We Made 2994 Recruiting Calls. Here’s What Happened…

We Made 2994 Recruiting Calls. Here’s What Happened…

Last November I hired a telemarketing company to make 50 hours’ worth of recruiting calls. The results were not what I expected.

Here’s the story.

I’ve worked with real estate brokerages on recruiting for years. And in all those years, I’ve never had a good answer to the question, “Can you recommend someone to make recruiting calls on behalf of our brokerage?”

Don’t get me wrong, plenty of companies and individuals provide recruiting call services. But, when I asked around about those providers, positive reviews were hard to find. 

One of the most common complaints I heard was the callers set few, if any, appointments. Another common complaint was the callers used high-pressure and deceptive sales tactics. As a result, agents would either no-show for the appointments or they’d arrive thinking the meeting was about something other than recruiting.

Since recommending existing call providers was out of the question, I tried sharing another solution – hiring a contractor on upwork.com or freelancer.com.

Turns out, that suggestion was a non-starter. Most brokers had neither the time nor the desire to locate, hire, train, and write call scripts for a contractor.

I was at a crossroads. I could either tell brokers to make the recruiting calls themselves (not a helpful suggestion) or I could create a solution to the problem myself.

Enter the telemarketing company and the 50 hours of recruiting calls.

Starting a Pilot

Rather than launch a full-blown recruiting calls service, I instead opted to start a small pilot program. The goal was to generate high-quality recruiting appointments without resorting to high-pressure or deceptive sales tactics.

Three of my coaching clients agreed to participate in the program and I engaged a well-respected telemarketing company to make the calls.

My clients’ responsibility was to provide the prospect lists. My responsibility was to provide the phone scripts.

At first, I considered writing my own scripts. But then I thought, “Why re-invent the wheel?” So, I bought a package of recruiting call scripts from a 3rd party (this turned out to be a mistake).

With the prospect lists and scripts in hand, the telemarketing company made 2070 recruiting calls during November of last year. 

The Data

Here’s the raw data from the 2070 calls (my thoughts on it are below):

·        Average Dials per Hour: 41

·        Average Answer Rate (percent of calls that were answered): 40.5%

·        Best Day to Call: Monday

·        Worst Day to Call: Thursday (no calls were made on Fridays)

·        Most Common Prospect Response: Happy/Not Interested (65.6%)

·        2nd Most Common Prospect Response: Call me back later/another time (12.8%)

·        Opportunity Rate (percent of prospects who agreed to a recruiting conversation with my clients): 3%

Mixed Feelings

The results of the pilot program weren’t what I expected and I had mixed feelings about them.

The opportunity rate was disappointing. Just three out of every 250 prospects dialed agreed to a recruiting conversation with my clients. Put another way, it took more than six hours of dialing to generate just one opportunity.

The good news was the opportunities we generated were strong. All but one of the prospects showed for the appointments. Even better, my clients hired five of the agents within two weeks of meeting with them (and these were productive agents).

Hopping on the Phone

The more I thought about the results of the program, the more I fixated on the question, “Why couldn’t we generate more opportunities?” And the more I asked myself that question, the more I realized I needed to hop on the phone myself.

So I did.

Keep an eye out next week for a new article. In it, I’ll share my takeaways from making 924 recruiting calls. I’ll also tell you how I generated nearly six times more opportunities than the call center.


P.S. – I shared the highlights of the call data above. Shoot me a message or en email if you want the full breakdown of answer rates per day, rates of responses, etc. You can use the data as a benchmark if you already have someone making calls or if you plan on hiring someone to make calls.

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