One seller asked us the same question three times in a single call.
Not "what will you pay." Not "how fast can you close." Just this: what are my options?
We had only just started calling sellers this fall, with two partners working a call queue built from our own pipeline, and I expected the early lessons to be about speed. Who gets there first. How fast the dial goes out. That is what nearly every funnel in this business is built around.
That call taught us something else.
(If you want to know how much of your own list you can even reach before anyone dials, our free Pipeline Grader shows you: grade your list here.)
What they were really asking.
"What are my options" is a question we keep hearing, in one form or another. A homeowner behind on payments wants to know if there is any path besides losing the house. An heir wants to know whether they have to deal with the house at all, and how. Neither one is asking to hear an offer yet.
A speed-first funnel is built to get to the offer, which is exactly why it is so bad at this question. That seller did not need us to be faster. They needed a straight answer, in plain language, with selling listed as one option among several. If the first thing they hear is a number, the conversation is usually over before it starts.
The numbers, briefly. In our first three days of calling we made 758 dials. Most reached nobody, and 34 turned into a conversation longer than a minute. So all of it comes down to a few minutes with a few people, and whether those minutes answer the question they actually asked. (The full breakdown is on the DealRoute blog this morning.)
Three things we changed after the first week.
1. We count conversations, not dials. A dial tells you how busy you were. A call of a minute or more tells you whether anyone was there.
2. We look before we dial. A homeowner behind on payments and an heir settling a parent's estate are in completely different places. One is scared of losing something. The other is holding something they never asked for. Thirty seconds on who you are about to call changes the first sentence out of your mouth, and the first sentence decides whether there is a second.
3. We start where they left off. If a seller wrote back two months ago and said the timing was wrong, the call starts there, not with the script. Nobody wants to tell their story twice, and the ones who have to usually do not.
The audit (ten minutes). Pull the last ten real conversations you had with sellers. For each one, write down the first real question they asked you. Next to it, write whether you answered that question or steered back to your script.
If more than a couple went back to the script, that is the leak. Not your dialer, and not your list.
The honest part.
This is a few days of calling, one state and one small team. Pick-up rates change with the time of day and the kind of lead, and we are testing both. For texts, we already ran that test: for about two weeks half our messages went out first thing in the morning and half later in the morning, and we could not find a difference in replies. Timing is worth testing. It is rarely the whole answer.
And speed is not worthless. It is just solved. Anyone with a list and a dialer can be first now, which means being first no longer separates anyone. Answering the question does.
One question to carry this week. When a seller asks what their options are, do you have an answer that is not an offer?
If you want to start with the list itself, the Pipeline Grader reads your actual list and shows you who is unreachable, who went stale, and who you never followed up with. Theirs reads a dropdown. Ours reads your list. It is free, and we never store it, sell it, or message anyone on it.
→ Grade your list
And hit reply and tell me the question your sellers ask most. I read every one.
Talk soon,
Jason