Jill Friday – Sellers Need to Like You and Your Dynamic Personality (LA 1553)
Jill Friday – Sellers Need to Like You and Your Dynamic Personality (LA 1553)
Transcript:
Steven J Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill DeWit:
Happy Friday.
Steven J 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 perfect Phoenix, Arizona.
Steven J Butala:
Today Jill and I talk about, well, it’s Jill Friday, and how sellers need to like you and your dynamic personality.
Jill DeWit:
It kind of sounds funny when you say it like that.
Steven J Butala:
I never would have thought that this was important to get anything done. And now more than ever, I don’t know if it’s my age or sort of experience.
Jill DeWit:
Maybe it’s me.
Steven J Butala:
It is you. It’s the Jill effect. And being an experienced parent, I just know that you need to have a dynamic personality and present stuff to sellers to get a deal.
Jill DeWit:
It makes a difference.
Steven J Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Well, and sellers and buyers, all of it, all of the above. And I can’t wait to talk more about this. I was thinking about career path this week, actually the last week, and we were just talking… It comes up often, and I have to remind everyone, get the mail out. There’s a lot of problems you can solve on the phone. And that ties into this.
Steven J 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, and if you’re already a Land Academy member, join us on Discord. I’m going to set this up.
Jill DeWit:
Okay.
Steven J Butala:
This is Sam and Malita, Land Academy members, responding to a question that somebody else asked about should I send a mail to a low activity area? Meaning wow, there’s just not a lot of comparison value. It’s both sales and actively sold property. This is what they say.
Jill DeWit:
This is cool. Their take on it. So Sam and Malita wrote, for areas where I just don’t see any activity or very little in the way of sold and for sale, I’m contacting agents that sell there and just getting them to give me the lowdown on the area. What’s going on in this area conversation? I’m a broker and have listed a lot of land in an area where we have tons on the market and very little movement. I would always be upfront with my clients on what to expect when listing land in that area. I knew exactly why it was slow over there, and I knew what would sell and what would sit. So maybe find out what sells in that area and what sits. Love it.
Steven J Butala:
Well, let me tell you a story. A true story, and it’s one that’s recent. We sent a mailer out in a centrally located state and did very, very well. And Jill found the right real estate agent to deal with. And he sold the property quickly. And to which she said, “Well, should I buy more?” I’ll tell you what she said in less than 30 seconds, “Boy, if I had properties anything in these three zip codes, I can sell it for $20,000 an acre.”
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). It was like, “This area, yes. This area, no. This area, maybe. This area…” That’s the conversation you want to have.
Steven J Butala:
Is there data involved in that? No. And the reason I put that, I’m a data person. The reason I put this question in this episode is because we’re going to talk about this is not all about data. It’s hugely about… And so think about now, if you call six or seven good local land real estate agents, what kind of conversations you’re going to have and how you can tailor a mailer around what they say without ever running any real data.
Jill DeWit:
Exactly.
Steven J Butala:
Today’s topic is Jill Friday. And she talks about how sellers need to like you and your dynamic personality. This is the meat of the show.
Jill DeWit:
So I was thinking about this because I was watching Shark Tank the other day. I know I talk about that a lot. It’s one of my favorite shows. When I’m on Hulu, it always just pops up, and I’m like, yeah, let’s see what’s going on. So, and it was really cool. There was a girl on there, woman on there, I’m going to say 20s, early 30s, maybe. She has little kids. And she was talking about, they had no money. It was a year ago. They had no money. And she was collecting all her kids’ hand-me-downs. She had three boys, and their kids’ hand-me-downs and just selling them to make money. And then she developed into making some clothes. Well, actually she had made some of the clothes, and she realized the clothes that would sell the best and the fastest for the most money were the clothes that she made.
Jill DeWit:
And it was basically these rompers that had an elastic in the neck.
Steven J Butala:
Oh, so little kids?
Jill DeWit:
Little kids.
Steven J Butala:
Tiny, little kids.
Jill DeWit:
Little kids. Yeah, yeah. So you could easily pull down their clothes, they could go potty, pull them back up, and it wouldn’t stretch out. And it would just be one piece. And it’s really easy and it’s comfortable for the kids kind of thing. No snaps, no this, no zippers, all this easy stuff. So anyway, the point is she was killing it not only because of that, because her personality. So she came on Shark Tank, she’s explaining all this. She’s like, I’ve developed this brand. These people follow me. I have limited edition. They love what I do. They like reaching out to me. I’ve got this little social media following. I want to keep this going and grow it and keep that energy.
Jill DeWit:
And they all said, “Oh, we get it. We see it.” So in the few minutes that she had in front of the Shark Tank guys, she was easily able to convey her energy. She was transparent. They all believed in her. She totally got a couple offers out of that. I don’t remember who she took, but it was really cool. So it makes me think of what I do every day. And I teach in Land Academy down to our 17-year-old boy. Truth time, I’m helping him right now learn to call people and get things done over the phone. He’s helping set up some of the utilities and different things at our home. And I’m like, let’s do this together. And I’m going to kind of coach you. And there’s little things that you can do to quickly, and I’m writing a whole thing about this, it actually ties into all kinds of stuff that I’m working on about building relationships.
Jill DeWit:
Like one of the things you can quickly do right off the gate, if you want someone to like you, the minute you call them, dive in with some kind of pleasantry. “Hey, how’s your day going?” That always gets them right off guard, number one. And you’re asking about them. You’re actually a nice person. You like them. You care. Instead of, “I need to speak to a supervisor.” How many times did they get that? Or, “You guys lost my bag again,” Or whatever it is kind of thing. No matter, even if it’s a negative thing, and you need to get… Usually you’re calling because you’ve got to get something out of them. The minute you can start off with a pleasantry, like, “Hey, how are you doing? How’s your day going?” Like, “Wooh, you guys sound slammed. It took me five minutes to get through, you guys must be worn out.” They’re like, “Actually, yes I am.”
Jill DeWit:
Right out of the gate in that one sentence, it’s not even your tone, it’s what you said. You’ve got them on your team because you actually care about them. You did something nice. So, today’s topic’s just about getting them to like you. And the point is, and there’s lots of things that I’m going to come up with towards the end of this year to really help you learn how to do this like I do. They need to like you and they need to get to know your dynamic personality. Why? A couple of reasons. One, I want them to buy from me. I want them to sell to me. Hello, number two, I want the deal to get done. I want whoever’s working for me to show up and get things done. And three, I want everybody to walk away happy customers, happy with my price. I’m happy with what they spent, whatever it is.
Steven J Butala:
You think this is nature or nurture?
Jill DeWit:
Both. I can nurture it. You know what? That’s a very good question. I think as a child, I used to get in trouble for giving away all my toys. My mom got mad at me. So I think I have a giving thing. That’s a nature part of it. But I think the way that I learned to talk to people and get what I want out of them is a nurture thing. I think that I was taught that being in my family, well being with my dad.
Steven J Butala:
I was born without a dynamic personality. I’ll tell you right now. And all of this, I had to teach myself to do this because I wasn’t getting what I want.
Jill DeWit:
Interesting. I did not know that because the man I met and the man I know is very dynamic.
Steven J Butala:
I was turning it all on for you.
Jill DeWit:
And very smart.
Steven J Butala:
I needed to be my best me.
Jill DeWit:
Aw, it worked!
Steven J Butala:
It did. It worked up until today.
Jill DeWit:
You got what you wanted.
Steven J Butala:
We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow-
Jill DeWit:
Now that I know.
Steven J Butala:
… but everything’s fine up until this point.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, cat’s out of the bag.
Steven J Butala:
I think this is something that needs to be practiced. And this is, especially for men. Men don’t stand in front of the mirror and do anything. They don’t stand in front of the mirror and see how they look, let alone how they’re smiling or not smiling or what their voice intonation’s like or how they present themselves. Trust me on this. And it’s too bad because we should. And the younger, the better.
Jill DeWit:
Well, let me just say, if you’ve tried and this is not you, and you’re struggling with your business, hire somebody, find somebody who can do that for you.
Steven J Butala:
People hire actors all the time to be the face of their company. So yeah, I agree with you Jill. But here’s what I really want to convey. This has to happen or you will not succeed. You can craft the greatest mailer there ever was, do the greatest pricing there ever was, have an amazing website, do all the stuff that we talked about in Land Academy, and all of it. But if you don’t get on the phone and respond to these sellers the way that Jill does, or somebody like Jill doesn’t do that, it’s just not going to be successful.
Jill DeWit:
They’re going to deal with me. They will pick me.
Steven J Butala:
Yeah. They’re going to sell it to somebody else.
Jill DeWit:
If you line us all up, they’re going to pick me.
Steven J Butala:
Yep. Jill’s our secret weapon. I mean, we don’t… Believe me, I’m pricing mailers. My pricing’s okay, but Jill just brings it home.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, when you get really good at this, it’s one thing to have a successful whatever, but then you can take it to the next level where you’re like, all right, I can really turn things around now. Now I’m good at this.
Steven J Butala:
If Jill doesn’t… If she’s not on the phone all day, she doesn’t feel like she put in a real day’s work. If I make one phone call a day, I’m not happy about it. I need to be in the front of the computer, in a dark room, analyzing data and picking new places, counties maybe subdividing the property, which is something we do now. And then I feel like my day’s, I’m contributing to the partnership. And so, I’m almost 55 years old, and I never knew that there was a place for Jill’s type personality in these companies and boy, I was wrong.
Jill DeWit:
Now you watch it, and you see me. I watched things going sideways in emails and communication. I’m like, “Get them on the phone and hand me the phone.” That’s it. And then when I get them on the phone, I’m like, now we can all talk.
Steven J Butala:
So one time, when Jill and I joined forces and we finally decided to… Well, she decided to quit her job, her W2 job. She said, “Okay, let’s go. Let’s do this.” And I said, great, I’ve had a phone number that has been unanswered after millions of mailers because there was a huge economic downturn between like ’09, ’10, and ’11 for us. It started a little earlier for the rest of the world, but so there’s probably a good 24 months where I was concentrating on other things, liquidating property I owned and all that. And Jill said, “Well, I’m ready.” So I took all the caller ID numbers from that phone number, hundreds of them and she proceeded to call people back and say, “Hello, Mr. Smith. I think you called this number on June 13th,” or whatever it was, “and probably because you got a mailer from us or an offer from us in the past few years-
Jill DeWit:
Just, do you want to sell?
Steven J Butala:
… and I’m wondering if you’d like to sell it.” Can’t tell you how many deals we did because of that. I’ll also tell you that every single mailer, wherever they’re calling, you need to get those hang-up numbers. And you need to call them and say… All caller ID numbers that you get from a mailer where they just didn’t leave a message, you got to call those people.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven J Butala:
People [crosstalk 00:12:25]
Jill DeWit:
Huge, missed opportunities if you don’t do that.
Steven J Butala:
We had a very successful mailer and people are reaching out to me now on email, whether they’re members or not members, and saying, “What the hell? You guys sent out 2200 letters, specific mail letters. And did like what? 20 or 30 deals.” Yeah, I’ll tell you why. Because of Jill.
Jill DeWit:
Thanks.
Steven J Butala:
Because Jill turns in transactions that were never going to happen into an amazing opportunity for us.
Jill DeWit:
Thanks, and I’ll teach you.
Steven J Butala:
You have to be, not at the beginning, you need to do all this stuff in the beginning, but you need to have a partnership like this.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you. So now you know you need to do it. Now you know why, and I promise it’s coming. Give me a couple months. I’m working on it. I can teach you. I’ll get you really good at this.
Steven J Butala:
Is this the showing up for life?
Jill DeWit:
No, no, this is this Jillify it.
Steven J Butala:
Oh, really?
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, yeah.
Steven J Butala:
Oh, see? I don’t know anything.
Jill DeWit:
That’s a whole separate thing. Yeah, we don’t talk about it. It’s awesome. Happy you could join us today. Five days a week, you can find us right here on the Land Academy Show.
Steven J Butala:
Join us next week for another interesting episode because you are not alone in your real estate ambition. I love Jillify it.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you. I know that’s your term. And I love it when people use that. That came up in career path one week. Someone said… or maybe it was on the Thursday call. Oh, it was a Thursday. Someone said, “Give me a minute. I’ll Jillify it. I’ll get this done.” I’m like, “Yeah!” That’s it. That’s the word.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find our content valuable and we really do appreciate your support. If you haven’t already, please check out our YouTube channel, hit the subscribe button, and give us feedback on the shows you love.
Steve and Jill:
We’re Steve and Jill.
Steven J Butala:
Information.
Jill DeWit:
And inspiration.
Steven J Butala:
To buy undervalued property.
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