Building Relationships with Buyers and Sellers (LA 1415)
Building Relationships with Buyers and Sellers (LA 1415)
Transcript:
Steven Jack Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill DeWit:
Hello.
Steven Jack Butala:
Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.
Jill DeWit:
And I’m Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny, southern California.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today Jill and I talk about building relationships with buyers and sellers.
Jill DeWit:
And more. I threw in there and escrow agents and money partners, because it’s all tied together.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you. You need to have them all on your team.
Steven Jack Butala:
This is quite possibly the single most important thing to get deals done, or really anything done in life that I can think of. The data part of this, I’m a what I think as a pretty good data person and a pretty good statistical person.
Jill DeWit:
You’re getting there, babe. I love, you’re trying to be so, not have a big head and I appreciate that, but you should have a big head.
Steven Jack Butala:
But it would all be wasted if we couldn’t sell anything. And every single one of the people that I know that are real good at this, every single one of the advanced members, the Land Academy advanced members, they can either do both data and sell, or they have partners like us and a situation like us.
Jill DeWit:
I think most of them have partners.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, they do.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
Actually most of them-
Jill DeWit:
I’m trying to think of one. Can you think of one? Maybe one that can do both, but even he is not as good on the personal part of it as he thinks he is.
Steven Jack Butala:
You know what, Jill? There’s a couple I can think of, but I think they have lot of people surrounding them. No, there is none. There are no people …
Jill DeWit:
Thank you.
Steven Jack Butala:
They either have a partner or they have a staff already …
Jill DeWit:
Right. Thank you.
Steven Jack Butala:
… that handles it, like a built-in sales staff from another company that just sells dirt.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Jack Butala:
Before we get into it, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It’s free.
Jill DeWit:
Brian asks, “Quick version. Is a higher or lower ratio of land postings like on Lands of America, et cetera, do total properties in a county preferable when identifying target county markets?”
Steven Jack Butala:
No. What he’s saying is if there’s a lot of properties for sale, tons of properties for sale, and then there’s a bunch of properties that exist in that market-
Jill DeWit:
In that county.
Steven Jack Butala:
… is it better if that ratio is higher, that there’s a lot of property for sale? The answer is hell no.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Jack Butala:
Go ahead.
Jill DeWit:
And then the longer version, he said, “Longer context, in Land Academy 1.0, chapter three,” I love this, “while Jack and Jill don’t go into a great detail on this, they seem to heavily imply that a higher land posting total property ratio is a positive sign, since they format the four chosen counties in green with higher percentages. And then they offer two cities with lower percentages formatted in red is what you don’t want to see.”
Steven Jack Butala:
And he goes on and on and on here. This is an incredibly intelligent question.
Jill DeWit:
This is Jack’s red, yellow, green chart that he …
Steven Jack Butala:
Yes. So, what Brian’s saying is how do I pick a county or how do I pick a zip code to choose mail? We have a, Jill and I, well, I devised this system a lot of years ago for myself and now it’s in our programs of this three, it’s a red, green and yellow test. It’s three statistics that involve percentage of property that’s for sale versus the universe of properties in that county, land properties. And you want that to be very low. All right. So, he’s going through Land Academy 1.0 and asking questions. And that’s absolutely what … Next week, we’re about to launch our accountability group, which is what this is for, because it’s brand new for us. We want to help new people really understand these chapters and understand the nuances of all of this, and Brian’s doing all the right things.
But that red, green, yellow test is three statistics. And in this environment, it’s too hard for me to bring it up and explain it, but it’s very, very important. Whoever you are, if you do these three things, these three statistics and pick a county where it’s all green, there’s three statistics. Sometimes one’s red. Sometimes one’s yellow. Sometimes one’s green and everything in between. What you’re looking for is three green, then you should mail there.
Jill DeWit:
Then it’s like, duh. How fast can I get the mail out?
Steven Jack Butala:
Exactly.
Jill DeWit:
Because look what’s happening in this area.
Steven Jack Butala:
This exercise that I just described works everywhere, every single county and every single zip code. It replaces and puts to bed forever any discussion of where should I send mail? What are the list of secret counties? I don’t know if this is going to work. Does the zip code work next to this zip code? I don’t know. It replaces that completely and entirely, and you can just check it off your list. Yep, those three are green. I’m going for it. And it will work. If it’s priced right, you’re going to do great.
Jill DeWit:
Excellent. Thank you, babe. Is there more to this that you want me to read?
Steven Jack Butala:
And then he finishes by saying this. Go ahead, Jill.
Jill DeWit:
By the way, at the very … There’s two huge paragraphs in the middle and then this at the end. “By the way, this is my first post. Loving Land Academy so far. Joined a week ago and everything Jack and Jill have to teach. Seems like this industry is on the cusp of great change/disruption.”
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, disruption.
Jill DeWit:
“I’m excited to jump in. I especially enjoy the posts from Kevin, Laurie and Luke. Great community.” Love it.
Steven Jack Butala:
I have to say, you’re using this community the way it was intended, the way that Jill and I built it. It’s not just us. It’s not just the programs. It’s actually reaching out to other members, asking questions, making sure you understand it, and then just beating the hell out of it like it deserves.
Jill DeWit:
Do you want me to say this?
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. You know what, Kevin, our-
Jill DeWit:
One of our moderators.
Steven Jack Butala:
This is not a usual question for us, obviously. This is so important. This is like building the foundation of the house correctly. So Kevin, our moderator, says this in response to Brian’s.
Jill DeWit:
Says, “Brian, I look for counties with fewer than 40 listings for each parcel size. For example, I search listings for four to six acres, like a five acre parcel, and then I skip the counties that have more than 40 listings. I don’t want to deal with a market that has more listings than that. Just move on to another county. Each of us finds our own rules of thumb for weeding out counties for our mailers.”
Steven Jack Butala:
And Kevin’s right. So Kevin’s used the red … Kevin’s been with us forever. He’s been to all our live events. He’s the moderator, and he’s had a lot of success with this program. And I know that. He and I have talked personally in person many times about the red, green, yellow test, and there’s easy ways and hard ways and data ways to do it. And so in the end, for whatever reason, after years of doing this, he’s decided to skip to the, for him, this is it.
Jill DeWit:
40. 40 is the magic number for him and that’s great.
Steven Jack Butala:
Does it work in Michigan for him? I don’t know. Minnesota, Florida. I’m not sure. So he probably looks at those states a little bit differently, but he would never say something like this if it didn’t work.
Jill DeWit:
Exactly. And that’s the thing, you’re going to get your own criteria. People ask us, like what we do on Thursday calls, would you do this deal, and we pull up Zillow and we’re like, “Whoa.” You see a lot of red dots. And everybody goes, “Well, how many red dots are too many? Do I sit and count them?” No, you don’t sit and count them. You’re going to get your own feel, like you just said, and you’re going to know like, oh, I don’t want to do this there. That’s a lot of competition.
Steven Jack Butala:
Those red dots, if there’s 100 red dots that come up on that screen, what only matters is how many properties are in that county as a percentage. So if there’s 45,000 properties in that county and there’s 40 red dots, that’s a tiny little percentage, and the days on market are real low, you’re going to do great there. Like I say, we don’t have any dart boards in our office. We don’t guess at anything.
Jill DeWit:
I wouldn’t mind having one though sometimes.
Steven Jack Butala:
What would you do with it?
Jill DeWit:
Put a picture on it.
Steven Jack Butala:
Whose picture?
Jill DeWit:
Not yours.
Steven Jack Butala:
Whose picture would you put on it?
Jill DeWit:
I can tell you what I put on from yesterday. We’re going to talk about it tomorrow about the deal we killed. I got a picture I’d put up there.
Steven Jack Butala:
There’s a seller, we’ll talk about it tomorrow, that we put a great deal together, Jill did. Everything was clicking. It was great. And this guy just went, he just blew up.
Jill DeWit:
Yep. We’ll talk tomorrow.
Steven Jack Butala:
Okay. Today’s topic, building relationships with buyers and sellers. This is why you’re listening.
Jill DeWit:
Am I starting?
Steven Jack Butala:
I’m going to start with a story.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. Okay.
Steven Jack Butala:
This is so important. This question that we just answered was really important on my side, on the acquisition side and the data side. But on other side, on Jill’s side, relationships are the reason you get deals done. And the first thing that comes to mind about relationships is I don’t really want to just do one deal with this person. I really want to do a lot of deals. And I think that’s false. That’s not why you build relationships.
Here’s an example. I took a class several years ago about this, and they used a used car dealer as an example. So in the seminar I took, that was all about relationship. It was an online thing, like Land Academy, like this, and the guy stood up there and he said, “Used car dealers are having a huge problem selling cars right now because of the recession.” And he said, “Everyone that I reviewed, or every used car dealer said the same thing. They’re reaching out on social media when they get a car in and they’re saying, ‘Hey, I’ve got this new car. It’s got this amount of miles on it.'”
Real estate agents are famous for this. Hey, I just got this listing. Look how beautiful it is. Here’s a drone shot. Nobody cares. No one cares about that. And what he said you should do and what I’m saying is what we do, this show is a perfect example, is provide information over long periods of time to get them to see your face, see your brand and trust you. And then when it’s time for them to buy a car, buy a house, they’re going to call you. And here’s how you do that.
If you’re a used car dealer, you’re in a neighborhood. So imagine you as a customer who buys a car every three or four years, you don’t care if they got a new car in. What I would care about is over and over and over on social media platforms, everywhere, on a zip code geography based scenario, that used car dealer telling me, “Hey, you know what? I sold 13 cars last month. Things are looking pretty good for the economy.” And my neighbor, who’s got two convenience stores, says his sales are up to, or his sales are down, or all the statistics. Make this just a big neighborhood thing. And I’ll tell you what. A year of reading simple little posts about, “Hey, here’s a neighborhood update and we’re doing okay. We’re not doing okay,” or, “Did you hear about this thing that happened over here yesterday,” that builds … I never would talk to the guy, but that builds relationship.
Inadvertently builds a relationship and trust of our neighborhood. And so, yeah, I’m going to go buy a car. I will think of him when I go buy a car. And real estate agents, there’s a few real estate agents that, in our market specifically, which is pretty high end where we live, and I’m talking about primary residences, provide data like that. Hey, our little zip code, 14 houses sold. Here’s the average price. And there’s new listings are this, and there’s this much inventory and all of that. I love that. Would that make you trust somebody?
Jill DeWit:
Of course.
Steven Jack Butala:
Because that’s what I think this is all about.
Jill DeWit:
We did that. Remember one time? We had a house that we did a renovation several years ago. And we picked, there were two girls. It was like Two Broke Girls. These two girls had a real estate team and they were just, the information they provided on these weekly newsletters that we found at the house-
Steven Jack Butala:
They put them on the doorstep.
Jill DeWit:
… every week, was like, they knew the area and they were really hyper focused on this area. We could tell. So when we called them, it was an easy like, “Hey, you’re going to list this house for us.”
Steven Jack Butala:
And they sold it.
Jill DeWit:
And they did. It was really fast.
Steven Jack Butala:
They sold the house like in a week.
Jill DeWit:
Because it was a perfect storm. We know how to renovate and stage it and they knew how to get it out there and sell it. And it was awesome. We did great.
Steven Jack Butala:
This was a lot of years ago, way before Land Academy.
Jill DeWit:
Because they inadvertently built a relationship with us exactly how you just said, and that was perfect.
Steven Jack Butala:
So I opened with those stories.
Jill DeWit:
They didn’t knock on the door, by the way. They never came knocking on the door and scare anybody.
Steven Jack Butala:
I opened with those stories intentionally, because I know Jill looks at this topic very differently and I would love to hear how you build relationships with buyers and sellers, Jill, because you obviously do it right.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. Well, you know what it is? You did the excellent way of saying how you get them to pick up the phone and call you. And then my-
Steven Jack Butala:
Which is my job.
Jill DeWit:
Exactly. And then my way, I take it to the next step, which is now I answer the phone and now I want to build a relationship with them to get the deal done. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a buyer, it doesn’t matter if it’s a seller, it doesn’t matter if it’s an escrow agent, it doesn’t matter if it’s your money partner, it doesn’t matter if it’s a lender. Whatever you’re working on. And it’s personal, professional, whatever it is. So you want to do three things. I wrote it down. Just kind of thought of it. There’s three things that I do to build relationships with these people.
One is I befriend them. I get to know them. You overheard me that day in my office. Someone called me, and I knew right away who it was calling in. I saved in my phone. This is not everyone’s in my phone on speed dial kind of thing. Most of it’s through the company. But even then I recognize the phone numbers after a couple of conversations. But right away, I could say, “Hey, how are you feeling?” I know she was sick. Or, “Hey, how did that weekend go?” One was my broker, by the way. I know my broker had a huge party a couple of months ago. And after the party, I’m like, “How did the party go?”
Steven Jack Butala:
Party for what? Just a social party?
Jill DeWit:
It was actually pre-COVID, now that I think about it, because it was a pre-COVID barbecue thing that he did, but I’m like, “How is the party going?” Also, by the way, I know he’s working with his daughter, which is really cool. And I’m like, so now every time, I’m going to ask how she’s doing. I think that’s great. So, befriend them. And what that means is get to know a little bit about them and remember it and ask them about it and be sincere about it, by the way. Don’t be phony.
Second thing is be nice. It’s silly. It’s so silly that I have to say this, but it’s true. Not everyone knows how to pick up the phone and be nice. That’s it. And then be patient. Some people are at your level. Some people are way ahead of your level. Some people are behind your level as far as doing deals or transactions or just life or working with money. Sometimes you deal with people, and I mean, they’re writing checks they’ve never written before. And sometimes you’re talking to people that are writing checks like this is piddly to them, but you don’t know. So be patient, never assume, and be cool.
The last thing I was going to say, I had an example like your example. One of the things that I have done in life is I’ve always made sure I’ve done my best to leave every relationship on a good note, especially leaving a job. I always want to make sure that … because you never know when this is going to come back. I have two examples. One is jobs that I’ve worked in the past in sales scenarios, and I’ve been personally reaching out to these people because I know I left in great terms. They love me. And I’ve actually reached out to my former boss and former coworkers to say, “Hey, I need some help. I’ve got some stuff coming up there. When I left to do this full-time, you expressed interest. Are you still interested?” And we’re having dialogues now about that. And I know how good they are. So there’s some good … I’ve got a good team. I can build right there from that.
The second thing is, it’s kind of funny. We have a former employee from another life. I don’t know how to say this, but we had another … Did we talk about what we did last year in other companies? I don’t know if I want to say it, but we had other companies last year. We were playing around trying different things. And one of them, I had an employee that didn’t leave. She decided to just throw the keys and walk out kind of thing. And now she needs something from me.
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, really?
Jill DeWit:
Yes.
Steven Jack Butala:
This is new to me.
Jill DeWit:
It’s actually kind of funny. And it’s funny, our whole team is like, “Are you kidding me? Now you need something from us?” Don’t burn those-
Steven Jack Butala:
You mean, she burned the bridge.
Jill DeWit:
She burned the bridge. And I’m like, you just don’t do that. If it’s not a good fit, it’s okay. Whatever it is. So I just thought that was funny to throw in there.
Steven Jack Butala:
And here’s some wisdom from an old person. I’ll tell you. We were going … I think it’s the next show.
Jill DeWit:
Okay.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yes, it is.
Jill DeWit:
All right.
Steven Jack Butala:
We’ll talk about it more tomorrow, but I’ve noticed with Jill that she can very easily establish relationships, very good relationships with people, whether buyers or sellers or whatever, if they have a light, kind personality. And it doesn’t have to be exactly like the personality, but we’ll talk about the deal that we just killed, that we would have made half a million bucks on it, but just none of us could take it anymore because they’re such clashing personalities that it was impossible to build a relationship with this person. They couldn’t remember-
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, because I’m not a jerk.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. That’s what I mean. They just didn’t respond to … They weren’t interested in signing anything. It was that bad.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
So we’ll talk about that tomorrow, but I think a lot of … It would be very unfortunate if the very first one or two or three deals that you did, you’re trying to listen to what we say and you’re trying to establish a relationship and it’s just not possible. There’s some times that it’s just not possible at all.
Jill DeWit:
That’s true.
Steven Jack Butala:
And so you just move on.
Jill DeWit:
That’s true. We’ll talk about that more tomorrow.
Steven Jack Butala:
Some people have had marriages like that, where it’s just no longer possible for it to work.
Jill DeWit:
As I’m agreeing with you, I realize what you just said.
Steven Jack Butala:
She doesn’t listen at all.
Jill DeWit:
Like, what the heck?
Steven Jack Butala:
This is classic stuff. Jill’s thinking about the next stuff.
Jill DeWit:
Like, what the heck?
Steven Jack Butala:
I do this on purpose sometimes.
Jill DeWit:
What are you saying, but no.
Steven Jack Butala:
You know we’re recording the show right now.
Jill DeWit:
Well, no, I wanted to say that. No, you touched on something good that I was thinking about. Building a relationship, like you said, like getting to have something … You mirror them a little bit. We haven’t talked about that in a while. If they go really fast, you try to catch up to them. Try to catch up to them. And if they go really slow, try to slow down for them. I mean, those little things like that.
Steven Jack Butala:
These are good shows this week. These are things that I don’t think anyone talks about. We talk a lot about buying and selling real estate. That’s the easy part. All this other stuff and why we’re so successful at this and why I think a lot of people in our group are successful, and especially at the live events before the COVID, we would all … It’s just like, oh, I’d talk to somebody and I’m like, “Oh, that explains it. Now I know exactly why you’re incredibly successful,” and it’s not because you know how to use Excel or you understand what an APN is or a perc test. That stuff is going to come anyway. You can learn that on YouTube videos. It’s this stuff, especially if you’re really young. I wish somebody, when I was really young, I would have said, “No one wants to know who you really are. No one.” The real you, nobody cares.
Jill DeWit:
Why do you think that’s a … I don’t think the real you is bad. I’m really confused.
Steven Jack Butala:
I think there’s a huge movement right now of people wanting to be accepted for who they are. And trust me, you do not want to ram your personality and all your junk and whatever you have down somebody’s concept. What you want-
Jill DeWit:
Well, if it’s bad.
Steven Jack Butala:
Jill, you just nailed it. If the person you’re talking to is going fast, go fast. You know, when in Rome. If they’re going slow, go slow for them. You’re going to get what you want. And that’s what this is all about. And have some fun while you’re doing it. And hopefully everybody wins.
Jill DeWit:
Perfect. Thank you. Happy you could join us today. Five days a week, you can find us right here on the Land Academy show.
Steven Jack Butala:
Tomorrow, the episode on the Land Academy show is called A Deal we Killed Yesterday. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. Yes, we kill deals.
Jill DeWit:
We do kill deals.
Steven Jack Butala:
We walked away from half a million bucks yesterday.
Jill DeWit:
I cannot wait because you know what, I’m sleeping great about it.
Steven Jack Butala:
Me too.
Jill DeWit:
It wasn’t worth it at all, and I can’t wait. I will tell you more. If you are interested in learning more about us or what we do, check out landacademy.com or houseacademy.com. We provide the education, tools and support you need to be flipping property like the pros. We are Steve and Jill.
Steven Jack Butala:
We are Steve and Jill. Information.
Jill DeWit:
And inspiration.
Steven Jack Butala:
To buy undervalued property.
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