Transcription
What's going on, guys? Joe Mall, Real Estate Investing Mastery podcast. Got a great interview today, and this is one of the guys that I, I think, is one of the best in the industry when it comes to sales and negotiating. We're all in the business of getting deals, doing deals, making money, right? But if you don't know how to talk to people, if you don't know how to sell, how to negotiate the right way, and in fact, negotiate without selling, right? It's my friend Cody Hoffin. He's going to be here in a second. Really, really good at like breaking it down into simple things where, uh, you make the seller come up with the price first. Now, this applies to whether you're doing houses or land, and I, I have a lot of clients working with right now in the, in my land investing community where they're like, the seller's calling me and they're not giving me a price, or I don't know what price to give them. They're saying, "Hey, you sent me a postcard, you tell me what you want to offer for this thing," and I don't know what to say. But Cody's going to lay this out. There's some simple steps of negotiating that is going to help a lot of you, so you don't have to stress out and worry about what you're going to say. All you need to learn is how to ask questions, right? We're going to be talking about that with Cody Hoffin. I want to jump right into this. He's a friend that I've known for years. I met him originally when he was, um, brand new in the wholesaling Inc community, um, and then did really well and grew, and now he's got a, his own franchise. It's called The Joe Home Buyer franchise. Not this Joe. I don't know. Will ask him how he came up with that name. I think it's a great name. I wish I would have come up with it, but we, we'll talk about that here. I think we should just bring him on. What do you say? Listen, get ready to take some notes because Cody brings it whenever I've had him on my show before. He brings it.
How you doing, Cody, my friend?
And I came up with Joe because I love you. That's what it is. To keep the secret. I, I, I wanted to let it out. I owe you some royalties.
Uh, thank you.
Way, okay, cool. So talk real quick, give us a back history of you. How did you get into the real estate game?
Yeah, uh, kind of a little backstory that leads me to today. I always had the entrepreneurial bug. My dad was a general contractor, um, he did large commercial. He did a company out here that's called RC Willey. It's the largest furniture store out here. Warren Buffett bought it in '98, and then kind of like, we would go all over the western United States and build these RC Willey's. So my dad had him on the job site. I was on the job site ever since I was like eight years old, doing work for him, um, I worked for him even when I got married the first few years, and I worked until '09 when the recession hit and it demolished his business. Warren Buffett's really big on making the stores nice when it's nice, but when the, when the economy goes down, he retracts making the stores look nice and he invests all in marketing. So it's just levers, right, that he's always doing. So marketing doesn't help my dad. So, uh, I didn't have a, well my dad was willing to pay me, but I ended up, uh, jumping into an insurance of all things, Joe, and it was selling auto, home, all that, all the fun stuff. It presented two challenges instantly. It's going to take a long time to make a lot of money in real estate or in, uh, in, uh, selling insurance. And then the second challenge was I couldn't get passionate about it. Like there's nothing fun about insurance. But with that comes two gifts. That's how I met investors. I was ensuring the largest, uh, number of investors in the state of Utah than any other agency out there. But what's funny is I never listened to their stories. All I heard was, "I have four rentals." I'm like, "That's my next guy to go get four policies," um, and then the other gift was five years into this. So from 2010 to 2015, I come home in 2015 and my wife is still stressed, uh, out of her mind. I came home early from work and she's crying at the table, and I asked her what's up. I thought things were fine, but it was obviously a pinched month. We had some expenses go out that we didn't think were going to happen, and it was a month that was slow on insurance, and she says, "Do we put food on the table or do we pay for the mortgage this month?" And I'm like, "Oh, can we do both?" Um, it was, it was bad. And so it happened to be not coincidentally two days later, I'm at a local real estate investor association. You probably know Andy McFarland, right?
Yeah.
Andy was up on the stage, and I insured all his stuff, and he stood up, he says, "I found this deal and I wholesaled it, and in three days I made 27 grand." I'm like, "Gez, what is this wholesaling concept? Like how do we make 27 grand in 365 days? You made it in three." And, uh, I talked to him afterwards and then started doing this and trying it and failing my way forward and went out there and my 39th day after hearing him talk, I'm like, "This is the way I've got to do it." After 39 days, I did my first deal that paid me 24 grand, and that kind of got me going. And then me and Tom did Wholesaling Inc together. We grew that, blew that up, um, coached a grip of people across the nation. It was, it was an amazing, amazing journey, um, I sold my ownership in 2020 of Wholesaling Inc in 2019, uh, we started Joe Home Buyer because we wanted to do the other portion. So instead of just leading people to do their first, we really wanted to help people that wanted to turn this into a business, do seven figures a year. And so we started by doing a scale program where they'd come out for three days and learn, and it started working. They're saying, "Hey, we're doing it, we're, we're getting the, the results that, that you guys said we would." And so fast forward, we, uh, opened up Joe Home. We knew there was something special there, and Joe Home Buy is to kind of help the average Joe get into real estate was the kind of the mindset behind that name, um, but we've helped some big names out there. Jerry Norton owns 10 of our franchises across the nation. We've helped scale those businesses to seven figures for him, um, Brent Daniels is a franchise owner. We've helped him maintain those multiple seven figures in his business, um, so that he can coach at Wholesaling Inc, um, in a hyper-competitive market that's Arizona. So that kind of catches us up to today, and that kind of was what got me into it. Was you connect the dots, hindsight, how God's kind of played a role and, and, and been part of my whole entire life, but I would have never guessed I would be here today. It kind of just happened, and then hindsight you're like, "Oh, I see why I needed to be an insurance. I see all this," and it all lines up, added up nice.
Nice, nice. Okay, so, um, you get into wholesaling. Wholesaling was where you, you negotiate with a seller on a property, get it under contract, and you sell that contract or double close, and you're just the middleman.
Yeah.
Um, it's a very easy business, but you need to understand sales and negotiating, right? You need to understand how to talk to sellers, um, it's a very important skill. It's, it's an easy skill to learn, but on a, you know, on a scale of 1 to 10, how important is it to know how to talk to sellers and how to negotiate?
That's a great question. I'm gonna give you two answers on that. I think anyone can do a deal. I really do. Um, you, you do enough appointments and enough failing forward, I think you can't, there's some deals out there that you just can't simply mess up. It's just the lead is so ready to make a decision, they're just looking for someone that will help them out, um, I don't think you can scale a business without learning sales and negotiation. I don't think you can ever turn it into a business, something that's repeatable, uh, replicable, something that can really grow to something special. I think people that struggle in sales, they're always going to have that ceiling on their business where they're only doing maybe a quarter million in revenue, 500,000 revenue. That's no bad thing, that's a great business, but those that are looking for that seven-figure business, absolutely, you need to know scale or sales. You need to know, um, negotiation, and that's something we've dialed in really, really well, and something we share with all of our Joe Home Buy franchises, and something I can't wait to share with you guys today.
So is it something that can be taught, or do, does it have to be, you have to be born with it?
That's a great question. I think it's a skill. Skills are meant to be taught and learned, and I think there's talents. Talents are God-given, right? You've got a talent, I've got a talent to connect with people and inspire people to take action, um, some of those things maybe, maybe not. Like I, I was just, I was given that gift. You have so many gifts that you have that I don't have, but sales is a skill, and skills can be taught, um, so yes, I believe anyone can learn sales, and you can practice it, get better at it, correct. You know you're going to not be good the first time you get into it. Some people might be naturally better at it than others, but anybody can learn this.
And let me ask you another question, um, because I, one of my best coaches was a guy named Claude Diamond. I don't know if you know him or not.
I remember Claude Diamond. I would jump on what was that app? We were on, it was like a weird app. Do you remember this? He would always get on and do a live.
I love Claude Diamond. I, I mean, YouTube, Facebook Live, Skype. I mean, been around a long, long time.
Something or some weird name. There was a weird, jump on and you'd hit like, like while you're doing it a ton of times.
Oh, a Periscope. Periscope. It's Periscope. He would do Periscopes. That's how I watched him on Periscope.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, anyway, uh, one of the guys originally taught me sales and, and is very, very good at it, and when I would try to be Claude Diamond, I would fall flat on my face, you know, every time I'd be like, you can't be Cody Hoffin, you can't be Joe Mall, you can't be Claude, Claude, Claude Diamond, um, so it's, it's really important you learn these skills, right, and just be, you can. So can you still be a great salesman or woman while still being yourself?
Absolutely. I think that's what brings the gift of what you're going to bring to the table. I think there's, here's what I do believe. I believe there's so many deals out there that there's not, there's going to be deals that are Joe McCall's, there's going to be deals that are Cody Hoffin. That means there's also deals that are not going to be Joe McCall's and there, that means there's going to be deals that are not Cody Hoffin, um, philosophically speaking, God loves all his children. He wants all his children to have deals. Like he can't just bless Cody's business when Joe's his child too. Like, at the end of the day, we're all gonna get, but we have to act. We have to get out there, and we have to overcome fears. Yes, that means we're going to have to get better than what we currently are every single day. We're trying to get 1% better or become more like him. And so yes, it's going to require us to get uncomfortable, but no, keep your authenticity because I think that's what is uniquely gonna allow people to say, "Oh, I didn't go with Cody Hoffin, I went with Joe McCall because Joe McCall had this about him that was different." That's authenticity. So don't be Cody Hoffin, be authentically you, and you'll get the deals that are meant to be yours.
Is my, yeah. Don't be afraid to be you, either. Just 15 minutes ago, I was late to this podcast interview, and my son, son, um, took a call with a realtor. He's done a bunch of land deals, but it's been about three or four years, and, uh, he just, he's getting hungry again. So he, he wants to learn, get back into the land business. So he's been sending out offers, and a realtor called him, and I'm proud of him because he's not trying to be somebody he's not, and he's not afraid to pick up the phone and talk to somebody even though he doesn't know what to say. So he took the call all by himself in the basement. I was real proud of him. You know, he's talking to the realtor, the realtor starts bringing up some questions, and he doesn't know the answer to them, so he comes upstairs and I help him with a little bit, but there's this fear everybody has. Well, not everybody, maybe some people don't, but most of us have this fear of like, "Oh, man, I don't know what to say, um, they're gonna know that I'm new, that I'm, and I'm not experienced. I've never done a deal before. What if they ask me a question I can't answer?" What do you say to somebody who has this fear of talking to sellers? They think the phone is a 100-pound cactus, you know, they don't want to, they don't want to talk because they're afraid of that.
It's a great question. I love how fear is always based on something more than what we think it is. It's not fear of picking up the phone. If you think about this, um, if no one was watching and no one was on the other side of that phone, no one would have a fear of picking up the phone. It's the fear of what people will think of us when they pick up the phone. And that's what's interesting is we tie it to what people will think of me. It's not the fear of riding the bike. It's, it's the fear of riding a bike in front of four people because if I fall, they're going to make fun of me. It's not the fear of getting on a bike if no one was there. Kids jump on bikes. And so I would say just like the bicycle method, we conquer fear with our proximity to it, meaning we can't just think it away. We have to act it away. And so the only way to ride a bike is hop on the bike, and that's what we learned as kids, but somehow the world's rubbed off on us throughout our generations of living, throughout our, our, our decades I guess of living, and you start to, you start to get rubbed off on, on, on, you know, what I, I don't know, like it's not natural for me, so I don't want to do it, but it's like we had to do it for the bike. The only way to conquer the fear of the bike is get on the bike and start riding, and the only way to conquer the fear of picking up the phone and talking to someone is picking up the phone and talking to someone. But what you realize, I think, during the whole process is riding the bike wasn't as bad as we thought it was. You have someone behind you leading and guiding you, steadying you. Same thing with the phone. You get off the phone, you're like, "Oh, 90% of the stories that I told myself in here didn't even come true." Like, yes, 10% came true. I still fumbled, I still didn't sound like I knew what I was talking about, but the other stuff where people are going to tell me to go pound sand and "You're an idiot, and I hate you, and you guys suck at what you do," like none of that came true. Like all these stories that we write is what's really creating the fear. And so how do we just write the story that's better? How do we say someone's excited to hear from me because I want to help them? I may not know everything, but I'm genuinely going to love this person regardless, and they need my help. And if you can rewrite the story, sometimes that makes it easier to pick up the phone.
Yeah, good. That's good. I like it. All right, so me, myself, most of my clients, a lot of people listening to this podcast right now, we're doing vacant land right now. We're wholesaling vacant land, so we're not making appointments to go see the property. We're, we're in four different states. This, you know, the seller lives in New York, and we're trying to buy their land in Florida, for example. So we, we close a lot of these deals over the phone and just, you know, and everyone listening, most of the, unlike other land investors who maybe send blind offers, they say, "Hey, I'll buy your property." They send a thousand of these at one time. "I'll buy your property for $2,556," just to see who calls.
Yeah.
We, we will send a postcard that typically says, "Hey, um, I need to talk to you about this 2.6 acre property you own in Jackson County, um, call me. I have, um," I, I recorded a message for you. It doesn't tell them why we're calling them or why we sent the postcard. Doesn't tell them what we're land investors. It just says, "This is really important. I need to talk to you right away. Yeah, call this 24-hour recorded voicemail." And so with that postcard, we get a huge response rate, and the reason I love it is because we get a lot of phone numbers, right?
Yes.
Um, and these are phone numbers of the people who own these vacant lots. Yeah, they call, listen to the voicemail. It's about a 35-4 second voicemail that says, "Hey, thanks for calling. Listen, when you decide to sell your land, you're normally faced with two options: either list it with a realtor or do for sale by owner. Now you have a third choice. My name is Joe, my company, we buy vacant land for long-term investment purposes, and if you would like to avoid the typical hassles of selling your property and dealing with the uncertainty of when it will sell, if you'd like to close quickly in 30 days, leave your name and number and the reference ID on that postcard, and we'll call you back and make you an offer. Thanks." Okay, so that's the outgoing voicemail.
Love it.
They get this postcard. We don't even know if they want to sell their property. They don't even know if they want to sell it. They listen to it, and then probably 35% of the time they leave a voicemail that says, "Yeah, this is John, uh, give me a call at this number. The reference ID is this." And by the way, that reference ID helps us look the property up because a lot of these vacant lots don't have addresses. Well, anyway, this is where people get frozen sometimes in the way I teach it, um, when I first was doing deals, I was doing deals with my two teenagers, and I didn't, you know, they're only, and they're busy with school and work and sports, and then, um, I didn't want them to call as a 13-year-old kid. I didn't want them to call the sellers back, so we changed it around where we actually sent offers. They left a voicemail, we sent them an offer at maybe 35 to 40 cents on the dollar.
Yeah.
And then we only talked to them after they got our offer, but now, now they, they haven't done deals with me in a few years. Now what I see is the faster way to the deal is they call and leave a message, call them back right away, get them on the phone and talk to them and ask them some questions about the property, etc. So that's where I want to kind of pick up with you on this. Will you give us, you know, just a really high level and in as detailed as you want training on you call that seller back, you know, they have a property that they want to sell, you have no, no idea if they're motivated or not, um, how, and you have some slides here. I'll share them with you when you tell me you're ready for that. Let's talk about that from that context. Does that make sense?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. The one thing I would love to see if you, if you, uh, are up for a challenge is split testing live answer rate versus a voicemail, and then maybe during closed hours, maybe your business is based off your lifestyle. I don't want to take a call or I don't have a team to take a call after 5:00.
P.m. Great. Send it to the voicemail, but during work hours, I would love to see what would happen if you did live answer rate, because it is game-changing our business.
Yeah, well, that's a great idea because I had a friend who's a wholesaler, you know him too, but um, he's out of Atlanta, Georgia. Yeah, and he used that same postcard for houses, and the postcard says, "Call our 24-hour recorded voicemail." Yeah, and it even says in parenthesis, "(No one will answer)." Well, he uses that postcard because it gets a high response rate.
Yep, and they actually do answer the phones live. And he told me, because I was asking him about that, I said, "Man, don't they get mad that somebody's answering?" He says, "I've never heard of anybody complain once about..." Um, which I love that because yeah, if you can get somebody to answer live, you can ask the questions.
Um, well, how many times do we spend in follow-up? Right now, we're creating a process on follow-up, and then when they don't pick up, what is our next follow-up process? Now another process you just built out versus taking the phone live. So when I'm, when I say I'm big on sales, I'm big on them calling me, how do I, how do I avoid building out two or three processes if I don't need to, if I can just do it in this first one by just picking up the phone? That's why I would challenge it. And we went from, when we started tracking it, we didn't know what we didn't know; we were at 43% live answer rate, and then we're like, "Let's see, maybe 50 percent's good." The next week we bumped up instantly to like 75%. I'm like, "Wait, what?" And then we looked and it's like, "Oh, look at our contract ratio; it also bumped up." And then we started, we started like saying, "Hey, let's see what we can do to see if we can get this to 100%." And there's, there's weeks where we get 100%, and there's never been a week in the last three and a half years that we haven't been below 95%.
It's just, explain that percentage again. Uh, live answer rate. So we went up to, from 43%, we were answering 43 of every hundred calls live. We went to the point where we're doing 95 to 100% every single week, and it's been that over three and a half years. Like we have not varied from that.
Yeah, because it's such a strong statistic that when we answer live, contract rates go up. And so, who, who answers the phones live for you? Is it... that's G&B Acquisitions, and it's, it's first come, first served. There is no fair play on Acquisitions in our business. There is no round robin. We don't even know what that word means. You can go to Red Robin and eat a burger, but round robin doesn't exist; like it's, it's not here. So we, we have all three acquisition managers; their phone rings, and it's who's the fastest to the holster to pull out the gun, like it's, it's that person gets...
Okay, so that's, I love that because some people will say, "Oh, I'll just hire an answering service." Right, that doesn't help anything, does it? It's another process, right? So now you got to train someone that's not part of the team to do the initial screening versus acquisition managers are built to sell, so they know how to, in the first 10 to 15 minutes of that call, lead and guide what should happen: Is this a hot lead and I need to stay on it? Is this a cold lead and I can now transition this over to a cold caller, someone that can just nurture it over time because they don't want to sell for the next six months? They're trained and experienced in doing that, and it's now a touch, like we talk about five touches before someone does business with you; that's a touch. And so it's a, it's a great touch because you're talking to a professional, not a virtual assistant, someone not a, not a setter or somebody who...
I love that, and I know very few people listening to this are going to do it, which is frustrating because I mean, I don't know how bad do you want it? Obviously, you know you're, you're in a place where like, "Man, I'm, I'm working on something; I don't want to answer the phones live; I don't want to be interrupted; I don't want to be tied to my phone," but here's the bottom line again; I think you'd agree with this, Cody, like this is the fastest way to a deal. That's the fastest way to a deal: Pick up the phone and talk to... no process after that. There is no process; that's the process. I, I made one process: Click yes. Okay.
Now again, I want to revisit this because I know some people are thinking, "Well, Joe, you said in the postcard, 'Call a 24-hour recorded voicemail, no one will answer.'" Yeah, first of all, if you have a problem saying, "No one will answer," just take that out of the postcard, right? But even though it says, "Call 24-hour recorded voicemail," and the reason I like this, I've tested it; it gets more calls. Yeah, it gets more calls. When they call and they think there's going to be a voice answer, Mission, we happen to be during office hours, who wanted to pick up to get to you quicker? Who's gonna get mad at that?
Oh, say that again; that was good. That's what I'd say. I'd say, "Hey, we were in the office during office hours, so we picked up the phone; we thought we'd get to you quicker; hope you're fine with this." Who's gonna say, "Oh, I wasn't fine with this; this is, I'm, I'm very, very pissed off at you guys." Like, yeah, no one. I love that. Okay, so now what happens is, because with this postcard with land, we're averaging 5 to 8% response rate on this postcard, right? Okay, those are direct mail numbers that we used to see with houses back in 2010.
Yep. Um, now you're lucky with a postcard to get half to 1% response rates, right? We're getting 5% response rates, which is huge, huge. So imagine answering the phones live when somebody calls and just talking to them. So what I want to do now, Cody, is maybe let's talk about how does that conversation go, right? When, when you're talking to a seller on the phone, what are some steps, and do you want to share the PDF, or what do you want to do?
Well, we can even start first before we go to the PDF. Think of this as where you may want to change your acronym; it makes sense for us: Joe Home Buyer, JHB. J stands for Join Forces, H stands for Hear Their Needs, B stands for Build a Plan. So we want to be on their team; we genuinely are interested in them in helping them get to a better plan B. So we're going to join forces with them. What is it you're hoping to do, right? What are you trying to accomplish? And you're spending that because we do, if someone's motivated, like the four pillars of motivation, if someone's motivated, we're not doing this over the phone; we're going right to the house, and we're going to do the appointment. Now in this model, it still works; this will still work. You want to be RT, build a relationship of trust. You want to, the person at the end of the day, that price doesn't matter; they know they're going with you because they trust you. At the end of the day, people think this is an asset; it's been trained in our for our home and maybe even for land, like this is an asset; I don't want this to go bad; I don't want to just deal with anyone. They're dealing with people that they know with certainty can close on the land; that's our job as sales; it's not to be the gift of gab or a golden tongue, like most people would say. It's, can you instill a certainty in them that you will close on that property? That's who they're looking for because many times we're less than our competitor by 20 grand, and they're going with us because we instilled certainty that we're the option that's actually going to close, where the other person may have paid them 20 grand higher, but they didn't feel certain that they were going to close. That's all buyers want: certainty of closing. It's an easy thing to think about. So we're going to establish a relationship with trust because you have to be a friend; you, you can't, you can't just go right to numbers; you can't because they don't know you; they don't know your morals; they can't feel it through you; they can't hear what, what kind of values you, you work off of; they haven't heard any storytelling. So we like to tell stories all the time. Um, take Joe, the last person we worked with last week; we were able to do this, this, this, this, right? Well, now that's a story that touches home where they're like, "Okay, they're working with a lot of people," and now with Joe Home Buyer, we're Nationwide, and we do this in many states throughout this great country where we're able to help people just like you get move on to plan B. We share five-star reviews; you can text them; you can do whatever you want, right? Just do whatever you can to establish a couple of things: friendship, like that you are someone I can trust, and the authority that you're the person, like, "I'm convinced, Joe, by the end of this call, you're going to know we're the people for you," why? Because we're going to figure this out, like that's what we do; we're the best at just figuring this out, what's going to work, what's going to make it best so that you move on to plan B. That's what I'm doing at the beginning of that call.
Okay, good, good. So what does that look like? Talk about like, is there a, excuse me, is there a formula, the set of questions that you ask, like, um, how does a conversation start?
Yeah, I would say when it comes to just building a relationship, there's not, because we're not talking about the house; we're not talking about square feet; we're not talking about the roof; we're not talking about that. Script: Everyone should have a basic simple script; I don't think you can go wrong with any of those scripts, so there's not one that's outperforming another. Um, I would just make sure when you're asking questions that you're doing it with intent, that you really, you're doing it to listen, because that's the H, like hear their needs. I, you know, when you're talking to people, that they're asking a question, and then you wonder if they even heard your answer, right? They're listening to respond versus listening to learn, and we need to listen to learn versus listen to respond. When someone says something like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we pay for, we pay cash all the time, and we do this," and you start like doing all the things that everyone else can do, but what are you doing to also hear it? "Joe, dude, that sounds rough; you lost your job; how's your family doing? How are you handling this? I know back in 2010 when I was uncertain knowing what I was going to do, CU my dad in the recession, it made me where I had to jump ship, and I jumped into insurance, and it was the slowest process; it, it took forever to make money; those first few months were so hard. Joe, how are you doing, man?" That's different than 99% of your competition. Yeah, I genuinely care about these people, and they feel it, and our team is trained to not seek for money, just seek to hear their needs, because if we know what their needs are, we can then go to plan B, which is the, the Joe Home Buyer, the B, and that's build the plan. So, "Joe, it sounds like you need to get out of this pretty quick; did I understand that right?" "Yeah, Cody, I need to get out; I mean, in a perfect world, I'd need to get out next week." And then you never promise that you can get out by next week; you just hear it. So, "Joe, if I were able to help you get out by next week, it sounds like that's something that's pretty, pretty big on your list; am I, am I correct on that?" "Yeah." Okay, and you haven't promised them you're gonna get them out by next week; you haven't told them, "Oh my gosh, well, I'm the guy; Joe, we do this all the time; we can close in seven days." That's what your competition's doing. We're saying, "What if, what if..." We're still building the plan; we're writing it down. Sounds like Joe needs to move in seven days or less. If I'm able to do that, sounds like that's pretty big on the list, right, Joe? "Yeah." And then they're going to go through it. So, "Joe, it sounds like you don't have much to move; all your stuff out, like you don't have help; you don't have family." "No, we don't have family." "What's your thoughts around that, Joe?" Let them come up with a plan. "Well, I don't know; do you guys ever buy homes where crap is just left in it?" "Yes, it has happened." "So is that what you're hoping for? Like, is this something that you, you don't think there's any way at all possible for you to clear this out?" "No, we can't clear it out; like I'm actually leaving in two days." Okay, so it's sounds like if, if I understood you right, you're hoping that this offer would also just buy it as is; you can leave all the stuff. Did I, did I hear that correct, Joe? And you're like, "Yeah." Okay, so if I'm able to do something like that, and like I said, we'll put this plan together; we'll see what we can come up with and what I'm able to do, and you're just still coming up with a game plan; you're not doing anything because that's the prep work you need to get to where most people are just going to right off the bat to the offer. I don't get to the offer; I want to be a friend first; I want to make sure that they realize, "Oh, I'm talking to someone that gets it; like this, this guy's the authority," and then I want to start hearing their needs before I start building the plan, if that makes sense.
I love that. Um, I didn't come up with this; I don't remember even who did, but there's, I heard a guy kind of give a three-step outline to a conversation with a seller: Number one, "What's your situation?" The questions: Number one, "What's your situation?" It's not, "Tell me about the house"; it's like, "What's your situation?" Yeah. Number two, "What would you like to see happen?" And then number three, "How quickly would you like to see that happen?" Yeah, I, I like that because it's a real simple three-step thing, and it's just, it's asking them questions, right? Getting them to tell you what the situation is, what's going on, why do they need to sell the house, and um, you know, and then that point, sometimes I'll say things like, you know, "Well, sounds like a nice property; why, why would you even want to sell it?" You know, or, "Should you have, you thought about just listing it with a realtor? Have you, have you called a realtor? Have you any friends or family that can help you with this?" Or, and then it's like, okay, "Well, what would you like to see happen?" Yeah, and shut up, right? Just listen; talk to them; ask them more questions. I like what you were doing there where you kind of an ask, you know, you're asking them more questions to dig and probe deeper. Yeah, "What would you like to see happen?" And then, "How quickly would you like to see that happen?" Whatever it is. Yeah, "When would you like that happen?" I, it's very simple; it's not complicated, right? It's not complicated; it's an art because, for whatever reason, when people pick up that phone, they think, "Oh, we got to go to business," and it's like, "Let's just find out who this person is; let's find out how we can just love them," and whether we get the deal or not, that they knew, "Man, I'm a better person for talking to Cody today, even though I didn't go with them." That's really good. One of the things I like to do with sellers is when I'm talking to them, I say, "Listen, um, I'm an investor, and I'm looking to buy some property in the area, but you know, most of, most of the deals just don't fit my criteria, so I, I'll, we'll talk a little bit about the property; I want to know more about what's going on and what's your situation, but if I can't buy your property, I'm going to give you, if it's all right with you, I'll give you the names and numbers of five realtors that can help you list it, sell it. Would that be all right?" Yeah, so kind of like I'm telling them I'm, I'm a, I'm not a retail buyer; I'm an investor buyer, but if, if it doesn't work out, if I'm not interested in the property or if we can't agree on the numbers, I'm gonna, I'm gonna at least give you the names and phone numbers of some realtors that can help you list it, right? And then jot down the promises you're giving and make sure you do it, like that's, that's the five-star review, even if someone doesn't go with us. You should see how many five-star reviews we have, and they didn't even actually do business with us.
Really? Yeah, that's awesome. They're like, "This is the greatest thing ever; Cody, help me do this," or "Cody's team now." Um, but yeah, it's, it's, we had a guy that we came to the offering type thing, and the price just didn't make sense, and so we'll get to negotiating; I don't want to bypass that; this is going to be the best of what, what we're going to be talking about, but um, it just didn't work out; the pricing wasn't, wasn't sense, and so I sat there; I said, "I'll help you still regardless if, if we do business or not; I'll help you figure out the best way to do it." I'm like, "Have you..." He's like, "Well, I'm thinking I'm just going to fix and flip." I'm like, "Perfect; why don't you get out a piece of paper; I'm gonna help you; if I was buying this home and I need to fix and flip it, I'm going to give you a step-by-step detail plan of what I'm repairing, what I'm yanking out, what I'm going to put in, and uh, I'll help you so that you can have a list that you can go to Home Depot, purchase it." So I went through the home; I said, "What would you do in here?" He says, "I'd probably just resurface the cabinets." I'm like, "For me, I've got to compete with that new neighborhood right there; I know it's not a new home, but I've got to compete with that new homeowner or that home builder right there, and so me personally, because of the experience I have, I'm putting in new cabinets; I'm not resurfacing these ones." Yeah, I'm like, "What do you think about the floor?" And we just start going that; I built this list out, and then he looked at, he's like, "Never mind; I don't want to fix and flip this; maybe, maybe I want to have..." What if you gave him a list of contractors that you've worked with before, right? You can do that, but we end up getting the deal, Joe, because most people would have said, "This doesn't work," and so they walk out. No, no, no, because I continue to show them service and say, "Hey, here's what you can do, and here's the list." Once he looked at the list, he's like, "I don't want to do all this; it sounds like I have to just make this pricing work," and I got the deal.
Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. I love it. Okay, so um, what, now you want to talk about negotiating because you said something about, you said something about you never, ever give a price, ever, ever. I don't, that blows my mind. Talk a little bit about that. Ever. So price is up to them, right? They know what they want for their home; all we're doing is, through those questions, Joe, I was asking, and it's coming up to Thanksgiving, so depending on when you watch this, we're doing this a couple weeks before Thanksgiving. I think of it as building a platter for someone to say, "Hey, I want to put a price tag on this platter," right? So you're building up, hypothetically, the mashed potatoes, the gravy, the turkey, the stuffing, and all this stuff, the yams, and all that stuff, right? When you say, "Hey, if I'm able to buy this in seven days or less, if I'm able to uh, have you leave all your stuff inside, and and I'll buy it with all the stuff as is, if I'm able to do this cash, if I'm able to like do these things," what you're doing is you're hypothetically building a platter for them, and then you ask them... so once you've done this... so it...
Sounds like Joe, you need me to do this this this this this. I just presented the platter, Joe. If I'm able to do that stuff, um, what does that look like for you? How much do you want for your home if I'm able to do those things right? And I just ask the question; I'm not going to say, "Hey, based off that, I need to be around here; you failed." So I'll ask them, "What do you think that's worth to you to be able to fulfill that for you? What is that worth to you, Joe?"
Well, I need to get at least 250. Let's say I'm at 200; I'd be okay. Joe, is there any is there any wiggle room at this at all? Can you help me at all in that number? And if they can't, or if they say, "Well, probably 240," okay, we're still 40 grand off, right? That's going to lead me—and let's pull up the slide so they can see it—yeah, so that's going to lead me down this five-step negotiation. That is awesome. You got their number; their number was 250, now it's down to 240. So what I'm going to do is what Chris Voss, uh, says, and never split the difference: you're going to set the anchor right, because the homeowner is what's opposite of an anchor—a kite. They're going to fly the kite; they're going to say, "I need 250." I'm about ready to drop an anchor. The anchor is supposed to do two things: it's supposed to be unrealistic, and it's supposed to solicit a no. The other nuance to that is it can't sound like an offer. Here's what it sounds like: so if I said, "Hey, I need to be at 150," I just broke that—that's an offer, like that sounds like an offer, right? So what if I did this? So Joe, real quick, you said you had a couple uh other investors looking at this, right? And you say, "Yeah." Okay, my gut tells me the other investors were around 150. Notice what I did: I didn't make an offer; it's unrealistic, and get ready—what's gonna happen? It's gonna solicit a no.
150, Cody? No, I can't do 150. No, no, no. I'm just saying, with those other offers, my gut tells me you probably had something around the 150s. No, no, they're a little bit higher than that. I love asking the question, Joe, if you don't mind me asking, why didn't you go with that those offers if they came in higher than that? Well, I didn't believe they could do it, right? You start to learn about your competition; ask the question. Don't people dodge the question about competition? I love it; that gives me ammunition. I know how to now work against my competition because they're telling me everything about them, right? Well, I couldn't we couldn't narrow this down. Oh, they couldn't promise me this, or they couldn't do this, and now I'm like, "Drop more notes." Oh, sounds like they want this; they didn't tell me that in the discovery process either, right? You're going through, and I say, "Hey, in a perfect world, I need to be maybe in the mid-100s, or the market would have me say I need to be in the mid-100s." Notice that I made the blame not on me; the blame is the market, or the blame is other investors. The market would have me be in the mid-100s. Mid-100s, Cody? I can't do that. Guess what I just did? Something unrealistic, and I just solicited a no. No is the beginning of all negotiation. So then I go there, and I just ask the next question: number three, Joe, how close can you get to that number? And I just sit there. I love that. And let me interject some things here because land is a little different than houses, because a lot of times sellers really honestly don't know what their land is worth. They've owned it for 20 years; you can't just get a Zestimate on land; it's different.
Yep, they may really not know. So, um, if they won't give you a price and you need to anchor it, one of the things that I do—and tell me what you think of this—sure, um, they say, "I don't know," you know, or they might say, "You called me, or you you sent me the postcard; I don't know what I want for it; just make me an offer," um, and maybe they've not gotten any other offers from other investors yet. So sometimes what I'll do is I'll pull up Zillow, yeah, and look at solds that have sold recently, either at a price per acre or some some similar size, and I might say, "Well, I don't know; I'm looking here at some sold comps on Zillow in the area, and in a perfect world, looking at these solds, it would—my offer would be somewhere around," and I list like the three or four lowest solds in there, yeah, 10,000, 15, 20,000, um, and then I'll say something like, "That probably wouldn't work for you though, would it?" I don't know; what do you think of that? So for me, again, if data is saying you're good and you're tracking it and it's like people love it, what sometimes can happen is if someone knows they're not going to go down to that price, it can build up a resilience in the sell where they're like—where it's almost like you just shut them off; they're like, "Ah, we're not even close, so I'm not even gonna do it." Why? Because you said my offer would be around, so you're actually stating that it is an offer by saying my offer would be around. So I would say, "I don't know, based off based off where the market would tell me to be," um, you're blaming the market, or um, have you had—if they said they've had other people want to buy their land, say, "I'm assuming the other people were probably around 100,000." Well, okay, I'm I'm trying to anchor the the price, making that initial anchor on the activity that I'm actually seeing on Zillow, yeah, right? So I'll—and I look at active Zillow, like Zillow's—Zillow would suggest it's around this; that's how I would say it. I wouldn't say, "Based off a Zillow would be this," because now you're saying it's too specific; you're saying it's it it sounds too definite versus you also have room to budge by me saying, "Zillow suggests…" I'm not making an offer; I'm just saying, "Zillow—Zillow, they need to be around 100,000," and they're like, "100,000? I can't do that." Beautiful; I just established a beautiful anchor that was unrealistic, and it solicited a no; beginning, so better—yeah, it would be better to say something like, "Zillow is telling me here, looking at these solds, yeah, that it would be around 10 to 15,000." Yeah, Zillow would suggest, based off what I'm looking at, Zillow would suggest around 10 to 15,000, but notice what you you did: you allowed yourself to not throw—you did not say anything that says this is my offer. Now there's room for no; they're gonna say, "No, I can't do that, Joe." Well, Joe, tell me this: how close can you get to that number? And now they're negotiating against themselves; they're establishing the number, why? Because you beforehand established the platter, and they're saying, "Man, I actually really like this; I don't know if I'll ever use this land." I do love that I have a little bit of cash; I do love that he's able to do this this this this this this this, and they put a price tag on it. That's where sales gets really good when you don't have to suggest your price, when you get them to suggest a price, and when their price is too high, you go to number four, right? So let's say vague was around the 10—Zillow would suggest he'd be around 10, and let's say your max is 20. Okay, Joe, I appreciate you saying you—the closest you could get is 30,000, and is there is there any other is there any wiggle room at all on this at all? And then you just do a vague price range: if it if I was able to bring in a few more thousand than that, being the 12 to 14,000 range, I mean, is that does that help at all? Does that get any closer? And they're going to say, "No, I just can't do 14,000, Cody." And I appreciate that, Joe, I really do. Now go back to step number three: how close can you get to that number? And I just sit there and I let them negotiate against themselves; we're down 20, and if you like it, take it. But then there's a point where you—again, here's the beauty is if this never turns into anything great where you can't solidify your number, you're never leaving them an offer, and you're never leaving them a price. I have not said price yet, still to this time. So if they're like, "I need some time to think about it," and let's say you've done everything, so I'm I'm I'm going to try and keep them on the phone, by the way, as long as I can until I get that contract, but let's say I've done everything; I've exhausted every effort, and they're like, "I just need time to think about it," I'm gonna dangle a carrot to make them realize they need to come back to me, so I'm not going to leave them a price, because my competition's going on to get that price, and they're gonna say, "Hey, I already got a guy that offered me 15,000." Well, I'll give you 16. Okay, we'll go with you. We've had this happen to every one of us because of that negotiation tactic; it doesn't work; it never serves you. So we don't leave a number; we don't leave a contract; we just say, "Hey, Joe, sounds like you're going to get a couple more prices out there." Let's say they just they're just one of those personalities like, "I need three estimates, period; the end; I'm going with the best; validate it." Then here's what I had asked Joe: you give me the last shot, why? Because I want to do everything I can. This to me is is just like how you're like, "I don't know what the price is; I just don't know yet either." Zillow's kind of all over the place on this one, but here's what I'm going to do moving forward: first and foremost, let's pull out your phone. When do you—when is your next person coming out? Thursday at 7? Cool. Thursday at 7:30, I'm gonna reach back out to you, but here's what's going to happen between now and 7:30 on Thursday: I'm gonna go back with the team; we're going to sharpen our pencil, and we're going to come up with something favorable. Notice I didn't say I'm gonna come up with our highest price; I'm gonna find something that's going to beat your competition, because if you come back, you better beat your competition, and they may at a price that you can't beat them, so it's—I'm going to put some work together that we can put together a favorable offer. I'm I'm I'm I'm just certain we can do something, Joe. Yeah, and you're just giving them that carrot to say why if they have to. Other than that, we're not getting off the phone; like if you're just humming around, I'll go down to—if you see some of these things, um, you can ask like the—"How would it sound—" and then sometimes you do can get to the specific number if they have to, right? Like, "What if I did 15,495?" Because now there sounds like there's some kind of math equation behind that, and they're like, "Oh, that's as high as I got him." Sounds like uh I need to take this offer. Okay, let's do the 14,9495. Yeah, I like that a lot. Again, sometimes though, land is a little trickier because they honestly just don't know, it is, and they—I would ask them what they want to do with it. What intrigued you about the postcard? Is there something you're trying to accomplish with it? Are you trying to go on a vacation? Are you trying to go buy something else? I know Christmas is coming up; are you trying to spoil the grandkids? What does it sound like for you, Joe? And help them dream; like try to get out of them what they're trying to accomplish.
Yeah, I'd love to take my kids on a cruise. What does that cost nowadays? That's good; very good. All right, so what what goes after that then? You get a number from them or you don't; what do you do? Yeah, if they're just tight-lipped, they're not giving me numbers; it is—if we have to leave that appointment, we also leave that appointment with no offer and no number, just a date to come back and get the contract and establish—so you're talking about meeting in person, right? Yeah, yeah. So if you're doing this on the phone, same thing: it's—I'm not giving them a number; I'm not telling them I'm submitting a contract, so you can see that I'm a serious buyer; that is just nine times out of 10 going to be used against you on your competition. Well, okay, that's different than what I do, um, and with land, and I do this because it's land; I didn't do this with houses, yeah, um, but if I can't get a number out of them, sometimes I just send the conversation with, "Well, you know what? I'm going to sharpen my pencil, look at my numbers, and you know, um, let me come up with a number," and sometimes I'll say this: "I I I'll go ahead and email you something, and I'll put something in the mail, and listen, if it doesn't work for you, just just throw it away, um, but let's keep in touch, and I'll also send you the names and numbers of the realtor," because I just know like their motivation is a one or a two where I need to need to be at a nine or a 10. Yeah, so I still like to send the seller an offer; I'll send that because yours is a little bit different, right? In single family, it's like—Joe Homebuyer's is gonna spank everyone that does that, but land—that's a little bit different; it's probably a a numbers game: how many contracts I send out to get x amount of accepted, and that could be that, but it doesn't mean that there may not be a better way to at least improve those numbers marginally where you're just figuring a way to get 1% better every single day until you hit the law of diminishing returns, right? Yeah, I like that a lot. I know my numbers; if I send 30 offers, I get one deal. Yeah, what if you could increase that to—what if you increase that to 10 by just saying, "Hey, when's the next time? Is there something I'm missing, Joe?" I know I know you said you can sign for this; I mean, listen to this: how many times I—nope, I can sign for this—that in everyone's head in sales thinks, "Oh, you're the decision maker; the signer," and a decision maker can be two separate people; like that's been a truth that I've seen my whole entire real estate career is just because Mom's able to sign doesn't mean she's not calling daughter to make a decision, and you need both of them. Hey, Joe, I'm gonna follow up with you; I'm gonna sharpen my pencil; I'm gonna do everything I can; I want to make sure that we come up with something favorable that allows you to to um to feel good about this, um, in doing so, is there anyone else you would like on this call next time we talk? Well, really my son's involved in this. Awesome. What's your son's name? That's fantastic; I would love to meet him just so that we can get everyone on—what's a great time that we can get you and your son and myself back on a phone call? And I—I call it BAMF FAM: book a meeting from a meeting, meaning I never have my acquisition managers ever get off the phone without BAMF FAM; they have to book their next meeting from this meeting that's happening. Book a meeting from a meeting, BAMF FAM; I—all—why? Because they need to attach a task to everything; that's how I'm able to hold them accountable, saying, "Dude, you went to the Johnson's family, but there's no task; what did you do? How do I know what you did? You didn't even do anything. When are you following up? Oh, well, it's next Friday." Well, it's not in there; how do we—how do I hold you accountable if it's not even in there? So it's BAMF FAM; it's when they—they're never getting off a phone, or they're never leaving an appointment without the next appointment right there before we leave. Pull out your phone: when are we meeting again? BAMF FAM, and we use that all the time as well to make sure that we always have followup, and we always have a task attached to every single action we take during the day. Yeah, I love that. Okay, we got to wrap this up; let's talk about Joe Homebuyer Franchising.com. What is that, Cody?
Yes, so Joe Homebuyer is for those that are like, "I'm a six-figure business," and they're trying to to turn into a business, um, that's who we're here to help and guide is to get to those seven-figure earning years; that's something that we're passionate about, and most times it's a lack of a skill set, and most times there's two things, in fact, when they hit that ceiling of a quarter million, 500,000, usually it's two things: skill set problem—what's the next skill they need to learn so they can get past that ceiling? The other one is actually a limiting belief, and it's stuff that we've caught our whole life; maybe Mom and Dad said, "You know what? The Johnson family just wasn't made to have money," and so we're really big at the skill set training; we're really big at the processes that you can just tap into, and it's like you follow this process; you don't have to deviate; like it's what you just saw today with the five steps of negotiation; it's like boom boom boom boom boom, and it just keeps spitting out—everything has a process within Joe Home, and then lastly is leadership development. Our mission statement has nothing to do with real estate; it's creating leaders because we know that when we build leaders, the leaders will go out and build successful businesses, and leadership is so needed in this nation right now; we need that so bad. And going to uh Jim Rohn, he says, "Rarely does a man's income exceed their level of personal development," meaning we try to chase money our whole lives; Jim Rohn would say, "Go chase personal development, and watch money chase you," and that has something we've seen to be true is you can't have a team of A players when you're a C player; you've got to become an A player that simply attracts A players, and then watch those A players build a great business for you. So we're big in building this to turn into an actual business that serves you versus you always have to serve it. Nice. So a good person who's a good fit for Joe Homebuyer franchise would be somebody that's already doing some deals, already doing six figures a year or even a handful of deals; we just had a guy from Arizona that had done his third deal this year; he's gonna do over a million dollars this first year uh switching over to Joe Homebuyer because he just tapped into the process, but yeah, beginners say, "You've got incredible coach right here," like that's going to teach you how to do consistent deal flow, and you might even do some high-end stuff, Joe, too, um, but yeah, for those that are ready to say, "Hey, I'm ready to turn this into a business so I don't have to work from 9 to 5," that's what we're looking for, and and you can apply the Homebuyer's Concepts trainings to land as well, all day long, all day long; we have people using it for commercial, and I I'm not—I would not tell anyone I'm an expert at commercial; I'm not; I'm far from it, but yeah, the process is the process, and it does work. Awesome. All right, Cody, anyway, how can people reach you on Instagram? Are you there? Yeah, Cody Hine, and I do reply, so when you DM me, it is not my team, Joe Homebuyer different; it is gonna be Joe Homebuyer team like nurturing that and and and having conversations. Cody Hoffin, it is me; I love talking to people and making an impact in their lives, so go to Cody Hoffin; you'll see the blue check mark; that's me; there's other fakies out there; go to the blue check mark; DM me, and we'll have some awesome conversations. Good; Hoffin is H-O-F-F-I-N-E; that is correct. Awesome. And then also guys, again, go to JoeHomebuyerFranchising.com. All right, thank you, Cody; appreciate you, man. Thanks, Joe. See you guys.