The Power of Answering the Phone (LA 1506)
The Power of Answering the Phone (LA 1506)
Transcript:
Steven Butala:
Steve and Jill, here.
Jill DeWit:
Howdy.
Steven Butala:
Welcome to The Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.
Jill DeWit:
I’m Jill DeWitt, broadcasting from sizzling Scottsdale, Arizona.
Steven Butala:
Today, Jill and I talk about the power of answering the phone.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. Nothing like a live person answering the phone. You need to do that, and I’ll explain more in a minute.
Steven Butala:
Yeah. 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 if you’re already a Land Academy member. Join us on Discord.
Jill DeWit:
Sean wrote, “Have any of you ever had a title company refuse to close a deal because the sale price is too far greater than the county assessed value? This just happened to me with two different title companies. I bought a lot with a current market value of $10,000. I’m selling it for $5,800, but the county assessor data has it valued at 3,825. The title companies are saying they cannot issue title insurance on the property because the sale price is more than 50% above the tax value. Since when does a title company determine the value of the property?”
Steven Butala:
Never.
Jill DeWit:
You are correct, Sean.
Steven Butala:
You’re correct to question this. They can’t …
Jill DeWit:
You are correct.
Steven Butala:
They shouldn’t. There’s something else going on.
Jill DeWit:
There’s somebody with … Is it a big ego thing?
Steven Butala:
If you’re brand new at this or you’re thinking about getting into this business, these things almost never happen. This is a strange anomaly that, Jill and I have done almost 16,000 deals combined in our career. I think something like this has happened to me maybe less than five times, but I’ll tell you, yeah, I had a title person one time, after she did about eight deals for me, called her husband and said, “These deals are all coming in. We should just buy these ourselves, they’re so cheap,” and so she took a bunch of business away.
Jill DeWit:
That’s, like, not legal.
Steven Butala:
I’ve had country recorders a couple of times refuse to record property that I bought because I was from out of state and they didn’t want to sell property to people that were out of state, especially for an expensive amount.
Jill DeWit:
Hopefully that’s all fixed by now.
Steven Butala:
Yeah, you can fix it. This, honestly, I would call a lawyer.
Jill DeWit:
I have an example, though. This is how I would explain it. We’ve all heard of this situation where a home was being sold for a price higher than it was appraised at. We’ve all heard of that. You get an accepted offer, the appraiser goes out … Normally, this happens. Normally, you’re buying a house, you’re buying it for $479,000. The appraiser goes out. We always want it to be that price or higher. We obviously want it to be higher, right, because thinking, “I got a good deal,” but it’s funny how, “Gee, look at that, the appraisal came back at $479,000. What the heck?”
Jill DeWit:
Now and then, and I haven’t heard so much now, but I think anybody over 30 has heard of this. Now and then you’ve had an appraiser goes out and then, like, “Oh, shoot, they only appraised it at 459,” so you have to pay cash for that last bit if you really want the house. This, to me, is no different, absolutely no different. The title company’s not going to go, “Nope, not doing it. Not taking it because it didn’t appraise to what you’re actually spending so we’re not going to close the deal.” They never do that. That’s not true. We just know that, and especially, often if there’s a lender involved, that’s why you had to get it appraised, too, by the way, so the lender says, “Oh, we’re only going to loan you up to the 459, because that’s what it’s appraised at.” It’s a hot market, we realize, you’re buying it at 479. You get to pay that extra 20,000 in cash. That has happened.
Steven Butala:
The assessed value has nothing to do with market value, so whoever’s making these decisions, they’re making up a reason, for whatever reason, that they don’t want to do this deal. What I’ve had, and now that I’m thinking about it, this is what I think’s going on here, and this happened to me a lot of years ago. I did a bunch of deals with one title company in northern Arizona, and after, like, the 50th transaction, all acquisitions, there was an audit. This was normal. It’s not a bad thing. It’s not like an IRS audit. They just internally audit some customers just to make sure that there’s no errors and stuff, that they’re providing the right service.
Steven Butala:
They came back and said, because they were all in this price range, valued at 10, buy it for 5, sell it for 10, or whatever, they were smaller numbers like that. They had a company policy that they were unable to issue title policies for any amount less than 30,000, which I understand. They’re an insurance company so they need to make money and serve their customers, so we all agreed, it’s going to cost me 30 or $40 more per deal to get over-insured, so if it was a $10,000 value, I’m still buying $30,000 worth of insurance. Everybody shook hands, and that was it. I would dig into this and really find out what’s going on.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, because they’re technically not insuring the price that you spend. The title insurance is not covering, “Whoops, I overspent on it. I’m losing money now. I get to go cash in on title insurance.” That’s not what it is about at all. It’s covering it for reasons that they might make a mistake, kind of thing, as chain of title.
Steven Butala:
What concerns me the most about this whole question is that two different title companies said the same thing, so they clearly talked to each other. I used to call it the, we’re the evil yuppies from Scottsdale, and they don’t want us buying their backwoods property.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
My whole career, some version of that’s been happening. I’m sure everyone else …
Jill DeWit:
You’re right.
Steven Butala:
… is experiencing it, too.
Jill DeWit:
You know what I would do, Sean? You know what my next phone call would be? I have two title companies that are being weirdos about this. You are not wrong at all, Sean, and you are doing nothing wrong. Congratulations.
Steven Butala:
Totally agree, Sean.
Jill DeWit:
You’re doing everything right.
Steven Butala:
I agree.
Jill DeWit:
If they’re questioning how great this deal is, you’re doing everything right, Sean. The only thing I would do is now just start calling attorneys and go, “I just need an attorney close. Can you help me close this deal? I know it’s nuts. Yep, I did awesome. Here are the numbers. Let’s get this done.”
Steven Butala:
I would google real estate attorney for that zip code and I would actually pick up the phone and tell them this story first of all, and see what they say.
Jill DeWit:
They’re going to have a laugh if you, too. He’s probably going to say …
Steven Butala:
“Oh, you mean Sally, over there? Yeah, she’s been doing this to everybody.”
Jill DeWit:
“Uh-huh (affirmative). Oh, we’ve dealt with this before.”
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
“Yeah, totally. They don’t get it. I’m happy to help you close the deal.” There you go.
Steven Butala:
Today’s topic, the power of answering the phone. This is the meat of the show, and it’s also Jill’s show.
Jill DeWit:
You know what, this really still does make me mad. I’m just thinking about that. It’s like, I’m going to the Triple A to get my car registered, and they say, “How much did you pay for it?” I’m going to go, “$52,000.” They’re going to go, “You paid too much. I’m not going to give you tags for that.” That’s exactly what’s going on right now. Like, “Nope, not going to give you tags. Not going to give you a license plate because you’re an idiot and you overpaid.” No, they don’t care. They shouldn’t care.
Steven Butala:
Jill and I choose the questions to post on these episodes.
Jill DeWit:
I picked that.
Steven Butala:
We have lots and lots and lots of questions, so we choose the most entertaining, but in the back of my mind, every time I choose a question, I think to myself, I truly don’t want to read a question that discourages anyone from getting into land investing.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, so was this my bad?
Steven Butala:
I just don’t want you to think to yourself, “Man, there’s a lot involved in this real estate investing land thing. If this can happen to Sean, it’s going to happen to me. I don’t want to undo deals like this and figure it all out.” This is so unusual, these types of things.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, true.
Steven Butala:
But, they’re funny as hell, so we put them on the show.
Jill DeWit:
Totally. Thank you. It’s a good laugh for all of us. Okay, so the power of answering the phone. Here’s the deal. If you really want to get a deal, whether it’s on the buy side or the sell side, so you’re buying from a seller or you’re selling to a buyer, you need to answer the phone. If you think you’re going to sit back and rely on answering machines and text messages and emails, you’re missing out. You’re not going to do as many deals as I am.
Steven Butala:
How did this become a topic? This is customer service week. This question is obviously getting asked a lot for customer service.
Jill DeWit:
Because it came up in recent communication. I don’t remember if it was one of the accountability groups. It must have been an accountability group or maybe a Thursday call or something. We were just uncovering a trend. I was seeing a little bit of a trend and I wanted to remind everybody, stop with the Google Voice text messaging, and either find a way to answer your phone, pay your sister-in-law to answer the phone during the day because she’s home anyway taking care of her kids, or get PATLive or some other service, because a lot of people think, “I’m just going to let the calls come in. I’ll just see what messages I get, then I’ll call them back.”
Jill DeWit:
I would argue, for every voicemail you get, there’s three hang ups that you didn’t get, and those could be the right person to either sell you a property or for you to sell it, too. I’m looking at my notes, here.
Steven Butala:
We live in the technology age, and every minute there’s new tools that are being developed to make our lives easier. Land investing is no different. I will tell you this, and because of that, young people who are much better at technology than most older people, believe that they have some type of technological workaround or solution over what older people do. That’s just how the world is now, and in a lot of cases they’re right. This is not one of those cases. Jill and I grew up with a cord …
Jill DeWit:
In the wall …
Steven Butala:
I remember when we got an answering machine.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, yeah, I do too. That was a big deal.
Steven Butala:
I remember thinking, “This is going to change our lives. We don’t have to be home any longer to wait for a phone call between 3:00 and 4:00 from the gas company, or whatever,” and it did, it changed our lives. Fast forward to now, it’s amazing. This business we’re in, got to answer the phone.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
I remember explaining this business model to somebody a really long time ago, a very young person, and we sent these letters out in the post office to land owners, and they just laughed in my face and said, “Get with it. Why don’t you send email offers?”
Jill DeWit:
Here’s what I want you to do. You’re new, you’re getting into this. This is how I want this to go. If you are not working a traditional 9:00 to 5:00 job, you’re remote, or however you’re doing it, and you can have your phone there, I want you answering the phone, first of all. I want you to get to know the sellers. I want you to get to know the area. You’re going to learn what questions to ask. You’re going to learn so much information about these properties in the beginning. I really want you to do that. If you can’t do that, you have a 9:00 to 5:00 job, I want you to do the things that I talked about, hire somebody in your family, hire your mom if you have to, and arm them with the right information, give them that inbound seller check list so they know what questions to ask, and you have that, too, and then, in the evenings and the weekends, when you’re not at work, I want the phone flipped back to you. I want you to do it.
Jill DeWit:
Now, over time, you’re going to go, “This is not what I should be doing. I know how it goes. I understand these sellers. I got a whole idea about this. I’ve got an idea how I want my script to go. I like the questions that I want. I’m going to tweak this, do that,” then I want you to outsource it, and then have it go to a PATLive or just some other place like that where you’re going to have a body answering the phone. How that works is, they’re going to take your questions, the four questions, the three questions or the two questions, or the 10 questions, however much money you want to spend, because the longer the calls are the more it costs, to capture that information.
Jill DeWit:
What happens at the end of the day, you’re going to get an email with all the information they collected. This person said, “Go jump in the lake.” This person said, “Yes, please call me back on Tuesday,” and such and such and such. You have all these opportunities and ways to do it. You like you had a response.
Steven Butala:
We have a person in Career Path right now, long before they were in Career Path, scheduled a couple of consulting calls with me. This is more than a year ago, and the first one, they said, “Look, we sent 4,000 mailers out and it failed,” and I remember Jill and I did this consulting call with these guys, and she said, “Why did it fail?” They put a spreadsheet up and said, “These three properties, we got signed offers back, but that’s it.” I said, “Well then, why did it fail?” Then, they finally said, “Look, we didn’t answer the phone. It just went to voicemail.” I said, “How many messages did you get?” “About 14.” “Did you call them back?” “No.” “On the caller ID, how many actual phone calls did you get at that specific phone number?”
Steven Butala:
“Oh, too many to count,” so this is what I said, “You guys need to go back on that caller ID, call every single one of those people back, and say, ‘Look, I think you called me. I don’t think I’m wrong here, but I think you called me and I offered some …'”
Jill DeWit:
” … to buy property from you.”
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), and they’re going to go, “Oh, yeah. Where is that?”
Steven Butala:
They scheduled a call to me two weeks later and said, “Yeah, we’re buying 30 properties now.”
Jill DeWit:
Yep. There’s another thing I want to just point out, one little tip, as we end this. It’s so powerful when you can answer the phone, and the sellers or the buyers, whatever it is, know that you’re the owner and that you’re making the decisions. They love that. They love that you’re not an agent. You’re not the assistant. Again, when you’re new, I want you to get going on this, and it’s the greatest thing when you can say, “Yeah, it’s just me and my husband and it’s our sweet little company, and I totally want to buy your property, and whatever price you and I agree on, that’s the price we’re going to spend, period.” You are supplying transparency and they’re going to be comfortable, and they trust you.
Steven Butala:
They want to make a connection.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. This is the funniest thing and I know I said it was my last comment. This is my last, last, last comment. Nothing beats when a seller gets my offer and they see my name at the bottom and they pick up the phone and call. They’re calling for Jill DeWitt. They know they’re going to get Jill DeWitt. They know, “Whoever this person is, I’m not going to get that person. I’m going to get their assistant. I might get a voicemail. I might get an answering machine. I might get an answering service.” When they pick up the phone and they hear, “This is Jill,” They’re like, “What the heck? As in, the Jill in the letter?” “Yep, let’s talk.” That’s the coolest thing.
Steven Butala:
I say this from my heart. I have a huge problem with answering the phone, and I mean it, and I took a personality test to prove it. I’m a tech person. Not an IT person, I’m just a technical person, and the personality test proved it, so what do you do? You get over it in the beginning of your career, and you just deal with it in the beginning, very beginning, and then once you’ve got a few properties under your belt and you realize that you can make some money at this and at least some part of that business, you enjoy, you find somebody like Jill and you partner with them, but you have to answer the phone. It doesn’t have to be you, and that’s why Jill’s name’s on the letter, and not mine.
Jill DeWit:
Please share what else was on this personality test. Please help me. What else was on there that I need to know? You know what, actually, more importantly, let’s just confirm I’m not nuts.
Steven Butala:
If you want to have an interesting conversation with your spouse, you guys should take personality tests, and it’ll answer a lot of questions.
Jill DeWit:
Yep, that’s true. Happy you joined us today. Five days a week, you can find us right here on The Land Academy Show.
Steven Butala:
Tomorrow, the episode on Land Academy Show, it’s Jack Thursday. I was asked to do a state of the union kind of thing, what’s going on 2021 real estate wise, and do we really care about lumber prices. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill DeWit:
If you liked that, that was just one example. There’s big picture things that come up that we think we know what’s going on. We’re guessing, should I pay attention or not pay attention, so tomorrow’s show, babe, is would you please share with us what we get excited about, what we don’t get excited about, when little things come up like lumber prices.
Steven Butala:
Yep.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you very much. If you need any sort of ownership or property details including owner phone numbers and FEMA flood map overlays, check out neighborscoop.com, created by investors, that’s us, for investors like you. We are Steve and Jill.
Steven Butala:
We are Steve and Jill. Information …
Jill DeWit:
… and inspiration …
Steven Butala:
… to buy undervalued property.
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