26k to stand up a cold call team, and one 6k assignment came out of it

Ran this from January to mid-April and shut it down. Writing it up because the arithmetic is simple and I ignored it for three months.

Setup: two callers, part time, paid hourly plus a bonus per appointment set. Dialer subscription, a list subscription with the stacking filters, and skip tracing. All in I was at about 8,600 a month once I counted the bonus and my own time managing them, which I did not count at first. Three and a half months, roughly 26k out the door net of the one fee we earned.

What we got: 41,000 dials, 1,900 conversations, 118 appointments set, 34 in-person or video walkthroughs, 9 offers made, 2 contracts, 1 closed assignment at 6,000. The other contract fell out when the seller's son got involved.

Where it actually broke. The list was the same list. Absentee plus high equity plus tenure in a metro with a lot of active buyers, pulled from a platform anyone can subscribe to. Sellers were telling my callers they'd had four calls that week. My callers were good at the phone and had nothing to say that the previous three callers hadn't said. My cost per contract was 13k and my average fee was 6k, and there is no version of that where more dials fix it.

The other thing I underestimated was compliance. Calling rules for consumer numbers, consent, and what counts as an existing relationship differ by state and are being enforced more than they were, and getting that right is an attorney conversation rather than something you figure out from a forum. I was running two callers on scrubbed lists and still not confident I was clean. That uncertainty was a real cost even though it never turned into a bill.

What I'd do differently. I'd pick a niche where the data isn't one click away, and I'd spend the 26k on getting in front of the people who meet those owners first instead of on dials. Probate attorneys, estate cleanout companies, the guy who does board-ups for the city. Slower and it compounds. And I'd calculate cost per contract against my actual average fee in week two, not in month four.

6 replies

0tonyv88SO4CPRO6

@halyard has it. Pay on walkthroughs completed and see what happens to the appointment count.

The relationship channel you're describing at the end works, and it's slower than you're imagining. I get maybe six referrals a year from cleanout and board-up contacts I've known for years, and two of them are worth something. That's not a replacement for 26k of dials in three months, it's a different business with a two year ramp.

1jordan_ellis2ActivePRO6

1,900 conversations to 9 offers is the ratio that bothers me. You had the conversations. Sellers were talking. Nine offers out of 1,900 means either your callers weren't qualifying or you were too slow to put paper in front of people.

1gregpowell66AG4BPRO8

13k cost per contract against a 6k fee, and you kept going for three months. I've done the same thing with a crew I couldn't keep busy, held on because shutting it down felt like admitting the whole idea was wrong. It wasn't the idea. It was the month.

-1bmoreno23AB1B

The line about sellers saying they'd had four calls that week is genuinely useful to me, since I'm about to mail a list built from the exact filters you named. What does a list that isn't one click away actually look like? Court records you pull yourself?

2luis_carrera Get yours

@ember mostly yes, plus things nobody has coded into a filter. Code enforcement notices, utility shutoffs where the county publishes them, tax sale lists before they're aggregated. Availability of all of that varies a lot by county and state, and in some places you're physically going to an office.

@cobalt, one thing you didn't put a number on. Did you ever calculate what your average fee should have been for that market? If the assignment fees in that metro run 6 to 8k, a two caller operation was never going to clear its cost no matter how clean the list was. That seems like the decision that was made in January.

26k to stand up a cold call team, and one 6k assignment came out of it

6 replies