117,000 Dials. 40 Contracts. $840K in Profit. Why Cold Calling Is Destroying Texting
Sumner shares detailed performance metrics comparing cold calling vs. texting in his land investing business, revealing that 117,000 cold call dials over 9 months generated 40 contracts and $840K in realized or pipeline profit. Cold calling produces significantly higher average gross profit per deal (~$60K) compared to texting (~$25-30K), while also requiring far fewer hot leads per contract. These efficiencies are driving him to dramatically scale up his cold calling operation.
Summary
In this interview, Sumner breaks down the performance metrics of his land investing operation, focusing on a comparison between texting and cold calling as lead generation channels. He explains that his team has intentionally pulled back on raw volume in favor of higher-quality, more targeted leads, aided by a front-end lead scoring tool called Seller IQ within his Land Insights platform. At peak, his team was sending 350,000 texts per month and receiving over 700 leads in the CRM, but the sheer volume was actually hurting acquisition performance. They've since scaled back to around 200,000 texts per month.
On the cold calling side, Sumner describes a process he considers unique in the land investing space. His two callers make approximately 5,000 dials each per month, totaling around 10,000 dials monthly. Over 9 months, they completed roughly 117,000 dials, which produced 40 signed contracts and $840,000 in total gross profit — about $200K already realized and approximately $640K still in the pipeline. The average gross profit per cold call deal is over $60,000, compared to roughly $25,000–$30,000 for deals sourced through texting.
The most striking efficiency comparison comes from lead volume required. To generate 142 signed contracts via texting in the same period, his team had to process 2,936 hot leads. To generate 40 contracts via cold calling, they only needed 310 hot leads. Scaling cold call contracts 4x to match texting contract volume would require only ~1,200 hot leads versus 2,900 — less than half the workload for the acquisition team, at nearly double the gross profit per deal. Based on these numbers, Sumner says he is planning to significantly scale up his cold calling operation going forward.
Key Insights
- Sumner argues that his cold calling operation produced 40 signed contracts and $840,000 in realized or pipeline gross profit from just 117,000 dials over 9 months — a level of efficiency he claims is unlike anything else he has seen in land investing.
- Sumner claims the average gross profit per deal from cold calling is over $60,000, compared to roughly $25,000–$30,000 from texting, meaning cold calling generates nearly double the profit per contract on top of requiring far fewer hot leads.
- Sumner reveals that getting 142 contracts via texting required 2,936 hot leads, while getting 40 contracts via cold calling required only 310 hot leads — and scaling cold calling 4x to match texting contract volume would still require less than half the hot leads, dramatically reducing the acquisition team's workload.
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