How to Avoid Acquisition-to-Sales Bottle Necks (CFFL 309)
Jack Butala: How to Avoid Acquisition-to-Sales Bottle Necks. Every Single month we give away a property for free. It’s super simple to qualify. Two simple steps. Leave us your feedback for this podcast on iTunes and number two, get the free ebook at landacademy.com, you don’t even have to read it. Thanks for listening.
Jack Butala: Jack Butala with Jill DeWit
Jill DeWit: Howdy.
Jack Butala: Welcome to our show. Jill is a little bit disgusted.
Jill DeWit: (laughs)
Jack Butala: In this episode, Jill and I talk about how to avoid acquisition to sales bottlenecks. This is another technical show. Sorry, there’s so many [we’re out 00:00:14]
Jill DeWit: I know.
Jack Butala: Great show today but before we get started, let’s share something interesting about what happened to us lately. Jill?
Jill DeWit: Okay. We have a bike problem, Jack. And I need to talk to you about this. So I was wondering if anybody else has something like this. There’s bikes … We can’t stop buying bikes. What is this?
Jack Butala: I don’t know.
Jill DeWit: It’s bikes, bikes, more bikes. Now this bike goes here and that bike goes … We have so many bicycles in our world. I think because we are now in an environment, well we’ve always been, and I guess in Arizona though it’s too hot sometimes to ride bikes so we don’t do them all the time. But here we do.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: Everywhere. And that’s my point. I want to be where I can ride my bike to my studio … check. I can ride my bike to the grocery store … check. My commute, our commute, rocks. Everywhere you and I need to go, we could do it on a bicycle.
Jack Butala: I know.
Jill DeWit: We could actually bicycle to the airport if we had to.
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: Because we rode our bikes past the airport.
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: So, we could do this. But there’s so many bikes. I’m just kind of like … Well, and equipment. But we kind of got past that. You know? All of our studio equipment.
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: So I’m just … Is it something about us? Does everybody have a thing like this?
Jack Butala: Like everything, it has to come back to something awful that happened in your childhood.
Jill DeWit: Like I never had a bike.
Jack Butala: (laughs)
Jill DeWit: I never had a dog. (laughs)
Jack Butala: Didn’t you tell me your dog died on your birthday once?
Jill DeWit: Yes.
Jack Butala: You can’t make that stuff up.
Jill DeWit: Oh it did. Oh my gosh I just messed up my headset here. So, yeah, on my sixteenth birthday …
Jack Butala: It was on your sixteenth birthday, too?
Jill DeWit: Oh my gosh, you want to talk about a sad story.
Jack Butala: I’m sorry.
Jill DeWit: Oh my gosh.
Jack Butala: That’s probably why you buy too many bikes.
Jill DeWit: Why I buy too many bikes. It all rooted in this trial, this traumatic childhood event. Yes, it was on my sixteenth birthday that my dog, Cindy, died. And then …
Jack Butala: Your dogs name is Cindy.
Jill DeWit: Her name was Cindy. Cindy Lou. Love that dog. You know, everybody has that dog growing up that is like … You get in trouble and you’re sent to your room. So I would say, ‘Come on, Cindy, let’s go.’ And she’d follow me. She knew it. It was like we were both in trouble.
Jack Butala: The dog got punished with you.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. You should see us walking down the hall. We both had our heads kind of slumped a little bit as we’re going to the bedroom, but I don’t know how it got to my dog, but yes there was a traumatic event. So you’d think that …
Jack Butala: You strike me as a frequently punished young person.
Jill DeWit: Oh I did all kinds of stuff. Oh you better believe it. That was it, man. I got used to it. And thankfully it was usually a swift punishment. So I’m like, okay, over. Let’s go.
Jack Butala: Yeah. I grew up in Detroit and we didn’t have dogs there.
Jill DeWit: Because your dogs froze.
Jack Butala: Yeah, we’d thaw them out like fish … in the Spring.
Jill DeWit: Did your dogs last 10 years longer than everybody else’s dogs because they froze? And you thawed them out in the Spring?
Jack Butala: Oh my gosh. We had to rust undercoat our dogs and stuff.
Jill DeWit: Your cars last half as long and your dogs last twice as long because you grew up in the Arctic.
Jack Butala: A second question posted by one of our members on SuccessPlant.com, our free online community.
Jill DeWit: Let’s move it along, Jill.
Jack Butala: Yeah, that’s what it is.
Jill DeWit: All right, that’s it. So Brandon asks, ‘Closing a deal …
Jack Butala: Lot’s of people are closing deals.
Jill DeWit: I know. Well this is good.
Jack Butala: You know, they’re really killing it.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: I’m proud of these … I’m really proud of these people. Go ahead.
Jill DeWit: Do you want me to use a county in this example?
Jack Butala: Yeah, sure.
Jill DeWit: Okay. ‘Closing a deal in the Apache county, Arizona, the county requires an affidavit of property value. The sellers are husband and wife as joint tenants.’
Perfect.
‘The husband is in another state and I’m sending him paperwork first, and then to his wife. How do I handle the affidavit since it has to be notarized by both parties? 2 separate affidavits? Thanks for any help.’
Do you mind if I tackle this?
Jack Butala: I want to know why the husband and that wife life in different states. I think before you close this deal, you should qualify them for the quality of their marriage.
Jill DeWit: You’re so silly.
Jack Butala: You should qualify …
Jill DeWit: Are you jealous? What if it’s a great thing?
Jack Butala: What if we qualified people based on … Are you good enough to buy my property?
Jill DeWit: Wait a minute.
Jack Butala: That’s the fastest way to go out of business. And that’s got to be … You got to break Federal discrimination laws and all kinds of stuff.
Jill DeWit: I think, this is hilarious by the way, that’s maybe why they stay married, because they don’t live in the same state.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: I can see that working very well for a lot of relationships.
Jack Butala: Jill and I live in different states often.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: Honestly, we do. We go back and forth.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: That’s why we’re happy.
Jill DeWit: And it’s, yeah, it’s …
Jack Butala: I’m happy damn it.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. Thanks a lot. Hilarious.
All right. So to answer Branden’s question. What’s great about this form … And for anyone who wants to know what we’re talking about, you can just Google affidavit of property value in the state of Arizona and a pdf will pop up and you can look at it. And if you scroll down to the bottom where the signature is, it says, for the signature, and it does have to be notarized, but it says seller, slash, agent … This is the key here. And to the right of it, it says buyer, slash, agent. The agent can be anyone. And it doesn’t have to be technically like a realtor or something. It can just be an individual signing on their behalf.
Jack Butala: Literally, the seller, you, Brandon, can sign that for them.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: So the answer is, save yourself a lot of time and energy. It’s actually the way it’s written … misleading. Anyone can sign that.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: As long as it’s a valid notarization.
Jill DeWit: And what I do, Brandon, is I take it a step further. I’ll even tell them, ‘Hey, there’s one more form and instead of me doing all this stuff, I’m just going to turn it for you. I’ll sign as the agent and then it’ll be notarized and I’ll take care of it.’
And they’re like, ‘Oh great, thanks.’
And you just send them a copy if they want it. That’s what I do. So they see it when it goes in. And all this is, this form, is really for the assessor to know what the property sold for. Is there any structure on the property? Was there any financing on the property?
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: Um, it’s …
Jack Butala: It’s to set the new assessed value.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: And Arizona is not alone. So many, many, many states have a document behind it, just like that. California is called what? A PCOR?
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: P-C-O-R
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: What’s the … TD1000 in Colorado.
Jill DeWit: TD1000 for Colorado.
Jack Butala: So, Jill and I have a website called ‘DeedPerfect.com’, where you can go and type in all of your information and it kicks out a deed for you. You can print it out and literally send it … Get it signed and send it in to the county. And all the different state attachments … There’s 49 states that you can do this with.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: On that website. This is not a commercial for that website. It’s a benefit for our members. It’s free.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: Just to take the paperwork hell out of some of these transactions.
Jill DeWit: Not-
Jack Butala: So that, literally … Just to finish the thought, Jill. Literally, you send in 2 documents. You send the deed in which goes to the recorder and they stamp it. And now it’s engraved in stone, so to speak. And then physically and literally, that other affidavit goes to a different department. It does to the assessor so they know there’s a transaction at which triggers the fact that they need to reassess that property value.
Jill DeWit: Yep. That’s it.
Jack Butala: How’s that for boring?
Jill DeWit: That’s good. You did great.
Jack Butala: You probably had 6 funny things to say and I just interrupted you.
Jill DeWit: No, it’s all good. I’ll save them. Trust me. They’ll come out. I promise.
Jack Butala: Do you have a question or do you want to be on the show? Reach out to either one of us on SuccessPlant.com. Today’s topic is ‘How to Avoid Acquisition to Sales Bottleneck’. So here’s a typical deal. You get the Assessor data through one of the products that we have, or however you want to do it if you’re not a member. And you decide that you want to send a bunch of mailers out, offers out, you do. You send them all out and some of them come back. They come back signed or they call you and you put a deal together. Great. What do you do next?
Well, you buy the property and then you get it ready to be sold. We call it ‘engineering’. You take a look around the internet, you put some maps together, get some cool pictures, either send a photographer out there or go out there yourself. Some people do drone videos. You take that to the level where you want. And then you post it all on the internet and then do some social media stuff and a buyer eventually contacts you, or if you’re set up properly on your website, they click on it and they check out just like they’re buying a pair of shoes. And then the deals over.
So, our members are experiencing some bottleneck points where they’re buying a ton of property, they just can’t get it processed enough from an engineering standpoint, and so the system gets jammed up, specifically in engineering. And it’s a timely point to say this because that’s where our bottleneck is always too. And we’ve been doing this since the 90s. So to work to fix that, about 4 or 5 years ago, we had some software designed specifically for us. It’s basically a CRM where engineers, they can be in a different country, log into the system, it’s all web [enabled 00:09:56], and do the maps and things like that usually when you’re sleeping. And you wake up and it’s done. So we have a solution. We have not released that. It’s still in the post stages of being tested an developed but we will release it as a full blown tool in the collection of tools that we have. So, yeah, there’s a bottleneck. Through the whole acquisition to sales process there’s a bottleneck.
Another place that we get a bottleneck and we’re bottled up there right now, is when you send out offers for years and years like we have, they call you back 10 years later. So it just seems to come in waves.
Jill DeWit: That’s true.
Jack Butala: So we have hundreds and hundreds of properties that need to be … That they’ve signed it and sent it back.
Jill DeWit: Oh.
Jack Butala: We’ve sent out 1.4 million offers.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: I looked at it recently.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: And so people die. And they look in the file when they’re going through their parents stuff or whatever. And they see our offer and they say, ‘You know what? Yeah. I am going to sell Dad’s 40 acre property. He never used it. I’m not going to use it. Let’s just be done with it.’
There’s a bottleneck there. We have solutions to all this stuff by they way, but can you think of any other bottlenecks?
Jill DeWit: Those are the 2 biggies.
Jack Butala: Ironically, I’ll tell you where’s there’s not a bottleneck is sales.
Jill DeWit: Oh, yeah.
Jack Butala: We never have too many properties for sale.
Jill DeWit: No. Yeah, and there’s always a way to … You can figure that out real quick how to get some money. But even some people get hung up on that. So, you’re right. One of the things that … What’s great about you and I is you really are the information and I’m the inspiration. And I talk to people because sometimes it’s a mental bottleneck. I talk to people that … They’re afraid to push the button. Now they’re a little nervous about even sending it in to the county, the recording it on the by side. Can we make sure it all looks great? And you know? You might screw some things up and it’s okay.
Jack Butala: Yeah, don’t be your own bottleneck.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: That’s what she’s saying.
Jill DeWit: There’s some mental things that cause some of these bottlenecks is where I’m king of going. Some people are like, ‘What if I send it in to get it recorded and I have something wrong? They’re going to be pissed off. They’re going to mail it back to me. I’m going to mess up the whole thing.’ And it’s not a big deal, that’s the thing. I always tell people, like what we’re talking about here too. You’re talking big picture stuff and I just want to address … There’s going to be some little mistakes along the way. If you don’t get … If your first 10 to 20 deeds that you send in to have recorded in different counties, if you don’t do something wrong and get it returned to you because your check was made out and you forgot $2.50 for … whatever …
Jack Butala: Transfer tax or something.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. And you …
Jack Butala: Yeah, if you don’t make any mistakes …
Jill DeWit: Send it in. Don’t …
Jack Butala: If you don’t make any mistakes, something is wrong.
Jill DeWit: You’re doing it wrong. That’s true.
Jack Butala: You know, in basketball, you gotta get 4 fouls.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: So if you don’t foul in basketball, you’re not trying hard enough.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. And when you talk about bottlenecks, that’s all it is. It’s not a big obstacle. It’s not a whatever. Jack & I call them speed bumps now and I love these little things too. The more that you come across these and you work through them, I think the better because A, you’re doing it. And B, it’s keeping out some of the competition.
Jack Butala: Yeah, and when it comes to these counties, their salaries are paid because there’s tax revenue. So you can call them and ask them anything.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: My favorite person to talk to at the county is the zoning people. For some reason, they know everything.
Jill DeWit: That’s true.
Jack Butala: The recorder? She or he doesn’t know almost anything about the actual real estate themselves.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: But for whatever reason, Zoning … They’ve been there and they’ve seen it and they’re ‘yep, this is a great …
Jill DeWit: They’ve walked it.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: That’s very true. That’s a good point.
Jack Butala: Join us in another episode where Jack and Jill discuss how to use information, that’s me.
Jill DeWit: And inspiration, that’s me.
Jack Butala: To get just about anything you want.
Jill DeWit: We use it every day to buy property for half of what it’s worth and sell it immediately.
Jack Butala: You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill DeWit: Okay I have a question.
Jack Butala: Go ahead.
Jill DeWit: I think so. I’m trying to decide. Is it Monday morning and we’re here and on it? Sometimes you and I crack up. I don’t know. We have Facebook live in a whole new studio that I’m just kind of … I’m still not in my comfort zone yet. I’m wondering if it comes across that way.
Jack Butala: Yeah, I don’t think we’re a real talent. That’s probably the core …
Jill DeWit: Oh.
Jack Butala: Core of the problem.
Jill DeWit: You’re so … You’re so … You.
Jack Butala: I don’t personally have any real talent.
Jill DeWit: Oh, yes you do.
Jack Butala: That’s the problem.
Jill DeWit: Oh my goodness. You are so silly.
Jack Butala: Ever hear people say, ‘I play tennis with this guy and I play better tennis. And I play tennis with this guy and because he’s not as good, I play down.’ It’s like playing up to someone.
Jill DeWit: Oh.
Jack Butala: My point is …
Jill DeWit: That’s very true.
Jack Butala: I’m your crutch, you know. You can’t …
Jill DeWit: Oh.
Jack Butala: You can’t expect to be … have any talent …
Jill DeWit: Shoot.
Jack Butala: Because you’re just playing down to me all the time.
Jill DeWit: Oh, that’s my problem.
Jack Butala: Yeah. You need a better partner.
Jill DeWit: Ah. Got it. Got it. That’s it.
Jack Butala: Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.
If you enjoyed the podcast, please review it in iTunes . Reviews are incredibly important for rankings on iTunes. My staff and I read each and every one.
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me directly at jack@LandAcademy.com.
I would like to think it’s entertaining and informative and in the end profitable.
And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes.
