I wouldn’t sweat the minutes thing. I use my cell phone for two businesses- my lawn mowing service, and my real estate investing. I have figured out, on average, how many minutes I use and I bought a plan to cover it. I currently have a 1000 minute plan and I have yet to go over. A lot of people say that it is $x for such and such a plan, so I’ll go with a ‘cheaper’ plan, but if you go over- it ain’t cheaper. My opinion is that you need to view this as a serious business investment. Pay what you need to pay and spend more time on your business. If things get tight- clean houses, mow lawns, work some overtime, get a second job. You can do it now that you know it’s only temporary until your real estate investing takes off!
Posted by Bipin Patel on July 16, 2001 at 21:40:46:
Hi,Friends.
I want to run an ad in the paper for we buy houses.If I use my cell number instead of my home number,would that look proffessional or I should have a seperate line as home number is always busy with computer.Thanks for opinions.
Posted by BIPIN patel on July 18, 2001 at 20:27:25:
My sincere thanks to all for good advise.I am going to run an ad in the paper next week using my cell phone.i have 2000 minutes per month.I should make better use of it and start doing practice on learning this business.Thanks for your precious time.
Bipin,
I’ve used several different methods for taking my calls.
Cell phone, second phone line at the house/office, and a voicemail only 800 number.
All seemed to work fine.
However, after hearing repeatedly that actually talking to people works better for them, I decided to try something new.
I also wanted to have something a little different to offer people who may call me, versus what the tons of other bandit signs and advertisements in my area have.
I know that if a seller wants to call me, I should make it easier for them. I now have a “Toll free” 800 number installed at my office. I’ll use this in all of my marketing. The 800 number line also has a local line attached to it, which gives me some extra features.
One of which is call forwarding.
I can then simply hit some buttons on the phone and have the calls directed to my cell phone while I am away.
Of course there will be voicemail at the office, as well as on my cell phone, just in case I cannot take a call.
And for those occassions when someone calls me and the call forwarding is not activated, the outgoing message will ask for some basic info.
My message is simple, and not designed to gather too much, or screen the callers.
I say something like; “We buy homes in any area, price range or condition, if you are calling because you’d like to know if we will buy your home, leave your name, number, a convenient time to call you back, and the property address you are thinking of selling after the tone. We will return your call within 24 hours.”
It seems to work well, and has in the past.
In my case, I have a full time job so I can not answer my real estate calls during the day. Plus I don’t have a cell phone yet (will be getting one soon). I went ahead and got a separate line for my home. The second line I use for business. I actually got 2 numbers for the new line (ring detection feature). One for fax and the other for regular phone use. My greeting on my machine says: “Thank you for calling xxx, If you are calling about a house for sale, please leave your name, telephone number, the property address, and why you are selling.” With this greeting, callers who are truly “motivated” will leave a message and these are the callers I’m most interested in contacting. I pay about $30 bucks a month for the second line, I figure I’m saving a little by using that for now until I get a cell phone.
However, if you have a cell phone and can answer it most of the time, I’d suggest using that for business like Kevin also recommended.
Posted by Kevin Subbert on July 16, 2001 at 21:49:53:
I use my cell number in my ads and haven’t lost any deal yet because of it. The only money Ive lost is because I go over my minutes. Ya know, all this talk about 3G and how you can check your email on you cell phone and receive text messages and check flight delays and all this junk you can do with your phone, but a phone that actually tells you how many minutes you have left this month, well I have yet to see one. Why cant they actually put a feature on a phone that I can actually get some use out of?
I flirted with getting a toll free number for quit sometime but eventually decided against it. I was led to believe that using a toll free number on bandit signs, flyers etc would lead to fewer calls since potential sellers may feel that they will be dealing with someone out of town.
Do you find this not to be true in your experince in using a toll free number?
First of all, get a line that will always be available, and always be answered by YOU, no one else. I use my cell phone and it works out okay.
By the way, Kevin, I agree with you on the usuable features. I can’t even get remaining minutes from the web site. Wait until the month is over, and it shows up on your bill.
Osirus,
We shall see, since I have not really used the “Toll free” number yet. My signs are going out this weekend with it on them, and the rest of the marketing soon after.
I’ll post here on the board as to the results.