We’re real estate agents not bounty hunters

People often ask if we can go further and do all of the leg work and negotiation to get you the number you really want.  We really want to help you (as if you couldn’t tell that already) but in short, the answer is generally no for several reasons.  It takes more time and effort than most people realize.  We do ao good job as real estate helping to find good numbers that are possible, not chasing one specific number that isn’t possible like a bounty hunter.

There’s really no way to tell how much time and effort it’ll take to get the number or even if it’s possible to get without doing all of the work to get it.  There’s really no magic secret that makes us better than you at doing this, at least not if you read my whole website.  I guess it’s natural to look for an easier way out, but if it’s not worth your time to do it, when you are the one that definitely has the most to gain from it, who else would it be worth it to?

One possible exception is for large Fortune 500 companies that the other party would recognize and would of make them ask a higher price.  In this case a third party (any third party really) would be smart.  Another good benefit is that the third party can be tougher than the buyer because the buyer can always come in directly at the last minute and play the good guy after the agent has pushed as far as they would go, sometimes even to the breaking point.  Alternatively the buyer may be able to get an additional round of concessions from the seller if necessary, although it’s harder for them to be as tough and still close the deal effectively.  If the buyer has to be tougher it’s better to blame it on his boss or partner etc.  The down side of using a third party agent is that communication and understanding the progress can be more difficult and you need someone you trust too, which I admit can be hard to find in this business.  Some lawyers can be good at this, but some get too hung up in the mechanics and technicalities, and ultimately make things worse and harder than they need to be.

It’s also seems like when small business owners look for a website, they know enough not to really expect to get the most generic domain for their industry, but somehow the same small business owner looking for a toll free number suddenly wants to pursue the most generic term for their business.  I appreciate that but it also makes it hard since they obviously can’t all get generic terms. 

I also want to say that although I want to help people and I don’t mind answering basic questions about toll free numbers even when the answers are clearly available from the website, I do have to draw the line at answering questions about digging deeper, especially for people that haven’t taken the time to read this part.  If they don’t have the time to read it, I certainly don’t have the time to answer their questions and walk them through the whole thing I already took the time to write out.  You also have to understand that many of the people that get numbers by “digging deeper” don’t really make us much if any money either.  So I’ll share as much of this as possible here but please don’t expect me to walk you through every step personally.  (see also How much help can we give.)

I admit that I built my business for years doing the consulting for very large clients, and I still see numbers that I got for them in advertising, almost every day.  But now, rather than trying to help a couple clients get good numbers I’m going to try to explain how to get to do it yourself so anyone and everyone that really wants to will have a chance.  I think in the long run that’ll be even more helpful for a lot more people.  So I’m going to try to provide not only great tools on our website but the secret information that no one else has ever shared for you here to dig deeper to get a great number yourself.

Originally I was going to charge several hundred dollars for this.  But I decided that since my goal was really to help as many people as possible I decided to give it away for free in order to reach even more people.

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    4 Comments »

    Bill Quimby (197 comments.) says:
    February 27, 2008 at 12:33 pm

    Part of the reason we can’t do the high end consulting service that we used to do is because we’ve grown up and turned into a phone company ourselves in a sense. We’re not a traditional phone company but I don’t think it’s right for a resporg to act like an individual and a phone company at the same time. You have to decide who you are and what you do the best and just do that. I’m proud of the work we did years ago, but I think this helps more people now and is the right way to go for us and the industry in general.

      alex glozman says:
      May 11, 2008 at 10:07 pm

      how can i find out who owns 800 number and talk to them about buying the number.
      thank you

        Bill Quimby (197 comments.) says:
        May 11, 2008 at 10:48 pm

        Hi Alex,

        Unfortunately there is no whois type of lookup. But we have a whole section of our site aimed at this. To summarize that, you’ll need to start with the phone company and call them a few times to get the customer information from them. Then you’ll need to track them down, and then try to get them to release it.

        But read the Consulting Section starting here: http://www.tollfreenumbers.com/consulting/#post-72
        Hopefully that’ll answer some of your question or help you a little. Unfortunately there’s no easy way to do what you’re asking for. But hopefully that helps and you can also find some other backup options too.

        Bill

          Backorders Simplified in just 6 sentences at TollFreeNumbers.com says:
          June 30, 2008 at 9:18 am

          […] We don’t track down the owner of an 800 number to get them to sign off on it (although we can process the paperwork for you if you do), but we do […]

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