Give them nothing but a dial tone
AM 570 Podcast
Column from The Wave
“Cold calling” is a practice used by real estate salespeople (and others) to contact potential sellers who’ve otherwise not shown any interest in selling their property. It’s a very annoying and intrusive practice that’s been prohibited since the Covid outbreak of 2020; However, many agents continue to flout the executive order banning the practice today because cold calling is their main, and oftentimes only, source of listings.
While I don’t agree with banning cold calling through executive order, or as a result of Covid, I do believe that it should be permanently outlawed through legislation. The motivation behind the Governor’s moratorium on cold calling in 2020 was not to save folks from being harassed or scammed, but rather to try and prevent the movement of people in order to slow the spread of Covid. I, on the other hand, believe that folks have a right to enjoy life without being subject to solicitation from sleazy salespeople. Truly experienced and successful real estate professionals simply don’t have the spare time needed to cold call people; Instead, we’re introduced to most of our clients through referrals.
During my career, I’ve encountered many inexperienced agents who’ve touted their number of years “in the business” as proof of their success. Many also brag of the cumulative price of all their career sales as an indication of their experience. However neither, in my opinion, is a true indication of experience or success in the real estate profession. Time doesn’t automatically equal experience and dollars don’t equal success. Still, I know of many agents and brokers who’ve spent many years making an awful lot of money by getting listings from habitually cold calling property owners. These selfishly unscrupulous licensees epitomize the Numbers Game and couldn’t care less about their individual clients. They only care about the number of calls they make, the number of appointments they book, the number of listings they get and the amount of money they make.
Anyone who calls a homeowner asking if they want to sell is no different than some boiler room stock broker looking to fleece people over a telephone. I draw the similarities between the two from my own experiences: Way back in 1993, at the age of 19, and after taking a break from college, I was offered a job as a stockbroker trainee. Naively, I accepted the position and began training at a firm on Wall Street thinking that I was entering a respectable profession from the ground up. I quickly learned that, despite the firm’s intense cold calling training program, it wasn’t for me. Not because I couldn’t do it, but because I didn’t want to do it. Commencing a career by robotically calling people while using scripted rebuttals just didn’t sit well with me. I left that position after only 3 months but I learned many lifelong lessons. Many years later I found myself being trained as a real estate agent in very similar ways. Unlike the unconfident and inexperienced 19 year old, my 35 year old self knew that I could do things differently and blaze my own path of success. I tweaked many aspects of the training, while patently rejecting most others. Cold calling is one tactic that I’ve never used despite being told, matter of factly, that it’s fundamental to becoming a successful listing agent. In the 11 years since then, I’ve successfully listed and sold hundreds of people’s houses, all over NYC, without ever playing any form of a numbers game. Next time an agent cold calls you, threaten to report them and hang up. Don’t be just a number on their scoreboard, or on their call list.
