The thing about many of these texting services is that the phone number they provide to you isn’t yours and you can’t port it to another service.
Why is that an issue?
If the service you’ve been relying on suddenly shuts down, all of your valuable conversations, connections and hot leads vanish into thin air with it.
And that’s not necessarily a small risk.
Mass texting exists in sort of a regulatory grey area and there are plenty of ways for the phone number you were provided to go kaput, like:
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A carrier blocking the phone number with their spam filters
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The service provider being banned because of violating terms of service
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You being banned as a user for a violation – even if unintentional
The idea here isn’t to scare you out of mass texting, it’s to highlight the importance of moving the conversation to your own number.
You may be thinking, wait a second, how am I supposed to explain the abrupt change in phone numbers to a lead? Won’t that make them suspicious?
If you do it the wrong way, yes.
On the flipside, you can use the opportunity to create a deeper connection with them and build more trust.
Pro Tip: Here’s how you can use the number change to your benefit:
“Hi John, this is my personal number, the number we initially connected on was my company line which my entire team has access to. I’d love to continue our conversation here with my number”.
In a couple of sentences, you’ve established credibility, shown the lead respect and created trust by giving them your personal number.
BTW - Moving the lead/seller should be something you should automate as well with a few different tools.