Telephone carriers and their technology have helped revolutionize how we communicate over the years. Everyone loves the ability to call practically someone anywhere in the world.
With that freedom comes one major problem.
Telemarketers.
We all hate receiving calls from telemarketers. We hate them so much the government created the ‘Do Not Call’ list. The legislation has stopped some legitimate businesses from advertising with cold calling.
Yet scammers who operate on the fringes of the law – if not outright breaking the law – could care less about the ‘Do Not Call’ list.
So, one member of the telecom industry decided to do something about it.
Jolly Roger to the Rescue
Appropriately named, Roger Anderson started examining lots of telemarketing calls. Then he started a company called the Jolly Roger Telephone Company to combat them.
Mr. Anderson didn’t fight them by developing technology to just hang up on telemarketers. He knew that the reason there are lots of scammers and telemarketers is because cold calling works.
Many of these scammers are trying to steal money from unsuspecting people. Roger believes the way to beat these scammers is to tie them up as much as possible so they can’t ever call the people who might fall for their schemes.
To tie the telemarketers up, Roger developed ‘bots.’ Bots are automated voice messages that have a limited ability to ‘talk’ to the telemarketer as if they are a real person.
These bots can talk to telemarketers for about 30 minutes at a time! Considering how many numbers telemarketing equipment can dial in 30 minutes, tying up these people for half an hour can save lots of other people their time and possibly their money.
So, you might be wondering why we have a lesson about telemarketing ‘bots’ on a real estate investing website.
Well, we can give you 5 reasons:
-
The service could save you some time, especially if you sign up for the business service (more on this later).
-
If you ‘dial for dollars’ and have people call lots of potential motivated sellers, this service could be something you want to watch out for.
-
You might want to tell motivated sellers who are facing foreclosure and/or bankruptcy about the service to help them with nasty creditor calls. (Did we just say that? We’re not sure that will work. But maybe you would tell your renters about it as a nice service for them.)
-
It’s just plain entertaining. Check out some examples of bots talking to actual telemarketers here. Or listen to this video.
-
Anything we can do to thwart scammers seems like a good thing.
How It Works
Once you head over to the website, you can sign up with a monthly, annual or business subscription. The monthly subscription is just $2/month and the annual subscription is only $6/year. Yup – annual is only $0.50 per month.
The business subscription is designed to help intercept all those calls from other businesses trying to sell you stuff – it’s $39/year. There are also some other optional subscriptions that you can see here.
After you have signed up, Jolly Roger will ask you to Pick a Robot from the page of the same name. They have lots of different ‘people’ you can choose to answer the telemarketers who call you. You pick which one you like and jot down the phone number.
Then you wait.
When a telemarketer calls, you transfer the call to the robot line, and let the robot ‘talk’ to the person on the other end of the line for as long as the telemarketer stays on. Here are the instructions on how to transfer the call to the robot, depending on what kind of phone service you have.
The service works on all kinds of phones and carriers:
-
Landlines
-
Cell phones
-
Google Voice
-
VOIP
For landlines that have VOIP (Voice Over IP), you may have a feature called Simultaneous Ring. This feature makes it especially easy to transfer telemarketers over to your robot.
Simultaneous Ring will ring both your phone and the robot at the same time. The Robot software will evaluate whether the call is from a telemarketer. If it suspects it is a telemarketer, the robot will automatically pick up. You will just hear a quick ring and it will click over.
One of the best features is that the software will send you an email with a recording of the call, right after the telemarketer hangs up. You can enjoy hearing these bots turn the table on these telemarketers… and perhaps have fun playing the recording at social gatherings.
Although this may not make a big difference in your real estate business, it could save you some time if you get caught by the telemarketers every so often. And probably give you a good laugh when you listen to how the Bot handled the call.
Hello, You There?
Have you used this service? Is it helpful (and funny)? Comment below.
Free Up Your Time – Besides telemarketers, other people can waste your time. Figure out how to get them out of your life.
Perform Ethical Marketing – Don’t do stuff that will annoy your customers. The great deals are not going to go to the jerk. They will go to the guy who cares about the people who have the deal.
Have Fun! – Real estate investing shouldn’t be drudgery. Look for ways to have fun on the job.
JP Moses
is a real estate investor in Memphis, TN, with experience ranging from land lording to note buying, rehabbing, and wholesaling. However, wholesaling is the area that he enjoys most and where he bring the most experience and expertise to his students.