The Hunter Ledger · Field note

4% to 70% engagement on phone and text outreach.

My phone and text outreach went from roughly 4% to roughly 70% engagement in a couple of weeks with a combination of improved product market fit and better conversations. 

The first few weeks or so of phone and text outreach was really tough. I felt like I had a product that provided a lot of value, but it was really hard to get ahold of people. A hard no's. The people that talked to me the most saw the most value for it but it wasn't such a need at their point in their career. I tried a few different categories of people based on who I assumed would be most likely to buy it. I thought wrong. But with feedback and chatting with people I finally connected the dots and found the right people to reach out to better understood how to initiate a conversation with those people. 

Just for clarity, this is me calling realtors selling the application, not me calling people trying to find listings or do  off market deals. It's using the same logic as the product and highlights that we can find the right people and start conversations. 

4% → 70%engagement on phone and text, my own outreach, over about two weeks

What 4% looked like

Of course the first guy was interested, right? The next 49 did not engage. 

Redacted spreadsheet of outreach to entity-owned property: name and entity columns, three phone columns, an email column, and outcome and status columns reading No answer, Attempted, Not interested and Dead down most rows, with one Interested and Engaged row at the top. Names, entities, phone numbers and emails are blacked out.

Why it failed

1. Wrong people

It took a couple of different attempts at product market fit and packaging. Calling different people and reflecting on the engagements I had. 

2. Wrong approach

Each sales environment is different. Each customer is different. Different tones and approaches, but its really its about starting conversations. Some are more compressed than others. You have to give yourself a chance to separate you from the competition. I haven't done phone sales and I anticipated people wanting concise information so i was coming in hot with the product description. It felt very forced even on the encouraging engagements. Then I thought about what im trying to do. I'm trying to build a product or offer a service that helps them. So I simply tell them who i am and ask if there are any problems that I can solve for them. Very non salesy and true. 

Phone Screener & Text: Hi X, My name is Y. I got your number off Z. 
Conversation: Hi, I ask people what problems they have and make solutions. What problems do you have?

Redacted call sheet with columns for name, phone, opener, outcome, status, last channel, found on, and notes. The opener text is identical on every row. The outcome column shows green Interested cells, several sent text rows, and red Wrong number rows. Last names, phone digits and the notes column are blacked out.

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Next in the Ledger: the first eight seconds after they answer — what I say now, and what I stopped saying. Until then, read batch 1: 8 Dallas ZIPs, 39–69% off-market or explore every mapped ZIP.

About the screenshots: both are my own working sheets, exported and redacted before publication. Names, entity names, phone numbers, email addresses and free-text notes are blacked out; no owner, property, address or parcel is identifiable. The 4% and 70% figures are my own outreach results over roughly two weeks, not a product benchmark or a guaranteed outcome.