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How to Talk to Motivated Sellers With Confidence

Sharon Vornholt
3 min read
How to Talk to Motivated Sellers With Confidence

I get questions all the time about how to talk to motivated sellers. They ask things like…

  • What do I say when they call?
  • What if they yell at me?
  • What if they ask me a question I’m not expecting?

Let me reassure you that just about every new real estate investor has the same fears and questions when it comes to talking to sellers (whether they will admit it or not).

There are a lot of brand new real estate investors are that are so terrified to talk to sellers they don’t pick up the phone when it rings.  Heck… even some seasoned investors won’t answer the phone when a motivated seller calls.  Even worse, there are some investors that even go so far as to send out an expensive direct mail campaign, but never answer the phone when someone calls them about their mailing.  What a terrible waste of money.

If this sounds like you, the one thing that you need to know is that you aren’t alone; just about everyone felt this way in the beginning.  I can tell you that I personally know seasoned investors that still hate taking calls from sellers.  So how do you change that?

As Nike Says, “Just Do It”

So how do you get over the fear?  You do that by doing the one thing you really don’t want to do; pick up the phone and talk to sellers.  In this case, practice really does make perfect.

I’ve have had lot of people ask me to create a training that dealt with this topic of how to talk to motivated sellers, so I finally decided to do that using Google Hangouts.

Related: Google Voice and Google+ Hangouts: Tips For Using These Free Tools

I ask my friend and fellow real estate investor Kelly Payne if she would be up for a little role playing exercise and she was game.  Kelly is a busy mom with 3 small children who invests part-time in not one but two cities in Oklahoma.  I want you to know right from the beginning, that this is totally unscripted.  We were just winging it and having a whole lot of fun along the way.

In this video we talked about 4 different but common types of motivated sellers you were likely to encounter.

4 Common Types of Motivated Sellers

There are a lot of different scenarios you can run into, but these are the 4 that I find most often.

  • Those folks that won’t give you any information; the ones with “one word answers” you have to drag the information out of
  • Motivated sellers that tell are big talkers but they never really answer any of your questions
  • The seller that has to tell you their “whole life story” before they ever answer a single question
  • And our favorite; the one that actually spits out all of the information you need without all the drama.

Making it Easier; Using a Property Information Form

There is one thing Kelly and I agree on, and that is if you use a Property Information Form when you talk to a motivated seller it makes the conversation flow much more easily.  Notice I said “conversation”.  Even though you use a standard form each time to ensure you will get all the information you need, it still has to be a conversation.   It should never feel like a “question and answer” call when you are using a form as a guide.

Related: Game Changer: How to Identify Motivated Customers

The primary focus of the call might be to gather certain information from the seller, but you are also there to build rapport with that motivated seller right from the start.   Never forget that people do business with other people they know, like and trust.  It’s important that you are able begin building this rapport in your first contact with them which will typically be that initial phone call, because you might not get a second chance.

The form I use is uploaded in the BiggerPockets File Place, and there are also a lot of other good examples of Property Information Forms in there too.  Ultimately, you will probably want to look at a few and make one that suits your style of doing business.

Need a Refresher?  Here’s the Video

If you are still struggling with what to say to motivated sellers, I think you will find this video helpful.  Kelly also talks about how fear and procrastination have caused her to actually lose out on deals.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LfT4tKaZ9E

 

 

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.