Transcription
All right folks, we're back. Now, we're going to get into a lot of these specifics of the phone conversations. In, I think it's call two of the two-call process. That accurate? When we're really doing any of the salesmanship that needs to happen, any of the connecting with the person, presenting the offer, the actual number, how to respond to different objections or responses that might come up. There's a lot to be covered here. Uh, you take it away.
All right, away. It is being taken. What's up, everybody? Super pumped about this. This is one of my favorite, favorite topics in this business because nobody else is talking about it for some reason. And so, um, I'm hoping to break this down in a way that makes sense and is easily digestible and could even be training for some of your staff. So let's dive in.
Yeah, the first thing I will say, Seth, is, um, people are looking for objections. And ideally, you handle those on the front end. Okay? And so, what that means is, there's only a couple types of objections. We'll get into those a little bit later. Good for viewer attention. Uh, we'll get, we'll get into the types of rejections a little bit later and how to manufacture your call so that you have an objection call, ideally, or, you know, how to set the next steps. Okay? So here's what that looks like.
Now, when we have a call, we're going to start by picking up the phone, calling this person. Ideally, we had an appointment with them to boost our odds. Them is this call two we're talking about right now. Call two, we're gonna make an offer on this call. So viewers, if you just, just happen to be dropping into this, we explained what call one and call two is in the previous conversation. But so, call one, this is where the lead manager has gathered a lot of the information about the property. So we kind of understand what we're dealing with and what property we're talking about. Call two is where a new person, the Acquisitions Manager, is now stepping in, and they're having really the most crucial conversation where the offer is presented and all of that. So I just wanted to preface that. Go ahead.
Yep, I love it. So in call two, our goal is to make an offer. And ideally, the end goal, goal is to get a contract signed, right? So the question becomes, how do I boost my odds of getting a contract signed by manufacturing a really good call? And, you know, something people should note before we get too deep is like, scripts are a process, okay? What I don't want is for everybody to be scripted. You don't want to sound like a robot where I'm like, "Hello, Seth, and today we are going to be talking about..." You know, it just, it sounds robotic. And the way we combat that in our scripting is we role based on frameworks, okay? So I'm going to talk through our framework of a sales call. And we actually had Veronica write out like five questions for each piece of the framework. My sales trainer, Jenny Hudspith, she always says, "Authorship creates ownership." So by letting her kind of write out her own questions, she then feels like she owns them and there's more accountability there. Versus like, you know, I always say with teams, when you're instructing them to do things, it's really similar to like when you have kids. And like, you know, Seth, you've got kids, right? So like, you tell your son to do something and he's young enough now where he's still probably pretty well-behaved, but I'd bet you, I'd wager in like seven or eight years, when he's a teenager, and, uh, you're like, "Hey, you should do this thing, it'd be good for you," and he's like, "Okay, Dad," and rolls his eyes. And then, you know, now, okay, that that happens now. Great. Um, versus like, one of his friends' parents tells him, and all of a sudden he's like, "Mr. Johnson told me to do this, and it worked, and it was good for me," and you're like, "I've been telling you that for a month, dude, right?" So it's kind of similar with staff sometimes. And so it becomes really important to just like, when you're working with them, let them have their own ideas, let them get into things. And we'll talk about that more in our sales management video where we're getting into sort of how we manage all this stuff and how we manage the team and how we find the right people and culture and all that fun stuff. Um, but that'll come later.
So with that, we're gonna get into what the framework looks like. How it goes is, you're on the phone with the seller, right? And at this point, you've been introduced as the person that's going to give them an offer, right? And so you want to make sure that there's integrity in that. You're going to answer, "Hey, Seth, like this is A with Assets for Acres. You have 10 minutes to chat." You're gonna say, "Sure, what is this about?" And be like, "Hey, you chatted with my team member Nikki last week about XYZ property in XYZ County. I just wanted to know if now was a good time to talk through some of the specifics, right?" If you give me a yes, then I'm gonna say, "Okay, great. This whole call should take about 15 minutes, and at the end of it, if it makes sense for us to work together, I'm going to present you with an offer. Any questions about that?" "No." "Awesome. I'm just going to ask you a couple of questions first, if that's okay?" "Yes."
Now, something that some people run into is like, when you start getting into this questioning, if there's any overlap between the first call and the second, instead of saying, instead of asking that question, use the word "confirm." Use the word "confirmation" here. "Hey, I just want to confirm this information is accurate. I see here." Sometimes when you ask the same question, the seller gets irritated and they're like, "I already told her that, right?" And they get really, for whatever reason, it's like, "Dude, calm down. You can tell me there's a road in front of it again." Like, it's not that big of a deal. But whatever. So you can say, "Is, hey, I just want to confirm that there is XYZ."
Now, underlying tone here, we're trying to do a couple of things throughout this, and I'll point it out as we get closer, right? Number one, I'm trying to eliminate objections on the front end, right? That's kind of the least important right now. Number two, though, is I'm trying to understand the seller's motivation. Tony Robbins likes to say there's two types of motivation: people are either running from pain, like something's wrong in their life, there's something painful going on, or they're running towards pleasure. Another way that I've heard running towards pleasure described is "feel the pain of an opportunity cost." Right? So instead of like, let's, let's say you want to go to Disney World, right? You ever really wanted to go to Disney and you're like, "Bummed, I can't go to Disney," right? Maybe as a kid. So that's like future pleasure, going to Disney World. But you can sort of create pain around like, "Man, like how cool would that be if you would go?" Got it? So what's gonna happen if you don't sell this property? Oh, you're not gonna go to Disney World. That would suck, right? So the point being, it's pain of opportunity cost, or running towards pleasure. You can call it either thing. I've heard, again, my sales trainer, I reference her a lot because I've learned a ton from her, Jenny Hudspith. She she talks a lot about it in the light of like, opportunity cost, essentially.
Now, we're going to introduce ourselves, frame the call. Right? That was one and two. Hey, this is A with Assets for Acres. Frame the call. It's going to take 15 minutes. By the end of it, we're going to get into an offer. Is it okay if I ask you a couple of quick questions? Awesome. Cool. You get into it. Either confirm info, or you start getting into stuff. The framework we use first is past, present, future. Okay? Past, present, future. Very simple, very easy to follow. Everything here should be simple and easy to follow, very logical, natural, makes sense. And so, if I were doing this, what this means is, I've got to ask you questions about the past. "Hey, Seth, I see you bought this property in 1981. What was going on in 1981?" You see how I didn't ask the question, "Why did you buy this property?" Everyone asks that question, right? It's also kind of invasive, to be honest. So, "What, what'd you buy this for?" Some people will volunteer it, some are weird. But if you can ask in an indirect way, people are often receptive to actually interacting with you for whatever reason, okay? And so, "Hey, what was going on in 1981?" "Well, in 1981, we had just gotten married and we'd moved down to Birmingham, Alabama, but we'd always had a vision for building a dream home in Whitney, Texas. And so we bought a 10-acre plot of land out there back then." "Okay, got it." And they might just naturally flow to present, right? It's a past, present, future. And if not, we're then leading them to present. "Got it. Well, Seth, it sounds like you guys still live in Birmingham. So are you no longer planning on building, building that house in Whitney, right? What's, what's, what's going on in the present?"
"Okay, got it. And like, how long have you been thinking about selling the property?" "Six months." "Can I ask like, what happened six months ago?" There's typically an event that made them begin to consider selling the property. "My mom's in the hospital. My grandkids were just born." You get all kinds of stuff, right? "Doesn't make sense to move anymore. I've got crippling debt. I'm behind on child support." I've heard it all, and it all sucks, but that's part of it. And we offer money, so it's really cool to be able to solve those problems. But we can kind of uncover some pain in the past, present, future questioning, right? That's what we're trying to do is like, what happened? What changed? Why are you considering selling now? Right?
What if somebody doesn't take that stance? Like, what if I, I wasn't considering it, you called me, you said you wanted to buy it, so what are you gonna pay me? Like, what do you do if there's nothing really there?
Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. I think you'd be surprised with how much some people volunteer. But you definitely do get that, probably like 25% of the time, where somebody's like, "Yeah, you called me, dude, like, what's going on?" And that's where we're just always going to redirect. "Hey, totally understand, Seth. We did call you. I just need to get through a couple more questions, and then we can, we can work on the offer. Is that good?" Any questions about that?
So you, you always want to, this is something I train my team on, is we have to keep the power in the conversation. There are times when I do a call review with Veronica, and I realize she ends up on the defensive. So like, there's offense and there's defense. And I know this sounds a little weird because we're talking about like, "Dude, you're calling a seller, calm down," you know? But I'm very meticulous about this stuff. And when I'm playing offense, I'm driving, I'm asking the questions, I'm leading the seller. When I'm playing defense, I'm the one answering the questions, I'm the one, you know what I mean? If they're like, "What are you guys doing with the property?" And when, and they can ask those questions, but they shouldn't take control from you, right? And so there's, there's a certain feel to the conversation that you want to be very careful of. When you answer questions, you want to redirect back to be like, "Well, what are you guys doing with the property?" And I would say something like, "Oh, we're investors. And so a lot of times we're buying property with the future intent to either sell, develop. A lot of times though, we may hold for a short period of time. It just depends." "Really? Can I ask, Seth, I mean, is there, is there a reason you'd consider not selling the property to somebody doing something?" So you want to take control back. "No, no, I was just curious." "Oh, just curious. And, and so how long..." And then you go right back in. You go right back in.
So is control basically synonymous with whoever's asking the questions? Is it that simple?
Yes, that's the easiest way to put it.
Okay. And so we're, we're working through this to uncover pain, motivation, if it's there, if not, future opportunity, which is where we go from past, present, and then to future. Like, "Okay, Seth, well, I guess what's your plan after you sell the property? I mean, are you looking to invest in another one?" And people love to correct. That's another thing. Is if I say, "Oh, and are you looking to invest in another property?" "No, no, we're not looking to invest. We're just gonna..." Some people just say no, and you got to keep going. If you can get what's going on in the future, okay? Like, "What are your plans to do with the money?" is kind of the question you've heard before, but you can't really ask, "What are you going to do with the money?" And so it's like, "Oh, are you planning to buy a different property? Are you going to look to for an investment property? Are you guys just putting it in savings, basically, right?" Um, "What are the plans after you sell the property?" And people volunteer that, and you you usually uncover something, right? And so what I say here too is, I got this from Andy Elliott. A big sales trainer, dude with the bald head, who says, "If you don't have a six-pack, you don't work for me." He's super cool. I saw him at an event and met him, and he's, um, very authentic.
I think, by the way, just quick note on that. So the night after you told me about Andy Elliott for the first time, I never heard of him. Facebook started showing me him. So I told you, your phone heard it. It was game over. It totally heard it.
Yeah, no question. How funny is that? What do you think? Did you learn anything?
I haven't. I actually took a screenshot because I was gonna email it to you just to show you, "Hey, look what happened." But I haven't actually watched the stuff yet.
So, okay. Well, he's, uh, he's very aggressive. Most people are very turned off by him. I like a lot of what the guy talks about, but we don't need to get into that. What he says, though, is, and what the lesson I was trying to take from Andy Elliott is, Andy says that our job as salespeople is to help people make decisions. That's what we do. If I'm selling you something, Seth, my job is to help you make a decision whether that is to work with me or not work with me. And how we make decisions is based on information. So if my job is to help you make decisions, I need as much information as possible in order to do my job the best, right? And again, everything here is with the sole outcome of getting as many contracts as possible. And so I need to know if we're a good fit to work together. And the best way I know how to do that is to find out if you have a problem I can solve by giving you money, right? Which is why we ask all these questions. I know a lot of people that are like, "Hey, man, like I should make the offer and move on." I'm like, "You can do that, and you'll get deals, don't get me wrong, but you're leaving on the bone. You're leaving money on the table, I promise. Because there are people you can help, and you need to help them see that a lot of times." So anyways, that's the point of past, present, future. Is you're trying to uncover pain, you're trying to uncover motivation, you're trying to see what's going on, you're trying to see why they're selling. And it'll come up a lot more naturally, but it's a really easy framework to just sort of walk through.
Did you have a question about that? Do you have like, this written out in script format or diagram format or just something like on a PDF that people could look at this and be like, "Okay, we talked about this, here's the next thing?" Almost like a similar to like a property call checklist for call number one where you're just gathering information, just telling you here's what you say next. Is there something like that you have for this kind of call?
I do have a script that I've got for this kind of call that I'm happy to share if you just want to like give it away. Or yeah, that would be awesome. I think people would love that. I would love that personally.
Yeah, totally. I can definitely share a script. I'm just gonna, I'll note it down. But so we'll go through past, present, future. After that, the question is, have I uncovered potential future objections? So remember earlier I said, we we want objections out of the way early rather than later, obviously, because I'm playing defense. Well, I'm playing more offense, defense when people are like, "I have to talk to my husband. I have to talk to my wife. Let me circle back with you. I need to think about it." Whatever they hit you with, it means there's something we didn't address as the sales rep because they're trying to make this decision on their own, right? So that means I did a bad job as a salesperson. Now, how we go through that is, I think through the different types of deal killers, essentially. So deal killers, objections, the most common ones, and these are labeled differently depending on what sales training you go through, but there's four types of objections here, okay? There's certainty, risk, which means me, the seller, I don't believe that you, the acquisitions rep, are telling me the truth. I don't understand what's going to happen to my property. I don't know what you guys are doing, right? You get this a lot when you're trying to double close, when there's a long DD period, or when people just kind of drop off the face of the earth. Is they're like, "Dude, this random Filipino called me on the phone and then passed me off to this person, and I was considering selling, but now I feel weird about it, right?" So like, there's like an uncertainty there. So it's the hardest objection of the fla overcome because you can't really pinpoint it as much. There are different scripts and things you can say, but it's tough. So to get ahead of that, we can do a couple of things. Number one is establishing brand and authority, right? Really good website usually helps. Another one is telling them like, "Hey, um, in our pitch is what it's called, and we'll get there a little bit later, ha, where we'll talk about that. But in our pitch, we'd say things like, "Hey, Seth, just, you know, last year we bought and sold over a hundred properties. We work in three different states, and like our goal is to make a transaction as easy as possible. We work with trusted title companies," and anything you can do to establish brand authority, past performance, that type of thing, testimonials help with that if you got them on your website. Again, I know our mutual friend Dave Dennison is phenomenal about that. And so there's different things you can do, but the goal is to build trust, right? So they don't feel uncertain.
Next, you've got timing. "Hey, now's not a good time. My mother just passed away." "Whatever." "Okay, totally understood. I'm really sorry you're going through that. When would be a good time for that, right?" And I'm accidentally sleeping into objections here. We might talk about rebuttal for objections in a little bit. Let's just go through the actual objections right now and how I might screen those on the front end. So certainty would be like, "Hey, is there anything from what you know so far preventing us from working together?" And you do that as a tie-down a little bit later as well, which I'll get into what a tie-down is in a little bit.
Next, you've got what did I just say? Timing. "Hey, just wanted to clarify, Seth, so if we were to come to terms, would you be comfortable selling the property in the next 90 to 180 days?" Yes or no? "No." If not, we need to go down this rabbit hole, right? We've got uncertainty, we've got timing.
Next, we've got partner, spouse. And like, partner could be brother, business partner, basically anybody else that has a say, right? "Hey, Seth, are you the only person that needs to approve the sale on the property, or is anybody else on title?" "No, just me." "Okay, got it." And that's that's great. Or, "Yeah, my wife's on too." "Oh, okay. And like, have you and your wife already discussed selling the property?" "Yeah, we have." "Well, what did that, like, just so I understand. So if you and I were able to come to terms on price, I mean, would you need to talk to her, or would you need to..." So you, you want to work through the deal killers now. "Yeah, I would need to talk to her." "Okay, well, then what we'll do is go ahead and schedule some time for the three of us, right?" And so you're trying to get ahead of objections as much as you can.
And the last one is price, obviously, right? People are just, and that's going to be our biggest one. People are going to say no based on price. There's a magic formula to make people want less, necessarily. There's things you can do, like we talked about NLP in the first of the series. MH, it's just another objection. And so the nice thing about price is you can, you can use it to your advantage to overcome the other objections potentially, okay? So those are our four objections that we're trying to screen for on the front end. Typically, you're going to ask yourself, you go through past, present, future, and then you're going to ask yourself the question, "Have I uncovered deal killers?" You're going to go through those four. If the answer is no, you ask questions to uncover those. Now, "Hey, Seth, just, just out of curiosity, are you the only person on title? You know, anybody else you got to approve? What do they think?" That type of thing. "Are you ready to sell the property in the next 90 days if we come to terms?" Like, there are questions you would ask for those. And I think I've got them in the script that we'll share with everybody. And so you're going to go through and just figure out, have I uncovered all four? If I have, awesome. After that, we're going to go into our pitch, which our pitch is what I referenced earlier. That's, "Hey, Seth, just so you know, we worked with hundreds of people. We bought and sold X amount of properties. We work with reputable title companies on every transaction, and typically we close on a property within 180 days or within 90 days or within 30 days," or whatever your pitch is, right? Any questions on any of that?
No. Awesome. If they do have a question, it's a good time for them to ask before you get to price. You don't want people to not understand mechanics of how to do business with you before you price. You want price to be an isolated negotiation piece. What you don't want is for you to get priced, and then it's, "I have to talk to my brother," and then it's, "I don't know about the timing," and "We're traveling," and da da da, because now you're like juggling all these objections, and it's very difficult to work through them.
I'll pause here. What's, what questions do you have?
Well, I guess, um, the point of this is not to get into it, but like, if somebody has issues with uncertainty, risk, or bad timing, and this kind of stuff, like, it's just a problem. Like, you've tried to get ahead of it, but it's a problem. Is there anything you can do, or is it just like, if it's a problem, it's a problem? Like, I can't change reality.
So, it, it really depends on the problem. Every single one is unique. I think if it's like, if it's trust or certainty, the answer is yes. "Hey, what can we do to make you certain?" There's a tons of things I've done before. I've sent a video or FaceTime sellers before. Sometimes just seeing face really helps. Yeah, I've done that too. It helps a lot. Yeah, totally. You can have them call your attorney or your title company. You can go put money in escrow. You, you can do a lot of different things to make them trust you. Reactively, you can ask them, "Hey, like, I understand you're not comfortable. Some stranger on the internet just hit you up and just trying to buy your property. Let me ask, Seth, I mean, what, what would make you feel comfortable? What can I do to help you feel comfortable about the sale?" "I don't want to make you do anything you don't want to do." Just address the elephant in the room. Half of this is just being a normal human.
If it were more of a timing thing, again, it would depend on the timing. Well, "I need to talk to my wife, and like, she's not home right now, and we haven't talked about this before, right?" Or, "I don't know." What's another good timing objection? Of like, you'll get some people who are like moving, and it's just like they're overwhelmed, and it's a weird thing. And so I'm like, "Okay, when are you gonna be done moving?" And I'll just set an appointment for the future. A lot of times, you might go ahead and just make the offer, but it just won't get accepted if you've got a timing objection. So I like to drive appointments for the future, essentially, okay? It really just depends. Every objection, every instance, it's it's a little unique. But there are some things that you can do to again, boost your odds of success.
And if somebody, like the spouse or partner objection, if they just say, "Yeah, I've talked about it with my wife or my brother or partner, and they don't want to do it." Like, "Okay, see you." Or do you do something else to you had to resolve that or how would you handle that part?
Yeah, if they don't want to do it, I'm always gonna drill down and I'd be like, "Okay, like, what about it turned them off? Was it, was it the price?" Right? And you want to get, again, people love to correct. "No, no, it's not the price." "Understood. So your, your wife's comfortable with the price?" "Yeah, they are." "Okay, so do they just not like me?" That's a line we'll use. "Well, like, they just don't know you. You're like a random." "Totally understood. Um, let me reintroduce myself. Can we get on the phone with her?" I understand this is uncomfortable, but you just kind of get your way back in. And it's not gonna be easy. Like, my whole point here is this, like, this business is, is it can be difficult at times. It's like any other business, you know? But if you work on these fundamental pieces, I promise you, you'll close more deals. It's really the point. It's uncomfortable, but it works.
Part I'm asking those things is because I'm one who on these kind of calls, I would be very quick to accept no for an answer. And I know in sales, you're not supposed to do that. So I'm trying to draw a clear line of like, when do you accept no for an answer? Like, when is it just like, "Okay, you win, I give up. Have a great day." Like, what would you need to hear on these things to be like, "Okay, I've tried my best. There's nothing else I can do," versus say no, "I can still do more. I can push harder."
I think I, I mean, I would need to get a very flat no, just like, "Hey, it's not gonna happen, buddy." I feel like it's easier to like point that out when you can hear it, right? So if I'm working through objections and I just get to a place where like, I'm out of moves, I feel like would be the easiest way to say it. So like, what I'm teaching right now is to give everybody more tools in the tool belt. And when you just run out of tools, it's the best way to be like, "Well, we're poop out of luck, you know? This is it." And again, price is going to be one of those biggest deal killers. But I think the other ones are all very easily worked through for the most part. "Easily" is a strong word, but like, you just put them on long-term follow-ups or make reminders in your CRM and pursue them slowly.
So no, and I agree. You've given us a ton of tools. There's a lot of stuff that, like, I don't know, I wasn't really aware of this stuff. So I'm actually excited to try it out and see if it works. When it comes to the price, though, because I understand that's, that's the biggie. So how do you handle that objection, "The price is just too low?" Like, where do you go from there?
So this is where I like to get in front of the price on the front end, like we talked about in the last video. And if you haven't seen it, it was fantastic, and I recommend that. But we would always start by shifting blame and talking about price, right? "Hey, like, I'm seeing other investors in this area are paying 40 to 45,000. What would you say to one of those investors if they made you that offer?" "I would tell them to kick rocks. I would hang up on them." "Hey, totally understand, man. This is just what I'm looking at on my computer. Let me ask, I mean, you're at 85. Would you even consider anything below that?" "No, I wouldn't even consider it." "Got it. So it's not even worth it for me to make an offer if it's below 85." "Well, what's your offer?" "Right. So now I know I'm back in." MH, I might flip it back on them and be like, "Let me ask, what's the lowest you would accept? I just want to see if I can work with the team here and get you something." So again, remember when I talked about control? If I can just get them to volunteer some lower prices and do it in a loop, it works really, really well. And so I'm going to use the NLP to get them down a bit. And then I would say, you know, "Hey, you wouldn't consider anything lower?" "Well, yeah, okay, I might consider something lower. What's your offer?" "Hey, totally understand. I mean, before we into that, I like, I just, I want to get you the most amount of money that we could, or I want to get you an offer that you'd be happy about. What would you, what's the lowest you would accept on this property?" "Well, I guess I'd go down to 75." "75?" "Yeah, 75." "So 75,000 is the absolute lowest you would go?" "You see, I would just loop it until they truly get, 'Yes, I would not do anything below 75.'" "Got it. Well, I've got an offer here. We we might just be a little bit apart, Seth, but is it okay if I go ahead and make the offer?" "Yes." So my team came back and looks like the best we can do on this property is $55,000. And now I shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Okay, this is something I'm adamant about with my staff, with my team, with everybody I work with, clients, whatever, is that you need to be quiet and let them think through it. Okay? And they're going to come back and they'll say a lot of different things. This is where negotiation process comes into place. So everything we've gone through so far finally gets to the price here, right? And it's, "Yeah, I just, I think we're a little bit far apart." "Totally get it, Seth. I I know that 55 is lower than you were wanting. I mean, is there anywhere in between that we could meet here?" Right? So I'm just gonna keep going and see what we can do. "Now, I really think we need to be at 75." "Totally understood."
So now I've got one of two moves because remember, we wholesale. So if it's a price that I can wholesale the property in, I'm gonna pivot and try to wholesale. So if I can't flip at that price, but I can wholesale, and I would use a tie-down. And a tie-down is when you isolate certainty in sales. And what that looks like, Seth, is I would say, "Hey, Seth, just so I understand, is price the only thing in the way of us doing business together?" "Well, yeah." "Okay, so if I were able to get you $775,000, we could do the deal?" "Yeah." "Okay, I might be able to get you that. I think the terms might just look a little bit different. Do you want to hear more about that?" Everybody's gonna say yes. And remember, things are only a big deal if you make them a big deal. So what this looks like, Seth, is we'd be taking on a little bit more risk at a higher purchase price. And so I just need more time to do due diligence on it. I got to cross my T's and dot my I's. We might also begin pursuing one of our exit strategies a little bit sooner. We may market the property. We may partner with a builder. We may da da da, which is why I need to get a little bit of additional paperwork signed. How this is going to look is, I'm going to send you a purchase and sale agreement with an attorney in fact document. We'll go through it together, blah, blah, blah. And, um, if you don't have any questions, we'll go ahead and sign this together and we'll, we'll work with you. Sound good? Like, any questions?" "No." "No questions?" "Okay, awesome." And then I'm always gonna try to get a contract signed live or schedule an appointment to do it live later because you can work through objections on the contract together. But what I did there is I isolated the price uncertainty and then pivoted to a wholesale price.
Now, some people frankly, Seth, just aren't going to be, either they won't be a wholesale price, they won't be a a flip price, and then I need to go kind of negative. So this is like Hail Mary. So there's like tiers to this, right? If, if I'm on the phone and let's say this property is worth 60 and they want 75, I'm like, "Hey, Seth, let me ask, like, what are you going to do if you don't sell the property?" You know? And it's like, "Well, I'll just hold on to it." "On to it?" "Okay." And now I'm either going to bring back the pain from earlier, right? "Well, you told me you wanted to pay your child support. You told me your kids were hungry, and that this was important to you. I mean, is this not something that you want to solve anymore? Is that not a problem you feel like is important?" And like, "Yeah, that's uncomfortable, but dude, you already lost the deal. Go for it, right?" So you either bring back that pain, assuming you uncovered some future pain, or you're going to go, "Okay, Seth, well, what's going to happen if you don't sell the property?" "Well, I'm going to hang on to it, and it'll get passed on to my kids." And then I'll be like, "Okay, do your kids know about the property? Do you already have this in an estate planned out in case anything were to happen to you tomorrow?" We've used that line, I think, at least four times where the seller has been like, "Oh my gosh, no, I haven't. Thank you. I'm gonna call my estate attorney." So as as wonky as it sounds, guys, we are helping people plan their estates, okay? And I actually, I sleep really well at night knowing that.
But in that light, what I'm doing here is I'm trying to get them to think about, well, what happens if this property doesn't sell, right? Right? And I either want to talk about the loss of opportunity cost, or make them realize nobody else is lining up to buy this property. And I'll tell them that, "Seth, will you tell me you want 75, but it sounds like nobody's lining up to give you $75,000, so I don't understand where you think it's going to sell for more. I mean, do you want to sit on it for another five years?" "You mentioned you'd do this with another $55,000." That's a line we might use. "How would you use $55,000 if you got it tomorrow?" Or even, "We use that on their asking price. How would you use $75,000 tomorrow?" "Well, I just put it in savings." "Okay, it's harder to sell on, right?" Versus, "I'd buy an RV. I'd go on vacation. I'd take my wife on a trip. I'd go do XYZ." We'll bring all that stuff back up. That's the point of all these questions is so we can use them because humans need to be continuous. And when you start to basically point out that they're not continuous people, they actually act more in line with continuous behaviors. And so if I'm like, "You told me it was important for you to catch up on your child support. Is that not important? Is that not a priority?" "Well, no, it is." "Okay, and I'm offering you $55,000 in three weeks. Help me understand what the gap is, right?" That's another verbage we use. "Help me understand. Help me." I think I got that one from Chris Voss. There's, there's so many different things you can do here to keep driving the conversation. But if I get through all that and they're still adamant, yeah, man, it's a dead deal. And a majority of them will be like, "You won't close 70 to 90% of your leads," which is that you're on the phone with and make offers to. That's fine.
Do you ever like, send them a written contract with the offer anyway, even after you've beaten it to death and they've said no? Like, you just do it anyway?
Yep, we send one in the mail. A lot of times, uh, like our, our buddy Mike Bulam, I think they send one via email, and they actually get a couple quarter through that way where somebody comes back and they end up signing it. Our team doesn't, and I'm wondering if we should. But I know people that do, and then the person comes back and they sign it later.
Yeah. Now, how do you logistically handle the signing of this contract? If, whatever you're using, PandaDoc or DocuSign, or whatever, do you like, have to have this contract prepared before you even get on the phone so that if they say yes and if it goes well, you just hit send, you do it right then and there? Or do you have, because like, what if in the conversation it somehow changes the offer and now you got to quick, like change the contract and how do you handle that?
So we use DocuSign. Now, we just switched over to it, thanks to my buddy Danny Benjamin. He's a land investor out of the Phoenix area, good buddy of mine. He actually just showed us what they do. Is they've got a Zapier integration. So they basically have a form they can fill out that has like name, parcel number, county, asking price, like it's just like all the things you would put in a contract, and within 60 seconds, your contract's out. So there's, there's like tech you can do. Um, I don't actually know how any of it works, I'll be honest. I haven't seen it. My lovely integrator and business partner, Ben, got all that stuff spun up. So he's on that, and our team's using it. And, um, so you can either do that. But if for whatever reason, you're not in an environment where you can, or your tech stack just doesn't allow it right now, then what you can do is set up an appointment to go through the agreement again. And you can do that a couple different ways. "Hey, Seth, so just so I understand, blah, blah, blah, okay? Are you still going to be at your computer in X amount of time?" "Yes." "Awesome. Can I just call you back once I get approval from my team?" So you're going to use the approval language, right? "Awesome. I'm gonna call you back in 10 minutes as soon as I've gotten that approval, and then we're gonna go through the agreement together. Sound good?" "Yep." "Cool. Hang up." Basically use that 10 minutes to create the contract and then call them back.
Sure. And do you have any stats on like, how much better your sign rate is when you actually do it with them on the phone versus just sending it to them and wondering if they'll ever do it?
So anytime we've done a live review, it always gets signed because you wouldn't even do that unless you knew it was a done deal anyway, right? Unless we got a, yeah, if we got, if we got a verbal, we need a verbal on price before we're gonna go and do a agreement review. It'd be silly otherwise. Yeah. But, um, what I can tell you is before we booked appointments or set expectations or did these live, we used to get like 50 to 60% signed, which sucks. Like half your business that you work on all this stuff for. And then what we did is we tweaked it. So if somebody doesn't sign, we triple dial them daily forever, or we, you know, book an appointment, and if they don't show to the appointment, we triple dial them daily forever. Um, essentially, we're setting the appointment, we walk through it together, things are good, they click the buttons, we're all good to go. That that'll basically get your average sign rate up past 80 to 90%.
Okay, gotcha. And do you ever get into like seller financing? Like maybe we'll buy this thing with owner financing? And because I know that's, this is a huge thing with houses and commercial properties, not quite as big in land, but kind of depends on what your exit strategy and what you're trying to do with it. But in the seller financing masterclass, we've got a couple videos that get pretty deep into this, like how do you have these conversations that A is talking about, and how do you present seller financing as an option? Because with seller financing, you can basically pay anybody's asking price that they want. It's just a question of how much they receive now versus in the future. So if seller financing is something you would ever consider buying with, that could potentially open up a lot of doors too, depending on what they're willing to accept. And I've got a little calculator on rps.com/mortgage. It's a pretty sweet calculator. You can plug and play whatever numbers you want, whatever will work for that other person. It'll kind of spit out if this needs to be true, then this needs to be true on the other end. But do you ever do that with seller financing?
I wish I did. We don't. I've looked at it on a couple of deals, and it just hasn't happened yet. I think it makes a lot of sense on bigger deals too, like subdivides, especially because you can get a cash return. We've got, we might be doing our first subject-to deal of a guy that owns over 200 acres in Kentucky and a house. And so we're like, taking over his mortgage, giving him 7 cash, and buying these sweet properties, 130 acres, a 93-acre, and a house. And I never bought a house like this before, so I'm weary.
It really depends as the buyer, what your objective is and what your exit strategies are and what you're willing to do. Just because it's possible doesn't mean it's smart to go down one of these roads. So you'd kind of have to start with your own end goals in mind too. But
Well, I know we're kind of coming up on our time limit here. A, is there anything else crucial we should know about this conversation? Anything you can think of that we haven't gotten into yet?
Good question, Seth. I think the biggest thing here would just be make sure you give your team the autonomy to get stuff inked up before you get in. My Acquisitions Manager doesn't have to ask me for permission before getting a deal inked. She's able to just do it because we've given her tools and templates and calculators and frameworks and all that type of stuff. So figure out whatever process you need to do to feel safe, but don't be afraid to cancel or renegotiate contracts in the future. It's just a part of the business. Sometimes you get it wrong, and you can't really do much about that.
Sure. Cool. No, that, and that actually a really good segue into our third and final conversation about how do you manage your team, how do you give them the authority to do this stuff, how do you help them understand how to have these conversations, how do you stay on top of it? A lot of stuff to get into. So I hope you guys will join us in video three where we'll go through all that stuff. See you then. Bye, everybody.
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