Managing mailer campaign responses might sound straightforward, but when you’re dealing with a tidal wave of inbound seller inquiries, it’s a whole different game.

In this episode of Land Academy, Steven Jack Butala and Jill DeWit dive into the art and science of managing mailer responses, tackling the flood of inbound seller inquiries generated from their targeted campaigns. From the initial wave of responses—ranging from thrilled to irate sellers—to the “sweet spot” when serious deals start rolling in, they share their proven strategies for keeping the process efficient, organized, and stress-free. Tune in to learn how to navigate the peaks and valleys of mailer campaigns, avoid common pitfalls, and turn every response into an opportunity to grow your business. Whether you’re new to land investing or a seasoned pro, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you master the mailer game.

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Managing The Flood Of Seller Responses: A Guide To Effective Mailer Campaigns

I’m Steven Jack Butala.

I’m Jill DeWit, and this is The Land Academy Show.

Managing Massive Seller Responses

This is episode number 2,101. It is Wednesday. We are talking about how we manage the massive inbound seller response we get to our mailers.

We?

Yeah.

How we? It’s like when I say, “How we pull data,” and you go, “Tell me about how you pull data, Jill.” I’m like, “I guess you’re right. I don’t.”

How Jill and her team manage the massive amount of inbound seller response to our mailers. To the person who does the mailers, thank you.

That’s you.

I know. All week this week, Jill and I are talking about how we’re planning to earn $2.5 million or more in 2025 buying and selling real estate. Each day on the show, we answer a question from our Land Academy member Discord forum and take a deep dive into land-related topics by popular request.

Roy wrote, “I have a seller that owns a property via an LLC. The LLC has multiple members, and all are willing to sell. The property is a mix of vacant land, farmland, some with current leases, and an old home and some barns. The sellers are offering to let me buy the LLC directly to avoid the transfer tax, triggering a re-evaluation of property tax and a couple of other benefits. This sounds good, but buying the LLC sounds like I’m opening myself up to potential legal issues unless I have amazing corporate due diligence. Anyone have experience in determining whether to buy the LLC or just buy the property directly?”

There’s no other place that I know of that has a transfer tax, possibly New Jersey, maybe New York or Canada. From an accounting perspective, we call this an asset acquisition or a stock acquisition. In the simplest terms, think about a McDonald’s. You’re buying a McDonald’s, and you want to buy either the company or the single location. Let’s call it a fast-food restaurant that a mom-and-pop own, like a McDonald’s. You can buy the assets, all the equipment, the building, hopefully, or maybe not, all the inventory.

That’s an asset deal, and those are the kinds of deals that we do weekly here, all of us at Land Academy and all the members. They could come to us and say, “I know you want to buy the restaurant and the building and all of that. I’ll sell you the company,” which means that I am buying all kinds of stuff that I don’t know about. Maybe their debt. Maybe they have a bunch of debt. They have a mortgage, I’m going to have to assume that. Maybe they have all kinds of accumulated payroll taxes that they haven’t paid, I have to catch those all up.

You never want to buy unless this is your business, you’re set up for it, and you have a team of lawyers and acquisition specialists. I know a lot about this because I used to do it. I used to buy and sell long-term care facilities like nursing homes and assisted living facilities, and there’s a lot going on. There’s a huge acquisition and disposition process that happens when you sell the stock of something. I don’t want to make this boring and complicated. Don’t do it, Roy.

You never want to buy an LLC unless you're very set up for it, have a team of lawyers, and acquisition specialists. It’s a huge risk because you’re buying all kinds of stuff you don’t know about—maybe debt, unpaid taxes, or other liabilities. Share on X

Using Data Tree For Ownership Research

You know what’s interesting about this? You bring up a good topic. We can go on DataTree, and you can pull ownership for the LLC. It’s really easy to see every piece of property they own or have owned in the country. That’s not hard. I wish there was a massive database of everything. They could have had cars in the LLC. They could have had, like you said, companies, employees paid.

There are so many different things, insurance policies, all kinds of other things in the name of the LLC. There’s just not a massive way to double-check that. You could make an attorney create or draft some document that says, “You’re swearing to me that this is the only thing you’ve ever had in this LLC. If anything else comes up, it’s you, not me.” That would still be a little bit scary, liability-wise, for what could creep up. Very interesting.

That’s the scary part. The good part is this, for the seller, think about the fact that you might own a piece of property or all kinds of stuff, cars, everything, in the name of the LLC. When I buy your LLC, there’s no transfer that happens. I bought the stock of the company. I now own it. It’s a legal deal. I got the keys to the building and the whole thing, but there’s no transfer of ownership at the county level. There’s no DMV transfer. There’s no real regular asset change of ownership.

The change of ownership is really on a piece of paper, an acquisition and purchase-and-sale agreement that goes in everybody’s safe when they’re done. “Here’s the keys. Thanks for the money. I’ve got the documents, thrown them in the safe. Now I’m going to go run the McDonald’s, or not.” Taxing authorities, specifically California, know about this. This has been going on since the beginning of time to avoid transfer of ownership and taxation, and they know that. What Jill’s saying is it’s getting harder and harder. There are databases everywhere now too. I’m leaving out all the ethical issues.

It’s funny though. I’m saying it’s so common with boats. That’s the place that I see it all the time.

Airplanes.

Large toys like that.

Case Study: 1-800 Flowers Acquisition Challenges

If you want an example of this, look up the story of 1-800-Flowers and how a guy purchased it and had millions of dollars of debt that he didn’t know about. He purchased it because they were out of business. 1-800-Florist or whatever it is. You know what it is?

I don’t know.

It’s a really interesting case study.

There are 800 flowers?

Yeah. This happened a lot of years ago, and he turned the company around and got rid of the debt. It was a nightmare acquisition for him.

Did anybody weigh in on this, by the way?

I don’t remember.

I’m curious now. I’m going to go look in Discord and see if there’s any attorney in Land Academy that said, “Here’s how to do it. Here’s what you do,” or, “Don’t do it.”

Are you kidding? Laura would say, “Do this. Hire me. Do this. We’re going to take ten months together. It’s going to cost about $200,000 or $300,000, and at that time, I will tell you that you can buy the property now.”

Can you tell he loves attorneys just as much as he loves real estate agents? Things Jack, we’ll use love loosely.

Lawyers have their place. It’s for me to decide, not them, what their place is.

Thank you.

Our topic is we’re going to talk about how Jill manages the massive inbound seller responses from our mailers that I generate.

Managing Seller Response Waves

That’s true. That has been Jack’s job in this, or role in this, over the years, and it’s never changed. Make my phone ring. That’s it. All I care about is making my phone ring, whether it’s on the buy side or the sell side. Now I do the sell side and manage that too. It’s really the buy side because no one’s better. Great, here comes all this stuff. We talked about it earlier this week. There are waves. There’s the initial wave, which is, initially, they just got it. Here they come. Some are mad. Some are thrilled. You get a variety of things. Usually, it’s a little too soon for them to really act on it. They need to make some decisions but be ready, because you never know.

The middle of it is the real juice, the meat of it, like, “We got your letter a week ago. We talked with all the kids. I think it was over the holidays, and then I opened up our credit card bill, and this couldn’t have come at a better time.” These are all the really good stuff in the middle. It’ll trickle off towards the end. You have an expiration date. Ours is usually 90 days when the offer is set to expire. There’s some call to action for these folks, and they will call you, and then they panic when they call you the day after. It’s the sweetest thing. “Will you still honor this?” “Let’s look at it. Let’s see what I can do for you.” There’s going to be six months later and six years later, stuff like that will happen.

The Importance Of Screening Seller Responses

How do I manage this? Number one, be ready, whether it’s you or someone on your team or PATLive. I want a live body answering the initial call right away. I’ve seen so many people fail because they had a Google Voice with an automated messaging or texting system or something, because they’re at their day job and they can’t take the call, and they miss it. Those people often will hang up, and good luck getting them again. They hear your message, they know you’re in business, but they were hot and ready to talk about it at that moment, and you missed that golden opportunity. I want you to first have that.

Number two, I want to make sure that you, or whoever’s answering the phone, is the best person that should be answering the phone. You can’t have your grumpy grandpa, because he’s home all day with nothing to do, answering your phone. That’s not going to be effective. If you’re that grumpy grandpa, know that. There’s nothing wrong with that, you just need to know that you’re not the best person that should be answering the phone. Jack and I have talked about this a lot over the last few months too. It’s common knowledge. Look at all the statistics out there about how many women are making these decisions. If you have a woman answering the phone, that would be my favorite.

It doesn’t have to be, but if you have an inspiring, helpful, friendly female voice on the phone answering these calls, you’re going to get a lot more deals right out of the gate. Especially if it’s a guy calling. If it’s a woman calling, it’s like, “We’re on the same page. This is good.” If it’s a guy calling, it’s going to often disarm them and be like, ” You’re a smart woman.” Make sure it’s a smart cookie who has a list and knows the questions to ask, and comes across as smart, then they’re going to be like, “I’m going to take this all seriously,” regardless of who’s calling.

I’m trying to think of my last point, which is, engage them. Ask direct questions. You get the information you need about the property and ask a few healthy open-ended questions that give you an opportunity to, A) find out more about the property, like, “When was the last time you saw it?” Let them talk. “Here’s the story. My dad had it. I actually didn’t even know he had it. We visited it for the first time last week when we got your letter. I found out I can barely get to it,” fill in the blank, and then see what’s happening.

You’re going to get information, and you’re going to have a chance to build rapport. You’re going to find out, “When did Dad pass?” “Actually, he just passed on Thanksgiving.” “I am so sorry.” Now I have a relationship with this person, and I’m real, and now I have an opportunity to befriend them and solve this problem together. That’s how I think about it. I’ll end it on this for me. You can ask questions if you have them. I see every inbound seller interaction as an opportunity to solve a problem together. Their problem is they want to get rid of it, and they want cash instead. I’m solving the problem because I want the property in lieu of the cash, because I’m going to do something else with it and make it more cash.

Leveraging Technology For Better Response Management

This is a huge component of why Jill and I are so successful, and why she thinks $2.5 million this year is too low. What’s the secret sauce here? If you had to really just paraphrase in a sentence, like in a soundbite, why are you so good at this? Everybody wants to know. What’s the secret?

I or my team is really here to solve the problem for the seller, not create problems, not overwhelm them, not scare them, solve the problem. Solving the problem continues into, “I don’t even know what to do. I’m a seller. I’m like, ‘This is all great, Jill. I don’t want this piece of paper, which is in my hand, which means this property. You’re going to give me cash in lieu of that. I don’t even know how to handle it.'” “Don’t worry about it. I got this. I’ll email you a little checklist. You can watch, you can know how it goes, and you know what to expect from escrow and things like that. I’m right here. We’re going to do it together.” I’m solving that problem. That is it.

I’m also quickly identifying, that’s a whole other topic, but I’m also quickly identifying if there is a problem because sometimes there’s not a problem. Sometimes people call back and are like, “I just want to know what it’s worth. I have no intention of selling it. I just wanted to hear. I don’t need the dough. Everything’s peachy. I intend to give it to my kids. They’ve all said they wanted it. It’s got the family cabin on it, and we’ve had it for three generations. It’s not going anywhere.” I go, “I hear you. Good for you. Move on.” That’s it.

The Power Of Follow-Up in Closing Deals

Somebody told me a long time ago, this person was and is very successful financially. He said, “If you meet people in your life from where they come, you will have anything you want. Meet these sellers from where they’re coming.”

That’s always the case. You take it down a step further, that even translates to identifying with them. Try to understand their loss. Don’t one-up them, but be compassionate. Speak the way they speak if you can. Like I said, don’t talk over them. If they’re New York people and they’re going really fast, up your game, try to keep up with them.

I would take it even way further than that, in your marriage, do that. Meet your spouse where they’re coming from. Don’t judge them. There are all kinds of terrible things that can happen, not necessarily in marriage, although that is true. In any relationship, meet your kids from where they’re coming. If you have a sixteen-year-old daughter, she’s in a way different place than you probably are. It’s probably not pleasant. We’ve been through this, and as best we could, you just meet them from where they’re coming and try to put yourself in their shoes. They just broke up with a guy. They think it’s the most tragic thing that could ever happen to them in their life. We all know the next guy will happen.

That’s a situation that we’ve encountered multiple times, which is, “We got divorced. Nobody wants it. We need to sell this thing. I need the money.”

It’s a seller situation.

“I’m liquidating our assets.” Good timing. Funny things come from that.

Whatever it is, if you buy and sell houses, I want to give it to you. If you want to hear some crazy stuff, send out a house mailer. We own House Academy too. Jill and I buy and sell a lot of houses, and I’ll tell you, you want to hear some crazy stuff? There are a lot of people that call us back and say, “That price is fine, but,” and then you start to hear the story. Whatever that is, 9 times out of 10, we’re going to help them solve it.

It's so easy to see something shiny out there and think, 'Oh, this will work,' but that's a fast track to getting off course and not succeeding. Share on X

They need to clean the basement up? Sure. They need to be there for 90 days because they need to move back to Massachusetts? Got it. We can work with you on that. It just becomes the real estate deal of dreams for us because they’re not going to sell to anybody else. They don’t really care about the price anyway. They just need help cleaning out the garage.

You’re a real person. It’s funny, I haven’t seen these commercials in a while. I’m sure they’re out there. The We Buy Ugly Houses people.

I haven’t seen that either. All those franchises, even HomeVestors and all that, they just all seem to be gone. I was thinking about that a few days ago. They used to have billboards.

I haven’t seen anything like that. So cool.

Join us again on Thursday. We talk about how we buy profitable properties that fit our acquisition criteria. This is imperative. It’s so easy to see something shiny out there and say, “This’ll work.” That’s a fast track to just getting off track and not succeeding. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill, information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.

Important Links

• Steven Jack Butala on LinkedIn
• Jill DeWit on LinkedIn
• Land Academy
• DataTree
• PATLive
• HomeVestors
• We Buy Ugly Houses