Stop Sounding Like a Salesperson (Do This Instead)

In this video, I break down exactly how to talk to sellers in your real estate investing business without sounding like a salesperson... and why being a "reluctant buyer" closes more deals than any script ever will.

This is one of the most important skills in real estate investing, whether you're doing houses or land. And it's the one thing most beginners avoid the most.

You'll learn the 5 principles I use on every single seller call, the 3 questions that uncover the real motivation behind a sale, and the 4-part formula for doing deals consistently (no matter the market).

== TIMESTAMPS ==
0:00 - Why talking to sellers is the #1 skill in REI
1:21 - You don't need six-pack abs to be good at sales
2:38 - Rule 1: Sound like a reluctant buyer, not a salesperson
3:39 - Rule 2: Ask more questions than you talk
4:27 - Rule 3: Focus on solving problems, not buying property
4:52 - The live seller call I recorded yesterday (two lots, 80-year-old couple)
5:49 - Rule 4: Don't be afraid to make offers
6:23 - Rule 5: Confidence comes from repetition, not scripts
7:00 - Why the less you know before a call, the better
7:18 - The 4-part formula for doing deals (marketing, sellers, offers, follow-up)
9:12 - The 3 questions to ask every seller
10:16 - Talk to 5 people a day and you can't NOT do deals

This video covers how to talk to sellers in real estate, how to negotiate with motivated land sellers, and how to use the reluctant buyer approach to close more deals without sounding salesy. Whether you're a complete beginner trying to get over your fear of the phone, or an experienced investor looking to sharpen your seller conversations, this training will give you a simple, repeatable framework you can use on your very next call. Joe McCall has been investing in real estate since 2006 and has helped thousands of students close land and house deals across the country.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

It's a simple formula, but nobody's willing to do it. Nobody. The people that are are doing deals. Hey, did you know one of the most important skills you can learn in your real estate investing business, whether you're doing houses or land, is how to talk to sellers, right? How to just have a normal conversation, how not to be salesy, but how to be just natural. Um, because that's the thing. Everybody wants to outsource to AI, to software, to systems, to virtual assistants, and they don't want to do any of the work. But listen, if you're not on this thing, you're not making money. So on this little podcast here, I'm gonna be talking about how to talk to sellers. So I've been teaching this for a long, long time, and the last couple weeks, I've been kind of having a more renewed interest in it because in some markets it's competitive, there's a lot of people out there doing deals, trying to do deals. And if you want to stand out, this is one of the best ways to do it is do what everybody's not doing, like talking to people on your phone. One of the things that I started doing is actually calling sellers live. So inside the dirt flippers program and inside of my apprentice program, every once in a while, just like, hey, let's call a seller, and we'll call the seller. I've been recording those calls and putting them inside the dirt flippers area. So we've got about two dozen calls in the in the program right now, and I had some before, but I've been really been focusing on putting them more of them in there. And people, the feedback has been great, they've been loving it because they realize, oh, it's not that hard. I'm not some pushy salesman. Like, if you're into Grant Cardone or Andy Elliott or any of these other guys that are big on social media selling sales training, you would think that you have to sign up for this ten thousand dollar coaching program and you have to have six-pack abs and you've got to be like somebody that you're not to be good at sales, and you don't. I'm a little sensitive about my six-pack abs or my lack of them because I see these guys, you know, Andy Elliott is kind of famous for telling everybody on his team, like in this one video, if you don't have six-pack abs, he's not gonna hire you. And if you lose your six-pack abs, he's gonna fire you. But you don't, I don't want you to think that you have to be somebody that you're not. Okay, I don't want you to think like Claude Diamond is a great friend of mine, one of my coaches, that got me started in the business. Go watch his YouTube videos. He's a really, really good sales trainer, right? So if you want good sales training, go to his YouTube channel, get anything that he gives for free. He gives a lot of really good stuff away for free. And sign up for his coaching. But I used to like try to be like Claude Diamond. I used to try to use his do his mannerisms and use his jokes, and it just didn't work. It didn't work. But I learned the principles behind what he did, and I started doing things like negative phrasing or being the reluctant buyer in a certain sense where I'm not you're never chasing sellers. So here's five really important points I want you to guys remember. Number one, do not sound like a salesperson, you want to sound like a buyer, and I want to challenge you to sound like a reluctant buyer, a hesitant buyer. Like, I don't know, like, why should I want to buy your property and not one of the 20 others that are next door to you? All right, most sellers, I'd say no sellers want a sales pitch. You need to be calm, you need to be simple, direct, and you want to talk to them like a normal person. And the best way to do that is to ask questions. In fact, if you just go to YouTube, there's a video I did with Claude Diamond probably like 15 years ago, about 30 pounds ago. We did a call where we were calling the seller, and I remember I was in my old Nissan Sentra. We were on Skype and we were recording, but he called the seller. And if you listen to this five-minute conversation with the seller, he asked about 25 questions. I want to encourage you to go look at that. Go to go to YouTube and do a search for Joe McCall, Claude Diamond, Cold Call, and you'll find this video. Go through it and just count how many times he asks questions on there. It's really powerful. All right, so this relates to my second point. Now I'm getting ahead of myself. Number two is ask more questions than you talk. Good investors listen more than they speak. And so you ask things like, so why are you selling your property? What's going on? Sounds like a nice property. Why do you even want to sell it? That's something I learned from Claude Diamond. The more they talk, the more you learn. And it also does this thing where it's a reverse psychology or something where you stay in control of the conversation when you ask questions. So learn to ask a lot of questions. Sounds like a nice property. Why do you even want to sell it? Uh, you know, I'm probably not your buyer, the reluctant buyer, I'm probably not your buyer. You should list it with a realtor. Why don't you list it with an agent? Have you gotten other offers on it before? When I'm talking to realtors of a that have older listings that are like been on the market over six months, I ask them, how long has it been on the market? Oh my gosh, six months, and it hasn't sold yet. Is there something wrong with it? So just asking those kinds of questions, right? Number three, focus on solving problems, not just buying houses or buying land. Many sellers are tired of paying taxes, they inherited the land, they moved away from it, they haven't been to it in six or seven years. So your job is just to make things simple and easy for them, right? Maybe they don't have a problem. And if they don't have a problem, that's fine. You probably can't help them. But we can we can help people who have a problem. Usually they want the cash, they're tired of it, they just want to be done with it. I talked to a seller yesterday and I recorded the conversation. His wife inherited the property, they're in their 80s, um, and they just want to get rid of it. And they don't really want to list it with a realtor, they want full price for it, but they think they have a bargain at full price because it's two lots right next to each other in a really good community. And I told them, I said, Listen, I'm probably not your buyer. I'm the easy button though. If you just want to sell it fast, get cash, be done with it in 30 days, I can probably help you, but you're not gonna like my offer. You should probably list it with a realtor. I'll tell you what, let me sharpen my pencil, let me send you an offer, and I'll also give you five realtors that have sold land recently in the area, and uh you can call them if you want, right? But he was super nice and he understood where I was coming from, and he and I said, you know, I have to make a profit, and so I can't give you that price. I did he had two lots. I said, I could maybe give you that price for both lots. Would you you wouldn't be open to that, would you? And he said, No. I said, Ah, you know, I laughed. I said, you know, I just had to ask. But anyway, number four, do not be afraid to make offers. Most beginners wait too long. Sellers are expecting an offer, even if you know it's going to be really low. The fastest way to learn this business and to learn whether you're doing it right or not is to make a lot of offers. So don't be afraid to make offers. And to take the pressure off yourself. You don't have to make the offer over the phone. You can make the offer, you know, in an email. Like talk to the seller and say, Hey, I'll send you an offer, but then follow up. Uh send them an offer in writing in the mail and send that offer in the mail every 30 days. Follow up in two weeks with an email, a text, or a phone call or whatever. Finally, confidence comes from repetition, not from knowledge, not from having a script that you have to say word for word. They say this, then you say this. If they say yes, then you say that. Forget that. You don't need scripts. You just need a list of simple questions that you can ask. But it's it comes from repetition, it comes from practice. And which is one of the reasons why I love doing sample calls. Sometimes I'll put them in my YouTube channel, sometimes it's in my course. But um I want you to know that I'm not looking at a script, I'm just asking a lot of questions, and I'm trying to get them to convince me why I should want to buy their property. Um, you don't need to know everything first. So one of the worst things you can do is before you call the seller, do a bunch of a bunch of research on the property and look at a bunch of cops so you feel ready and prepared. No, the less you know, the better, because then it forces you to ask more questions. So think about that. But the people winning are taking action. Talk to sellers, follow up, keep on practicing, keep on going, make offers. Like this business is really simple. Like whether you're doing houses or land, it's really simple. It comes down to like three or four things. Marketing, always be marketing. You either go out and send out marketing where you get leads to come to you, or you go out and you get go out and get leads yourself. You get leads to come to you like with direct mail, or you go out and get the leads with cold calling or texting, which I hate. But whatever. Float your boat. I'd rather get leads to come to me. And that's why direct mail works, and it works incredibly well, especially with vacant land. So number one, marketing. Always be marketing. We're not in the real estate investing business, we're in the marketing business. Number two, talk to people, talk to sellers, right? If you could just talk to five sellers a day, five or five realtors or five buyers or five investors, talk to five people a day, and I guarantee you'll do deals. If you could talk to a hundred people, you can almost not not do deals. Double negative. Because it's just about you gotta talk to people. I know you want to hide behind your phone and you think the phone's a 500-pound cactus, but if you just talk to five people a day, and these conversations, by the way, they're only a few minutes long. Three, four, five minutes. Just ask two questions when you're talking to people. Do you have a house or a property you want to sell? Do you have a house or a property you want to buy? If you just ask those two questions, you're gonna find somebody that's got a property they want to sell, and somebody else that's got something they want to buy. And within a hundred people, a hundred conversations, you'll probably find a deal in there somewhere. Or at least make some connections where maybe in a month or two down the road, after you sent them a couple texts every 30 days to follow up, hey, I'm looking for deals. Do you have anything? You're gonna find somebody that you can put together. Number three is make offers. It's the number one rule in real estate. Make offers, make offers, make offers. That's it. Your speed to income is directly proportional to the number of offers that you make. And number four is follow-up. Every 30 days, you need to follow up with all of your seller leads. I mean, this is simple, basic one-on-one stuff, right? If you do those four things, marketing, talk to sellers, make offers, follow up. You will do deals, but it takes consistency, it takes intentional effort. So I hope you're paying attention. When it comes to talking to sellers, like just take it easy, man. It's not a big deal. Relax. It's okay if you don't know everything about the property. It's okay if you don't know what to offer. Just ask some questions, find out why they are selling. Is this a now thing or a later thing? Like, there's three kind of questions you should be asking them. So tell me your situation. Notice that's not tell me about the property, but tell me about your situation. And in there you can ask about the property. And then number two, what would you like to see happen? Okay, cool. And when would you like to see that happen? I often say to sellers, like, you're not in a hurry though, right? Like, you don't have to sell this thing right away. You've got plenty of time. And try to figure out like, tell me about their situation. Why do they want to sell this thing? Is it now or later? What's more important to them? Like getting the highest price or selling it as fast as possible? Because I can't help everybody. I'd love to. I'll send you an offer, but I'll also give you some realtors that you should probably just list it with them. So what would you what's your situation? Number two, what would you like to see happen? Just ask that question. What would you like to see happen? Well, you know, I just want to sell it. Okay, great. So have you gotten offers before? Did you reject them? Why don't you list it with a realtor? Have you listed it with an agent before? And then when would you like to see that happen? Whatever it is. So just keep it simple. If you could talk to five people a day, I I could almost I can't guarantee anything, but I could pretty much get close to guaranteeing within a hundred people. I talk to five people a day, that's 25 people a week, that's a hundred people in a month, and then you follow up with each one of them with a text, an email, a ringless voicemail or something, you'll do deals. It's a simple formula, but it's just nobody's willing to do it. Nobody. The people that are are doing deals. So anyway, appreciate y'all. We'll see you later. Take care.