Re: Over qualifying the sellers? - Posted by David Butler America’s Note Network
Posted by David Butler America’s Note Network on February 27, 2000 at 13:46:26:
Hello Richard,
In reading your first paragraph, it appears your thinking might be a little bit backward here. You say you are finding plenty of “motivated” sellers but no cooperative ones. By definition, motivated sellers are cooperative sellers.
However, motivation, by itself, does not insure that a deal can be made, because all sellers have needs. Most of them also have “wants”. Your objective at the outset is to try and ascertain their needs, separate the needs from the “wants”, and create possible solutions THAT WILL SATISFY THEIR NEEDS. Then you have to “sell” your solutions.
Keep in mind that a solution will rarely work unless it solves a problem for the seller. Really, sellers could care less about your needs. So, the ball is always in your court when it comes to finding solutions that give you want you want - at the same time you give the sellers what they need.
It is helpful to keep in mind that much of the time, even in desparate straits, many sellers are focused on their “wants” rather than their needs.
A lot of that is due to the fact that people tend to react emotionally rather than logically in terms of understanding what their real problem is.
That is where your challenge lies. You have to find a way to build rapport to the point where you can help them identify their problem(s), and then work into educating them about the possible solutions.
You’ll be doing good if you can get to the point that you can close on one of the ten propects you bring to that point.
Depending on your local demographics and economy at a given point in time, it may take you 20 calls to get one prospect - other times it may take as many as 100 calls to get one prospect. Things change by the day, so all you can do as far as getting prospects is continue to make the calls.
A big part of your success is going to come through educating your prospects - but to make this process work for you, you can’t spend a lot of time trying to educate someone who isn’t motivated, so your first objective is to identify as quickly as possible those who are truly willing to listen to possible solutions - and then put yourself in their shoes.
By the way, a very good book on the subject is OWNER WILL CARRY, by Bill Broadbent. Bill has been doing this for about 40 years now, and he is well known and respected throughout the creative real estate industry.
Also, in addition to some good information right here on this site, you might want to click on our banner above (not American Note’s banner), and look through our library of articles on the subject of owner carrybacks.
Hope this helps, and best of luck.
David P. Butler Vice President, Broker Relations