26. How I transformed my call routine with Smart Lists

Have you ever found yourself sitting in front of a seemingly endless list of contacts, unsure of where to start? This morning's episode of The Work From Anywhere Agent dives into the art of decluttering your calling list, a revelation I stumbled upon after realizing my lead generation was turning into a mountain of procrastination.

As I streamlined my approach from overwhelming chaos to strategic precision, I noticed how targeting those most likely to move kept my engagement high and my calls purposeful. Gone were the days of aimless dialing and waiting for a breakthrough. Instead, I uncovered the power of Smart Lists in defining my daily calling routine to prioritize genuine connections.

Tune into today's episode to uncover the eight game-changing Smart Lists that have transformed my daily outreach. From 'blazing hot' leads to those nurturing future plans, these lists ensure no opportunity falls through the cracks while keeping my outreach both effective and meaningful.

Let’s keep the conversation going! Join our Agent Facebook group to share your experiences, or join the upcoming Nurture Funnels challenge to further refine your own calling strategy.

Business Systems for Realtors Facebook group: https://facebook.com/groups/bizsystems.
7-Day Funnel Challenge: https://orbit.realestate/cnfin7days
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

In today's episode we're talking about the smart list that I use when I'm calling my database, and so this was something that before we started Orbit, when I was still using follow a boss, I got really intentional about and carried that practice over to Orbit. If the smart list ends up being too overwhelming and there's too many people to call, then I end up procrastinating much more than I need to Versus when I set up my smart list. So I'm only talking to the people who are most likely to be moving, most likely to be wanting to transact real estate. That's when I stay really hyper, sort of committed and interested in my own lead generation. So my first list that I call is my sphere, and I start with that because it always feels good to start with someone who actually wants to talk to you. Typically, I call three or four people from my sphere. They're super quick conversations. So when you first set up this list, you're going to have like, let's say, 100 or 200 or whatever people on it. These are people who you are in relationship with, right, if you were walking down the street, they would recognize you, you would recognize them. It's not like they're just like a name, there's like an actual relationship there. You know something about them, they know something about you, and having this list first just makes starting the calls much easier. Then my second list is what I call blazing hot, and these are people who have booked a discovery call on my calendar but didn't answer. I've referred them to a lender and so I'm waiting to hear back from them. All of those like random things Someone who booked a consultation. We completed it, but they haven't signed the document yet, and so we use our filters to set this up automatically, so it's not like I have to go in and remember who hasn't answered, and all of that. Yet Having this list has been one of my most profitable lists, because it's people who already want to do something and just, for whatever reason, didn't take the next step. Sometimes it's because they get busy or they get double booked or whatever, and so we just make sure nobody falls through the cracks. List number three is my new people, so people who come into the database from whether it's networking, or they text in the number, they call us and I miss the call, they message us on social media or they fill out a forum on our site, and so this list is exactly as it sounds, all the new people coming into the database, and so we definitely want to make sure that we at least make contact with them as quickly as possible.

Speaker 1: 2:25

List number four is my hot leads, so people who I think are going to do something within the next three months. That number can vary based on you, your production, your business, your preferences, your lead sources, all of that. Some people agents I know, who used to be really heavily into expires would say if they're not ready to sign a listing agreement in the next seven days, then they're not a hot lead. People who only do relationships and networking and things like that will say three months or six months or whatever. You have to decide what makes sense for you. Three months seems to be a good fit for me, and so my hot list are people who you know they're just waiting on something to get started.

Speaker 1: 3:05

List number five is my nurtures. I used to put like a specific time frame on this, but what I've found is that, to me, a nurture is somebody who has a definitive timeline. So whether it's because they're waiting on their kid to graduate high school, or they're waiting on a court order, or they're waiting on something specific to happen, they're waiting on a lease to end. That to me, is someone who's a nurturer. They are someone who is definitely going to do something, and so I call them every 30 days. And then I also have my sort of cold people which are in what I call C stage, and those are people who are like, yeah, someday I'm going to do something, I just don't know when. This is a joint smart list and so those people I call every 90 days and it's just kind of a check in to see how things are going and see how their plans are coming along. But that way we're able to really be intentional about calling the nurturers first and then calling the sea people, and so that way, as they move closer to move forward, then we move them into warm stage and then I start calling them every 30.

Speaker 1: 4:04

List number seven is the actives, and so we don't have a direct integration with an IDX platform. On Orbit, however, I set up a zap from RealScout to Orbit which basically updates their last active date when they're looking at properties on the site, and so this list pulls up everybody who's been looking at properties and I call through that list To me having a database of people who are looking at properties, even if they're not ready to do anything right now, is still going to keep you top of mind and reaching out to them in a very casual way. That's like hey, looks like you reached out about some properties a while back and I just wanted to see if you had already purchased or if that was still in the plans for you. That was a script that I learned from Barry Jenkins from YLOPO and that was kind of his approach and it really gets received well, so long as your tone does not sound like a salesperson and you sound more like a customer service rep, if you will. And then the last one is the home values. And if they're looking at their home value on RealScout, that tells me that they might be thinking about moving, even if they're not ready or committed to it yet. But I want to start getting back in front of them. And so that's kind of the eight smart lists that I call through every day.

Speaker 1: 5:15

I will say that for the most part, most of my lists are between, let's say, five to 10 people at maximum, and even the ones that are larger, like my sphere list, where I still only call three or four or five of them every day. And, as a word of advice, if let's say, for example, you have your sphere list and you have 150 people on that list, if you think about the goal is to call them once every 90 days, there's 13 weeks in a year. There's five days in each of those weeks. So I would just do the math to say, okay, 150 people, let's actually use 195. Because I think if you were to call three people every day, that's 195 people in the quarter, right?

Speaker 1: 5:50

So if you have, let's say, 195 on your list and you call three of them every single day, monday through Friday, you know that you're going to get to the bottom of that list and by the time you get to the bottom, it's then going to start repopulating. And so using smart lists makes it so that when you sit down in the morning and you start making your calls, it's not like who am I going to call, what should I say? You already know that the contacts are bucketed. It tells you exactly who you're supposed to call, what to say and how to say it. I hope that this is helpful. We are coming out with our nurture funnels challenge in just a couple of weeks, and so that is going to be focused around organizing and activating your database, so that way we can make sure that you're maximizing your revenue from that.