What to say when you call your database

What to say when you call your database

June 2007, the first iPhone, and I was working the floor of the Apple store in a Rochester mall. There was a limit of two per person, and some of the people in our line had already bought their two in Buffalo that morning and driven down the Thruway to buy two more. They were Canadian, the phone was not for sale in their country yet, and they were smuggling them home.

Nobody cold called those people.

Call reluctance is not a fear problem

Every agent I coach has a version of the same list. Forty names, maybe sixty, and somewhere around name number six the scrolling starts. You skip the one you have not spoken to in a year. You skip the one who used somebody else last time. You skip the one who will ask how the market is, because you do not have a good answer. By the end of the block you have made eleven calls and told yourself the other forty-nine were not a fit today.

The skipped names are not random either. They are the ones where the gap since the last conversation feels too big to explain, and every week you skip them, the gap gets bigger.

The industry has a name for that, and the name is call reluctance. It makes it sound like a nerve problem, something you push through with a louder playlist and a standing desk.

There is no such thing as call reluctance. There is only value deficiency.

When you hesitate over a name, ask one question: am I hesitating because I do not know what to say, or because I do not have enough value in the back of my mind to justify the call? It is almost always the second. You are not afraid of the person. You are afraid of the ninety seconds where they wonder why you called and you do not have a reason.

Just checking in is the absence of value

The fallback, when there is no reason, is the check-in. Hey, just calling to see how you are doing. Hey, just checking in, did you see anything you liked this week?

It feels harmless and it costs you. When you call your database for no other reason than to check in, what the other person hears is that you want something and you are not going to say what. They are polite about it. They say they are good, they say they will let you know, and they file you under people who call when they need a deal.

The buyer version is the same mistake with a listing feed attached. Asking a buyer whether they saw anything they liked hands the work back to them. They have forty listings in their inbox and no idea which three matter, so they say nothing, and the follow-up dies there. The fix is to do the job you are paid for. Pick the three best houses, because you are the pro. Offer two times to see them. Let them choose one. You took the decision fatigue off them, and you gave them a reason to answer.

Friendship does not keep you top of mind

The belief underneath most skipped names is that the relationship will carry it. They know me. They like me. When they are ready, they will call.

They will not. Not because they do not like you, but because calling you is friction and clicking a button online is not. On the day they decide to move, the agent on the sign down the street is one tap away and you are a phone call they have to remember to make. Your job is not to be liked. Your job is to make it low commitment for them to remember you.

Relationship is found in value. The friendship is real, and it does not do the job by itself.

The same goes for the email list. Agents ask permission to add people to a newsletter as though it were an imposition. Do not ask. Nobody cares about being on your newsletter, and nobody says no to something they did not have to think about. Put them on it, make it worth opening, and let the unsubscribe button do its job.

Sales calls still feel abrasive to me. Always.

I have been doing this for thirteen years, and I ran the lead generation department on a team for two and a half years before Covid. Sales calls still feel abrasive to me. Every one of them.

Earlier this year I let my own outreach slide for months. I had decided something else I was building would bring people to me, and that the calls could wait until it did. It did not, and the calls did not get easier while I waited. They got harder, because the longer you go without reaching out, the bigger the gap you feel you have to explain.

This week I sent a text to somebody I had wanted to reach for a while. I congratulated them on a promotion and mentioned what I could offer. I got one word back, and it was not yes. On the phone that same person would have stalled politely for four minutes and I would have spent the rest of the day wondering what they meant. In a text it was simple. So what. I am moving on. There was no objection to handle.

What changed was not my nerve. I had a real reason to reach out, and I said it plainly.

Value is something you bring, not something you are

Value deficiency does not mean you are not valuable. It means you showed up without anything to hand over.

The easiest version is an invitation. A client event, a giveaway, a pie at Thanksgiving, something people can say yes to without committing to anything. The event itself matters least. The before and the follow-up are the whole thing. The invitation is a reason to call forty people, and the follow-up is a reason to call the eighteen who came.

A question works too. When do you plan to move next: this year, next year, or later? It takes ten seconds to answer, it tells you exactly where each person sits, and it is a better reason to call than any market update you could write.

And sometimes the value is curiosity. You do not need to talk about the real estate market at all. You can talk about them: the kid who started college, the kitchen they were thinking about redoing, the job change they mentioned in the spring. Stay curious about them, and they will ask you about you. That is where the referral conversation starts, and you did not have to steer it.

Make the call so simple there is nothing to be reluctant about

The goal is a conversation so stupid simple that reluctance has nothing to hold on to. One reason, one sentence to open it, one question to close it. If you need a page of notes before you dial, the problem is the call, not you.

With an invitation as the reason, it sounds like this. Hey, it's me, we are doing a pie giveaway the week before Thanksgiving and I wanted you to have first pick of the pickup times. Tuesday or Wednesday? That is the whole call. If they want to talk longer, good, you listen. If they do not, you said something worth hearing and you hung up before it got strange.

It should feel like brushing your teeth. Nobody builds up the nerve to brush their teeth in the morning. You do it because the alternative is unpleasant and because you decided a long time ago that it is not a decision you make fresh every day. Calling your database works the same way when the reason is already settled before the block starts. It is all about the little things and the boring things.

What to do before your next call block

Fifteen minutes, done once, and it carries the month.

Pick one reason worth calling about this month. An event, a giveaway, or the when-do-you-plan-to-move question. One reason, used for every name on the list, so nothing has to be invented at name number six.

Rewrite your opener so the reason comes first. Not how are you doing, not just checking in. The invitation, the question, or the three houses, in the first sentence, so the person knows why you called before they have to wonder.

Put everyone on the list without asking. Every contact goes on the newsletter today. The call is the reason to talk. The email is how they remember you between calls.

Back in that mall in 2007, nobody on our team picked up a phone to fill the line. Apple had built a reason so strong that people crossed a border twice in one morning and hid the boxes on the way home.

Your database is not going to drive down the Thruway for you. But they will pick up for a reason, and the reason is the part you control.