There are Uncovered Deals in Your Existing Mailer (LA 1763)
There are Uncovered Deals in Your Existing Mailer (LA 1763)
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 the Valley of the Sun.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today. Jill and I talk about how there are uncovered deals in your existing mailer right now.
Jill DeWit:
Yep. It happens.
Steven Jack Butala:
Every once in a while, Jill and I talk to somebody or it gets back to us and somebody says some version of this. “Yeah, I sent the mailer out and it just didn’t work.”
Jill DeWit:
Right. I actually got an email that got to me. There’s an individual, let’s just say the name rhymes with clue, who has got very close to our transaction coordinator because he’s submitted several deals. And the ones that he submitted that were not-
Steven Jack Butala:
I know who you’re talking about.
Jill DeWit:
They were not accepted. They’re all valid reasons. I wrote back, “Hey, this location stinks. There’s no access.” There’s really good positive things. But then there’s some that are good. So we have one right now that we funded-
Steven Jack Butala:
Is this the show?
Jill DeWit:
I guess I should hold it.
Steven Jack Butala:
“I guess I should hold it.” Yeah, hold it, Jill.
Jill DeWit:
Okay.
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. And I hope by now you know that Jill and I personally instruct a handful of new and existing Land Academy members in a class called Career Path. If buying and selling land is your career or you want it to be, let us know. Please email support@landacademy.com. See if this level of involvement is for you.
Jill DeWit:
It’s called Career Path.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, career path.
Jill DeWit:
Did you say it? I don’t know if you did.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yep.
Jill DeWit:
Okay, good. Sorry. Victor wrote, “To those who have done minor improvements on a property, like underbrush clearing or minor tree trimming, did you ever see any difference in the amount of time it took to sell?” I don’t.
Steven Jack Butala:
This is a very intelligent question and it’s probably rooted in experience. In fact, I know in your case, Victor, it is because 20 people responded to this in Discord, and ultimately I responded too, and so did Kevin. And the answer is no.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Jack Butala:
I know you have this deal. I know it’s a great deal, and you go all the way down and there’s a river back there and it’s beautiful and all that. And I know it’s your first deal. Congratulations, by the way. I’m sure you’re going to do great. But in this case, I know a real estate agent came to you and said, “Look, this property’s great, but you can’t get back to the river. And if you can clear some of this stuff I might be able to sell it faster for more money.”
Steven Jack Butala:
And so this taps into a bigger thing for me as a business owner and as a real estate deal maker, and that’s the real reason I included this question in this episode. Throughout your entire career people will come to you and say, and have this notion … I’m going through it right now with an employee and they’re not going to be with us for much longer. “If you just do this one more thing for me. Please, do this one more thing, then I can get my stuff done.”
Steven Jack Butala:
In this case, the real estate agent saying, “Yes, but if you can just do this one more thing, can you just clear this?” And trust me, it will not end there. That’s a personality issue. And I’m sure that many of you listening have had personal relationships like that, where the person in your relationship comes to you every once in a while and says, “Yeah, I like this thing about you over here, but you really need to work on this thing over here for me, because it’s just not working for me. So if you could just work on this one more thing, then it’s going to be okay.” So be very, very leery of that professionally and socially
Jill DeWit:
Counseling by Jack. I didn’t know we were going to there. Now can I add to this?
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh sure.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
Sure.
Jill DeWit:
Now it very rarely pays off. You go, “I did all that.” And sometimes you get it scheduled, you might go down the path and get it scheduled and someone’s going to buy it. And you’re like, “Oh, I didn’t even need to do that.” It’s more just, if you buy it right and it’s a good property, the right person’s going to see that. And you know what, and they’re not going to appreciate it. You rarely get your money out of it and the energy out of it that went through to do whatever it was.
Jill DeWit:
I’m here to tell you, we have bought and sold all kinds of crazy properties, including mobile homes with holes in them. And you know what, because the right person’s going to come along and they’re going to … You might fix it up and they’re going to rip it off anyway. You’re like, “Great. They just replaced the mobile home that I repaired.” That’s it. You can’t truly guess what they want, especially in the land environment.
Jill DeWit:
I’m a huge fan of … I don’t see it so much nowadays, but I remember back in the day with houses, you always hear of a carpet allowance, a flooring allowance. Huge fan of that, because how many times people come in … I’ll tell you right now. Our personal primary residents, they spent huge amount of money touching up spots of this very expensive Italian plaster finish, for me to come in and paint all over the whole thing. It was a waste of time and a waste of energy and a waste of money. So I wouldn’t do it.
Jill DeWit:
And so truth time, I only do what’s required. If there’s something that is required by the county for some purposes, for example, I’ve had to maintain this green belt kind of designation. I had to get kind of a forestry expert to go out and rewrite a report, and that’s required every time it changes hands or your taxes go up times four. That I understand. And I don’t want to pay times four taxes because I’m in all of the property right now. But it’s very, very, very rare that you have to do something like that.
Steven Jack Butala:
In this case, and in many, many cases this day and age, you can solve this problem or these problems by doing it electronically. If you’ve got a great graphic or a picture or drone shot of a lot.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, like staging a property.
Steven Jack Butala:
Of a lot. You can say, “This the footpath down to the amazing river.” And you don’t have to clear it.
Jill DeWit:
Clear it if you want. Don’t clear it if you want.
Steven Jack Butala:
Don’t spend any real money on site.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
Spend money on marketing. Spend money on a great video that says, “Here’s the river.” Point it all out, so that while you’re looking at it on the internet you can see, “Oh my gosh, this is a foot path.”
Steven Jack Butala:
And then pull a Jill, make it real positive. Like. “There’s a foot path, here it is, down to the river. If you wanted to, you could clear a path to put a vehicle down there, but we don’t want to spoil that. We want you to do that, you do as an owner to enjoy that.”
Jill DeWit:
I’m going to pick it, it may not be what you want.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. Hold on a second, Jill. Make it a positive thing. “It’s untouched forestry that leads down to the river where you can create your own camping site. And by the way, it’s priced so this far under retail so that it’s an untouched camp canvas.”
Jill DeWit:
That’s what I capitalize on, what you just said. In every one and 100 deals someone says, “Well, are you going to stake it out for me?” I go, “Hold on a moment.”
Steven Jack Butala:
Like serving steaks?
Jill DeWit:
Right. Sure, I could go to the county. I could get their guy. I could plan it out. I could pay and da, da, da, have it all done and walked and staked for you. “But let me tell you, the amount it cost me to do it is not going to be what I charge you for my time and my energy and expense and the work just getting it all set up. Or you could take that savings right now because of the way this is priced, and decide if you want to do that later on. You’ve got all of the GPS coordinates, you know where it is so you can decide if you want to do that.”
Jill DeWit:
And then mainly when I say, “Sure, I’m going to do it, but what I’m going to charge you is not going to be what it costs.” They’re going to be like, “Nope, never mind. I’ll handle it, Jill. Thank you very much.” That’s kind of what I thought.
Steven Jack Butala:
These people, meaning real estate agents and often title agents, they all need to be managed. If you let them they will rule your life, and they have to be managed.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. [inaudible 00:08:39].
Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s topic, there are uncovered deals in your existing mailer. This is the meat of the show.
Jill DeWit:
Right. I was talking about a member that … This actually got back to me because he is worried about his mailer not having the bang for his buck. I’ve got a list here of every mailer he sent out. Every county it went to, there’s 10 here, and how much he mailed. And I got a couple things that are going to jump out right away. “So there started off good, and then now look at our mailers later on.”
Steven Jack Butala:
Wow. Well, please read that.
Jill DeWit:
Okay.
Steven Jack Butala:
Without the [inaudible 00:09:16] edge.
Jill DeWit:
Nope. We started off sending 1,272.
Steven Jack Butala:
To county X.
Jill DeWit:
Not bad. Next mailer was 1,919. Not bad.
Steven Jack Butala:
We’ve done multiple deals with this guy, by the way.
Jill DeWit:
Right. I’ve got one right now that we just funded. We’ve got one for 1,920. That’s the one in that particular county purchased for 37. It’s listed for 90 with a great agent, I think it’s Whitetail. We got another one here for 2,766, and then another one for 3,066. So this is not bad.
Steven Jack Butala:
Jill, can you explain what these numbers are? You’re just-
Jill DeWit:
Okay. I’m sorry. Give me a second, thank you. Okay. What I’m telling you is, this individual sent out this number of units of mail, direct mail to-
Steven Jack Butala:
Offers.
Jill DeWit:
Right. With offers to sellers. This is the number of envelopes and offers that got in the mail.
Steven Jack Butala:
Excellent.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you. So anywhere from 3,066 units of mail offers to sellers in one county, all the way down to in another county, 263 offers in the mail. That’s too low. That’s not going to work. You need to send more mail.
Jill DeWit:
And what my point, what I’m trying to draw out here is, and when I get back to this person I’m going to let them know, they’re not sending enough mail. Do you understand? They started off great. I say your minimum … Your minimum used to always be 1,500, to get a deal.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. And I want to send this message very clearly.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
Jill and I are about to do a 50,000 unit mailer. Why? Because I don’t want it to fail. And if I send out 10,000 units, there’s a small … It’s not going to fail, these mailers don’t fail. This is what this show is about.
Jill DeWit:
But if you send out 1,000 or 300-
Steven Jack Butala:
If you send out 300 mailers, you’re not going to get any real response.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. You stand a chance to fail.
Steven Jack Butala:
And so why not just send out 50,000 and then go do five deals? And maybe you just end up doing the one deal where you make 50 or $80,000. And the mailer costs 20.
Jill DeWit:
My whole point is, it was timely that this email got to me. It got through my transaction coordinator to me because they become friends because of deal submittals and things like that. And good guy, and we’re doing a deal with him right now. My coordinator says, “Look, this guy’s worried that his mail’s not hitting and he’s not getting results.”
Jill DeWit:
I have two things to say. Number one is, I see the list and I’m really glad that he sent this through. It’s not enough. That right there is not enough. When you send out too few offers, number one, you’re not going to get as much response. Well, that makes it bad right there. And then number two, the response you do get, you’re going to find yourself trying to scramble and make a deal out of something sometimes that isn’t there. When you send out 300 and you get maybe 10 responses, I’m like, “Great. I got to make one of these 10 work.” That’s not what you want. I want you to send out three, five, 8,000 units of mail at a time and have 20 and 40 things to sift through, because then you’re not going to make a mistake. Then you’re going to look at these differently.
Jill DeWit:
That’s number one, it starts with mail. So uncover deals in your existing mailer, maybe you’re not sending enough. Number two, we just coached someone new on this just the other day, personally. You’ve got to answer the phone. You’ve got to dig in these initial phone calls. So much happens in this very first phone call that’s going to make or break your mailer. If you, first of all, don’t answer the phone, now you’re down 50% of chances, so think about that. You just cut that in half. Because by the time you call them back, are they going to answer the phone? Who knows. They threw away your letter, they don’t want to talk to you anymore. Are they going to return your call? They called you right then for a reason. That’s number one.
Jill DeWit:
That’s number two actually. Number three is, you’ve got minutes to forge a quick relationship with these sellers and see if there’s a deal there. And you’ve got minutes to have a nice conversation, to befriend them, to get on the same team. Even if they’re calling you back and telling you, “You’re nuts. I think the software’s stupid. How dare you?” Your job is to calm them down. Answer the phone, calm them down. Explain, “I didn’t mean to do that. This is not my goal in life to piss people off like this. This is not why I have a phone number, this is my business. And, “Hey, do you even want to sell? What is the number?” And get it out of them, just get that conversation going.
Jill DeWit:
And we’re not even to due diligence, we’re not even to do that. So many people are not uncovering deals because they’re missing them because of these three initial things.
Steven Jack Butala:
If you’ve ever taken a sales class, just sales 101, picture a funnel. This is what they teach you in a sales. There’s a funnel at the top. And then as it goes down, like a funnel, like any type of funnel that you use in cooking or a putting motor oil in your car, the mouth is big and you weed it down into the nozzle.
Steven Jack Butala:
And so this mailer, this mailing concept that we do, is a brilliant way to create leads at the top of that funnel that are very, very warm and very, very ready. They’re hot leads, they’re hot. And so that’s the work of the mailer. The work of the mailer is to get the brim of that funnel full. And they’re not going to fall down on their own, a couple of them might. But your job is to take them now, as a salesperson, from the top of that funnel and drop them down through. And that doesn’t happen by luck. It happens by what Jill’s talking about, establishing a relationship, making them feel comfortable, establishing trust, and then following through on what you say. And so yeah, 200 warm leads are not as … Or sending out 200 mailers might generate-
Jill DeWit:
A couple of calls.
Steven Jack Butala:
… maybe, maybe two warm leads at the top of that funnel. So now you’ve put the onus on you. You’ve given yourself probably what’s an impossible task of converting two warm leads to the bottom of that funnel, versus sending out 50,000. Now you’ve got what? 500, 200, whatever the number ends up being at the top of that funnel. You’ve given yourself a very accomplishable task of converting the two or three or four or five of those warm leads into sales, or acquisitions in our case.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s how this is. I’ll tell you, and I’ll end on this story. Jill may or may not remember this, but there was a time where there was a gap, a pretty substantial gap, during the last downturn where our phone … We’ve been sending out mail for years. Our phone number was still on. And so we weren’t answering it because we were in the survival mode doing other stuff, because there was just such a downturn. Anyway, Jill and I together turned it back around and we went back and looked at that phone number, the inbound phone number that’s been on our mails for so many years. And there were probably 100, 200, maybe 300 caller IDs in there.
Steven Jack Butala:
I sat down with Jill and she’s like, “You know what? I’m going to call all these numbers. I’m going to dial these numbers.” And she called several people and said, “I see that you called on February 5th,” or whatever it is. “And chances are you called because we sent you an offer to buy your property. And so I’d really be interested in taking a look at it.” And Jill converted, I don’t know, how many sales out of that? I can’t remember.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Jack Butala:
And so that’s what this episode is really about. You have to create these deals for yourself. They’re all warm. The mailer does a fantastic job of creating that top funnel, warm lead scenario. But it’s up to you to close these deals. I will tell you on a personal note, I suck at this. I suck at that top rim, warm lead scenario and converting them so that they drop through. She’s great at it.
Jill DeWit:
Right. I want to add one little note though. Too much time can’t pass. Because if too much time passes they’ve moved on, so you got to do it quickly.
Jill DeWit:
Happy you could join us today. Five days a week you can find us here on the Land Academy Show.
Steven Jack Butala:
Tomorrow the episode on the Land Academy Show is called, how a double mailer works and why you are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill DeWit:
Good. That’ll be good, I’m excited. Hey, by the way, I have something to say. In case you didn’t know, I’m just leaking something now in the post show, is Land Academy enrollment has been closed. And I’ll tell you right now, by the end of this month, it will be open. And hmm, there’s a holiday coming up at the end of this month and there might be a special running then. So if you’re thinking of joining Land Academy, hang on there, watch your email, watch our social media. Towards the end of this month we’ll be reopened and there will be something awesome to offer you to join. That’s all I have to say about that.
Jill DeWit:
Can you scroll down? I wasn’t going to read that. I replaced that. Sorry about that. Excuse me while I talk to our … Can you tell we produce our own shows? So I’m skipping that whole little thing there to that. Ready? Three, two, one. We are Steve and Jill.
Steven Jack Butala:
We are Jack and Jill. Information-
Jill DeWit:
And inspiration.
Steven Jack Butala:
To buy undervalued property.
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