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Unknown
Some of the best leads in real estate never turn into deals.
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Unknown
Welcome back to the seven Figure Flipping Podcast. Your host today. Myself, Adam Whitney and Lindsay Arko from the blackjack team in seven figure flipping team. We're going to dive into marketing and sales today, so stay tuned and stick around to the end. I always talk to investors who either say their leads are bad, or they say that they can't close deals.
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Unknown
They're getting leads, but they're not good enough lead bad leads. They're bad leads. They're bad leads. You know my saying there are no bad leads. There are only bad salespeople. So why it. So why do good leads die? Well, here's the thing is, we all have access to the same exact leads. You can literally buy the same leads as every other company.
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Unknown
So it's not leads that are the problem. It's probably the operator, the real estate investor who's generating the leads and doesn't know what to do with them. I think they routinely underestimate what is required to get the deal done. Yeah, and sometimes it's not even really about the conversation that's important. But just having a process to actually continuously reach out to that lead and get them on the phone is something commonly overlooked.
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Unknown
By the end of this episode, you'll understand why leads look perfect on paper, but they really still don't convert, and how better conversations will change your outcomes. Most people think you have to be just this great, slick, natural born salesperson, but it's not really about that. It's about, you know, having clarity, having leadership and structure in your process.
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Unknown
Yeah. And I think for us, where we're coming from is we've literally closed over a thousand deals in blackjack real estate, and we've had some of the top sales trainer in the country train us. And, we've tried everything. We've tried every conversation, we've tried every process only to develop a process that we use specific to our company that is unique to us.
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Unknown
It's a little different style than everybody else, and it's extremely effective for our team. What do you think the major difference is between our process and some of the different ones that we've tried? Because we've really we've tried everything out there. Yeah, I think, you know, every, every process talks about pace and tonality. But one of the things that is inherent to what we do is, is curiosity.
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Unknown
Like that word is just different. And when you reframe and you think about sales through curiosity, it does make you a better active listener, which is really critical to hear those pain points that you'll ultimately end up solving. So with that, said, Lindsay, and you know, obviously we have a unique sales process called the intuitive sales process. And, a lot of people in seven finger flipping are using it.
00:03:03:22 - 00:03:33:09
Unknown
What are you seeing from the businesses within the community? How is it impacting and affecting their business using your sales process? Probably the number one thing that our members tell me is that they no longer have combative conversations. And it's it's really because, like you said, you're you're speaking to the seller and you're you're being curious. You're just trying to find out simply, does this person have a problem?
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Unknown
And if they do, is it the kind of problem that I can solve? We're not worried about the bedroom, the bathroom counter, not worried about the square footage, and we're not worrying about what the comps say at that point. We just want to see if they have a problem that they can solve. When you talk to a seller and you and you approach the conversation from that angle as wanting to truly help them, it lowers sales resistance and it allows them to open up and share more information with you.
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Unknown
And so their conversations are no longer combative. They're no longer competing with everybody else out there that have had the same exact conversations with the sellers, so they're able to help them in a very different way. Yeah. Well, what would you say to the I mean, people listen to this, podcasts are on YouTube. They're listening to all these other people.
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Unknown
You know, like maybe RJ who's like, just get on the phone and drop the price out of the gate and say, hey, do you want to sell your house? How much do you want for it? Yeah, yeah, I can't do that or. Yeah, I'll do that. Yeah? Like what? Why is that? Is that effective or why or why not?
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Unknown
Why would you not do that? I just it it's, it makes the conversation all about me, what I want and what I need. And our sellers don't really care about what we want or need. They don't care how many houses we've bought, how many people we've helped. They care about themselves. And so when I have a conversation that's focused on how I can help somebody else get to their goal, which is ultimately, in most cases, to leave their home at a fair price, that changes the whole conversation.
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Unknown
What that does is it builds trust. And if they trust me and I can get them the result that they want the fastest, I'm going to be the person who gets the deal. But doesn't every seller just want the highest price? Of course. But do you know something? I've never paid anybody the price that they wanted. Ever. Not once.
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Unknown
Yeah, I well, I think, you know, some of these you get on the guru kick and you go on YouTube University and it's like, you get on, you ask them some, you build fake rapport and then, you price anchor them and then you eventually negotiate a price. But it's all a lot of price based thinking, like, why not do what.
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Unknown
Why keep them out of price based thinking? Can you, like, help me understand the theory around that? Right. So if they're in price base thinking, then they can't think about, getting to the result or the place that they want to go. And so they just get fixated and stuck there. They can't move beyond that. And so when we when we start having conversations where we've built a lot of fake rapport that builds distrust, I've had this a number of times, even where I've had conversations with sellers.
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Unknown
I have learned absolutely everything about them. I know their cousins, brothers, first name, their children all these things. And at the end of the day, some of them have even come back to me and told me because they're my friend, that they sold the house to somebody else. That hurts a lot. So I had to find a way to position myself as a trusted advisor or an expert that will help them get what they want.
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Unknown
Not necessarily a overly friendly customer service person who's there just to take notes on conversations and become their friend. Yeah. So what would you say to people who are like, well, I just don't have any good leads. All my leads are they don't have any motivation. And, they're maybe they're closing a deal or a month or three deals a month, but they have this desire to do ten or 20 or 30 deals a month, but, they don't feel like they're closing.
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Unknown
They're getting any good leads, so they're too scared to scale their marketing. I, I would need to see some numbers. So I'd say it's likely that you need to ask better questions, but to tell you that for sure, I'd want to know a couple of things. We did this exercise. It was painful. I remember this is a couple of years ago, and we had a lot of leads that came in from people, and I did not think they were very good leads.
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Unknown
And so we did a little exercise where we dug through them and we saw who they sold to. Right. And so, you know, that they sold to another investor if it goes into the name of an LLC and we lost a couple deals out of there, that would have been a game changer for our business in that month.
00:07:41:12 - 00:08:03:05
Unknown
And so when I broke down those conversations, what I found is we made assumptions. You have to go into these conversations with a ton of curiosity and a willingness to serve and get somebody to their outcome. And so I would take a look at the appointments that you have gone on. How many appointments have you gone? How many offers have you made?
00:08:03:07 - 00:08:22:05
Unknown
How many follow ups have you done? How many deals did you get? I'm willing to bet you that you did not make offers on enough properties. One of the KPIs in our company is our goal is to make offers on 60% or more of the appointments that we go on. When I start to see numbers slip in sales, it's usually because we're not making enough offers.
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Unknown
Well, I think some people might hear that and think 60% is low. Can you can you qualify? Why 60%? Because you're going to have no shows. So no shows count against count against you in our world anyway, right? So we count that as an appointment whether they showed up or not, you can't make an offer on somebody who who didn't show up.
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Unknown
And then there might be other, somebody might have not necessarily had enough motivation or been interested in selling. They might need a longer nurture, which would mean an offer would come later. You know, every appointment does not equal an offer. It really depends on the level of motivation. But you need to ask really good questions to figure out what that is.
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Unknown
Can you give and I mean, I think that's a fair point. So, you know, I've heard a lot of people say, well, you should make an offer on 90% of the attended appointments. Yeah. So, but, you know, you can't get a deal without an offer, so that makes sense, right? It becomes what I don't like to do with our sales team is nitpick and argue the quality of a of an appointment.
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Unknown
I don't want to do that. I know that they're going to have no shows. It's the nature of our business. I know that we'll have a lead submitted by a wholesaler, and it's not necessarily it gets set as an appointment. And maybe we uncover that it's not a a homeowner, it's a, it's a wholesaler or something like that.
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Unknown
I don't want to argue with that with our team. What I but what I do want to see is us consistently making offers. So when I put that number in place, it's a it's a pretty fair, number for each side. Yeah. I think the thing that's maybe a little different than from us, between us and other people is, we are very liberal in our qualification for leads.
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Unknown
Basically, if you have a pulse and a house you own, we'll talk to you with an actual salesperson, not just a lead manager. So we don't make them get, you know, we use we would typically say, let's get the timeline. The reason for selling the condition of the property and. Yeah, or like all that stuff. And, we don't do that with our lead managers.
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Unknown
They, they do get a little bit of information, but at the end of the day, we want the trained salesperson on the phone, with as many people as humanly possible. And again, we're all virtual. We're all over the phone sales. So we're just not heavily qualifying. And obviously if we're going in person, we're going to have our lead managers set appointments that are time worthy because you'd be spending so much time driving out to somebody's house and, what would you say is better for close ratios in-person or over the phone?
00:10:57:20 - 00:11:19:12
Unknown
Oh, definitely in person. You're going to close better in person than you are over the phone. What what you can possibly do, like in our situation is we operate in three to 3 to 4 states at any given time. So we can cover a lot of appointments in the course of a day and multiple states without having, you know, vehicles needing to travel to the home all the time.
00:11:19:12 - 00:11:37:23
Unknown
So that's just a structural decision that we made, timely based slightly before Covid, that benefited our business. And we've stuck with that. But if you do have the opportunity to go in person, your close rate is going to be higher. And there's there's times when I've gone out because we knew that it was necessary for us to close.
00:11:37:23 - 00:12:00:04
Unknown
Yeah. And I think that in person is certainly going to close more. But you don't have as much flexibility in your business being virtual. We can pick up and go drop into pretty much any market we want to. We did that. We went into Georgia this year and did a bunch of deals. There. And then went back into Tennessee and we went back into Tennessee.
00:12:00:04 - 00:12:21:06
Unknown
And we can do it with a virtual sales team, which I think is great. But I think there was a point that you made earlier I just want to touch on because a lot of our members and maybe even our listeners who don't have a team, are going to be speaking to sellers for the first time. And I want to make sure that we stress that.
00:12:21:06 - 00:12:41:12
Unknown
And those situations. This is what I see with new investors a lot. They will, get the information from the seller. They will take take it away. They'll analyze the deal and they'll think, oh my gosh, I can't pay what this person wants. And then they won't get back to the person. They'll have anxiety about giving a low offer, and so they'll never make that offer.
00:12:41:14 - 00:13:05:09
Unknown
And if you don't make any offers then you get no deals. And so if you spend the time to analyze the deal, if you spend the time talking to that person, then just make the offer. Yeah. I think, interesting story. I was like in the beginning, I, I remember I didn't really I was, I was not confident in the numbers so I could talk to anybody, of course, but like, I just wasn't confident in the numbers.
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Unknown
So I called I remember one of the first deals I did, I called this old guy, he is a Clyde Street property. I remember the guy's name, but I offered him 60 grand. He's like, no way. Kick rocks. I got somebody at like 91. I'm like, crap, honey. I'm like, no, I can't do that. I'm at 60,000.
00:13:20:14 - 00:13:38:10
Unknown
So I went back and I ran the numbers again. And then I reached out to, an agent. Local agent? Ashley. And I was like, hey, can you look at this property? This guy said, he's got it. Somebody, you know, 91, and I think I can offer 60. What do you think? And she ran the RV and actually got better numbers than me.
00:13:38:10 - 00:13:57:17
Unknown
And she's like, no, you could. She's like, I think I could actually get somebody to buy this from you for like 105. I was like, oh my gosh. So I called the guy back and I left him a voicemail and I said, hey, man, it's that dumb marine Adam again, I don't do math. Well, I meant to tell you, I cannot pay you 91,500.
00:13:57:19 - 00:14:15:17
Unknown
And, if you know, if you want to do the deal, give me a call back. So this was Friday. He called me on Monday and said, hey, that other guy didn't work out. I'm ready to do the deal. And then I assign that price signed him up, and I signed that property immediately for the 105,000. Ashley's mom bought it, and then she flipped it and made 60 grand.
00:14:15:19 - 00:14:35:12
Unknown
So, I just wasn't confident in the numbers, though. And I think that it's not just the sales conversation, but a lot of times it's the ability to have confidence in doing the deal. And you don't get that without experience. So when you start coaching somebody who's early on and they're just starting to go into seller's houses, what what guidance are you giving them?
00:14:35:13 - 00:14:55:17
Unknown
So the the first guidance we give them is to have a script. It doesn't necessarily have to be my script, but have a script, memorize it, talk it, speak it, practice it in the mirror until you can breathe it. Because if you do that and you go into a house and you will get nervous when you go in, you're also trying to have a conversation.
00:14:55:22 - 00:15:14:15
Unknown
You're trying to like, look around at the house, you're trying to make notes. If you have all that memorized and you're comfortable saying it and you get nervous, you're going to revert back to what you know. And if what you know is a script, it's going to come out of your mouth really, really easily. Always be curious. Just just be natural to be curious.
00:15:14:15 - 00:15:39:01
Unknown
How do you mean? I mean that when people give you answers that are they're very closed off, you have to dig deeper to get them to open up. Showing interest in somebody alone will not do that. But if I give you a brief, short answer and you just said to me, how do you mean? It would require me to open up and give you more information like I just did.
00:15:39:06 - 00:16:02:03
Unknown
So that's a great example. Other times you could use mirroring techniques. Chris Voss never split. The difference is probably one of my favorite sales books, even though it wasn't intended to be a book on sales. Right. Because he used mirroring as a technique to get people to, open up and give more information or clarify a statement that they made.
00:16:02:03 - 00:16:24:05
Unknown
So, if you want to maybe do a little role players. Okay, you can do an example of a mirror. All right. What? I guess you should ask me a question. Yeah. So so, Adam, what's what's got you thinking about moving away from this nice house? Just say I want to be closer to family. Family? Yeah.
00:16:24:05 - 00:16:45:18
Unknown
You know, my sister lives up in North Carolina. I'd like to be closer to her. Okay, so ideally, you'd move to North Carolina? Yeah. Okay, so then I would ask you things like. How long have you been thinking about doing that? Just I continue on to figure out like, obviously what else would you ask me? I how long would you how long have you been thinking about doing and why would you ask that question?
00:16:46:00 - 00:17:03:22
Unknown
I want to know how important this decision is and how long it takes this person to make decisions. Is this a is this an emergency? You just lost your job and you need to get closer to family. So you need help with child care. And and I'm like, why do you need to get closer? How long have you been thinking about it?
00:17:03:22 - 00:17:22:17
Unknown
It kind of leads to maybe the why do or is it that you just miss your family and and you want to be closer so that different answers that you give me could, increase or decrease your urgency? I also want to know, you know, have you thought about where you might be going? Have you looked at any houses?
00:17:22:17 - 00:17:44:08
Unknown
Do you have a plan for that? If you don't, how long would it take you to make a plan for that? Because all of that determines your readiness to sign an agreement with me. Now, if you need to go look at houses in that, that's going to take you 3 to 4 months, that's a much different conversation than you're ready to go in the next couple of weeks.
00:17:44:09 - 00:18:05:08
Unknown
Yeah. And I think that I mean, that goes back to your point. I'm just being curious and asking great questions, which regardless of what sales process or scripture use and that's kind of fundamentally the they'll play as ask great questions. So let's, let's so we've got obviously people in our community who have teams and you know, our scaling up have scaled up.
00:18:05:08 - 00:18:30:02
Unknown
I'm thinking of Paul and his team that you coached and help hire salespeople for. What about the operators who are maybe 3 to 5 deals a month and and looking to scale? Obviously you've got to have more leads and more salespeople. So what would you tell them about, like hiring the right person, onboarding them? What kind of training and what kind of management and accountability should be in place?
00:18:30:04 - 00:18:52:10
Unknown
I think the the hiring in the onboarding is going to depend on your team and your culture. Probably one of the most important things when you're hiring somebody is to have somebody who who matches your your core values and your standards and your culture because if that is not a match, it doesn't matter how great of a salesperson they are.
00:18:52:10 - 00:19:14:13
Unknown
So I would recommend using something like the Who method, to hire and great book. Greg Schwartz called who such a great book and it helps you put everybody through the same process. So you're judging candidates fairly. One of the biggest mistakes I think you can make when you're hiring a salesperson is you will get somebody that comes in, is just a great talker.
00:19:14:15 - 00:19:40:01
Unknown
And so you might vibe with that person. The conversation goes great. You're hiring. You're like, this person's a trainwreck. But they were a great talker where somebody else who would be great at following your sales process might not have that gift of gab, but might get ushered out because you didn't have the same vibe. So if you you analyze every and every application the same way, and you hold every interview the same way, then you're judging more fairly.
00:19:40:07 - 00:20:09:14
Unknown
So I'd start with that. And then, once you bring somebody into your environment, the window for training should be very, very short. I know that the person is going to put their best foot forward in the very beginning. It's kind of like dating. It's never probably going to get better than it is at the beginning. So I want to see how likely they are to follow my process, digest the script, and get to work in the first couple of days, right?
00:20:09:14 - 00:20:34:14
Unknown
If they're not willing to put in that time and that effort in the beginning, it will never happen. So we do cut the cord rather quickly. If somebody is not engaged and putting in the work immediately, I think I think one of the important things to note, and I've seen this play out in our company, like really, really well in the past couple of years, is our sales process is a process and a process to be followed precisely.
00:20:34:16 - 00:21:00:15
Unknown
And there's not it's it's pretty black and white. There is some intellect required in the conversation, the kind of the, you know, going back for the seller. But at the end of the day, it is a very specific process. You either do or do not do it. And I think that has allowed us to be way more efficient and way more effective because we actually don't need some savant, you know, Rico Suave, a human who can talk you up and all that.
00:21:00:15 - 00:21:25:05
Unknown
We need someone who can follow, process and and have a conversation. That's a very different higher than what we had historically hired. Yeah, we would historically hire what we would call a high A or B or high driven social, somebody who can go for the clothes but like, enjoys talking to people. And we find that you actually want a, you know, somebody who is somewhat social, but you'll want somebody with some details who can follow process.
00:21:25:05 - 00:21:46:08
Unknown
What you don't want is somebody with no details, and they're going to be on 12 different processes are going to be all over the map regardless of how good they talk. And we've had those people and they come into our business and they'll come out of the gate in month one and close ten contracts, and then month two, they'll sign up 20 contracts, and you'll have to cancel all of them because they're just off the rails.
00:21:46:08 - 00:22:07:19
Unknown
Right? Right. And we even found that, like, actually some of the better process followers are more introverted, but their drive, their will to win and close is higher. And so because they're more passionate about that, they can still do the job and do it really well and follow process. But they don't have to be what I think most people would refer to as, like a natural born salesperson.
00:22:07:21 - 00:22:30:03
Unknown
Yeah, I'd like to know too, from your perspective. So you get this person on they they're good at closing that they can follow the process. They're executing well. What does it what should accountability for a company look like? Daily calls, weekly calls. How many calls should be reviewed, how much coaching should happen. And, on a sales team.
00:22:30:05 - 00:22:49:03
Unknown
So the one of the most important things with the sales team is that you have daily connectivity, especially if you're virtual. If you're in person, it's probably a little bit easier, but just to have at least a 15 minute huddle every single day, especially with a virtual team. But this is important that that you have specifics when you're in office.
00:22:49:03 - 00:23:11:08
Unknown
Two, there needs to be a 15 minute huddle every single day where we're talking about, our KPIs. And it should be really simple. So I'll just I'll give you ours. We have how many appointments did you go on? How many offers did you make? How many contracts do we have? And then finally, it's how many outbound calls did you make?
00:23:11:10 - 00:23:36:03
Unknown
So to hit the KPI we have to meet one one of the four criteria. We need to have a minimum of 100 calls a day outbound for the for the sales team, for closers. Or we have to have three offers or we have to have one contract. And if you have one of those criteria, then you hit your KPI for the day.
00:23:36:05 - 00:23:57:09
Unknown
Oh that's great. I want to go back to, what about the coaching part of it though? So we get on this huddle every, you know, 15 minutes every day. We we all are accountable to our KPIs. A little bit of direction happens and you go for the day and you execute. But what about like training. Like how where how do we train?
00:23:57:09 - 00:24:16:18
Unknown
How often do we train? Do we train more in the beginning, training a ton in the beginning. I think a lot of times when you hire somebody in acquisitions, you, you think you can hand them a script and send them on their way and maybe teach them a little bit about underwriting and the script in the role.
00:24:16:18 - 00:24:44:15
Unknown
Play like 1 to 1 is important, especially when they're they're learning the content. But to really effectively coach somebody and identify where the skill gaps are, you need to do car reviews. So in the beginning, we're doing them daily, sometimes multiple times a day, when we're in training and then we're inserting the coaching and we're asking them to either call back that person or handle something differently on the next call.
00:24:44:20 - 00:25:13:20
Unknown
And we need to see that they're capable of taking that coaching and implementing it and doing that very, very fast. If they're not able to do that, they're probably just not going to do very well when, they become more seasoned over time. You're going to dial that back, you know, maybe in the, in the six plus months that somebody is working with you, you're probably only going to do like one a week unless there's there's a skill gap or a significant issue.
00:25:13:22 - 00:25:34:13
Unknown
Then we're, we're going to do more, call reviews. We're going to do more role playing. We're just going to make sure that they've really have addressed all the issues that they need some work for. For a sales team. Do they do you think it's appropriate? So underwriting and analyzing deals and doing sales are not not the same.
00:25:34:15 - 00:25:57:05
Unknown
Not the same. And if you're a company that has the ability to do multiple access strategies, you now you're injecting more complexity. So like, hey, underwrite for a flip, underwrite for a wholesale deal, underwrite for a create a finance deal, underwrite for innovation. How do you balance training sales? Do you do anything? Do you have somebody separately underwriting, giving them their information?
00:25:57:05 - 00:26:21:19
Unknown
Do you recommend that, or should you be teaching both those two skills at the same time? Somebody who is really great in sales and somebody who is really great underwriter are almost never the same person. So if you have a person who follows process, which is why that's so important. And in our sales environment, it is likely that they can underwrite reasonably well.
00:26:21:19 - 00:26:49:07
Unknown
What we do is we give them tools and spreadsheets that allow them to plug basic numbers into to, to spit out an offer. But, the final underwriting is always done by somebody else. It always needs approval. Yeah. And I think for bigger companies, a lot of times this is especially if you're doing a wholesaling, this is your disposition person or even maybe your agent who's listing your house is on the back end.
00:26:49:07 - 00:27:08:07
Unknown
Because at the end the day, they got to sell that thing. So they're incentivized to make sure that acquisitions folks are buying houses at the right price. And, you know, for some of you listening, you may be a 1 or 2 person show that's you. Like if you got to sell the house on the back end, then you want to make sure it's underwritten well, so you should be a part of that process.
00:27:08:09 - 00:27:30:14
Unknown
And I think that's a really important distinction because people kind of get tripped up. They'll get a good salesperson, but they are locking deals up too high or something like that because, you know, they just they're not great. Underwriters are crazy with their RVs or, you know, hey, they're like, that's a cosmetic rehab and it's $100,000 rehab. So and sometimes, especially if you're virtual, sometimes it's really hard to tell.
00:27:30:16 - 00:27:57:06
Unknown
You're, you're talking to somebody over the phone, you're gathering a lot of information, but you are also are going off of what somebody tells you. And so as long as in those conversations, you have taught your acquisitions, closer that they always need to leave the door open to make adjustments that we are going off of what the seller is telling us, but we'll have to verify it and may need to make adjustments.
00:27:57:08 - 00:28:19:00
Unknown
It's you're not going to get a lot of blowback if you have to make an adjustment after you go in, you do the in-person walkthrough, or you take pictures and you find other problems. It's how you phrase it that matters. Yeah, I think it can just kind of goes back to having the fundamentals of communication, you know, setting proper expectations.
00:28:19:00 - 00:28:42:19
Unknown
So where we're both are expecting the same thing, having communicating with a great tone, being curious, actively listening are all things I've heard you say today. And then for a team, as you're building your team and you're building your company to maybe scale, you've got to have like daily interaction with your sales team, whether that's training and it sometimes might be multiple times a day or daily huddles.
00:28:42:19 - 00:29:09:15
Unknown
And then as they get more skilled down the road, you can do less call reviews, but you still have to consistently do those things to hold people accountable. And for us, lens we have, I mean, we're our everything in our company is super process driven. We're all about systems and processes. What would you tell people right now if they they feel like they it feels messy or they feel like their leads aren't very good.
00:29:09:15 - 00:29:14:07
Unknown
What would you tell them?
00:29:14:09 - 00:29:41:15
Unknown
I don't I don't think the leads have changed in the last ten years. I've seen the same type of leads over and over again. As a matter of fact, I think probably we've had right now the most realistic sellers we've had in the last five years. And so just work really hard on the leads that you get. If you you are spending money and I don't care if that's money to get the lead or the time to get the lead, you're spending money on it.
00:29:41:17 - 00:30:04:04
Unknown
You need to work those things until they're dead. Dial until they tell you no. And, when you do get Ahold of somebody, be curious. Find out what their problem is. Not everybody has a problem you can solve. Not everybody's interested in solving their problem. So get really good at qualifying and then spend the majority of your time focused on this leads.
00:30:04:06 - 00:30:23:12
Unknown
Yeah. I think a data point for people is when we did this analysis in our CRM, the average time from, the time a lead came into our CRM to the time we signed a contract on average 59 days, which means that first appointment is, you know, or the first few conversations to get to the appointment. Then you had the appointment, then you're following up for a few time.
00:30:23:12 - 00:30:40:12
Unknown
So laser doesn't have to happen in one sitting. I think people get especially newer folks are on the phone. They think they've got to close it right then and there and, they don't they don't have to. But what would you say to somebody? Because we get this a lot, too. I'm thinking of Anna. She she's would probably tell you this.
00:30:40:14 - 00:31:03:04
Unknown
What if somebody says I'm not a natural sales person? Yeah. I don't really like talking to people. I'm actually really happy you brought up Anna. And also just super proud of her, because this was a very uncomfortable process for her. She did not like digging deep and asking personal questions. She felt it was rude or or that it was uncomfortable.
00:31:03:04 - 00:31:24:02
Unknown
But she also really, really wanted to help people. And so if the only way you can uncover a problem, the only way you can actually help somebody is if you do go deep and ask those questions. If you let people give you surface level answers, you will not solve their problem. You will not win and you will waste her time.
00:31:24:04 - 00:31:44:05
Unknown
And so when she started implementing it and got results, that was the fuel she needed to to keep doing it. And now I believe she's like hiring her first sales person working on that. We were working on that last month. Yeah. And she's she's because she did it understood it I mean maybe got close to mastering it. Maybe she even mastered it herself.
00:31:44:05 - 00:32:08:01
Unknown
Now she's able to bring somebody in and and run your play on how to build the sales team, which I think is is phenomenal. She's a great example of somebody who doesn't love doing acquisitions. But she did understand that in order to have somebody working for her and hold them accountable, she needed to have done it, and she needed to know how to do it the right way so that she could coach it and hold them accountable.
00:32:08:01 - 00:32:30:11
Unknown
And then, of course, you know, she can plug them right into our Wednesday sales training call. And, and they can get training there as well. Yeah. And then they get trained by the one and only. There are certain things that people say then you might even call them their objections. My leads are bad. Or the other one that I would say is I don't like talking to people.
00:32:30:11 - 00:32:52:14
Unknown
I'm not good at it or, you know, it's a more competitive market. Sellers are just, more unrealistic today, than they ever been. Is that true? Have any has anything actually changed with the sellers that we're talking to? Not a thing. Nothing. The sellers problems have not changed. I've heard the same ones for the last ten years.
00:32:52:16 - 00:33:15:01
Unknown
The the scenarios, the situations like they're the same thing. The person is likely in distress and needs a way out, but they don't know how to do it. They've there's been a lot of in action for a really long time. And so we think I think especially when when you're new and you just start doing acquisitions, you think this should be easy.
00:33:15:01 - 00:33:45:06
Unknown
This person's living in a terrible situation. There's there's circumstances, there's this person's living in terrible circumstances. Their situation is absolutely terrible. They should want to leave. But the truth is, they've been accepting this for a long period of time, and so they're less likely to change their behavior unless you give them a reason to do so. Right. As far as you know, they want such high prices so far over ask.
00:33:45:06 - 00:34:09:16
Unknown
I think a lot of that's fallen off. This is probably the least difficult I've seen sellers in the last five years. Yeah, I think people recognize the market has shifted. I mean, it's been basically two and a half years because it started to shift mid 2022, and people are seeing things set on the market and seeing more things be available, and they're seeing what's in the news saying that, you know, there's more inventory.
00:34:09:16 - 00:34:42:06
Unknown
So poor people, it's slow to happen. But you know, expectations are slightly changing. I would agree with that. The thing about leads are here's the thing about leads. Everybody, this cracks me up. If you have been generating leads and you think your leads suck and you're not closing a lot of deals, I would encourage you to take all the leads you've generated, whether it's from PBL or cold calling, and upload them into something like a prop stream or a batch leads or a reassembly and see the sold or receive whatever platform you're using.
00:34:42:06 - 00:35:01:16
Unknown
See the solds and go look for everything that sold to an LLC. So those are all the deals that you missed that were motivated sellers that sold to somebody for some reason and go analyze those deals. Number one, that'll just give you facts and proof that there are deals in your leads, and it is your job to make a deal out of that.
00:35:01:16 - 00:35:24:09
Unknown
Now, the other thing I would say specifically about marketing is there we all have. We literally all have access to the same exact marketing. We can all go buy TV ads. We can all go by Google Ads, PPC, we can all go by leads. We can all go send direct mail. We can. We're all we're all doing the same exact things.
00:35:24:10 - 00:35:50:04
Unknown
So when you get to scale, you're you're more focused on brand. When you're smaller, you're more focused on being efficient with the spend that you have available to you. But the reality is, is the we all have access to the same exact leads, the literal same exact leads. There is no difference. So how is it that one person is closing 30 deals a month and another person's closing three?
00:35:50:04 - 00:36:12:04
Unknown
I'll tell you how it is. It's it's all about your what you expect to have to do with those leads. The people who are closing 30 deals a month. No, they have to be extremely aggressive in getting a hold of leads and re skip tracing leads and calling people's aunts and uncles and grandparents and chasing them to the end of the earth to get them on the phone to make that deal happen.
00:36:12:06 - 00:36:41:05
Unknown
And the people are only closing a deal or a couple deals a month. Don't understand what it actually takes. Would you agree or disagree with that? What are your thoughts? I 100% agree with that. Every single time that we have lost a deal to another investor, it was because we did not follow through. We made an offer, the seller did not like the offer, and in acquisitions we let our follow up slip and somebody else got it.
00:36:41:07 - 00:37:10:15
Unknown
Sometimes it was higher than what we offered, but sometimes it wasn't. And those are the ones that really hurt, because I know if we would have continued to aggressively follow up, we would have gotten the deal every single time. So for some, maybe some tangible advice or takeaways like give, what's one thing somebody could do walking away from this podcast today, whether they're, you know, they're on the phones, they're doing sales, whether they're big teams, small team doesn't matter.
00:37:10:15 - 00:37:26:09
Unknown
Like, what's one thing that somebody could do today to improve their conversions? The first thing to start tracking your numbers and putting them out there for everybody on your team to see. And if it's just you put that on a note, like a post-it note right in front of your face. How many people are you talking to?
00:37:26:10 - 00:37:59:07
Unknown
How many offers are you making that would that that just that alone will change the outcome. And I think for those you who want you feel like I need something in marketing or sales or something is missing in your teams. And on January 15th and 16th, we're going to do a small workshop. It's going to be people from our mastermind, and then we have ten seats available for people not in our mastermind, but not ten yet.
00:37:59:09 - 00:38:20:04
Unknown
However many are left. Yeah, there's a couple left. Okay, so maybe a couple left, but if you want to get in on that, it's in just north of Tampa and Tampa, Florida, the 15th and 16th of Jan, where we're going to deep dive on marketing. We're going to go into both niche efficient marketing and big broad brand marketing and give you an exact playbook to walk away with.
00:38:20:04 - 00:38:46:21
Unknown
And then the second day, we're going to go deep into the sales process, hiring, managing the whole kind of the whole nine on on the sales stuff. So if you're listening to this, you're going, well, you know what? I have some of those problems. I, I do have a mindset of my leads aren't good enough. I'm having trouble scaling and actually making money or I'm having I'm having trouble of turning my marketing plan into an actual system that's repeatable.
00:38:46:23 - 00:39:09:18
Unknown
Or you're interested in sales because you're not converting enough leads. Then you this is for you. Yeah. And that's what we're going to work on in Tampa on the 15th and 16th of January. You have two, two focus days. Day one on marketing. Day two is going to be on sales. You're going to walk away with a workbook, an actual plan and a system that you can implement literally the minute you walk out of there.
00:39:09:20 - 00:39:25:21
Unknown
I'd encourage you to to sign up and come again. This is not for newbies. This is for somebody who is already closing deals. You can have you can have an intelligent conversation with with operators who will be actual operators there, who are doing lots of deals. So you got to be the right fit for the room so you can apply.
00:39:25:22 - 00:39:42:22
Unknown
There's a link in the comments you can apply to come. Somebody from our team will reach out, make sure you are qualified and then, you can come to the event January 15th and 16th. There is a cost to the event. There is a cost of the event. It is more than a candy bar and less than a new car.
00:39:43:00 - 00:40:04:22
Unknown
And this event's actually going to be pretty unique because we're going to have both, our, our mastermind members there. But we did open up a small segment of seats for some operators who are who are looking to grow their business. All right. Thanks for listening to this show. Talking about marketing and sales, the most important part of your real estate business.
00:40:05:00 - 00:40:13:05
Unknown
If you liked it, make sure you leave us a five star review. If you want to come to the workshop, click the link below and come and we will see you on the next one.
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