Let’s talk about voice mail systems. If you’re brand new to real estate investing it’s probably something to start with and if you’re a seasoned experienced real estate investor and you’re not using voice mail systems, I think it’s going to be a real weakness in your system.

How to Set Up Voice Mail Systems

If you’re getting a lot of phone calls from buyers or sellers or renters and you’re saying the same thing over and over and over again, it could become pretty aggravating after awhile.

I run a property management company and a real estate investing business. I own over 20 properties myself and I manage about 150 properties for other investors, so we’re constantly advertising for renters. At any one given time we probably have 20-23 properties being advertised for renters, and in a typical week we’re getting somewhere between 150-200 phone calls.

What to Say in the Voice Mail

Now if I had to answer every single one of those calls it would be very aggravating. What we do is we set up systems and we use voice mail systems. We have the people call the voice mail system, they can listen to a 1 or 2 minute message, and that message will describe the property.

It will describe the rooms, how many square feet, any features like air conditioning, a garage or a pool or anything of that nature. It describes all those features. It also tells the price and tells the down payment they have to put down if they want to rent the property.

At that point, once they’ve listened to that 1 or 2 minute voice mail, they can either leave their name and number, which means they’re pretty interested, or they can hang up.

At that point that’s wonderful, because I don’t want to talk to them if there was something in that information that doesn’t fit their need. If it’s too many bedrooms, if the price is too high, they don’t want air conditioning, or they have to have a garage and this property doesn’t, and they don’t like the quality or they don’t like that, wonderful. I want them to hang up the phone so I don’t have to address that.

Filter Out Prospects Who Are Not Serious

That is the primary factor of why you guys should be using voice mail systems. It’s no different with renters. It’s the same with buyers and it’s the same with sellers. You get to the point where you have systems in place, where you allow the system to do the majority of the work, so once the person has listened to a pre-recorded message from you and they still leave their phone number and name, they’re obviously a high-quality prospect.

Probably 50% of the calls that you get are going to be a complete waste of time. The people are going to be just sniffing around. They want you to spend some time with them on the phone. They want you to come out to their property and give them an offer, but they’re wasting your time. You want to eliminate that 50%. You want to focus on the other 50%. That’s where the money is.

I invite you to learn more about Real Estate Investing and join our FREE weekly tele-seminar class where we teach tips and strategy on how to grow your real estate investing business and how to raise Private Money by going to http://www.realestatewealthtoday.com/TuesdayTipsSignUp.html

Mike Lautensack is a full-time real estate entrepreneur, coach and mentor in Philadelphia, PA and creator of the Private Lending Presentation Kit. This powerful done-for-you kit is loaded with tools and techniques to attract and develop a consistent stream of private investors into your real estate business. To learn more about this kit and receive your FREE eBook go to Real Estate Investing Blog.

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