What Does the Sales Person of the Future Look Like (LA 1229)
What Does the Sales Person of the Future Look Like (LA 1229)
Transcript:
Steven Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill DeWit:
Hello.
Steven Butala:
Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.
Jill DeWit:
And I’m Jill Dewit fighting back a cough and broadcasting from sunny Southern California.
Steven Butala:
Jill, fighting back a cough.
Jill DeWit:
I got to say, isn’t it kind of funny that nowadays with the Corona issue… I don’t know what to call it right now. I’ve heard so many funny sayings. But anyway, I’m afraid to cough or sneeze or do anything in public because I’m-
Steven Butala:
Or breathe.
Jill DeWit:
Or breathe too loud in public.
Steven Butala:
Breath in or out.
Jill DeWit:
Exactly. You can look at people through protective lens, but heaven forbid you touch, breathe, sneeze, blow air, fart. I don’t know. Just kidding.
Steven Butala:
Never heard you say that in the 10 years I’ve known you.
Jill DeWit:
Because girls don’t do that.
Steven Butala:
I know.
Jill DeWit:
Anyway, that’s why I was holding back a cough. I’m like panicking. We were somewhere the other day in a store with our child and he sneezed and I thought everybody was just, it was like Costco, and 20 heads turned. I couldn’t get out the wipes fast enough.
Steven Butala:
Yeah. Used to be like smoking. It seems like overnight you could smoke, you could light up a cigarette in a grocery store, wouldn’t matter, and then overnight it just seemed like, wow, you’re the devil.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. You’re smoking. Yeah. Isn’t that true? My head pops up now if I’m on the pier and I smell smoke, I’m like, all right, who’s doing it? Who is it?
Steven Butala:
Yep. You’re going to hell.
Jill DeWit:
That’s right. And now it’s a sneeze or a cough.
Steven Butala:
I can think of a few things that people do a lot that should be classified as the smoking coughing thing.
Jill DeWit:
I love it. What is it?
Steven Butala:
We will lose 90% of our listeners. We will lose all seven listeners that we have on this show.
Jill DeWit:
Can you say it in code.
Steven Butala:
No.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. All right.
Steven Butala:
And everybody knows what I’m talking about. There are things that people do that are just ridiculous, but they seem to be okay right now. And it’s all the decade we’re in. It’s stuff that’s just okay and acceptable.
Jill DeWit:
I don’t know, so if you know, please share it with me later. You think you know people.
Steven Butala:
Every single one of them is covered multiple times in the Seinfeld sitcom.
Jill DeWit:
That’s it?
Steven Butala:
If you’ve ever been disgusted by somebody that you went on a date with and it’s totally okay for some reason, but you’re like, “Nope, it’s not okay for you to clip your toenails like that in a state park.”
Jill DeWit:
Okay.
Steven Butala:
Or you know, this is the beach and I know that you think you look good, but no, you don’t.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, I do know that one.
Steven Butala:
Stuff like that.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, that one’s true. I am familiar with that. You know what’s funny? I missed the Seinfeld wave, isn’t that weird?
Steven Butala:
No, you didn’t. It’s totally okay.
Jill DeWit:
All right. I’ve seen it obviously and seen many of them, but not all of them.
Steven Butala:
The thing is about Seinfeld, it’s just constant references to things and so that’s the value in it. But sitting there watching this show, and I’ve only probably 10 or 15 episodes, but they’re the same episode over and over again that just deal with different stuff, dating and the silly habits that we have and things like that.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
You didn’t miss anything. Trust me. Today, Jill and I talk about what does a salesperson of the future look like? You know, because Jill’s a salesperson and to some degree I am too. I don’t like to admit it or talk about it, but I think it’s going to change. I think sales is so dramatically changed in the last 10 years even, with computers.
Jill DeWit:
I have some notes. Last 10 years in last 10 days.
Steven Butala:
Yeah. That’s great, Jill. I love that up to date thing.
Jill DeWit:
It just hit me. I was thinking about it today, putting down notes of what I wanted to talk about on the show and I’m like, I know what the salesperson in the future is and I’ll tell you here in a few minutes.
Steven Butala:
Excellent. Before we get into it, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on Landinvestors.com online community. It’s free.
Jill DeWit:
Scott wrote, hello. I’ve been a Land Academy member since 2019 and I have received a purchase agreement from my last mailer which led to a discussion with the owner. Much to my surprise, not really, since I know this happens quite often, in parentheses, the owner mentioned that he also had 240 additional parcels in the same County.
Steven Butala:
Cha-ching.
Jill DeWit:
Right? I love these. Most are five acres with the largest being 10 acres. This is great. Just asking for advice on how to potentially proceed with this large number of parcels. The owner has been selling parcels every year and has dealt with longterm option contracts like one year with another land investor in the past. That’s a long time.
Steven Butala:
I wonder if it was me.
Jill DeWit:
I believe-
Steven Butala:
This is a made for Jack deal.
Jill DeWit:
That I could easily wholesale these parcels and make a minimum of $400 per parcel but will not be willing to bite off more than I can handle. Any thoughts are much appreciated. Sincerely, Scott.
Steven Butala:
Like anything, what you want to do first is get all the data, get all the APNs, and run an analysis and see what you’re looking at. And so I would, this is a sentence I would say with as much enthusiasm as you possibly can muster, this is about sales. Sales happen on the acquisition side, too. I would say we love these kinds of deals.
Steven Butala:
I personally have a massive constituency. I know who to sell these properties to. This is what we do for a living. We’ve done it for years. I’m part of this huge group. We do hundreds and hundreds of deals every single day. I would love, love, love to see the list of these properties and I’m extremely confident I can put something together.
Steven Butala:
Actually, probably pretty quickly. Please send me the list of APNs. I’m going to run an analysis. I’ll probably need about a day to do it and I’ll give you a call back with an offer. We do want to buy this property, it’s just now a matter of the quality of the properties and the price.
Jill DeWit:
You know what’s funny when you first start talking, I thought you were going to go with an option agreement, which I’m not really a fan of right now.
Steven Butala:
I’m not either.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. All right.
Steven Butala:
I mean we never have been.
Jill DeWit:
I don’t really discuss it… This is the Jack and Jill show how we do it differently. I don’t share what I do. If they ask what I do, what are you going to do with them? I’m like, this is my business. I’m going to roll them into my inventory and see how it goes. But I don’t really talk about my business very much. And honestly, most of the sellers that I talk to don’t really care. They just want to get rid of it and how fast they can get a check. That’s really what it’s about.
Steven Butala:
Okay. This is a great point to bring this up at. This might just become the whole show here. A person that has all this property in their inventory is a deal maker just like us. And so you want to appeal to that person’s sense of you have it times 10, Jill, I want to get a deal done. What do you mean you have this kind of thing?
Steven Butala:
You buy and sell property? You’re involved in this big group. I want you to win, too. I want you to win, so let’s try to put a deal together. I love your enthusiasm. I agree with you. The one off sellers are like, just get this out of my garage.
Jill DeWit:
I’m going with the Coronavirus 10 day plan. So that’s the whole thing. I guess the question is-
Steven Butala:
This option contract, it probably doesn’t apply here.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, yeah. I hope he’s saying that-
Steven Butala:
With this group, we’ll raise the cash.
Jill DeWit:
Well, I hope that he’s saying he’s been doing it and it sucked because if I had a one year option agreement with somebody… It’s funny, I just signed up with a broker the other day and I said, “Look, I’m signing this.” He was open to rewriting it too. He would even do 30 days at a time. It’s just a pain in the ass to keep extending it. And I didn’t mean it like that. When I go in with a broker I’m interested in a six month relationship because I want to be over in 30 days.
Steven Butala:
So he’s not talking about doing an option on these properties.
Jill DeWit:
Okay.
Steven Butala:
He’s talking about doing a release.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, okay. Well-
Steven Butala:
[crosstalk 00:07:49] 20% of the properties on the first [crosstalk 00:07:50]-
Jill DeWit:
Well, I don’t even know if we even know that. Maybe we should just take them all down. I guess my question is on this thing, I don’t read it like that and I don’t know what the seller wants. So does the seller want cash right now because he’s going to-
Steven Butala:
Everybody does.
Jill DeWit:
Because he’s moving to Alaska and saying, “I’m going to be virus free with my family over here.” Or you know, such and such. That’s-
Steven Butala:
Who doesn’t want cash right now.
Jill DeWit:
I sound like the poopy one today.
Steven Butala:
Yeah. You do. This kind of deal excites me man, I’ve done a bunch of these. Every single deal that I’ve done where it checks all the boxes for me. Usually, one box is unchecked. Usually the deals we do are like, I love every single thing about this property except check one of the boxes might be price, might be access, there’s usually one, but at the-
Jill DeWit:
Timing.
Steven Butala:
But we still do it.
Jill DeWit:
How fast you want to do this?
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
Might be seller’s attitude.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
If it checks all the boxes, I will gleefully write a check and add it to the other side of my balance sheet. That’s what this is. We’re just shifting cash and assets around a balance sheet and ending up with equity.
Jill DeWit:
Okay, so you’re going to be Jill today and I’m going to be Steven.
Steven Butala:
These kinds of deals really make me happy.
Jill DeWit:
This is going to be funny. Let’s see if we can continue this.
Steven Butala:
There’s always five… What he’s talking about, 240 properties. Two or three or four, four or five of those are going to be like-
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
Probably pay for the whole deal.
Jill DeWit:
Okay, I’ll go back to Jill for a minute here. The big picture is ding-ding. Those are nice sized properties. I don’t know what County they are, but if it’s a good County that’s not flooded with available property, then you can be happy and be busy here for a year or two just selling these.
Steven Butala:
And make a million bucks. Yeah. Exactly.
Jill DeWit:
That’s the point here. If you need the funds, we all know it’s out there. Boy is it out there. People are calling me.
Steven Butala:
My checkbook’s open for this kind of stuff.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
Today’s topic. What does a salesperson in the future look like? Well, apparently what did they look like 10 years ago and 10 days ago? This is the meat of the show.
Jill DeWit:
You like my saying?
Steven Butala:
I did, I just repeated it sort of.
Jill DeWit:
Okay, good. We were talking yesterday when came up with this topic and I’m just like, what’s going to happen? I was thinking like, okay, look, all this crazy stuff that’s going on right now. What’s going to happen? What’s going to happen to salespeople? They’re not going to be needed. It’s so interesting.
Jill DeWit:
And what’s funny is about like us personally, I’ve had that job. I’ve cold called to… Anyone who’s been in this business knows you do 80, 100 calls a day, outbound calls. That’s a lot of work. It’s not so much fun. And I’m thinking right now, I’m like, okay, things are changing. And first of all, what am I selling? So many things, so many industries and so many things that are going to change. We’re all going to be rewriting our job descriptions and maybe our companies and where we’re going with this.
Jill DeWit:
Are people needed? Here’s my big point to this whole thing. I want to talk about it with you. As I’m putting down notes and thinking about what’s happening and what’s coming, and what are we going to sell? Your best salesperson right now is nothing but an online marketer.
Jill DeWit:
Think about that for a minute.
Steven Butala:
Really.
Jill DeWit:
Because I’m not really sure a huge sales team is needed. So for example, we’re doing it right now anyway. We’ve always been that way. We buy property, make it look really good on the internet, put it out there, have a button to check out and pay. I don’t need a sales person. I don’t need a team. I need a person to write a beautiful description and take great pictures and put it all together.
Jill DeWit:
So that’s where I think this is going. Everything that I’m doing online, like I’m not talking to people, isn’t that funny? I’m not getting any calls. I don’t know about anybody else, too, but no one’s calling me to buy anything. But they sure are hitting me with emails all day long. I’m getting nothing but ads, and emails and thing. It’s all online marketing. Nobody wants to talk.
Steven Butala:
Can I ask you a bunch of questions?
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
I think we’re just saying sales here, but there’s lots of different types of sales. Here’s a failing type of sales, regardless of how great you are. You have a flashlight that you can buy for 30 cents that you want to sell for a $1.50 on Amazon. And so the only way you’re going to get any attention or sell that flashlight at all to any degree of success is through making sure you’re at the top of the search function on Amazon.
Steven Butala:
So that’s not sales-
Jill DeWit:
That’s marketing.
Steven Butala:
I would even call that like online tech savvy.
Jill DeWit:
Well, here’s where I’m going with this.
Steven Butala:
There’s lots of different… The sales we do all happen in the acquisitions because you have the greatest property and it’s the cheapest and it’s going to rise to the top in that search that they do online. So what Jill said, I’m backing up what you’re saying, it becomes online marketing.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. And here’s my thing too. I just think about everybody in our industry, and I come back to realtors too. What’s going to be needed of them in the future? Because I don’t really need them to do a walk through with me anymore. I can do a virtual walkthrough. The seller can walk me through on a live video chat.
Steven Butala:
Realtors are only surviving on this fictitious, it’s an urban legend or urban myth that they’re needed to complete a deal.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
They only make their money-
Jill DeWit:
And they’re required to hold your hand through the paperwork, which most of them don’t know the paperwork themselves.
Steven Butala:
I mean at some point, I was thinking about this a couple of days ago. You know how you go into realtor.com and you get all the information that you want about let’s say where you live, see how prices are, line your house up against the houses that are next door, all that stuff. And then there’s a picture of somebody who uses too much hairspray right there. It’s Sally Smith.
Steven Butala:
It’s a picture that she’s using from 22 years ago by the way. She doesn’t look like anything like that in person. What if that was an escrow agent?
Jill DeWit:
Oh, I think it’d be great.
Steven Butala:
Man, me too.
Jill DeWit:
It should be.
Steven Butala:
And it was like you just click on it and you say, “Yeah, I do want to buy this house and here’s the escrow agent. She’s going to close the deal for you.”
Jill DeWit:
That’s a good idea, combine the two jobs into one.
Steven Butala:
She’s going to close a deal for you and here’s a list of the top three lenders that love this neighborhood and here’s the appraisers that they use.
Jill DeWit:
Didn’t that use-
Steven Butala:
And then you’d save 6% on the deal.
Jill DeWit:
Didn’t that used to be the way, by the way? I thought that there used to be a very strong relationship between real estate agents and title agents.
Steven Butala:
And mortgage brokers.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
Yes. It used to be like a-
Jill DeWit:
They would all know each other.
Steven Butala:
A trinity of things. Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
You would do for me, I would hand it to my person. They do my deals and we’d all work together and they would help each other. Someone would hear about a deal, say like, “Oh call Susie, she’s the real estate agent. She’ll show it you it to you. And then when you’re ready to close, I’ll take care of that.”
Steven Butala:
I did a primary residence deal a long time ago, speaking of 10 years ago, and the real estate agent that did the deal to this day, probably one of the best real estate agents I’ve ever dealt with. You know who I’m talking about? She said-
Jill DeWit:
AB.
Steven Butala:
Yep. She said, “Don’t worry about the [inaudible 00:15:15] at all. I’ve got a person that’s magical about this and I’ll get a term sheet to you in an hour and the only variables really going to be interest rate because this is what happens and that interest rates going to be dictated by your credit score and a couple other things.” And she did.
Jill DeWit:
That’s exactly how it should go.
Steven Butala:
And I said, how can I beat this? This is service. Now, I’m like, okay, there’s some value here.
Jill DeWit:
That’s true. Yeah.
Steven Butala:
We got off on a real estate agent tangent really, because that’s like an example of sales that’s just-
Jill DeWit:
In our industry-
Steven Butala:
Antiquated and it was over 10 years ago.
Jill DeWit:
Right. I’m seriously just think about all the retail, we’re not retail, but I’m just thinking about salespeople. That’s where I think that they are, I’m not seeing them coming back.
Steven Butala:
The harder you have to sell something, the worst the product can stand on its own two feet.
Jill DeWit:
Oh I got something to say about that.
Steven Butala:
This is kind of your show. I’m filling here. I’m just a filler.
Jill DeWit:
Oh good. Thank you. Then you’re bringing up good ideas. So, that’s so funny because one of the things that anybody who knows us and knows our community, we don’t sell. We share because that’s not-
Steven Butala:
We share.
Jill DeWit:
We share what we do and hopefully we weed out and only get the right people in, which is IE professional top level investors. That’s our goal. Because we want to do deals with them. But our thing is we’re doing deals.
Steven Butala:
As a commercial real estate broker, which is how all this mess started a lot of years ago and the real early ’90s. I had an older guy come to me, there was a lot of guys, it’s a full commission job, so there’s 10 people clamoring to just get real estate deals done in Detroit in one of the worst recessions there was. So it was a mess.
Steven Butala:
And there’s one guy at the end who’s constantly selling real estate. And he never listed anything and it was all apartment buildings. And I’m like, I went and I walked in, I said, “Can I ask you a bunch of questions?” He’s like, “Absolutely.” A lot older than me. I said, “What’s the deal here? Like you never get a listing.” He’s like, “Because I have a list of all the people who own the apartment buildings in the Metro area. They’re going to buy this properties from each other. They just don’t know what’s for sale.”
Steven Butala:
And he said, “But here’s the key,” and this is the whole takeaway, I obviously, remembered it for the rest of my life. He’s like, “These deals come to me all the time. This landlord says, I need to sell this. Can you sell it for me?” And he said, “I don’t do it very often. I only do it in the deals that I believe in.”
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
You have to believe in what you’re selling.
Jill DeWit:
Exactly.
Steven Butala:
If it’s not obvious that Jill and I believe in buying and selling land this way, after show number, whatever, this is 1,229 and all the people in our group that are just raving positive about it with the results. We’re into this, I believe in this.
Steven Butala:
I believe in rural vacant land. I believe in all kinds of land as a real estate vehicle to get filthy, stinking rich on the Pacific ocean. And it’s only going to get better, and that’s not the only benefit making money. I dig it. I love land and I love houses if they’re priced right when you’re actually getting away with something. When you’re buying, it’s cheaper than everybody else did because of data. So I love that whole component of it.
Steven Butala:
I’m very passionate about it and I’ve never wavered from that.
Jill DeWit:
Well said.
Steven Butala:
If I had to go sell ballpoint pens right now, door to door. I’m going to fail at it, the first minute because I don’t believe in it. I don’t believe the pen that I’m selling is better. I think door to door is stupid, there’s no pride in that.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you. Happy you could join us today. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. You can find us right here on the Land Academy Show. Tuesdays and Thursdays we are on the House Academy Show
Steven Butala:
Tomorrow, the episode on the House Academy Show is called not killing your spouse while building a business together. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill DeWit:
I’d like to take some credit for that topic.
Steven Butala:
I think I just stole that show from you.
Jill DeWit:
As we’re brainstorming the other day, so yes, thank you. The Land Academy Show remains commercial free for you, our loyal listener. So wherever you’re watching, wherever you’re listening, please subscribe and rate us there. We are Steve and Jill.
Steven Butala:
Information-
Jill DeWit:
And inspiration.
Steven Butala:
To buy undervalued property.
If you enjoyed the podcast, please review it in Apple Podcasts . Reviews are incredibly important for rankings on Apple Podcasts. My staff and I read each and every one.
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me directly at steven@BuWit.com.
The BuWit Family of Companies include:
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 Apple Podcasts.
