When To Stop Selling (CFFL 539)
When To Stop Selling (CFFL 539)
Transcript:
Jack: Jack Butala with Jill DeWit!
Jill: Hey there!
Jack: Welcome to the show today! In this episode, as promised, Jill and I talk about when to stop selling. When is it just too much, jeez, stop with the shameless plugs of your websites.
Jill: Bank account’s too big …
Jack: Every other sentence is Land Investors this, Land Academy that. Before we get into it, though, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community, it’s great.
Jill: Merritt asks, “Hi all. I’m wondering if folks have any experience with doing deals with attorneys. I know that I’ve heard warnings in the podcast from Jack and Jill that attorneys have a tendency to kill deals, but I’m not sure that applies to when they actually accept an offer you’ve mailed them.
Jack: Man I have a lot to say about this already.
Jill: This is good.
Jack: Right?
Jill: I got an accepted offer back in the mail that looked like a great deal. Reviewed it with Pappy Jack, thumbs up Pappy Jack, that’s you. Strangely, after multiple attempts to get in touch with the seller via phone, no dice.
Jack: Oh darn.
Jill: Finally decide to email the guy and got a quick response.
Jack: Oh good!
Jill: He wants to do the deal but his deceased mom is on the title. I called the county and found out the necessary steps, removed him off the title-
Jack: Good for you Merritt.
Jill: And emailed him back the information, and the forms for him to file, et cetera. It should take him about thirty minutes of his time and cost $25. I said I would reimburse him. After I sent the email back to him, I notice that on his email, he was a D.A.
Jack: District Attorney.
Jill: It’s hilarious. Looking him up and found out he’s in fact the D.A. of the state’s capital county.
Awesome, this is so funny.
Knowing this makes me want to take this deal down even more to show that I conquered the Genghis Khan of the state with an Excel spreadsheet and a $5,000 cashiers check.
Jack: Oh, Merritt. We gotta have you on the show. You’re hilarious.
Jill: Is this cavalier and/or naïve on my part?
Jack: No, it’s great.
Jill: I really can’t run away, since I signed the Purchase Agreement with the D.A. Is this a mistake at a hundred miles an hour, Jack?
Jack: Nope.
Jill: Thanks for your thoughts.
Jack: No, so let me clear this up. I don’t dislike doing deals with attorneys. I just think that some of them can get a little overzealous and look for things to kill a deal. And by the way, just so we’re all clear, full disclosure. Lawyers get paid the more they talk and do stuff. So if they can stretch a deal out for a couple more weeks, or a couple more months, or a couple more years, they get paid more. They can bill more. The more problems they find and that they have to solve, the more they get paid. Do all of them do that? No. In fact, one of my best friends is a lawyer in Scottsdale. I’ve known him forever. His name is Kent Lang, he’s a construction real estate attorney-
Jill: Sales plug.
Jack: Yeah, well I hope it’s [crosstalk 00:02:54] more business out of it. I have never dealt with an attorney who is more straightforward, honest and tries to get stuff done quickly. In fact, I tell Joe, Kent wrecked it for us. Every other attorney we deal with it’s just, oh, it’s not Kent. You know.
Jill: Oh yeah.
Jack: It’s not the Kent level stuff.
Jill: I know.
Jack: No, so should you stop doing the deal ’cause the D.A. level situation? No, not at all. I think you should full steam ahead, and shake the guy’s hand and maybe potentially even meet him. You know, why not?
Jill: Exactly.
Jack: I think it’s great. If you’re gonna solve, I bet you I could name the state that Merritt’s working in here, because a lot of times it’s really hard to get deceased people out of a real estate deal. And if it’s gonna take you thirty minutes and $25, my hat’s off to you, you’re off to a great start here in your career. And you’re funny.
Jill: I love it. Love it, love it, love it.
Jack: If you have a question or you want to be on the show, reach out to either one of us on landinvestors.com. Why does he say it like that?
Jill: I don’t know!
Jack: Today’s topic: When to stop selling. When to stop plugging your own websites. When to just tone down the Tony Robbins crap. This is the meat of the show. Jill, you’ve had a ton of experience. This is the opposite show of yesterday, by the way. When is it just too much?
Jill: Oh my gosh. When you turn ’em off … It’s really easy to oversell. If you’re trying to sell, how’s that? So, okay what do I mean by that? If you are sitting there listing features and benefits, and anyone who’s in sales knows what I’m talking about. You have a feature, you have a benefit. Feature, benefit. And you’re trying to convey the product and make it a wonderful and why it’s wonderful and gonna solve all your woes, you know. When you start going down that path, and you’re caught up in that path, and you stop listening to the questions that your customer is asking you, you’re selling. And you crossed the line.
Jack: Here’s what I … Somebody told me this a really long time ago and it’s always obviously stuck with me. Everyone needs some problem solved. And when you’re solving somebody’s problem, we’ll give several examples here that are pertinent to our industry in a second here … When you’re trying to sell them something they don’t need or want, and if they’ve expressed, “Look, I don’t want a Cadillac, I just want a Buick, then it becomes too much selling in my opinion.
Like here’s an example. A guy calls in, or emails in and says, “I love this property that you have in Northern Arizona. It’s a little bit too big, but I can get around it if it’s got this, this and this.” And my comment or question to that person is, “What are we doing here? Is it a Christmas present for your two-year-old son? Do you want to live off the grid? What are we doing? Because I’ve got other stuff that may be able to solve this problem for you or get you what you want maybe more effectively.”
Jill: Listen to you!
Jack: You know, I just think that …
Jill: Oh, you’re making fun of me? You’re kind of a sales pro yourself. Oh, it’s coming out.
Jack: Don’t call me a salesman.
Jill: Jack, Jack, Jack. Wow. The “s” word. You know how to sell.
Jack: I think that if you’re solving somebody’s problem, I mean, there’s a million examples. Cars, cars are a great example. Land … Houses … Primary residence is an easy sell.
Jill: Right.
Jack: Everybody needs one.
Jill: Right. The main thing is you don’t want to be walking around trying to make sure everyone has your widget because you just need to get them in everybody else’s hands. You want to get your widget in the hands of someone who really wants and needs it, like you’re saying. And it’s gotta be the right widget. And if it’s not the right widget, get out.
Let’s go back to Jack’s example. There’s a lot of people that come to us that they have money burning a hole in their pocket and they want to invest in property, okay? Buyers. But I’m not gonna sell them something just to get it in their hands. Like Jack said, you want to make sure it’s the right one. And, by the way, what if they’re all fired up and they have no money, I’m gonna politely tell them, come back when you do. Please don’t go take out a second or you know, sell a child, or something silly, you know what I mean.
Jack: I think every time I walk by your office and you’re talking on the phone, which is about twelve hours a day, when I stop and listen, I don’t even know if you know that I do this, I stop and listen when you say, “You know what? You’re not ready for this. If you’re looking through the couch to buy whatever property you want to buy or get involved with Land Academy or any of the other stuff, the products that we have, it’s just not the right time. Why stress yourself out?”
Jill: Exactly.
Jack: Why would you put yourself in a bad financial situation … And you have a thing I’ve heard you say: “Please set up a separate bank account and save a bunch of money for six months and then …”
Jill: Call me in six months!
Jack: Yeah, that’s what it is. “Call me in six months.”
Jill: Exactly. I don’t care! We’re not going anywhere. So, it’s gotta be the right time.
Jack: That’s real, I think.
Jill: Yeah. Well, it’s just … times it’s just too much. You know, that’s what’s interesting. It’s like, for some reason, people cross that line where they’re just overdoing it. Where you almost want to say, “Shut up already, I’m already gonna buy it, please stop.” You have to get out of your own head a little bit and listen to your customer and when you hear them say, “Great, what do I do next?” Don’t keep going with six more things. ‘Cause what you might accidentally do is turn them off too, ’cause that’s happened to me. I have people, I’m like, I would’ve bought that, but they would not shut up-
Jack: Yeah me too.
Jill: -and now I’m out. I couldn’t stand it.
Jack: You know, we’ve all done that. We’ve all been on the salesman side of that. Where you get excited, or I don’t know why. A lot of years ago, but …
Jill: Meaning, the seller side or the customer side?
Jack: Well just too much selling. When I was younger, I was a commercial real estate broker.
Jill: Where you sold too much? Ah.
Jack: Just, like, shut up Jack.
Jill: Right. God, fine. Where do I sign? Knock it off!
Jack: That should be the name of our show: Shut Up Jack!
Jill: Make it stop!
Jack: Make It Stop.
Jill: “I’ll sign, alright, alright!” No, but, it’s just yeah, there’s a ton of too much-
Jack: That’s how Jill describes her relationship with me to her girlfriends-
Jill: Yeah, make it stop. [crosstalk 00:09:30]
But you know what happened? He wouldn’t stop, so I had to say yes.
Jack: Okay, so I guilted you into it. I filibustered you.
Jill: A relationship by guilt. Why am I here?
Jack: Who’s the winner there?
Jill: He wouldn’t go away anyway, so I might as well just gave up, gave in. Just kidding. No!
Jack: So recently Jill and I had to buy, we needed to replace some furniture ’cause it was just worn out. And Jill’s favorite couch manufacturer for a bunch of reasons is La-Z-Boy, which I didn’t know anything about. And so walk in this store, the guy walks up, he’s a retired real estate agent, and he says, “What are we looking for today?” And we described it. And he said … We walked past all the $17,000 couches and all that stuff, and he took us straight back to the, for lack of a better description, Scratch and Dent back room, and we found a perfectly good, unbelievable deal.
Jill: It was just-
Jack: Not brand new.
Jill: Yeah, it wasn’t even like it was anything wrong with it, it was just kind of like last year’s model.
Jack: Yeah.
Jill: So who cares?
Jack: And he was happy, and we were happy. We saved a ton of money. Jill got exactly what she wanted. I mean, she walked in the room and walked right to it, and we put a deal together on the thing. And the guy … he could’ve … It’s the upselling, selling something you don’t need or want thing, that that’s when selling is just too much, I think.
Jill: Right.
Jack: So he could’ve very easily said, “Eh.” He could’ve listened to us, which he did, and then steered us toward something that we didn’t want and wasted a bunch of time.
Jill: Well he also left us alone for a little bit. Like, “I’ll be over here. You guys walk around, let me know if you need anything.” I really appreciate that.
Jack: Me too.
Jill: You know [inaudible 00:11:16] like, that’s a good thing.
Jack: Respectful.
Jill: When someone comes to you right off the bat, there is a percentage of people that are ready to act at that moment, but there’s a lot of people that need to sleep on things. Especially depending on how much money this product is, whatever you’re selling. So if someone comes to you, you don’t say “Oh, it’s gonna go fast, you don’t make an offer now, I’ve got six more people that want this property.”
Jack: Yeah, come on.
Jill: Don’t do that unless you really have ’em. ‘Cause you know here’s the funny thing, is I really have had, the more I’ve had other interested parties, and I really will sincerely share that, but I’m not … and I will say, “But I want you to sleep on it, but I do want you to know that I am talking to another guy, so …” But you can tell when someone is being sincere. I can tell when they’re being sincere. Don’t make it up if it’s not true. That’s the part that drives me crazy. And don’t follow people around the showroom. That drives people crazy.
Jack: So let me ask you this, because I know you have a ton of experience at this. When as a seller now, as a real estate seller, do you turn it off and say, “You know what? I can’t deal with this buyer any longer.”
Jill: Oh, well you know what? That’s a very good question. I think the more experience you have, the quicker you will read these people, your buyers, and you will know when they’re serious or not. Now, there’s always gonna be some that surprise the heck out of you. You were thinking that guy said he lives there, he’s living in this … He sounds like a vagrant in a motor home, and he has nothing, but it turns out the guy just paid $50,000 cash, so he’s got … he’s okay. So you have to be … You don’t want to insult anybody, be careful, but … What was the question again?
Jack: I don’t know, I was thinking about something else too.
Jill: I already lost the question. Wait, when-
Jack: No, so when do you … Obviously you have a lot of experience …
Jill: Yeah.
Jack: What are some of the characteristics that you can share with everyone else when you’re out? When you’re like, you know what, this guy’s probably for real. When is it too much? You know, we’re talking about too much selling. Sometimes people, as buyers, it’s just too much. It’s like jeez, just stop.
Jill: Right. I have a lot of patience, so that’s a tough one.
Jack: I don’t.
Jill: So, I try to really quick qualify them and see if they’re really serious or not serious. And even if they are not serious, but they had some questions, I’m gonna still do the right thing. Because who’s to say they’re not gonna hang up the phone, and be talking to their brother-in-law, who says, “Oh my gosh, that’s exactly what we’re looking for” and he might be a good person, a good buyer. So I have a lot of patience I guess.
Jack: I think it’s a full-blown two-way street. So if you’re selling a piece of property, somebody calls you on a piece of … houses or anything, and the person on the other end of the line doesn’t sound sincere, they’re wasting your time … A lot of times I hear our salespeople on the phone and they’re talking to people and they’re just sitting there listening to some sob story. “I have to move out because of this, and I need to buy some land …” And they’re not gonna buy anything. I’m telling you right now.
Jill: They just want to vent. You gotta get those off the phone.
Jack: Right. That’s my point.
Jill: When it goes that sideways, then you shut ’em down. I guess that’s my thing. I’ll answer a few questions, but I’m not gonna sit here for 45 minutes. Shut ’em down.
Jack: So logic, or in just the natural course of things, you would think that more talking, or the more face time that you have is better.
Jill: No.
Jack: And I really … And I used to think that.
Jill: No you’re right.
Jack: And I know now with experience, after whatever, however many deals we’ve done, almost 16,000 deals, less talking is better.
Jill: You could accidentally talk people out of stuff, when you don’t mean to. That’s the thing. The more you keep talking, you might really mess it up. And go, “Yeah, and you know what, that whole thing about that neighbor next door with the gun and the whole thing, and the whole police that showed up, that was really a minor event.” So next think you know, you’re like I just shared something, oh my gosh, I didn’t need to. You know. And scared somebody. Which you know, you could accidentally talk too much. That’s a good thing, when to stop selling? One more good thing. When you’re talking too much, and you make it sound like it’s a little too good to be true, you could talk yourself out of the sale, and you don’t want that.
Jack: I think, if you describe the good and you describe the bad, pros and cons, and there’s not too many bad things, but there’s a bunch of good stuff, and you’re a relatively rational, down-to-earth person, you’re gonna sell a lot of stuff. Especially if you own it.
Jill: And remember that, the only reason you’re here doing this is … I’m assuming we all believe in what we’re doing. That’s the thing too. I’m not going to buy a property unless it’s a good property, then I know it’s going to be something usable and good. Otherwise I just don’t buy it.
Jack: Right.
Jill: So I have no trouble properly and-
Jack: Oh my gosh you’re right. You believe in the product.
Jill: -conveying what I have. And if it’s not a good fit for you, I don’t care. I got six more people that I’ll talk to that are interested.
Jack: You know why?
Jill: Doesn’t matter.
Jack: That leads me right to my next point. I am without a doubt 100% confident that we have the best priced property anywhere. And I don’t care what the product type is. The houses that we sell, the land that we sell. There’s nothing … Because I’ve done so much up-front work about what we’ve purchased it for, so if and when … and I convey that to our sales staff, but if and when we ever have to actually … We don’t have to sell that much stuff, because it just sells itself it’s so cheap. The best customer for us is somebody who’s done all their homework and they call and they say, “How do I get this deal done? ‘Cause yeah you guys are priced at half of what everything else is priced at, and I checked you all out and you look good. So let me know how to close.”
Jill: Bingo.
Jack: “Let me know where to click.”
Jill: Thank you.
Jack: That’s how I know I’m doing my job.
Jill: Yep.
Jack: If there’s a sales pitch … Sometimes people call and they say, “You know, I just wanted to know there’s a person behind this thing.”
Jill: Yes.
Jack: And I get that. That’s totally-
Jill: Uh-huh, yeah, totally. They’re legit …
Jack: Then they say, “How do I buy property that cheap?” And then we say, “We have this thing called Land Academy.” That’s how this whole thing started.
Jill: I know. Exactly.
Jack: If you have a question or you want to be on the show, reach out to either one of us. Oh that’s the wrong line.
Jill: That’s okay.
Jack: Join us on the next episode where we discuss how to value houses, one of our favorite topics.
Jill: That’s gonna be good. And we’re gonna answer Matt’s question about how to build a buyer’s list.
Jack: You’re not alone in your real estate ambition. I got all excited.
Jill: You did. I lost you there. So I hope I didn’t lose everybody else. So if you like our show, please rate us on iTunes or wherever you are listening. We really appreciate that.
Jack: I know, I didn’t know when to stop selling.
Jill: That’s what was going on. Overkill, Jack.
Jack: Overkill Jack. I like it.
Jill: Overkill Jack.
Jack: Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.
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