I Don’t Want To Make Phone Calls To Sellers. Can I Still Be An Investor?

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“I don’t want to make phone calls to sellers. Can I still be an investor?” – Jim Wexford, Ann Arbor, Michigan

 
Joe: Absolutely – you can hire somebody to do all of this work for you, but I’m going to suggest that if you want to do this well and get a quicker startup and money in your pocket sooner, it’ll be easier if you make these calls yourself.
 
Joe: I know they can be painful. I was a real estate agent and I know the first time I started making calls, I did flat out cold calls. There wasn’t any Automarketer around to bring leads to me. I just got on what they used to call the ‘Criss-cross’, which was the phone numbers of everybody on any particular street, and I would start at the top and start calling. As an agent they teach you, ‘Call them and ask them if they’d like a free market analysis of their home’. So I’d make the calls and after 10 or 20 of those calls, I’d get somebody who’d say, ‘Yes, go ahead’. Out of 2 or 3 of those, I would get appointments and get a listing and then of course, we’d sell the property, so it really worked.
 
Joe: I hated it. I still hate it. I don’t do it anymore. I do everything by automation now because I want people to call me. It’s easier to talk to them if they’ve responded to an ad positively and that way, I get rid of all of the junk and the people that are upset.
 
Joe: I remember sitting down at that table. I waited until everybody left in the evening, I went into my real estate office where nobody else was around, got into the conference room, spread out all of the papers in front of me, spread out my script in front of me. So, I’ve got my phone numbers and the phone in front of me and then I was just terrified for a while, until finally, I’d pick up the phone and I’d make the calls and I’d get the business.
 
Joe: It wasn’t any fun, but I made money and it helped me grow my business, and as I did it, I got better at it. I got more comfortable with it and I became more confident with it and my conversion ratios went up. So many good things happened because of it. And it made me better at talking to everybody, not just in my business but in my life as well. It made me more persuasive – it made me learn how to speak in a consultive way to folks.
 
Joe: A good way to learn some of this is by going to Amazon, pick up some books on consultive selling and learn some of these techniques on how to talk to people.
 
Joe: It’s not the old used car salesman techniques anymore. Nowadays, it’s about learning how to solve a problem, so in other words, you’re working as a consultant.
 
Joe: If you go to a doctor and say, ‘Doctor, it hurts,’ then the doctor will ask you questions about what hurts, then he makes a diagnosis based on his knowledge of medicine and then you follow his recommendations and hopefully you’ll be cured.
 
Joe: It’s the same thing with what we do. We question the people to find out what their situation is and then give them their options (and there’s more than one option here) and then they pick the best one.
 
Joe: And in many cases, the best option is working with us, and if it’s not, that’s okay – they can go with another option as well. Sometimes, even we think that another option is better, but they still go with us, and in that case, we just make sure that they understand what they’re getting into. We want them to be comfortable with what they’ve decided on.
 
Joe: When you do that, people like you a lot better. It makes it easier to sleep at night, and, people appreciate what you do for them. That’s what we try to accomplish in our business because it makes our business sustainable in the long term.
 
Joe: You don’t have to cheat people – you don’t have to take advantage of some old lady and steal her equity out of her house by hammering her and negotiating down on the price. You don’t have to go do short sales and lie to some appraiser about how this property’s not worth it, trying to convince them to lower the appraisal – and lots of the other crazy things in this business – you don’t have to do those things – you can have a good, honorable business and still make a lot of money doing it.
 
Joe: Just like with a doctor – you go to a doctor and he solves the problem for you. He says, ‘I’m going to do heart surgery on you if you want to live. I’m going to charge you $100,000 and I’m going to cut your chest open and put you out. You’re going to be off your feet for weeks and months and you might even die, but – there’s a good chance that you’re going to live. And, if you don’t do anything, I guarantee you that you’re going to die. So, it’s a good option – it’s the best option for your situation.’
 
Joe: And that’s what we do for these folks – we find the best option for their situation. By doing the massive marketing that we do, we get more chances with it; we get more people coming in and saying, ‘Let’s give it a try’. I hope that answers the question.