EP NNA 73 – Three Steps To Calling Banks For Note Deals

In this episode of Note Night in America, Scott Carson breaks down his three simple steps to contacting banks to find note deals. He breaks them down using a list from Bauer Financial, Laneguide.com, the Texas Savings and Mortgage Lending list or pulling leads from LinkedIn. He also discusses sending out your email, connecting on LinkedIn, and following up with a phone call over two weeks. He shares the stats and success you should have if you make phone calls three times a week and how averaging an hour per day for a month will help you grow and make money with banknotes in your real estate investing career.

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Three Steps To Calling Banks For Note Deals

I think you’re going to grab a pen and paper. You’re going to want take some notes. We’d definitely go through a couple of great things for you guys that are looking for deals, looking to connect with banks and some of the other opportunities. If this is your first time, welcome to the show. We had a great event with Note Weekend, great amount of people. Over 70 people were signed up for that. All of those that signed up, get a ticket to our Calling Banks Training.

Let’s dive in the main content, three steps to contacting banks. It all starts with a list. This is stuff that we have done for many years. I’ve been looking back. It is a totally different market than what it used to be. I think we agreed it’s different market. It’s totally different in how a lot of people market these days. If you think back to what was going on many years ago, YouTube was relatively new, Facebook wasn’t like it was. Instagram wasn’t even around and there were many groups, but it wasn’t the same thing when it comes to what we’ve seen as have happened the last many years.

It’s a little bit different mindset when it comes to marketing. It used to be dial for dollars and like an email blast I found out with some things, it has all gotten differently. The episode’s all about what our process is specifically into what we’re doing here as we get into the fourth quarter of 2020, what we’re doing now, we’re going to be doing it in the fourth quarter of 2020 and I’m helping you ramp up and get rock and rolling because I think there’s a ton of opportunity. I don’t think it, I know it. I know there’s a ton of opportunity for all of us out there.

First and foremost, you’ve got to start with a list of asset managers of your banks or asset managers. I don’t care where you pull your list from there. Some variety of places to pull some lists from. You can even pull from 1 to 4 different places for the most part. First one is LaneGuide.com. If you go to their website, roughly for about $182 a year, you get the online version. You can go in their special asset managers, search and download the list across your different counties. That’s roughly 700 names across the top twelve states. You need to scrub that up a little bit. It’s not the easiest thing to copy paste, but it’s well worth it. We’ve used that. It’s a great place to be.

BauerFinancial list, this has no emails for you. It’s a little bit more work for you, but it does give you a lot more ranking systems as far as how bench rank from 0 stars to 5 stars. What kind of defaults do they have? We’ll be calling off of lists, I’ll be hitting and try to hit the full 99 banks that are listed from 0 star to 3.5 star. I start at zero and work my way up in reaching out to them and make it in dial for dollars. BauerFinancial list can run you $250 to $400 or $500 depending what kind of list you pull well worth it, because it does give you the rankings. It gives you the names of the CEOs, but it doesn’t give you the list of emails like Lane Guide does. You can jump on the Texas Savings and Mortgage Lending website. This is a free website that tracks those that are licensed to do business here in Texas, mortgage brokers, bankers and they also has some other companies for other different types of entities out there. You don’t need those four. You need the mortgage bankers and the servicing companies. You can add the mortgage brokers in there, but I think that’s a little bit more so for later on, but that’s a big list there for you that can download.

We’ll go through how to get that list at the upcoming workshop. You can also jump on LinkedIn with no email list. If you’re budget strapped and you’re working a lot, LinkedIn is a great place to get started for free and finding lists of people out there to market to. You’re not going to be able to email them and you’re not going to be able to find phone numbers to be a lot of hunt and pecking and trying to track down different things. Still, it’s not a bad place, especially if you’re strapped and working a ton and don’t have a lot of free time to sit down and go through some things. Starting off with the list is the most important thing.

If I were anybody on here, I would pull the Texas Savings and Mortgage list and then I would also purchase a BauerFinancial list. It’s well worth it, depends on what you’re looking for. Lane Guide is valuable because it does give you internal numbers and a lot of places. Honestly, if you didn’t want pay for the BauerFinancial list, then jump on and pay for the LaneGuide.com, the online version, one access is all you need. You can also jump on Scotsman Guide. That’s free. I would use that more so if you’re in the commercial assets side of finding portfolio lenders lending on commercial properties for the most part, but it’s not going to give you a lot of phone numbers or email addresses like a couple of the other ones will.

Step One: Email

Step number one is an email. I know these three steps are going to sound basic like I’ve talked about before, but I don’t want to go back. I look back at some of my emails and some of my webinars have done in contacting bank asset managers. I went back and simplified it. If you got an email that asset manager, upload them to whatever your email service provider you’re using or your CRM tool. Mailchimp is the easiest thing. If you’re not sending out emails on a regular basis, you need to do this. Mailchimp is free up to 2,000 connections and then it’s still relatively cheap afterwards. You’re going to go over 2,000 connections or 2,000 contacts easy with the Texas Savings and Mortgage Lending, other asset managers or databases you have. You might as well start off and get and rolling with it, but uploading it into Mailchimp your list and what you want to do is be careful. You don’t want to take like the full tooth. If you’ve never sent an email out through Mailchimp before you get a brand new account, you don’t want to blow the full list because it’ll say, “Omnivore,” to make you un-upload the list.

What you have to do is you got to be careful. You got to season your email service a little bit. What you’d have to do is uploading 2,000 contacts, you may need to go back in there and upload 100 to get 1,000 and 100 times 20 to get 2,000 contacts. It’s what you’re going to have to do with a new Mailchimp account. It’s better than to send the email out to the first 100 and then you can replicate it and send it out to the rest of the context twenty times and then you can merge your lists together. It’s not that hard to do, but first and foremost, upload your list. You may have to do it 100 assets a time. If you’ve been sending out through Mailchimp for a while, great, you should be okay, but that gives you like, “Omnivore warning and it wants you to un-upload or download the list instead of letting them be there.” That’s the way to get around it. Send your email that you’re going to send out to your asset managers and keep it simple, send it on a Tuesday or Thursday.

That way you can keep in track of what’s going on. You’re going to see somewhere between a 10% and 20% open rate when you send it out. What you want on your email is kiss. “Keep It Simple, Stupid. Keep It Simple, Scott.” You want a logo, not a huge logo. You want to have a thin logo, a horizontal logo at the top and linking to your website. If you don’t have a website, have that linked into your LinkedIn profile. Go out and buy your URL. You’re in business, time to start acting like it. You want to keep this very small. We don’t want to have a long ass diarrhea of a mouth about what note investing is and all how awesome you are. You’ll want to keep it simple and straight to the point.

Who, what, when, where? “Mr. Asset Manager, I’m reaching out to see if you had anything in your books this quarter that you’re looking to get rid of. I’d love to talk to you. I’ve been a real estate investor for twenty years buying distressed assets for the last fifteen. We’re looking for non-performing or defaulted, residential commercial loans, and most of the major markets. We’re buying for our own portfolio. On the residential side, we’re looking for assets between $100,000 and $500,000. On the commercial side, we’re looking for stuff under $2.5 million. I’d love to talk with you.” Kind and simple. A couple of things you may want to do. You want to do this? You want to create a professional headshot.

I’ve seen people send out emails where they look like ass. I’m like, “You got to dress it up a little bit.” Don’t take a picture of you in some ugly sweatshirt that’s all stretched out or a t-shirt, look professional. Guys, put on a collared shirt and you may be wearing gym shorts underneath the bed or your boxers, but at least get a decent photo against a solid wall. Ladies, do the same thing. Don’t wear a stretched-out T-shirt or dry fit shirt that you’ve been wearing for three days straight. Put on a shirt, a blouse or something that looks nice and then take a photo. You want to be attracting people not like, “This guy looks like he rolled out of bed.” Keep it professional. You want to put your picture down at the bottom and the email comes from you, not your entity.

It comes from Scott Carson, not We Close Notes. It comes from Stephanie Goodman, not Good Journey Investments. Your headshots can be down at your signature. You want to put the link in the end, where if they click on your photo, when they click on your logo it takes them either to your LinkedIn profile or your website. You better have something on your website with that smiling face. It helps you brand. You might even say, “I’d love to schedule a fifteen-minute phone call to talk about what you have or what we could do to maybe work some things out,” whatever it might be. You may want to even put in a Calendly link and go and create your free Calendly thing for fifteen-minute increments, an online calendar that people go and connect.

You don’t want to ask all these questions. What you’d want is his name, email, phone number and then bank name is all you need. They can pick the time out of their schedule and set something up that makes sense around your schedule. If you’re working full-time, look at your schedule. Either make it in the morning or at noon or in the afternoon. If you’re not working and this is while you’re doing, then limit it, make it at lunch or give some opportunities across. A couple of hours in the afternoon or 1 or 2 hours in the morning to make connections. I don’t let anybody connect with me unless it’s 10:00 AM. After 10:00 AM, I’m good to go. Before that, I’m probably not going to be awake.

I will be awake, but probably not functioning prior to 10:00 AM Central for the most part. It’s my time to myself to get things rocking and rolling. What you may also want to do, it’s a valuable thing to record a short two-minute video, do it with your smartphone, set it up there and talk in the nice blouse you’re wearing. When you look all nice, record a short little two-minute pitch video. “My name is Scott Carson. I’m the CEO of WeCloseNotes.com. I want to thank you for taking the time to open my invitation here, open my email. I would love to talk with you. See if you have anything non-performing on your books that we take a look at. We’re buying residential notes between $100,000 to $500,000 and most of the major markets across the country prefer nonperforming, but we’ll also look at performing. In the commercial side, we’re looking at your small balance commercial, $2.5 million or $3 million or less on different commercial properties across the country as well.”

Contacting Banks: There’s a million amount of connections on LinkedIn that you can make from just those three or four assets.

“I have over a 12-year, 10-year, 20-year experience doing this, but I would love to visit with you or schedule a call and see what you have on your portfolio that we can create a win-win scenario. Give me a phone call Scott (512) 585-3810 or email me at Scott@WeCloseNotes.com. When you write your email and then send it out, give it 48 hours before you start looking at your list. Review who opens up your email 48 hours later. You sent it on a Tuesday, let me look at it on a Thursday. I sent it on a Thursday and look at it on the following Tuesday.” Give it at least 48 hours business time consecutive. Tuesday is better than sending on a Thursday because if you send it on Thursday, it doesn’t go out too late. They might even look at it until late Friday and your open rates on Thursdays are lower than they are Tuesdays. If you can’t send on Tuesday, worst case, send it on a Wednesday, but try to get that first email out on a Tuesday. Get a hit tomorrow.

A week later, hit resend. You can resend the same email by replicating this same email and send it to those that unopened the email and you send it the opposite time of the day. If you send it in the morning, send it in the afternoon. If you send it in the afternoon then have it go out in the morning, but you’re going to see an additional somewhere between a 5% to 8% open rate if you give it another 48 to 72 hours as well. That’s the first step is writing an email in Mailchimp and sending it out. This the big thing that disappoints me the most is when I pull you guys and pull students at Note CAMP, they’re like, “What’s an email blast? I’ve haven’t sent one out in the last year.” You have to start doing this because otherwise you’re not going to make connections. Here’s the thing, in email you’re not going to see probably better than a 20% open rates because the fact is people don’t look at their emails and some of these lists that we’re talking about maybe a little outdated. I may not be going to the right person.

This is one step in a three-step process. Can you find assets by doing this one step? Yes you can, but when you combine the three steps together in an effective manner, it does a great job. It’s like creating a three-legged stool. If you have one post and I’m thinking on that, “You can sit there and balance on it and it can support you. Two, it’s easier to balance. Three, you can sit on that thing.” That’s what we are trying. Are there any questions about the aspect of this? It’s going to take you the longest to write your first email because you’re going to have to set it up. You’re going to have to adjust the photos. You want to spend a little time doing. Jump on Canva.com and create your logo. You might even want to go on there and write it up and feel free.

If you’re going to send an email out to your asset manager for the first time, do yourself a big favor, send me a copy of it and then send me a text message or an email and say, “I sent you a sample email. Would you take a look at it?” If you’re going to take the time to create an email, I will gladly try to schedule it into my time to look at your email. You can talk with ScottCarson.com, schedule a 30-minute phone call with me. I’ll be glad to look at your email and tell you what looks good, what looks bad, what’s writing good or what looks like ass. Please take me up on that. I am yours to help you out with it.

I want you to do that because there are plenty of emails and asset managers that go around. I’m not worried about the 800-plus people that registered at Note Night in America sending emails out to all of the same people. Some of those asset managers aren’t going to see it. Spam filters are going to block a big chunk of it. Some of those not going to even be sentencing. I would hope that more than 5% of the people that I’ve coached, but this doesn’t happen on a regular basis. Although, it is still one of the most effective ways and it’s the cornerstone of reaching out to people on a regular basis and why not do it in something you can track, you can see who opened your emails and it leads to everything else in the chain.

If you’re not going to send an email to your asset manager and you’re not going to do that, you can log off and go enjoy the rest of your time with your family. I’m not trying to be rude. I’m a straight shooter with it. This is one of the most important things that you can do and it’s not that difficult. Writing an email out to asset managers can be intimidating, but how many emails do you get on a daily basis? It’s not going to be difficult. Do yourself a favor, if you call me, almost send it through Google. You can’t see who opens your email through Google. You don’t have the same type of professionalism as sending from an email service provider like Mailchimp or Infusionsoft or AWeber or anything. Send it out through somebody you can see the open rates. Do yourself a favor, if you’re going to be in real estate in long-term, pony up the table and pay the $35 a month or the $50 a month to send out via emails because it’s going to come in handy a lot lately.

Step Two: Connecting And Reaching Out

Step number two, if everybody’s fine with that, get your email writing. Take the hour to mess around with it. Give me a little bit of time to review your email. This is why I’m trying to challenge you guys and gals, I’m calling banks on Wednesday. If you start spending time going through and writing your emails, I’ve got some time to spend some time looking at your online emails. I can evaluate those so that Tuesday you’re sending out emails to asset managers. “Let’s please do this.” You come to Austin and spend the two days with me one-on-one. I literally write your email for you and restructure it and send it out for you. Don’t call me up and say, “I want you to write my email for me.” I am not going to do that.

I’ll tell you what you did right and wrong. You need to tweak things, but I’m not going to sit unless your coaches did to mine. The second part, connect on LinkedIn. Free version of LinkedIn is fine. Complete your profile. Take the time. Make sure you have a complete profile filled out. It means making sure you have a professional photo, make sure taking the photo that you send in the email. You use your profile photo. It matches up. It brands.

No offense. I know that you love sharing your family and your loved ones, but get your spouse and get your kids or whatever weird looking photos, take your logo off your LinkedIn profile photo. Put your freaking smiling face. I had five people send me invites and I’m like, “Who the hell are you?” It’s a logo. I’m like, “No.” People even send me an invite with no photo. I’m like, “I’m not going to accept your connection with no photo. It’s a waste of time.” Put your photos so people can start seeing who you are. Going back to your email that you sent out 48 hours later, you’re going to look at your open rates and you’re going to see everybody that opened your email.

You can even see people if they clicked on your profile. That’s why we put a link. If you clicked on your photo, you can see who clicked on your LinkedIn profile. Look at those at those who opened the email and immediately those that opened go out and see if you can’t find them on LinkedIn, connect with them, you can do this at any time. You can do this at night, on weekends, in the morning. You can do while your kids are watching SpongeBob SquarePants or Frozen 2 for the twelfth time. You can literally go on your phone or your email and do that here. Now the thing about sending a connection on LinkedIn, you don’t have a long ass amount of space. You want to make it short and sweet.

“Hello, John. Hello, Stephanie. Hello, Steven. Hello, Juanita.” You want to say, “Hello, blank,” and that’s your personalization, but then also short and sweet. “I wanted to see if you’re the right person at your bank.” Put their institution in there so that’s different. “If you’re the right person and handles your note sales at your institution, I’d love to talk with you and see if we could possibly buy some.” Remember, we talked about that little video in your email. You can use it again here. You’re going to take that asset manager video and you’re going to go to Bit.ly or Pretty Links and create your custom URL like what I do as if I have the link, I don’t put the YouTube link where it’s long. I might put Bit.ly/ScottAssetManager or Asset Manager, Calling Banks.

Something that’s easy enough to remember, but I can customize it and Bit.ly, which is free to do so I can see the tracking. Let me share something with you. Once you upload these and when you start going in and sending out these invites over the period of a couple of days, you’ll start seeing people are either accepting them and you can also click on your profile to see who’s viewed your profile and other profiles that these people looked at that were looking at them. When I do accept your friend request, then you want to go on there and say, “Thanks for accepting my friend request. I’d love to talk with you. See if you have anything on your books that you’re looking to get rid of.”

You can also pull us special asset managers, secondary marketing, etc. when it comes to that stuff. Send out invites when you’re bored, sitting at home watching Frozen or waiting on something, maybe your wife or husband is watching a Lifetime movie for the third time. Sending out invites to your special asset managers, secondary market on LinkedIn, that’s free and you do the same thing. Copy paste, “I wanted to touch base if you’re the right person.” Keep it short and sweet and be able to communicate with a lot of people.

What do I mean by Bit.ly? You want to be able to see who’s clicked on your links. We’ve been doing a lot of this and it’s a nice thing. Bit.ly is a free website. You can take any long link and customize it like NoteWeekendAugust. I created this August 22, 2020. It was for a link register. I wanted to see how many people clicked on a link. I can see my Note Weekend class, they have a 34-page manual and I put in for videos of our asset manager, a video to Baldwin Advisory group or a link to a custom Bit link going to the video and we call them asset managers. You can see on your Note Weekend NoteProz. Over on the left-hand side, I can see that two people have gone through the replays and clicked on the link. Hopefully, they started watching that NoteProz, but it’s a long, complicated YouTube video. I can see that only one person has clicked on the call and the asset managers video replay in the manual.

When I had Mike Wolf on talking about wealth mastery, he had a link to his book and his class. I see that 158 people for either the webinar here we did on Monday night with them and then the email I sent out Tuesday, 158 people clicked on that link or 156 people clicked on his book. This is a great tracking thing. Same thing for Kimmy and few people watching Kimmy Wine, 39 people clicked on Daren Blomquist’s slides that I created a link for you guys to download here. Some of these are for our podcast episodes. Some of these are for the Note CAMP link.

Contacting Banks: Dialing for dollars is still cheaper than mailing postcards and yellow letters and going door knocking.

I had eighteen people on the email blast I sent out click on my video. That’s an important thing. That’s from May 2020, I’ve used a different link for it since then and created a new one, but that was the old link I sent in May 2020. For June and July 2020, it was a different, it was a prelim, but Bit.ly is free to all of you and that allows you to see besides the views on YouTube. I put my Bit.ly link in there. If they click on that, that automatically takes them to the YouTube video or the Vimeo video where we posted it. It’s much easier to see and it’s a great tracking matrix for you. The website is http://www.Bit.ly. Free to set up account. Doesn’t cost anything. That’s the beautiful thing of that.

Going over to LinkedIn, let me flip over there. One of the great things is you can see who’s looked at your profile. If I look at my notifications, “Congratulations.” I mentioned someone. I can see, “Peter Crocker and six others viewed your profile.” I’ll hit See All Views. I’ve had 1,322 views in the last 90 days. I’m down 23%. I can see Doug Homer. I love Doug. He looked at looked at my profile. Thane Ringler, speaker, podcast host. Lisa, Owner at a Virtual Assistant Services, Ray Fish, Rendering, Derrick Butler, Peter Crocker, Joy Langley, Tanya Reeves, SVP, Senior Real Estate Market. She looked at my profile. I can click on her profile and I can hit connect. This is where I would add a note. “Tanya, I’m looking to see if you might know.” I put my name and I only have 300 characters I can type in her. Hopefully, this shows up for you.

I want to leave enough room so I can go put the Bit.ly link in it because it’s a shorter link in that way, send it to her and hopefully she sees it and connects something. Now the thing is besides sending that invitation out, I can see people also viewed Scott Larson, Vice President of Acquisitions and Finance, Vice President of NCD Real Estate. Vice president, asset manager and you see pending because I sent her an invite. Katie Welch, Account Executive, Multifamily Marketing. Business banking, market managers, senior vice president, AVP, senior market analyst at PMC Real Estate, TLC, Real Estate Banking.

These are going to be some great people to connect with. Same thing if I’m going to click limit, I’m going to click on that and then add a note and do the same thing. Copy paste. That way, I’m going to start connecting with people and I can start seeing who’s looking at my profile. It’s sneaky that way. Tanya has got a nice photo. If she was working for a different company because she works at PNC, but if you guys should put your logo, your company header back here in this spot back here and edit it and make it look a little bit more professional.

Going over here to special assets, if you are bored, I’m going here and type Whole Loan Trader. It’s the same thing. Connect. LinkedIn member, Director of Whole Loan Trading, Duncan Williams. John Toohig, Head of Whole Loan Trading and Raymond James. Whole Loan Trading, MetLife. It’s saying Matthew Rothstein, Director, Whole Loan Trading at Baird. Alfred Chang, Whole Loan Trading at MetLife. You got some insurance companies for that stuff, whole loan trading. Those could be Mountain View Capital Holdings. I’ve bought from them before from, Michael Keller. Simple as that. It’d be great if I had my list of my email blast. LinkedIn is the one thing, if you don’t want to call it asset manager, don’t get on the phone and dial for dollars then you should be spending time on LinkedIn, free time on LinkedIn to reach out on a regular basis.

Hopefully, that’s helpful for you. I’m going to go back to the third step. Step one. We know contacting banks via email. Step two, connecting with them on LinkedIn and reaching out to them directly. This is not difficult. I’m not talking about having an upgraded version of LinkedIn. You use a free version, but completely fill out your profile. Keep it simple, add some things to it. You can start tracking to see who clicked on your links. When they do connect with you, if they come back and connect with you, accept your connection, then great. Send them another message and say, “Thank you for connecting and would you be able to talk about what you might have in your portfolio?”

Literally, special asset managers, secondary marketing, whole loan trading, chief credit risk officers. There’s a million number of connections on LinkedIn that you can make from those 3 or 4 assets. If you’re bored off your ass of sitting and watching a movie, that’s a great way to do copy paste. If you did it from LinkedIn, LinkedIn is going to limit to the amount of about 150 invites in a daily period. That’s about the maximum they allow. If you do it from your phone, they’ll let you do it again and again and go and beyond, but you’re not going to probably do more copy paste than 100 in a night.

If you do that, you should probably get somewhere between 12 and 24 connections for every 100 that you send out. It’s that good especially if you’re doing it during the week. If you’re doing it on the weekend, it may get buried in email and not every asset manager is going to be looking at their LinkedIn. One thing you may want to look at is if you’re looking at them and they have less than 500 connections, they’re probably not looking at their LinkedIn. They don’t have a face on the earth, a picture of a profile, then move on and you can spend time in your second-degree connections and find plenty of asset managers that way.

Step Three: Dialing For Dollars

The third step. This is the thing that everybody gets like, “I’m going to be talking about calling dial for dollars again. I’m sick and tired of hearing Scott Carson talking about dialing for dollars. It’s the 21st century. I should not have to dial for dollars to find deals.” That’s correct, but if you’re not doing any other marketing, then you should because dial for dollars is still cheaper than mailing out postcards and yellow letters and doing door knocking. Same thing, going back and looking at your email list that you sent out at first that’s why email is number one and leads your LinkedIn. It leads to your dialing for dollars. You send out 1,000 emails to asset managers. It means you’re going to probably end up with somewhere between 100 and 200 off your list and open rates about 20% and 1,000 emails sent out, that’s 200 names and phone numbers or names and email.

If you’ve got phone numbers because you imported them in from the list that we talked about, that’s your list of those that open. That’s your hot list to call. If you make 10 to 20 phone calls per hour, it’s not hard to do, but set yourself a two-hour time block minimum on either Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday and commit to this. I know I have been in rooms. We’ve had students, we get together for calling blocks. I’d have twelve people in the room and everybody’s waiting and people are scared to death like, “I’m scared to make a phone call. Please don’t answer.” They answer, “What do I say?”

I’ve seen it. People would spend money, come in and then they sit there and look. I’m like, “Look at your list and dial for dollars.” Prewrite your voicemail script. Here’s the thing to keep in mind. Prewrite it. Keep it simple. You’re going to end up saying it a million times if you do this on a regular basis. I don’t mean anything negative about it. I’m trying to make fun of ourselves because I’ve done it before. In my first dial for dollars, I practiced making phone calls for 50 phone calls. How do you practice making phone calls? In the mirror. I would literally think of the stupid shit that they would ask. What do I say for that? When I was doing this back in my business partner and the mortgage company, boy was in the other room. He was like, “Who are you talking to?” I’m roleplaying.

It’s one of the best things I did. Get over the jitters. Pre-write your voicemail script and say it slowly. This is the thing I have to slow down when I get my voicemail because I get excited. I’m a fast-talking guy. The more you squeeze in per second does not mean the more quality it is when it comes to calling an asset manager. Prewrite your voicemail script. “My name is Scott Carson. I was directed to you as being probably the right person to handle your distressed notes sales and special assets or secondary marketing manager. I would love to talk with you. If you have anything in your books that you’re looking to move this quarter or next. I’ve been in this for a couple of years now. I’ve got over a twelve-year history. I’ve been doing it since there was dinosaurs that roamed the earth. What do you have in your books? We can take a look at and talk with residential, commercial, we’re buying in most major markets.” Something simple like that.

Your voicemail script is easy. If you go through our virtual workshop, “There are scripts in there for you.” The reason the dial for dollar thing comes last and I’ve done it second or done it 30. It works either way, but I like being able to say, “I sent you an email to a couple of days ago. I’ve also sent you a LinkedIn connection.” What are they thinking? I hear that, “Somebody sent me an email to me, LinkedIn connection. Let me go find them.” “I sent you an email and I sent you a LinkedIn connection a couple of days ago. Trying to connect with you. I believe you’re the right person to talk to.”

Talk slowly and say your phone number twice. If you have a simple email or if you have a complicated email, it sounds like it’s a tongue twister, sounds like something else. You can create your email as simple, Scott@WeCloseNotes.com or WeBuyNotes or NoteBuyer101. Something simple or HappyHouseBuyers or HappyNoteBuyers, whatever it might be. Talk slowly, say your number twice or email twice. It’s simple and always leave voicemails. I’ve been on call with somebody I would dial, it would go to voicemail and then they go to the next one. I’m like, “What are you doing? Leave a voicemail.” “They don’t check the voicemail.” Now for sure, they can’t call you back. If you at least leave a voice message, you can make that touch with them and they know that you’ve left the voicemail.

“This guy is committed. I’m going to call him back.” Leave a voicemail. Trust me. It’s worth it. If you’ve left a voicemail, make a note on your list, your spreadsheet and call them back in two business days or call them back the next day if you leave a voicemail message, follow back up. If I got a voicemail from somebody 3 or 4 days in a row, you better believe I’m going to call them back the next day to quit freaking calling me. At least you make progress that way. I’ll say, “I’d love to talk with you. I left you a voicemail. I’m trying to see if you’re the right person. If not, hopefully you can point me in the right direction or I can send you an email and quit filling up your voicemail.”

Contacting Banks: 80% of sales are made after the fifth contact.

If you leave a voicemail, you’ve got a gatekeeper or secretary and they send you the voicemail box, “Call back,” and before the gatekeeper either sends you into voicemail saying, “Do you mind giving me his or your email so that I don’t bother you? Can I get his or her email? I know they’re busy. I know email is faster than checking voicemails. I hate voicemail. If you got an email address, I would prefer that to drop them an email.” Here’s the big thing. I used to always say every no was worth $500 for me. How did I figure that out? When I started dialing for dollars back years ago, I would dial and dial.

I was trying to get to Capital One and I made 70 phone calls over a three-week period. I kept track of it. I went back and said, “I made 70 phone calls. I found that right and appropriate.” The first note I flipped from Capital One was worth $35,000 wholesale fee to me. I think $35,000 divided by 70 phone calls. That means every no was worth $500 to me. I’m going to set a challenge for you. I want you to set a goal of getting 100 NDAs. That was one of my big goals many years ago. “I need to be directed a 100 NDAs.” Within the first 90 days of dial for dollars, I was beyond 100 NDAs. I need to advance my goal off this.

That’s why it was a lot easier. I was like, “This is easier than I expected.” I had over 1,000 NDAs in my first twelve-months. I’m doing this. I’m not expecting to do it for 12 months. Few of you will ever be committed to something like that, but if you can set a goal for 100 NDAs you’ll either stick with it or you won’t stick with it. We know that’s obvious, but 100 NDAs added a lot of value and a lot of momentum and you’ll see, “This is worth doing.” It also separates you from everybody else out there. Many people out there, there’s no deal. The Debbie Downers, the people that are a pain in the asses that you want to avoid. If you trust me, if you set a goal of getting 100 NDAs, it will be well worth it long-term for you along.

Here’s the big thing why we have three-touch approach and why we do this extra follow-up because 80% of sales are made after the fifth contact. An NDA is a Non-Disclosure Agreement. That’s what the bank is going to make you sign before they send you a list. It’s a 2-page, 3-page saying you’re not going to go out and blast it from the rooftops. “John Smith over here with Social Security number 45-239-1999 is in six months default.” That’s a non-disclosure. Not going to blast it out all over. Publicize it. That’s what’s an NDA is. Here’s the thing they think about. If you send out your first email on a Tuesday, that’s day one. The second day you jump on LinkedIn and send an invite. That’s Wednesday to those that you sent emails out that started to open the emails. Even the people that were on your list maybe they didn’t open the list in the email, because it got by their spam filter, but at least start sending out LinkedIn invites to your email list.

You’ll make a phone call on the third day and have to leave a voice message. Three connections and potentially three days there. Now the following Tuesday because you’re not going to do anything on Mondays and Fridays, second email blast. That could be day four on Tuesday. The second phone call, you’re leaving a voice message. The next Wednesday, that’s your fifth touch because you can’t resend them another invite on LinkedIn, either accepted or they’re declining. It doesn’t matter. That five-touch basis is over two weeks and that is your 80% of the ways they’re made. Are you going to get some people that respond on your first email blast? Yes. Are you going to get some people that respond to your LinkedIn connections? Yes. Are you going to get some people you talk to on the phone when you’re making phone calls? Yes, but that’s a little bit along. That’s still touching base.

You still got to follow-up with them. I want you to get in the habit of doing this because most of you out there don’t have any sales training or don’t have any type of follow-up system and you don’t know where to begin. You’re like a wild gunslinger fired off at everything, put some systems in place and commit to doing this for two weeks or for three days to call them back to at least. Trust me. You will see momentum if you commit to something for a little while. People ask me, “Scott, how do you stay driven with what you’re doing?” Because I’m committed to doing this day in, day out for you guys. I’m not going to lie, tired up this weekend. Sunday was worn out. I didn’t want to do the show, but I know the importance of it if where we’re at. I’m committed to you because I know that the topic is relevant for what we have coming.

If you start doing this stuff, you’ll find deals. The sixth connection is when they do finally accept your connection or they view your connection, then you follow-up and say, “Thanks for connecting with me.” Who knows when that’s going to be? Here’s what I’d like to challenge you. I only want to challenge you out here because I know you can do this and this is not difficult especially if you’re stuck at home. I know a lot of people are dealing with kids being stuck at home or spouses. I get that. Print a list out on a piece of paper, go outside and dial from outside. I’ve done that for years. I used to be part of the book club here in Austin, Texas. I printed a list of 100 names.

I’d go jump on the boat because we had a pass and I could go out on Lake Travis and dial for dollars in one of the most peaceful settings out there. Get your cup of coffee, get something comfortable, you get some snacks. That’s going to invigorate you and keep it moving. I like peaches and I like cherries. Those are two things I like, Topo Chico and a good cup of coffee. If I can have 3 or 4 of those things, I can get rock and roll and getting momentum. Fifty phone calls for three days straight, that’s not too much to ask because you can literally knock 50 phone calls roughly out in at least two hours. On average, you’re going to see it at least probably a 20% success rate of talking to the right person.

Out of 50 phone calls, you should get at least ten people you talk to. That’s ten new contacts by new meaning, they’re more than an email per day. If you do that, three days in a row, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, it’s 150 phone calls per week, phenomenal. Good job. You’ll be have 30 new asset managers per week to add to your list of, “It was great talking to you. What do you have this quarter? I follow-up with the next month. I follow-up with the next week.” That’s the viable thing. We do this for four weeks. You’re going to have 600 asset managers. That’s 120 new asset managers. That could be your 100-plus NDAs in a month there. You may not need more bank assets after that. You may not need more or less based on we’re coming into here in the fourth quarter.

I hopefully, you’re see and trying to make this KISS, Keep It Simple, Scott. “I’m trying to keep it simple. Lord, please help these people find the way to the asset managers. Please, Jesus, bless these people with clarity of a mouth and clear mind, a conscious when dialing for banks. Please, Lord. Amen.” If you do these 2 to 4 hours to knock out 50 phone calls, it shouldn’t take you four hours. You might have some longer phone calls, but if you have longer phone calls, it’s means better connections. Non-Disclosure Agreements is what NDA stands for. Get them to sign their non-disclosure agreements with it and they’ll send you a list. If it takes you 2 to 4 hours to knock out 50 phone calls, that’s not bad. That’s normal. If you can get to your 604 weeks of making technically 25 calls per hour, that’s two minutes per phone call and then a five-minute break to run around and get crazy.

Make 20 phone calls, take a 5-minute break. Make ten phone calls to wrap up your two hours. That’s literally in that timeframe of making 25 calls. That’s 24 hours per month for phone calls. It’s not bad when you figure in an hour per week for emails, the longest time on this average is going to be on the front-end time. The rest of it can be literally 30 minutes of edit, paste, and then uploading. We’ll say four hours per month. If you spend an hour per week on LinkedIn of connecting and following up or adding new invites for four hours per month, that’s not a lot of hours. That’s 32 hours in a monthly basis. That’s not bad. That’s 1 hour and 5 minutes every day.

You can commit to an hour a day. A lot of people will commit to even ten-minutes a day. This is not difficult. If you have a push between now and September 2020 as you roll the fourth quarter, one of the Holy of Holies when it comes to asset managers, the fourth quarter in a distressed year, “Lord, let the deals rain down.” You can have that happening for you. You can create your own success if you put this simple plan in place. This is not difficult. You don’t need a college education. You don’t even need a high school education most of the time, but what you do need is to film one two-minute video talking about what you’re looking for. What do you mean? One good freaking decent photo. If you can’t take a good selfie. Smile on your damn selfie. Don’t be like, “I’m in jail.” People want to connect with people’s smile. When you’re making phone calls, smile. If you’re in a shitty mood or you’re having a bad day, don’t get on the phones.

Go back to bed, roll off the other side of the bed and then get started up again. I’m laughing at this because this seems simple, but the simple things are what most people will flake on and it’s a sad thing if you flake on this stuff. If I were you all, I would spend time getting your mail template set up, getting your LinkedIn profile, filming your two-minute video about what you’re looking for. That’s three things. It’s not hard to do and then write your email. It goes out Tuesday morning at 11:00 AM Eastern Standard Time. When making phone calls, put a mirror in front of you. It’s a great way to see. I agree. I used to sit with a mirror. I used to practice in front of a mirror. It’ll make you laugh, make you smile. I have a big screen TV that I can see my face when I’m talking. Part of what I like doing is when I’m making phone calls, especially if I’m doing a Zoom call, I can see my image when I’m looking like what you are seeing.

If you want to call and watch me make phone calls, join me. It’ll be one of most valuable things you can watch, 12:00 to 5:00. We’ll be targeting the BauerFinancial list. We’ll be going through so you can see, listen and ask questions and learn. See me say the things I say, see me leave a bunch of voice messages. See me get transferred to kingdom come. It’s $59 per person, but it’s one of most valuable things that you will see. It’s a great training and the beautiful thing. You will literally see who I’m calling. You’ll see the phone number, see the emails. I know that last time there was a bunch of people that walked out with the, “There’s at least twelve asset managers that Scott shared for different banks.” It’s there for you to take a look at. We do include the replay. If you can’t join us, you’re going to replay to the five-hour training afterwards.

That’s provided. I get through five hours. I don’t lose my voice somewhere in between. I noticed when I started talking after 3 or 4 hours, my voice starts get a little hoarse. It includes the replays. You can go to CallingBanks.com and get signed up there for you. Send an email blast out after you pull your list, follow-up on LinkedIn, those people in that 48-hour period and then pick up the phone and start dialing for dollars, $40 and send your email. This is not meant to be difficult. You’re not going to get through all 1,000 people on LinkedIn. Somebody asked me this, if I would take the 1,000 names and import them into LinkedIn, I wouldn’t do that because that’s a book upload. It doesn’t allow you to customize that one-off basis. It sends a blank connection. There’s no type of comment on that 300-character thing. Don’t bulk upload. Go ahead and copy and paste, write your thing. It’s simple for you guys.

“Did you send out the Bauer’s list for Note CAMPers who attend your class over the weekend?” Yes. I sent the emails Sunday morning, I had it done by 10:00 AM my time. The replays went out and there was a link. If you scroll down that, “Thank you for attending Note Weekend.” That was the title of the email, the replays. You can see what links people click on. It’s as beautiful thing. It’s part of the reason we use Mailchimp in the past. When you guys should use Mailchimp because if they click on your LinkedIn profile, you’re going to see they clicked on LinkedIn. They clicked on your website. You can see that they clicked on your website. If they clicked on your Calendly link, they went to schedule a meeting, but didn’t get around to it. That makes it easy for you to say, “I saw that you clicked on my link. Let’s schedule a phone call.” It’s an easy follow-up.

That’s why your email is the number one thing to market out to and it leads to the other three things being able to work for. If you know how to use it, you spend a little bit time, it will work and feed you month in, month out going forward and trust me, you want to have that access the next 24 to 36 months in a continued basis out to asset managers. Hopefully, it was valuable for all of you. It’s not that difficult. You have to sit down and a lot of people say, “What do I do? Next. I don’t know where to start.” Start sending emails to asset managers, start with a follow-up or connect with them on LinkedIn. It will go a long way to helping you succeed. 100 NDAs, your closer to 100 in non-disclosure agreements from banks than you would think. A little year, a month out from having 100 connections. Hopefully, go out and take some action.

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