Technology 101: Phone.com

Stories and adventures about my experience investing in mobile homes.

Technology 101: Phone.com

(Note: Since I’ve had a number of people ask me about the types of equipment and service I use for my mobile home investing business, I’ve decided to start this new series ‘Technology 101’ which will highlight the products and services I use.)

In my book, I go over the essential items for starting up a mobile home investment office. Early in my career, I used a cell phone primarily to conduct business. Though, as my volume of purchasing homes increased I soon found myself answering multiple calls from prospective buyers for the different homes I had on the market. Clearly, this became a problem.

When people called in asking about “the home,” I had to constantly ask “which home?” Most times, they would say the “three bedroom” but I would have to ask “which one” being that I had several “three bedrooms” on the market.

Ultimately, it came to the point where I was overwhelmed with the amount of people calling not to mention exhausted from answering the same questions over and over again (i.e. number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, monthly amount, etc). Soon it became unmanageable.

(Note: For those who are interested, I do have a script in my book that goes over the types of questions to ask when receiving calls from both prospective buyers and sellers.)

So to weed out the “Lookie Lous” from the serious buyers, I decided to implement a phone messaging system. Doing a bit of research, I stumbled upon Phone.com and have been using it ever since.

For a small monthly fee, I am able to have a dedicated local business phone number folks can call for the homes I have on the market. Since I work in multiple areas, I’ve set it up so there is a menu. The first thing people hear is the message system (in a pleasant voice, you can actually select different types of voice for your messages and scripts!) which asks folks what area they are looking in. It will prompt the different areas which callers can choose.

Once the area is chosen, callers are then taken to a different menu. This menu explains all the homes on the market for that particular area. I have a script in place that directs people to drive by the home if interested. If they like the home and would like to see the inside, the script prompts them to call me at a different number (my main phone number) while at the home to set up an appointment.

(Note: Nowadays, I do not schedule appointments individually. As discussed in further detail in my book, I only do group showings with multiple prospective buyers.)

Here’s a video to give you an idea of exactly how it works:

Video Link

(Note: If you’re interested in more tutorials on the Phone.com service, feel free to check out this link.)

Just by using this service has saved me both time and money not to mention weeding out the serious folks from the “Lookie Lous.” If you enjoyed the review and would like to sign up, as a reader of this blog you can use the coupon code “Tenoff” to receive an extra 10% discount.

Hope you enjoyed this new series. Happy Investing!

(Note: For anyone who missed it, here’s an article I recently wrote. Thanks for reading!)

(Disclosure: Some posts may contain affiliate links.)

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