Jake Burhans uses five discovery questions to qualify sellers: motivation, timeline, price, decision makers, and condition. He says this system lets him focus on high-potential deals and has helped him close over 50 transactions.
I use these 5 pillars of pre-qualifying in the discovery portion of all of my seller calls to get all of these checks. 1, motivation. Why is the motivation important? You need to understand why the seller is selling it. If you don't know why they're selling, it's going to be impossible to negotiate on the back end. At the end of the day, we're here to solve problems. It's not so much about the price but about the value we can provide in the solution to the seller. 2, their timeline. When are they selling it? If they're looking to sell this thing in 9 months, why am I spending an hour on the phone with them right now? 3, price. How much do they want? The price does matter. It is about the motivation, but ultimately we need to figure out what do they want for the property? 4, decision makers. Who's involved in the decision? Is it just them? Do they have an attorney? Do they have a wife? Do they have a brother? Make sure that we get these and ask the question, hey, does anyone else have input on the sale of this property? And number 5 is condition. You actually need to know about the property. Ask detailed questions that you can arrive at a good number.
