How to build rapport to close deals instead of negotiation

What is going on, everybody? We are live right now. This is, as you know, the Batch Leads weekly call, that where we come in, we show you how to do deals and how to use Batch to talk to motivated sellers. So I got Nicholas Nick on here. What's up, Nick? How you doing? Nicholas, what's up?

Doing good, Nathan. How about you, man?

Oh, doing, doing excellent. And, uh, what I want to tell everybody, the re— the episode what we're going to be doing, talking about today, is how to build rapport with sellers versus just trying to negotiate and strong-arm them. And Nicholas, I know you've been having a lot of success with this, and you've been telling me before we hopped on that this is something you're focusing on right now, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. So yeah, you know, I think— good.

Oh no, I was just gonna say, so everybody, if you're, you know, talking with sellers at the moment and you're struggling not doing deals, and you're like, I wonder why, you gotta— this episode will help you. So, uh, not only will it help you then, uh, to get more deals, but it's going to help you to be more confident in talking to people. Because if you're not you're not trying to go on every call and just be like, oh, I have to get this deal. It's going to relieve a lot of that pressure. So anyway, Nicholas, go ahead.

Yeah, absolutely. And what, what I've learned, you know, being a lead generator, I find myself constantly talking to investors, trying to mindset them into actually calling all the leads, right? And I know that sounds stupid. Who needs to be mindsetted to call leads, right? I know that people could think that that's not a thing. It is a thing, okay? And what I've learned is there's a big deal— excuse me, there's a big difference between closing deals and working leads, okay? And a lot of people, they might close a couple deals and then hire me, but then they'll get good leads and they're like, Nick, uh, what do I do here? I'm like, oh, I see what you're missing. You're missing the working the lead part, right? We all know how to close a hot deal when it lands on our lap, find someone that wants to buy it., right? But what do we do with a diamond in the rough, right? What process do we put that diamond through, or that, that piece of coal through, to make it become a diamond? And I think that that is the majority of lead gen. So a really important skill is working leads, right? That's a skill that's different than closing deals, and I think people often think it's the same thing, and it's not. So The rapport versus negotiations, in my opinion, is step one, you know. And I have been teaching a lot of my clients to lead with rapport. I think negotiation sounds scary. I think negotiation sounds ugly. I think that even if you're in a negotiation and you're the one who has to take less, no matter what, you feel a certain way about that. Okay, and now that's not always a bad thing. I know we got to close deals. Negotiations has its place, no arguments at all there. What I resonate more with is building a relationship. Okay, and so a big piece of what I want to chat about today is focusing on that relationship, because if you get them to love you, or try to get them to love you, right? They're not going to love you, but if that's your goal, and they end up on liking you a lot, then that's still really awesome, right? But there's, there's no better way to pay less for a house than to get the owner to like you. And right, and I'll just got— I have a little—

trust you, it's the same thing, right?

Exactly, exactly. And then even if you have to negotiate, once they like and trust you guess what? They're going to even appreciate that a lot more. They're going to be more receptive to those negotiations if you have that foundational relationship. Now I'll just give you guys a small example. This happened to me 3 months ago, and I was selling a $4,000 e-bike that I bought. Okay, don't ask me why. Then don't ever buy a $4,000 e-bike. Go buy something cooler with $4,000. That wasn't a good investment. Anyways, I'm selling it. It's taking up garage space. This guy hits me up on Craigslist. I got it listed for $3,000. Okay, this guy shows up with his nephew. His nephew's 20, so it's not a kid. They're two adults, and they're just talking to me for 10 minutes before— they have the $3,000. I can see it in their hand, right? They're like, done deal. It's a good deal. They're ready. End up talking to the guy for 15 minutes. Come to find out it's gonna be his daily driver. He's gonna use this bicycle as a car. You know, and I— and it just kind of pulled on my— he wasn't trying to make it pull on my heartstrings, but I literally— I have 3 e-bikes and 3 cars in my driveway, and this guy doesn't even have one car or one e-bike, right? And so he ends up talking to me, and I go, you know what, he's about to pay me, and I go, you know what, man, you can just give me $2,000 for it. And he was like, whoa, what? Like, he, he didn't even negotiate. Wow. You know, if I would have kept my mouth shut and if he would have walked up and just handed me the cash, he would have paid $1,000 more. But because he sat there for 15 minutes, we chatted it up a little bit, light convo. I was like, you know what, man, you know, you need this bike more than I do, brother. You know, like, and I need the garage space more than you do, so go ahead. And I think that that happens with houses more than we care to admit. Okay, and if we spend a little bit of time with them, a little bit more time getting them to like us and getting them to love us, that when it comes time to get to that contract or get to that table, the conversations are also going to go equally as well. So that's kind of my philosophy on rapport over negotiations, you know.

No, you know, I'm all about, uh, building rapport and making the seller feel like it's their decision versus like they, they had to choose, right? And they got like strong-armed into an offer maybe they didn't like. So let's, let me talk about an example that comes to mind. Like when you have Open Door, Offerpad, uh, Zillow, a lot of these companies didn't make it, right? Like the— in the flipping industry. And a lot of the reason why is there was really no rapport building in that process, right? It's literally just like, we'll give you an offer, you accept it, and that's it, right? And, and I think Yes, because of the amount of money they have, they can spend all that money to bring in the leads and all that volume. But as you can see, the model didn't work, right? They weren't good at flipping. I'm not saying it didn't work because they didn't build rapport. Totally. There's like a lot of things that came into place. But the reason why the local home buyer is never going to go out of business, that will always be a play. As long as people are buying real estate, there's going to be a job for the wholesaler, the fix and flipper. There's going to be a job for those people because they can, they can get, they can meet that person, shake their hand, talk to them on the phone, make them feel good. People want that element. I don't care, like AI, all that stuff, like you're, you're always gonna have a place if you can build rapport and connect with people and make them feel like, uh, make them feel good about their decision.

Yeah, and I— and it's also, I think, for us to be the lead generator or be the one working the leads, if you think you're walking into a call where you need to talk them down, that's a lot scarier than walking into a call and being friendly, you know. And so I think too, especially for the person looking for the courage to overcome, and I'll tell you, veterans hire us, newbies hire us, they're all scared. And it's not that they're scared to call, to be clear, it's that they read something in the notes and they go, yeah, you know, the next one's gonna be easier. You know, this one didn't say everything perfectly. And, you know, to follow to that, I got a great saying, and that's every lead's worth 2 to 5 minutes of your time, you know. And if they're a total asshole, hang up the phone. And if the call's going great, I would never hang up the phone. And I think another piece of Legion, I think it's that simple, you know. Don't judge a book by its cover. The notes on a cold caller, on the lead, if it's a one-touch Don't expect the notes to— no one says, oh God, I've been dying to give my house away for 50 cents on the dollar. Oh, thank God you called.

You know, so, you know, they hold what's going on to the chest, right? They hold it close to the chest. They're not going to immediately, as you're talking to them, explain all the issues they're having. That's ammo that they know you can use against them, right? Like, for example, for selling that e-bike, if you were like, hey, I need to sell this ASAP, if I don't, I'm not going to make rent, blah, blah, blah, people are going to be like, $1,000.

$500, you know, good point.

So, so they're, you know, they're not always going to tell you exactly what's going on. The fact that they're talking to a cold caller is probably good motivation alone.

You know, that's, yeah, that's such a great point. And, you know, to really get in there and, and really meet them where they're at. If you have— I guarantee you some of the most successful investors on this planet have the best seller experience. Okay, think about that. What are they experiencing when they go through your flow? And I, since, since I, um, sell leads, I talk to clients all the time. I say, let's use this call, for example, that I'm on with you. I didn't answer the phone and say, are you gonna buy something or not? Because if you're not, I'm not even gonna talk to you, right? But as wholesalers, when we start with the low offer, we're almost saying the same thing. Right. If you're not even interested in talking about this loan lead to me, and that's just not always the truth. There's so many leads in the relationship that I think that we look over because the dollar signs are so attractive that we step over the relationship on the way to them. Yeah.

Price is— when they talk about the 4 motivation pillars of motivation, like price isn't really even a motivating factor, right? Because everybody wants as much as they can get. It's like timeline, it's a condition. What else is it?

Motivation.

And I can't remember the other one, uh, but price. And price might even be one of them, but it's like, it's not— it's, it's, uh, what's the word? It's deceiving. It's very deceiving, price, right?

Yeah. Well, and the other part is, starting with the price, this is something we've been realizing at Lead Mining. Since the price literally does matter so little I know a lot of people like, that doesn't make any sense, but since it does, almost even asking them how much they want to sell for is a bad move. Now, the old tactic was get them to say the price first, right? But if they don't know and they're just shooting out a high number, you don't want to start your baseline here and work down. You'd rather start your baseline here and work down. And so there's been, there's been some interesting developments with price. And one of my best clients, this is one thing I'll share, he says this is how he trains his acquisition managers. I may have shared this on the last one because it was pretty ninja, but he has them listen to the recordings of sellers saying, I'm never gonna take less than $300,000. And then he shows them what they bought the house for. And he's like, next time everything lines up but the price, don't hang up the phone. And that's important, what you were just saying. There's so many other indicators than price that we can focus on that can get us to our goals, you know?

Right, 100%. And that's, that's— I agree with you. Like, it's not, it's not always, uh, again, it's a deceiving factor, right? And obviously we want it, we want We're not taking anybody's houses. We're not being like, you have to accept this offer. It's literally you present options. You say, hey, these are what's available to you. What makes sense for you? What works best? So that's, uh, that's what we do. So Nick, can you tell me, um, how you would start building rapport if you were to, you know, do a conversation like that?

You know, for me, I think it's keeping it light. I think it's softball questions. I think it's— I would come up with 3 to 5 questions you want to know the answer to but isn't too invasive, right? So let's just say one great one is, oh, you know, how long has this been in the family for? Is a real great one, right? It's, oh, they might start talking about Grandma, Grandpa, or Mom, or, you know, oh, you know, he left it to us. And, and it's like when you get them going on good stories I think is another good indicator, right? And another tip would be look for positive distractions, right? You know, where can we take this call that it's not all business all the time with them? And, and where can we look for opportunities to interject stories about our past and our lives? And I think one thing I'm really good at is just like relating to people. And I also don't make people feel rushed. So I think that not creating a space where they have all the time in the world, I think, is also really important. You know, it's like if someone thinks you always got to go, or you know that they're on a time crunch, they're not going to be their authentic selves with you because they're going to try to be respecting your time. So keeping it friendly, keep it light. Okay, I don't think we talk about money on the first one, maybe even two calls. That's how light we keep it, right? We want to show up as a resource. We want to show up as a friend, okay? You know, we're not— we're someone who's been in real estate for a long time and we want to make sure they make the best decision possible for their property, right? It's kind of like the attitude that I like to carry, um, so that way it may not all be focused on price and how— it's more like, what are your goals? So one great question, one great question I have, and this is super ninja for realtor-investor combos is when you get the lead. Let's say you get a lead from us. Hey, I see you spoke to Sherry about 123 Sycamore Street. Yeah, I sure did. Oh great, well look, Sherry told me you may be interested in selling. Why don't you tell me, how did you plan on doing that? Okay, I think that is a really ninja question, and What's important about that question is they should throw up all over you. Oh, well, you know, Sally up the street sold a house and she made a killing, and then Margaret did the same thing. And oh, okay. So now you know where their head's at. Now, you know, they want to sell because 4 properties on the street sold for max dollar value, right? So it's important for us to know where their head's at. And I think often as investors, we just come at them not caring where their head's at, and then we can have a mismatch. But if you know what they're thinking, that means you know how to get them to where you want them to be.

Love it, bro. So exactly what you're saying, that ninja move. So that's something I do in my sales process when I'm talking to sellers. Let me actually show you what it looks like. So I, I have what's called an offer— a painless offer calculator, because what it does is it goes through all the options that a seller has to sell their house. So you can flip it. I can flip, I can wholesale, I can do innovation, I can do a BRRRR, I can do a rental, I can do creative cash offers. So when I'm talking to a seller, I don't go in there with anything specific in my head where I'm like, I want them to accept this. When I talk to a seller, I just ask them, what options have you explored? Right? So I kind of like how you said, how do you like to, you know, how would you like to sell your house?

Yeah, right.

Same things for me. It's like, hey, you know, you know, we buy a lot of properties, but we don't we don't always, you know, buy them the same way. I'm just curious before we dive into kind of like what we do, I was just curious, like, what, what options have you explored so far to sell this house? So it's not like invasive. I'm not like being aggressive. I just kind of want to know where their journey is. And then I take them, you know, I ask them if they don't really have anything to say, I just say, well, have any investors made you any cash offers yet? And they're like, no, they haven't. You know, I'm saying, well, have you even thought about keeping it yourself and renovating it and selling it, you know, after you flip it yourself? You're going to make the money that way. And they're like, oh, you know, I really don't. And then I'm like, well, you know, have you thought about listing it or selling it to someone? Like, are you able to sell it on terms? Like, you know, maybe you keep it as a rental and— or maybe you sell it to someone and you carry the loan. Um, you know, I go through all these options in what I call my offer, offer, option, decision tree. And depending on like where they're at, like if they need speed and they don't have time. Over here it says they want the highest price and have time. I know what options to offer depending on their motivation. So the whole purpose of like the rapport building for me is like, where are they? Like, I'm not trying to push them into one box. It's more of like, where are you? Okay, your house is currently listed, but you're kind of upset because the agent hasn't been able to sell it. Okay, well, you know, the options that I have are, you know, I can buy this for cash or we can, you know, make you some creative terms. Um, but again, we're not diving into like, oh, this is my offer. And, uh, that's, that's how I build rapport, bro, is I just kind of talk to them about what they want to do.

And let me just call to everyone how genius this is, because the hidden subtext here is the more you have to offer the seller, the more rapport is important to you. If you just have a cash offer, what do you care about rapport? Look, man, all I got, all I got is $100K. So, you know, take it or leave it, right? Because if that's the only trick up your sleeve, then what does rapport even matter? But your, your system, that was beautiful, by the way. Like what you just shared, I hope you get some people booking this masterclass at the bottom because that was ninja, bro. What you just shared in a couple—

I actually took a little screenshot just so I'll send you this if you want, man. No problem. Like Dude, I love it because when I— so what happens is I put in the numbers, and when it does come to negotiation time, once we run the numbers, I sit down and I say, hey, look, we got a couple options for you. We already talked about how you, you only really— you don't want to renovate it, so you only want to list it or do cash. And actually give them their bottom dollar. I say like, hey, you know, uh, if we go cash, you're gonna get $426,000. But if, you know, if you let me, um, you know, list this for you, You're going to get more. Like, these numbers aren't exactly—

wow. And see, this is— go ahead. This is the difference. I want everyone to know that this is the difference between having a business and being a wholesaler. Okay. I feel like this is a business. There's nothing wrong with being a wholesaler phase one, right? But I think everyone should really strive to have this. This is so awesome. And this speaks to me as a business owner. You know, I have a, I have a hard time relating to, even though I sell to investors, because like they don't care about customer service and like they just care about transactions, you know, but what you just showed me, uh, I can clearly see your whole business model. And then think of the seller. Oh my goodness. You're not a wholesaler, Nathan. You're a house selling specialist. By the time you're done showing them all those options, that's really cool.

Yeah, dude, I love it because like especially with the analytical people, like the older generation that like they want to know their options. Like sometimes when I show this to older people, they're like, look, thanks for showing this to me because I was thinking about doing this and that option. But now that I know the difference between your cash offer and mine is just for— and listing is like $40,000, it's not worth $40K for me to go through that hassle at the moment, right? So it's just a way more transparent process and Anyway, building rapport is something I'm huge on, man, because if I'm talking to someone, I actually do care. I really do care about their situation. And if selling it for cash is not their best option, which it's not a lot of the time, I tell them that. I'm like, you know what, we can get this done quick. But it seems like in your situation, from what you told me, you should just list this thing and I can help you with that, right?

Yeah. And that, and that also, that has to help you sleep at night. You know, it's like I think about this. And it could be my business is cool. I get to make other people rich, right, with lead mining. So it is rewarding. But like, I do at least once a month— this is going to sound really stupid— but I do think about people that own gas stations and if they know that like what they own other than the gas is just everything in there is an addiction, right? All they sell at gas stations is alcohol, cigarettes, and sugar. That's it. Okay. And It's like, I wonder if that person is like, oh, I'm just grinding away, or dude, I'm like kind of fucking up my community right now because the alcoholics are coming in here grabbing— and I'm not knocking— I, I drink, I eat sugar, I have bad habits. That's not what I'm saying. But I think about these other businesses that aren't a net positive at the end of the day. And what you're also saying to me is you're— this, this turns what— it's a very clear net positive what you turn this into, you know. So I think that that's really cool. And I always think about the people that they do have to induce a little pain in order for them to make money. And those, those things exist, and I'm not knocking them, but I do wonder what that must be like when they're laying down at night, you know. And so it's cool.

Well, when I first started wholesaling, I think this is something everyone faces, or you don't want to like tell people that you wholesale because they like— the common thing is like, oh, you take people's houses. And I explained to like, I don't, I don't think I've never taken anyone's house. First of all, because you can't take someone's house. And the way I do business and the way I tell people to do business is like, if you present options, if you know, like, what's, you know, how a seller is able to sell and you point them to what best fits their needs, you're going to sleep great at night. So it's definitely a great feeling to do this business because I've helped a ton of people out of situations where they were going to lose their properties quickly. Even I have this guy right here, like a millionaire. You have to get that, by the way, if you got to get that.

My girlfriend's here, thank goodness.

So this is a really interesting situation. This was a property in Colorado and it was a millionaire, multimillionaire, had multi— tons of properties. This was a million-dollar house. And you would be like, how can you serve someone that's like, you know, that has millions of dollars? Like they're not distressed. But this guy, he had a tenant in his million-dollar property that he was scared of. He was like a bodybuilder, he had like piercings in his cheeks, he was jacked and tattooed, and he was scared of the guy. So he's like, hey man, can you— I don't want to deal with this guy, let him in. Now he's gone kind of crazy. I'll sell this to you at a discount and you deal with it. So I was like, okay. And there's someone in my—

my—

one of the buyers in my network that was like, yeah bro, I don't mind taking care of it. He bought it. I wholesaled to him for $50K. The guy just goes and knocks on the door and is like, "Hey, man, I bought the house. I'm going to need you to leave. You haven't been paying the rent." And the bodybuilder's like, "Yeah, that's fine. I just, you know, the guy that I was talking to, the previous landlord, he was really hard to deal with. I don't know why he didn't like me." So it was interesting to show like, hey, you can serve anyone. Like, we helped out that landlord, you know, that's— that headache of that tenant and that issues they were having, like, was not worth it to him to have to deal with it anymore. So, right, help people in many different situations.

Yeah. And so many people would be scared because it has a problematic tenant, and it's like, no, that's actually an opportunity for you to think about how much pressure, you know. And if you haven't had bad tenants, you don't know how much pressure that landlord's under. Okay, I've had some nightmare tenants.. And sometimes it's worth a massive discount to never have to lose sleep over that guy again too. And that's— yeah, that's such, such a good point. Yeah, I'm excited. You know, Nathan, these, these calls are great. You know, this one has been pretty— I've learned a lot, so I can only imagine other people.

Yeah, we got a, we got a, a fan just saying, what's up y'all, had to stop by because Nicholas drops game all the time.

Let's go! Awesome, thank you, dude. Well, you know, I don't know, dude, I don't know who Zero to Deal is, but if I'm not mistaken, he also popped up on a Joe McCall video and said something also very encouraging. So I don't know your name, uh, I would love to though, so if you drop that, that would be great. But I really appreciate, um, I really appreciate the kind words.

Yeah, you got a YouTube channel too, right, Nicholas?

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's just Lead Mining. If anyone searches Lead Mining, uh, or youtube.com/leadmining, um, everybody, this one is— yeah, yeah, it's a, it's a good time.

Go subscribe, help, you know, help them grow the channel. All right, that's right. I think it's awesome, man. Like, we're, we're in the, we're in the trenches, we're working, we're seeing what's working, what's not working, and building rapport, definitely it works and it makes you feel good about what you do. So definitely do it. And, uh, let the negotiation follow, which is usually much easier once you have that. Oh yeah, we're here. Got Sip.

We got Sip Rodriguez. Rodriguez. Yeah, he's a client of ours. Thank you, sir. Dude, I appreciate you, bro.

Let's go. All right, well, Nicholas, we're gonna wrap up. Everybody that's been watching this, Batch Leads. If you don't have leads, go check it out. And if you need help with, uh, you know, contacting those leads, Nicholas, Nick, the Lead Mining Pro. He's got your back. Is that right, Nick?

Nicholas? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Thank you guys all so much, man. I really appreciate it, and I'll see you in a month.

All right, catch you later, bro.

See you, man.