Daniel McClam: How To Generate 50 Real Estate Leads Per Day With Cold Calls

Recently, Paperless Pipeline founder Dane Maxwell hosted a roundtable event where he discussed the U.S. real estate downturn with our users.

He spoke to a range of speakers, each of which shared tips on how to survive these difficult times and prosper during the recovery.

Among the speakers was Daniel McClam, President and Broker-in-Charge at Hawks Real Estate, of Charleston, North Carolina.

He told us about his business model and how his company uses cold calling as a way to generate hundreds of new leads every week. 

About Daniel

Daniel had been working in commercial real estate. During the pandemic, he noticed an increased demand for small, single-family properties among institutional investors.

He set up Hawks Real Estate to take advantage of this opportunity. 

The company currently works with 10–14 hedge funds. It finds properties that match each fund’s buying criteria and secures the deal on their behalf. 

In an increasingly tough real estate market, the company achieved 75 deals in 2022 using just four agents. 

A Real Estate Lead Generation Machine 

At the heart of Hawks’ success is a lead generation machine. Here’s how it works:

  1. Targeting

Hawks has developed software to identify properties that match a hedge fund’s buying criteria. This includes filters like: 

  • Neighborhood
  • Number of beds
  • Bathrooms
  • Size
  • Estimated value

But more importantly, it can identify likelihood to sell indicators. These include property owners listed for:

  • Distressed foreclosures
  • Probate
  • Divorce
  • Code Violations
  • High equity
  • Increased interest rates
  • Number of times moved in the last 8 years

This allows Hawks to create shortlists of properties their client wants to buy, with owners motivated to sell. 

  1. Cold-calling

The shortlists are then sent to a call center. This consists of 10-20 staff who spend 45 hours per week cold-calling people on the shortlist and asking them if they would be interested in selling their property. This results in 25–45 warm leads per day. 

  1. Buying

Each lead is passed on to an agent who calls the property owner. They seek to establish the seller’s needs and ensure they match those of the institutional investor. 

  1. Flipping

Hawks gets the deal to the stage where the property is under contract with the seller. At that point, they take the deal to the institutional investor and agree to terms.  

The Benefits of This System

Hawk’s lead generation system has several benefits:

✔️Everyone’s a winner

All parties are likely to be satisfied with this system. The hedge fund gets the property it wanted, the seller is able to get a good and fast sell on their property, and the agent gets a relatively straightforward and lucrative deal. 

✔️No geographic limits

All of Hawks’ deals are done remotely. This means they can buy properties from whichever neighborhoods their clients stipulate. They currently work in 10 different markets, few of which are local to them.

✔️It’s incredibly efficient

Targeting the exact properties their clients want and people most likely to sell, allows Hawks to find the perfect deals. The high-value work is given to agents. The only stage where time could be wasted is during the cold-calling phase—which is why this is outsourced to a call center. 

✔️Happy agents

Daniel’s agents are happy because they spend all their time doing what they do best: selling and earning commissions. This means they are more likely to stay, allowing Hawks to retain experience and reduce recruitment costs. 

✔️It’s not limited to institutional investors

Daniel and his team are considering selling their software as a service. That’s because it could work for regular residential or commercial deals, too. For example, agents can choose to specialize in a specific neighborhood. They could identify people who are likely to sell in that area and offer to sell their property. They could tell them about the other properties they have sold locally and secure the deal before their competitors can.

Survive the real estate downturn with Paperless Pipeline

One way to survive the real estate downturn is to make your closing process faster and more reliable with Paperless Pipeline. 


We know that switching to new software during this time feels risky. That’s why we offer a free trial—no credit card details are required.