on the receiving end generally do not mind mass emails at all. What they mind is a mass email with a bad repair number in it, because now they have spent an hour and they trust you less. Send to everyone if you want, just do not send junk to everyone.

bmoreno23 · Answer

Lantern, you've described the choice as reach versus relationship and the seven closers are already a relationship. If you call them first and they say no in twenty minutes, you've lost twenty minutes and you can still blast. The reverse isn't true. You can't un-send to 60.

chriswalton8 · Answer

Ember's point about order being reversible is the sharpest thing here. The same logic applies on the capital side, where committed money gets the call first and the crowd second, because the crowd cannot be put back in the box. The one thing to add, lantern, is to be careful about giving overlapping windows to two buyers by accident. That mistake has cost people real money, and it usually happens on the day the contract lands.

When a dispo list has sixty names but only seven real buyers, blast or call first

8 replies