Sold my first contract in under 48 hours after six weeks of doing nothing but calls

Following up on my earlier thread about start costs. I went with the cheap version and it took longer than the spreadsheet said.

Six weeks, 140-odd calls and texts, 22 people who'd actually talk to me. Of those, 9 gave me a buy box with numbers in it. Total spend: 41 dollars for a CRM and a lot of coffee I bought myself.

Then a wholesaler I'd met once texted me a duplex, contract 96k, needed roof and one full unit gutted, and asked if I had anyone. I had two people whose stated boxes fit. Called the first, he said send it, walked it the next morning, wired earnest that afternoon. 41 hours from text to signed assignment.

Fee 10k, I took 4k at 40 percent.

The part that nearly broke it: the buyer wanted an extra week on closing and the seller had a hard date. That took three calls and the wholesaler eating a small concession, and it wasn't me who solved it, it was the closing attorney suggesting a structure both sides accepted. If I'd been alone on that I'd have lost it.

What I'd keep: the six weeks of calls with nothing to sell. Every hour of it paid off in that one phone call, because I knew who to call without thinking. The thing I got wrong in my earlier post was treating the buyer list as a cost. It's the asset.

3 replies

2angela_burkeServicePRO6

140 touches to 22 conversations to 9 usable is a 6 percent conversion from cold to useful. That's about what I see on the service side for a cold list, so your effort was normal rather than unlucky. Worth tracking that ratio going forward because it tells you how many calls buy you one more real buyer.

1brandonlee36Passive

What happens if the closing attorney isn't clever that day? You said yourself you'd have lost it. So the plain version of this outcome is that a 4k fee depended on someone else's problem solving.

Not criticizing, I've had the same with property managers. But the thing to build is your own answer to a closing date mismatch, because it'll happen again and probably next month.

2aaron_fitz10 Get yoursPRO6

@tally the line about the list being the asset rather than the cost is the thing I needed. I've been treating buyer calls as overhead before the real work starts.

One question. Of your 9 usable buy boxes, did you have a sense which were real before this deal, or did you only find out when one of them actually wired money? Trying to work out whether I can tell a serious buyer from a talkative one before there's a deal on the table.

Sold my first contract in under 48 hours after six weeks of doing nothing but calls

3 replies