A slightly shorter post this week as I am currently traveling doing the Property Academy Roadshow having completed the first day in Newcastle and now on my way to Newark.

In my last post about Ethan the AI Prospecting Neg we had just launched him. He has been working hard, starting around 100 conversations with customers over the past week. These conversations are started by text message. They go to sellers who we know. Perhaps they are sellers that we did a valuation for, or they may have simply registered as a buyer with us a few year ago. We use the data from Twenty EA to establish that they are on the market. We also record if they have had a fall through or price reduction and how long they’ve been on the market.

One of the key questions that we are seeking to understand is when is the best time to have these conversations?

Ethan has three key capabilities

1. To have the conversation with the aim of securing the valuation
2. To opt customers out if they don’t want to hear from us
3. To create a follow up if the response is a ‘not now’
4. To find a time that the valuer who covers that specific postcode is available and create the valuation and all the appropriate automations in the CRM

So far he has booked two valuations. The first valuation, seen yesterday was listed at 7:19am today.

We are testing every day of the week at the moment and spread the messages throughout the day, from morning to evening. Both conversations that led to the valuation being booked were started on Saturday, one at 10pm on Saturday night. This led to an excited phone call between Alex and me, much to the disgust of our families. The second messaged back on Monday morning, clearly having thought about it over the weekend.

My evidence for telephone based prospecting is that it takes about 40 calls to book a valuation so it’s not far off at the moment. The plan is to let it run for a bit longer and then if it looks like Saturday is the winning day, to move a much larger segment of messages to Saturday.

The next mission is to expand Ethan’s capabilities to cover valuation follow ups. What if you valuer has missed their appointed follow up call? Or maybe even failed to follow up? Wouldn’t it be good if Ethan could drop them a note to see how they are getting on and if they would be interested in listing?