The 5 things you Need to Say - Find and Network with ANY Real Estate Agent / Broker Anywhere Anytime

All right, we're live. So today is broker scripting. When we go through this training with owners, the goal is to help them find their broker in any market, to work with very few brokers very, very closely. And we mapped out the straightest line we could from point A to point B being intro. They have no idea who you are. To they have absolute confidence that you are ready, able, and willing to purchase property. We want to be on the top of their list. Now, a lot of agents, all agents, can send you some list or MLS feed, or they have, they have some sort of marketing they can send you. And when you don't do this call quite right, what you typically get offered is, hey, let me put you on a list and you'll be another one of the people on our distribution. The goal here is to get you to the top of anyone's list. Now, as brokers, this training is going to be two parts. We have the, hey, we want to go out and buy real estate and we want to know how to do what we teach other people how to do. So we're going to go over that piece. In addition, you want to listen when you're working with buyers and sellers. You want to be able to hear when it is a professional, when they know what they're doing. This will help you quantify how serious a buyer is by the quality of their questions. When they start. So we've mapped out 5 questions that we do in our scripting. I'm going to share them with you and how that relates to you both as an owner and a broker. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to find a property. I'm going to use an example of we're in a brand new market. You don't have connections. You are looking for a deal. I'll choose a market like Dallas. You want to talk about a specific listing because you don't want to call on a very, very general topic. That makes people feel like you're wasting their time and it doesn't make a lot of sense. In addition, this is how you find people who represent the type of properties that you want to buy and/or represent. You get network of people who are currently listing that type of property. Turns out they'll probably do it again. They probably have built up a pipeline. So I'm going to share my screen and we'll hop onto a site. Craigsy, the main sites that you use for this, and there's a ton of them. You can do it on Zillow, you can do it on LoopNet. Um, for those who don't know, I worked at LoopNet for a while. LoopNet is pay-to-play, and the bigger the market, the more expensive it is for brokers to advertise. While it's not a bad place to find a broker that's not afraid to put money behind their listing, LoopNet doesn't show everything on the site. If there's enough people paying in that market, they'll shut off all free listings. CREXi will show just about everything, which I prefer because I want to see a larger snapshot of the market. So that's the site I will typically use if we are looking for multifamily, 5 units and up. This works for any other asset class as well though. And you can use the same— if you're doing this with houses, you can do the same thing on Zillow. So I'm going to choose a market that I'm not currently in but really want to be, Dallas, Texas. And we're going to sort by the types of buildings that we want to buy. In this example, we want to be an owner of multifamily. So I'm going to look at multifamily listings, though it would be cool to own that Starbucks there. And we're going to look for buildings that fit our desired criteria. And it's not taking me a really long time. These look phenomenal. It's less than $1 million. It's likely in my price range. And I see here an 11-unit apartment complex. So perfect. So I know just from looking at this a few things. I have the broker's name. If I was logged in, her phone number would be right here. Since it's a recorded call, I won't pull that up on this. She's licensed in multiple states and this particular listing has been on market for almost exactly 2 years. I mean, this has been out there for a while, so we know there's probably something that's keeping this from selling. So there's probably some story here. We're not going to start with the negative though. We're going to jump right into the scripting questions. So the first question that we ask— we're calling about the property— what we have to ask is, is this property currently available? Is the property still available? Is a really important question, because one, if you find out it's not and you started with specific questions on the property— hey, what's the owner's motivation, or are they willing to get creative on the financing— you ruin all momentum if you don't start with the question, is it available? Because then it's, no, it's not, it's actually going under contract. And it's like, well, that kind of throws off my, uh, my rhythm. If you ask, it's available. One, it frames the conversation. They know exactly what property you're calling about, why you're calling. It's specific. I'm going to let two more people in. There we go. This is why we have the power to edit. Since we just jumped into question one, I'm going to restart right at the beginning of that. So we're talking about the straight line from you found a property, new market, new broker. We're on CREXi because it has a few more listings than LoopNet does. LoopNet's pay-to-play. And we clicked on a listing that looks like what we want to buy because the brokers that we want to find are probably representing a property that we would like to buy. And if they represented this property and it's perfect for what we're looking for, they're likely to have more. The goal is not to buy this property, it's to get to the top of their list and build a relationship. So our first question was, is the property available? And where we get off is sometimes people ask specific questions. It's not available. It ruins all of your momentum. You're not talking about how to structure a deal and the property is not even available. You have to backtrack and you're going to lose credibility. Super simple. But question 1, when you're going from introduction to, hey, I am a ready, able, willing buyer. Question 1 is always, "Is the property still available?" You're going to call on this property, the 11-unit apartment on Corinth Street. "I saw this listing, looks amazing. It's exactly what I'm looking for. Is the property still available?" You're going to tell them 1 sentence, 2 sentences about yourself. In my case, "Hey, I am an investor in Washington State. I have about 71 units here and I am looking to expand to Dallas." This looks like exactly what I've purchased in the past. That's my story. Yours is gonna be unique, but you're just gonna give 'em a little bit. You're gonna ask a general question. As we go through the 5 questions, what we want to do first, we dictate why we're calling in question 1. We're gonna start very open-ended and we're going to move them through the sales cycle very efficiently. 1, it's going to make them comfortable. 2, it's gonna get them excited about getting into their closing rhythms. And 3, they are going to believe that you're ready to purchase. So first, we're going to ask a general question, the easiest one that we have found. And this is more open to what you're comfortable with. I like to ask a question on location because every broker should be able to tell you about the area and it gets them talking. You want to be in the 80/20 rule. They should start doing 80% of the talking very early on. So in this, if I'm local, I'll probably ask on a neighborhood level, "Hey, I own on this side of town. What are your thoughts on this neighborhood, surrounding properties?" As a broker, they should be able to tell you a story. You're also testing the broker because if they can't do that, they're not the broker for you. You're going to talk to them about the property. If I'm out of market, I might ask about the actual market itself. So this is in Dallas. "Hey, I'm from Seattle. I'm familiar with some areas of Dallas. I don't know the specific area." Well enough. It looks like it's a little outside of town. What can you tell me about the area? But location questions are general. They open conversation. And again, you're letting the broker do what they do, which is start to tell the story of the property and start their sales cycle. The goal there is not really to learn anything, even though it's nice to see what they have to say. You're really just scoping out them and opening a conversation. Question 3. We want to get a little bit more specific as we move on. I'm going to ask another open-ended question, but it's going to be a little bit narrower. After they've told me all the things they've loved about the property, which they will do, okay, what don't you like about the property? Generally, they're trying to sell you the property. Generally, you're going to hear people say, oh, I mean, everything is just about perfect, we love it, uh, or I don't know what you mean. What could possibly be wrong with this property? That is a pretty normal response. However, if you push one more time, just as a general rule of thumb with sales, you just rephrase the question. I usually just ask, well, that's fine, but if you had to choose one thing you'd change, what would it be? I have never had someone not answer with something. It's either there's one tenant who's not paying, There's something wrong with the books. The plumbing could be updated. There's something. Again, the goal of this is to keep the conversation flowing. We started super open-ended. Now we're showing interest beyond just, oh, tell me about the area. It's okay. Give me some details. The other thing you're testing here is you wanna see if they'll lie to you. If you've done some homework and you already know something about it, that's great. Everyone lies. It's kind of just a rule. Especially in this industry. I just want to see if they'll lie that early, and I'm not going to fault them for it. If they'll lie to you, they'll lie for you. But it's just good to benchmark how well they answer that question if they give you something substantial, because there's no such thing as a perfect property. Even if it was built yesterday, there's something wrong with the parking, there's something wrong with the leasing. It's 11 units, there's some problem somewhere, and the broker should know it and be able to communicate it. Again, pulling them through the sales cycle. We get a little bit more technical with question 4. When we are communicating this, the goal is to ask as many questions as we can using as few questions as possible. You want to be efficient. You don't want to be wasting their time. We've gone through general discussion. We've gone through details on the property. Question 4 is really critical. How is the bank going to look at this deal? Another way to ask it is, how is Fannie or Freddie going to look at this? Are they going to want 20, 25, 30% down? The reason we ask this is you're asking multiple questions at once. First, on the psychological part of the sale, you move from details to finance. So you're getting their engine revving. I'm like, okay, we've talked about the deal. They're not scared off yet. Now we're talking about bankability. These are closing questions. You're initiating the sales cycle for them, creating believability that you know exactly what you're doing and you're capable of closing the property. What you're also asking is, is there deferred maintenance on this? Because the bank's not going to want to touch it if the roof's falling off or if there was a— if half the building burned down last year, or simpler, if there's bad books, which is the other question you're asking about the bookkeeping, the financing, how the property is run. If it's not bringing in enough money to be bankable, That's going to come up here. If you need a higher down payment, that means there's something else going on where the property is not squeaky clean to the bank. They'll want less down if it's just beautiful maintenance, excellent bookkeeping. So you're asking a lot of questions with a really, really simple question. It's an intelligent question. It is in line with the rest of your conversation, and it gives you the rest of what you need to do to close down the conversation because now you've talked about the area of the property, the financing of the property, the nitty-gritty. Question 5 is simple, but the way you word it is really important. Is there anything else I need to know before making a decision? And the reason you word it that way is it's again, 2 questions in 1. Your whole conversation has been framed on this one property. But if you remember from the beginning, we go into every call with a starting point and an end goal. Our goal was to build a relationship here and get to compete for properties like this with this broker. We've only talked about one property, so their natural response is always going to be one more detail about the property. It's going to be about the area, the maintenance. You might find out, oh, I did forget to mention one of the tenants shot the other tenant. Whatever the problem is, they might bring up one more problem, or they're gonna bring up one more selling point of why this is the right deal for you. The wording before I make a decision closes the sales cycle, going all the way through specific point, open-ended question, narrower financing decision. You've done the entire narrative. They have full confidence you know what you're doing. You've walked them through their own sales cycle. So now that they believe that you can buy, they're going to answer your question and you get to respond with, that is great, I appreciate that. What I actually meant are, is there anything else, any other property I need to look at before making a decision to purchase this property? Is this the property for me based on my goals in this market? You're not jerking them around. There's no sleight of hand. It's just, it's a natural question. And you've gone through a progression where you've built credibility in 5 questions, and now you're talking about other deals. Should I be on the top of their list? If they're dead set on selling you this property, you're gonna have to get a lot deeper because again, it's been on market for 2 years. It's in a really hot market, Dallas. There's something else wrong here if they haven't already told you. So you can keep digging on this. But in all likelihood, there is another deal out there and there's something else they know that's coming on market, about to come. This script is the fastest way from point A to point B that we have found to do this without adding steps. It's worth mentioning, you're always going to have more conversation than just your 5 questions. We've ran this with other brokers and they literally just stick exactly to the script and it's super robotic and it's terrible. Don't do that. Be a human. But use these 5 questions as a benchmark for when you guys start talking and spiraling off. You can loop back to the next point and you just want to hit these 5 points to keep the conversation moving. Now, if they offer to put you on a list, every single one of us can send someone an MLS feed. We have software, we can automate marketing. Everyone can do it. What you don't want to hear, and it usually means you did something a little wrong, So they go, well, you know, there's nothing yet, but I can put you on a mailing list. That's like the friend zone. We don't want to be in the friend zone. I want to be your one and only. I want to have one or two brokers in a given market, and I want them to know I am using them. I am loyal to them, and I want them to be loyal to me. So I always answer with, well, that's great. I'm on a lot of lists because I want them to know that I'm active. And that's not my goal. I'm on a lot of lists and I appreciate that. I'm ready to play. You show me the right deal, I can make a decision immediately. What does it look like to be the first call? Not everyone will do it, but you only need 1 or 2 brokers in the market to have a really tight relationship. And all of a sudden, all the deals are open to you. And then people who have off-market deals, We ran this script as a test in a call center. Cody and I did this for 3 weeks. We had over 50% response rate from brokers who showed us an off-market deal after this call. It was either from another office, from a friend in a different town, or right next door to the property. But over 50% of people following this script had some other deal to look at that was not available to everyone or just about to come up. You want to compete outside of CREXi and LoopNet. These places are where deals go to die because they didn't sell off-market. In a hot market like we have today, multifamily trades off-market. It's just what happens. Single-family trades with 50 offers right now. That may be a little exaggeration, but not much. I'm seeing things in Seattle go $300K over asking with some degree of consistency, which is just ridiculous. I don't want to compete with those people. I want to be ahead of it. This is a script that works to get you ahead of it. Lastly, as a broker, your clients should have a line of questions somewhat like this. When you are representing your clients calling another broker, Your line of questioning should be like this because this tells them you are a broker who knows how to play the investment game. You understand the sales cycle. Your client can make a decision. You guys are ready to go. You want to be able to buy real estate if you're going to sell real estate. So I highly recommend everyone uses this to purchase. However, this talk track works when you are calling any broker anywhere representing your client. If you do not know them, The exact same conversation works. Specific property, open-ended question, more specific financing. What else do we need to know before we make a decision? Perfectly follows the sales cycle. We'll build credibility. When you get really busy, as I know more than half the people on this call are, when you have a large list of clients, you're transacting often. Cody and I run across this a lot where we just don't have time to broker for everyone. I want to. But I can't represent everyone. When we have someone who is ready to play, they ask questions like this. If they're asking you to represent, it may be open-ended. So they might not ask, is the property available? But they should have questions about the location, the financing, and you should be able to walk them through a similar talk track and prepare them to look at these things. You should be able to communicate location. You should be able to communicate what is great and what is wrong with the property. You should be able to have an intelligent conversation about how it is going to finance and why, and you should know what other options are available. Now, when you bring a property to them, it should be the right property. I'm not advocating for giving them a ton of options. You should know them well enough to match. This is the deal for you. This is why I think you should do this. That's why Cody and I, when we list a property, it was on market like a day, and most of the stuff we move is off market. Because we know how to match this deal to the person because we've walked them through these steps and these questions. That being said, anyone you're representing, you should make sure you can intelligently communicate each of these points because this is how you're going to move real estate efficiently. Anyway, that's what I got on broker scripting. I told you guys I'd keep it fast, and that is what today is. We have found this to be extremely effective. And I am in no way saying that we are perfect. And I know of at least— I'm just looking through the list. There's at least 3 or 4 people on this call who are far more experienced than we are in brokerage who can share even more knowledge. This is one tidbit that has been hyper-effective, and I share this with absolutely everyone. If we're coaching an owner how to operate, this is the 4th week that we go through on our RAD training. This is week 4. That is everything I've had. Any comments, feedback, questions for me before we wrap up today? Let's go. I want to say thanks. Absolutely, absolutely. This has been, uh, a lot of trial and error to get here.

Yeah, I don't pretend to know everything even at this point, Christian, and that's some good stuff for people, including myself. Yeah, they can always tweak the scripts, right?

Absolutely. And again, it's not set in stone. You can add and remove from it, but yeah, we try really hard not to remove or not to add steps. So this is— I can't think of a more efficient way to get from A to B in less than 5 questions. I feel like if you remove one of these, it doesn't flow right. Um, so I believe this is the most efficient way. If anyone comes up with a better one, feel free to share. Brandon knows more about real estate than I'm He's forgot more about real estate than I'm ever going to know. That's just realistic. Jeff, same here. I mean, you guys have a lot of experience here. This is the, I think, the one tidbit that I have to contribute to this community more than anything is that this pathing is a really, really, really good way to buy and sell real estate.

You call on this one? It's been on the market 741 days. I'm just curious.

I really should. I'm sure there's something wrong with it. I'm looking over at Fort Worth side of the Dallas market. I'm actually going to be flying out there in a week for some off-market deals on that owner scripting we recorded last week. Found someone with 2,000 units who is very, very receptive to seller finance and lease options. I— it's either going to be a total waste of a flight or it's going to be an amazing inroad to the Dallas-Fort Worth market because he owns just a lot of stuff. Um, this stuff actually works. But no, I haven't called on this one yet. So if anyone's looking to get into Dallas, I mean, 11 units, that's the right price. I promise you there's something wrong with it. Of course, I don't know what it is yet.

Yeah, it's fascinating. I mean, that something would sit that long in a market like that. Is there dead bodies laying around or what?

I, I am assuming it's some mix of that, or they don't have a single book, or something. But when it's— when I see it on the market that long, it gives me an inkling. I don't know yet, but it gives me an inkling that they might be willing or have to get creative to transact. I know on social media I get a lot of comments on like, why would anyone seller finance in such a hot market? They can just get cash. I'm like, well, most people seller finance to us because we have a relationship and they're invested in us and want to move Cody and I forward specifically. And that's really where seller financing works. However, people can just get stuck. If this isn't bank financeable, their only options are get creative or get a cash offer. So when I see it on market that long in a market this hot, we have a significant chance that we have an ability to get a little creative on this if this is a pain point for someone else that we can solve. Yep. And that's what question 3 will illuminate. I imagine they have, uh, they know exactly what's wrong with this. If it hasn't moved in 2 years, uh, they probably have a lot to say on that question number 3. Yeah, anything else?

Christian? Hey, yeah, can you guys hear me?

Yeah. Hey, Chris.

Hey guys. Yeah, no, I just want to reiterate that this line of questioning is perfect. I mean I deal with so many calls to and from brokers that, you know, this really pares it down to the important questions. You're kind of cutting through the BS, you're getting the broker talking, you're asking 2 and 3 questions with just 1 question. Uh, this, this stuff is gold for sure.

Yeah, I really appreciate that. Yeah, thank you, Christian. Absolutely. Anyone has any follow-up questions at all? We're all on the same team. You guys know how to reach me. Give me a call, shoot me a text, send an email. But really try this. This is the only thing that I've done that works significantly over 50% of the time. I mean, this really works if you deliver this right. I, I will use this forever. It's phenomenal. And the best thing you can do for Cody and I is if you try this and you come up with another line of question, a better open-ended question, if you have a tweak to this, that works even better. I would love for this conversation to be a living 5-question document that we can tweak and add and use as a team. So I value any feedback a lot because it took a lot of feedback to get where we're at right now on it. And yeah, I will send this recording with a summary of the 5 questions so you can print that, use it, and just use as a basic roadmap when you're buying and selling real estate.

Perfect. Thanks for sharing, man.

Absolutely.