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Is PatLive the best choice for handling incoming seller calls? Does a Bear Shit in the Woods? The answer is yes.
In case you haven't figured me out yet, I'm all about outsourcing everything that I can to make my life more efficient, more organized, and so that I have to the least amount of minutia as possible. Answering phone calls happen to be at the top of my list of minutia. There is, of course, more than one way to skin a cat.
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The worst way imaginable to take seller calls: Is to take them yourself. Good Lord, this will drive you right to the bottle of nearest whiskey. While it may be a good idea fora newbie to take a few calls in the beginning just to get an idea of what a motivated seller sounds like, and as well as what a NON-motivated seller sounds like. Just a warning, though, it WILL get old very quickly. The number of Non-motivated sellers will outweigh the motivated ones by a mile. If you do this, don't say I didn't warn you.
The next worst way is to send all of your sellers to voice mail. This is what the masses of people in our country do. No one wants to answer the phone anymore. If you have a motivated seller on the line, trust me when I tell you that you really should be capturing their information. You don't want them to get away, or be left in limbo waiting on someone to call them back. If they're seriously motivated, they'll continue dialing numbers until they get a live person to tell them they'll come look at the house.
You can hire a Virtual Assistant to take your calls. Ehhh. I'm not totally excited about this either. I prefer letting them do administrative tasks like processing contracts and scheduling closings. I don't want them to be the first point of contact for my sellers. They are an excellent choice if you want to automate your marketing campaigns or get help with administrative tasks, though!
You can hire a cheap answering service. I did that once. All of their operators worked from home. I did some random test calls on this company (I can't remember the name of them now), and the operator did a terrible job handling the call. Besides that, I could hear dogs and babies in the background. Not that I have anything dogs or babies, but I don't want either one of them screaming in the background when I'm trying to collect information from a seller. This is my livelihood on the line. Oh yeah, the operator was also smoking a cigarette during the call. I could hear her blowing the smoke out and coughing. What an epic fail!!
And then there's PatLive Answering Service. Are they expensive? I guess. That's what everyone is always crying about. I'm always happy to get a big PatLive bill. It means that sellers are calling me, and I'm getting seller leads. One of the best things about PatLive is that they understand our business. Ron LeGrand has trained them to know exactly what it is that we do, and how to handle the seller calls. You don't even have to explain. They have LIVE and PROFESSIONAL operators that take your calls LIVE 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. What more could you want?
I even have PatLive Answering Service enter the seller's information directly into my seller lead form, which is integrated into myCRM. So as soon as PatLive has completed the call, I receive an email notification with the seller lead information. PatLive even has the ability to add additional virtual numbers for only $5 per month. This means you can forward ALL of your Google Voice numbers to PatLive.
If you're serious about your business, and your not one of those people that hem and haw about spending too many nickels, then go ahead and take the calls yourself. Otherwise, sign up for an account with PatLive and let them handle it for you. If you spend $500 on a monthly invoice in exchange for a $10,000 check, then what does it REALLY matter how much the PatLive bill is?
Check out PatLive now. (I'm a proud and enthusiastic affiliate and a USER of their service! If you sign up using my link, they'll waive the setup fee and give you a killer unadvertised special). HEY HEY You can also call in and mention the name "property mob" or "Tracy Caywood" and receive the same discount.
Do me a favor now: LEAVE YOUR COMMENTS AND FEEDBACK BELOW. If you experience different results, share them with me. Because I wanna know. Thank you verrrrr much.
ok so I have heard this is the way to go get a google voice number then I found out about PatLive. I already had marketing associated with the google number. SO I recently signed up with PatLive and began having my google voice number forward to PatLive......but finding that the calls go to voicemail before PatLive picksup. I can't get any help solving this issue from Google or PatLive. OTher than PatLive said I could export the number out to PatLive and I looked into that and fount that once I export the number out then I cannot go back. I was not ready to take that step as I would still like the option to go back to google voice or do something else with that number without PatLive being the answering service. Do you have a work around to keep Google voice number with Google voice and still have PatLIve answer calls before it goes to Google Voice Mail?
Seems there are a couple of rings before it goes to PatLive making it difficult for PatLive to answer in the 5 rings before it goes to GoogleVoicemail. PatLive does seem to answer calls in 3 rings if I call the PatLive number I signed up with for the PatLive account.
I'm wondering the same thing as Elaine. I signed up with PatLive through a JV Program that I"m in, however, because it's not directly with PatLive, it's a little complicated. I have several google voice numbers as I like to keep the phone numbers for bandit signs, postcards, yellow letters, etc different whenever possible.
If this can't be done properly, then I"m a bit disappointed. The way it was explained to me was that I could forward it to my local # I got from PatLive (don't want to do that, as that's designated as my postcard number so I can take off my cell number!) They then said I could forward it to my 800 # but that I would need to give the callers my extension #. I don't want to do that either, then I have to add extension #as to bandit signs, and marketing pieces and, well, that's just a pain in the ass. HELP
Haven't done this yet but If I get serious enough to use PatLive at their rates then I would likely scrap Google Voice and get more serious with a RingCentral account then fwd to PatLive or something similar. I did talk to a PatLive agent and she sounded very professional and I even tried to trip her up a bit and she gave me a professional response back.
were you ever able to successfully have your google voice calls forwarded to patlive?
were you ever able to successfully have your google voice calls forwarded to patlive?
Do not contract with this company. I was with them for several months and had numerous problems from the beginning. I received numerous complaints from customers telling me that they received inaccurate information and were often placed on hold for 5 minutes or more. I myself was placed on hold for sometimes five minutes when making test calls. Once a representative gave my cell phone, which was private, to a caller when I was on vacation. I went to great lengths to educate PatLive about my business so that they could take calls, get customer info and most importantly schedule an appointment. After many months and thousands of dollars I discovered that PatLive was unable or incapable of doing what I asked. A couple of months ago I requested that they place my account on hold while I sorted out a better way to help PatLive understand my business and interact with callers. I specifically instructed them to not bill me while my script was incomplete. A script is a complicated thing that takes time to develop. I was concerned that PatLive might try to begin billing me before the script was complete thus the reason I specifically instructed them to hold off on billing. To my surprise I receive an email statement from them for their silver package, and that I was due to be billed for another cycle shortly. I called immediately and asked why I was being billed. I got the run around and was pushed to a supervisor who was unable to make a decision and refund my account. Several days late I received an email from their department informing me that I was not deserving of the refund I requested but that they would credit me a nominal amount. They did not provide any specific reasons for their decision only that there is sufficient evidence that shows I specifically requested that my account be reinstated. I have emails that show the contrary and will do whatever is required to get to the truth and to eventually receive a refund for charges that were not authorized.
Seems like a lot of times test calls ended up with the being placed on hold, or the phone just continuing to ring while it looked for a live operator, while charging your account for minutes used. Live answer sounds great, but who's gonna stay on the line if it continues to ring and look for an operator? Also, they can't relate to you vocal tonality, sarcasm, urgency or any other clues that can be helpful. I personally use a long voicemail message that screens out non serious callers.
I am really excited to hear I can connect this to Zoho CRM. I am going to work on this. I have to switch away from my current provider first.