Building Your Buyer’s List— Should An Invitation Be Included On An Offer Letter?

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and on this week's roundtable, we've got almost all the usual suspects. We've got the technician, Eric Peterson. Eric, how are you? Good.

Happy to be here.

Good to see you. We've got the breathe in, the mailing, breathe out, the marketing, the Zen master, Mike Zano. Mike, how are you doing?

Wonderful. Thank you for asking.

Good to see you. We've got the most feared woman in the country, the terrorist hunter, Mimi Schmidt. Mimi, how are you?

I'm doing great. They're coming after me, trying to pull me back in.

Are they really?

The terrorist hunting?

Yes, the dod. You got to stay strong. You put in your time, you manage 150 people. It's Mimi's time.

That's right. That's why I keep telling.

Yeah, well, but, you know, I don't know, maybe we'll all be safer if you get back there. Maybe go part time.

She can't say no.

That's. Yeah, that's true. That is true. We've got the big papa. I love it when you call me Big Papa.

Tate.

Litchfield in the Idaho. Tate. How's the fishing?

Good, man. Really, really nice. Great weather. It's a good time to escape the heat of Las Vegas.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And last but not least, you know you love them, the brain, the professor, your flight school Sherpa, Scott Todd from Scott Todd.net landmodo.com Learn anything about anything. Investorninjas.com Scott Todd. How are you, Mark?

I'm great.

How are you?

Pulse is still normal. Respiration is fine. We got a really interesting topic today that I literally have no idea what people are going to say. So what is our topic today, Scott Todd?

Okay, so the question of the day is, should you. Would you. Have you put on your offer list or offer letter. I should say on your offer letter an invitation for someone to join your buyers list. I mean, like, hey, don't want to sell? Want to buy more? What do you say? Join my buyers list.

It's a really interesting topic and it kind of riffs off of last week's topic about the offer letter. Should be one page, should be two page. Should you have a counter? And now we're adding one more element. And I'd love to know what Eric Peterson thinks about this novel idea. Eric, what do you think about building your buyers list on the offer letter?

Well, I won't say it's a bad idea, but I Think I probably wouldn't do it myself. I think that in my mind, I don't want to confuse my potential seller. I don't want to send them mixed messages. Like, I want the focus of that letter to be buying their land. If they're going to call me and tell me, you know, they don't want to sell their land, but they'd like to buy more, you know, then maybe we could have that kind of conversation, because that does happen from time to time. But I think in general, to put it on the letter, I'm going to be a. A no on that. Just because I don't want to. I don't want to confuse them.

Okay, okay. You know, who might be a little bit more irascible about this, a little bit more ornery, maybe taking the other side of it, is going to be the Zen master, Mike Zano. You love building your buyers list. Here's another opportunity. What do you think?

Well, I'm gonna go with a hard no. And the reason is, is I don't want to give them a negotiation tool, because if they decide to, you know, to wait and get the deal of the week, and, you know, maybe they delay, and then next thing you know, they're like, well, you know, geez, I see what you're selling it for. I'd like to have more for my property. I don't know. I think that for that reason alone, although I think it's got some valid potential in generating more potential buyers. But I'm going to go with a hard no. I don't want to give them something else to go buy for a comp, because they probably don't even know what the comps are. They probably held on this property forever. They have no idea when we mail them. That's typically the people we're dealing with. And now it's like, I don't know what it's worth. Oh, yeah, Let me check out this guy's prices. Wow.

Wow.

It's worth 10 grand. Why are you only offering me 2500? And so I think it could cause some confusion.

Sorry.

Okay, okay. Interesting. Mimi Schmidt, what about you?

I agree with Mike and Eric completely. I do not want the people that I'm buying from to know what I'm selling that property for. I do not want them to know now. I mean, neighbor letters, I'll go back and ask the folks if they want to buy the property next to them, Right? So for those people, I'll go back with the neighbor letter, But I don't want the whole group to know what. What my up. My retail prices that I think that would ruin the market for me. And specifically in some of these niche subdivisions I work in.

You know what, it's so funny, like, you would say that, because I wouldn't even want the neighbors to know I want to buy their property. Yeah, yeah, but sometimes. So like, when we'll do the. When we'll do the neighbor letter, they'll be like, no, I don't want to buy, but I want to sell. Happens a lot. So it's just another legion tool. But. So are you sticking with that answer then? Would you still go with the neighbor letter or that convince you to not even do that?

I wouldn't put. I will I reach out to. To buy for them to. To buy a property from me and be on that seller side, but I'm not going to put them on my buyer's list.

Okay. Okay. Well, Tay Litchfield in beautiful Idaho.

Right. Since I'm coming from witness protection over here, because you can only see half my face, I'm going to play devil's advocate here because I don't think it's as bad of an idea as Eric and Mimi and Mike. Because here's the thing. We send out offers. Our goal is to get a 3 to 5% response rate, right? And that's 3 to 5% of the people who are potentially interested in selling us their property. Of that 3 to 5%, you know, we're looking for a 1% buy rate. That's how we know we're right on the money. So in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, are we really going to see more than 1% of these people sign up to be on my buyers list? I don't know. I mean, what do I care? My information's public out there anyways. It's not like I'm hiding anything. So what's to prevent people from taking the name on the offer letter to begin with and Googling, you know, see what Tate's selling this week anyway? They can sign up on our buyers list from the website. So, I mean, is it something I see myself doing immediately? No, but I don't think it's a terrible, terrible thing. I mean, I really can't make a hard decision without split testing it. I gotta let the numbers tell me if I'm right or wrong on this one. But I'm leaning towards a more maybe than a hard no.

Interesting. Interesting. Scott. Todd, what are your thoughts?

Scott's on my team. I already know it.

I don't think so.

I already know it. He is, Mark. I know he is.

He might. He might use your inferior razor, but he's not going to be on your team when it comes to business.

I could. I could tell right now, though, we're a country apart. He's feeling my answer. He's like, oh, Tate, that makes sense. Yeah, I got your back, man.

Okay, so my original. My original thought on this was absolutely not. Like, that is crazy craziness. Because all of the reasons that Mimi and Mike and Eric all said, I agree with them 100%, right? Like, it's weird. Like, I even think it's weird that, like, I'm even selective as to who I'm mailing my neighbor letters to. Okay? So, like, I don't just mail neighbor letters to raw land, because I'm going to mail them an offer letter. I don't want to turn around and mail them a neighbor letter saying, hey, buy. Why don't you buy the land that they're going to look at and go, well, you just offered me 2500. You want 10,000 for it? So I only mail to houses around me, right? That's the way I do it, is I mail to people who have houses around because they didn't get my original offer letter anyway. So I'm like, no, that's ridiculous. Because to put someone on my buyers list, because you know what? I want to continue to. I want to continue to kind of mail to them and say, hey, look, I'll buy your property. Every hundred days, I'm gonna buy. I'm gonna offer buy their property. However. However, the odds are in our favor that they're not gonna sell their property, right? Like, the odds are that they're not gonna sell their property. They probably won't buy another property. They may not sell their property. But that said, why not try it? Like, why not? I would put them into a certain. I would give them their own landing page so I can tag them. And then if I ever see that it's not working, my favorite, I just blow them out. That's what I would do.

Okay? I'll tell you guys why.

What did I say? What did I say?

All right, all right. Easy, easy, big papa. Okay, I'll tell you why, you guys. This is what I call pretzel logic. Okay? So I'm definitely team Eric, team Mike, and team Mimi. I'll tell you guys why. What are the four elements of every strong marketing piece? A strong headline, urgency, scarcity, and a clear call to action. Now, on our offer, there is a clear call to action. It is very simple. We're going to buy this property or we're not going to buy the property. And if we're really going to be making it a little watered down, we might look at your counteroffer. But that's is focused. It is clear we are not fishing for anything else on that particular offer. And that offer is going to save us time. Because look, you could do blind offers all day long and be on the phone all day long and do the Scott Todd method. Well, maybe I'll just send them to a landing page, make it fill out a form. And now I got to go through all the, you know, the whole thing there. That's not what we do. We are thing. Now, if you want to do it the Scott and Tate way, that is a second letter that has nothing to do with the offer. Now, if you do that and build your buyers and build your buyers list that way, I have no qualms. But that's a clear call to action. Are you interested in building your wealth, having a legacy? We have raw land available in the area you live. Go to this website, this beautiful Scott Todd land Moto landing page, and put in your information. I will send you a deal of the week. It is a clear call to action. It's not a, oh, P.S. by the way, we'll buy your land too.

Okay, Mark, I agree. I agree with what you're saying. And put it in a second letter. And see, that is the beauty of this mastermind, is that we can craft these things to come up with a solution to anything.

All right. Tate looks a little. A little annoyed with me.

Tate, you know, the thing is, I'm not just. I'm not annoyed. I'm just a little hurt. I mean, that was a low blow, Mark. That was like, this is the only way to do it.

No, I'm making. No, I'm saying from a clear, fundamental marketing perspective, that is the way to do it and not to muddy those waters because we have a hundred years of data on this.

I agree with you. I do agree with you that maybe including it in the original offer is not the right way. But I think that, you know, whoever submitted this question, whether Scott or somebody else, they could be onto something. There could be another way to build this buyers list that maybe we've overlooked, maybe we haven't thought of. And that's why I really like the origin of the question is, is there another way to build our buyers list with people who've already bought in the area? And I think the answer is yeah, Maybe we could send out letters. Maybe we could try that. I personally am not going to change my offer letter. Honestly, I'm not going to add this, but I do think that there are other approaches here that could work and it's in our best interest to give them a shot. So I will try it.

And for 67 cents, if you know your numbers, I agree with you. I think that second letter that could go out to say, get on my buyers list because you already know they own raw land.

I agree with you and that letter. The way we could, you know, word that letter is we already know you own land out in this area. If you want to own more, get in touch with. Right. And then when they sign up, we could find out, contact me. I bet you we're going to get people from that letter who are going to say, I own this, but I'd like to sell it. Are you interested? So it could work out to be another opportunity to buy. So I don't know. I think I'm going to try it. I mean, what's the average value of somebody who ends up buying property from us?

Right. And I think it's a stronger lead because you already know they own property.

Right.

So I think it's a good idea. I like the landing page idea. I just don't want it on my original offer letter. I don't want to muddy those waters, but I'd love to know what Eric Peterson thinks about building the buyers list. Either if he was swayed by the Scott Tate argument or if he likes the different argument of, hey, maybe we send him a different letter.

Yeah, I have no problem with a separate letter. I still feel like including it on the offer letter just kind of muddies up the message and I think, you know, ultimately confuses the potential seller. But I've got no problem with an additional letter if someone wants to pursue that.

Yeah. I mean, I would ask Mike, but he's literally living in complete fear of Scott Todd in so many different ways because, you know, is his phone gonna start ringing? Is it gonna look like it's different people? And, you know, so there's probably just whatever he says, we gotta take it with kind of like a grain of salt because probably not gonna, you know, be like, oh, I don't. This. I just, I don't. You probably won't ever hear him say, I disagree with Scott toddlers.

So.

But that being said, just so we. Everybody's clear on that, we would like your opinion, Mike.

Well, yes, there's a lot of truth in what you Said. But I will say that there was a wonderful thing that Tate brought up about the percentages.

Look at we.

There's like, 95% of the people that know and probably like the area as opposed to the three to five that are gonna respond and the one that we're gonna buy from. So, I mean, we're already reaching out. These are potential buyers. So I don't like it on the initial offer letter, but if there's something we could do, since we already have that, I think that's pretty cool.

Okay. And let's just give Mimi the last word on this.

Mimi, my opinion hasn't changed. I wouldn't put them on my buyers list, and I wouldn't let them know what I'm selling my property for.

So you wouldn't even. So you wouldn't send a second letter even just to build your buyers list?

No.

Not to those particular areas. No.

Because you want to keep it clean. You want to just buy property there.

Okay, I'm following the recipe. I'm keeping it simple.

Checkmate.

He just burned us all. Follow the recipe.

Well, I think, Mark, don't you. You used to come out and say, you know, follow the recipe, but let me come up with these crazy ideas because, you know, you can afford to waste some money. So I think that's the way we should let this go, is let's let Mark waste some money. Let's let Mark contaminate his buyer's list, and then you can share your results with us.

Okay.

You know what? I like that experiment. I would do it for the community, 100%. So let's do it. We'll get people on it, and we'll come back and. And Mimi's probably going to laugh at us. But maybe not. Maybe we'll be like, hey, we got a sale from this, and we can laugh at, you know, all the way to the bank based on our experiment. So we'll see. But you're. But, Tate, you're right, though. Like, the only way to know is if you test it. That's the only definitive way to know. So as much as I ripped on your original answer, there are parts of it I did agree with.

I knew it.

So, you know, we're. You know, we're still good. All right, well, before we go to our tip of the week from Mimi Schmidt, I just wanted to let everybody know about this week's sponsor of the podcast. None other than. I know you guys aren't gonna believe it. Flight school. Learn how 16 weeks can really transform your life. A one time sale. Get recurring passive income every single month. No renters, no rehabs, no renovations, no rodents. Build real wealth without having to put a lot of capital in from your own pocket. But do it in real time with the master, the Yoda of land investing, Scott Todd, taking you up that mountain safely, quickly, efficiently. Learn more. Get on a call with the Zen master, Max Zano with a nightcap OG Scott Bossman. Just go to thelandgeek.com forward/training thelandgeek.com training okay, Mimi Schmidt, what is your tip of the week? A website, a resource, a book, Something actionable for the autopaths, American listeners to go improve their businesses, improve your lives. What do you got?

It's something else out of the HubSpot Sales blog. It's a training template. I get a lot of questions about how to train a sales va, and I think it's the hardest VA to really train.

So.

So this. It's way more detailed than any of us would ever use, but it gives you some things to think about. Right. When you're training your sales va, what software do they need to get set up? And what email accounts or slack channels. Right. What other tools technically do you use? Right. People that they should meet or talk to, how to set goals for them. Suggested reading. Right. So it's just something to help people get their thoughts together for their sales VA training.

I love it. I love it. That's really good. I'm downloading it right now.

Huh.

Very cool. Well, I'm not downloading it right now because it's asking me all these questions, but eventually I will. Eventually I will. Eric, what do you think of that tip of the week?

It's great. I mean, we all need sales training for ourselves or for our sales assistants. So any resources to help with that? Highly recommended.

All right. Well, fantastic. Well, I think today's podcast was very lively. It was a great topic. I think we worked some things out together in a mastermind type of setting. So good on us. I want to thank the listeners and hopefully you're getting value as well. And if you are, there are three little things you can do. All you have to do is subscribe, rate, review the podcast, send us a screenshot of that review. To support thelandgeek.com we're gonna send you for free the $97 wholetailing course, how to double your money, 30 days or less. And before we end with a big group hug, are we ready to do this? One, two, three. Three. Let freedom ring. Okay, not bad. So speaking of hugs, I Think we're all sort of missing them, aren't we?

Yeah, yeah.

You know, I saw some friends the other day. I gave them, like the bow, like, you know, elbow stay six feet away, you know, it's kind of missing. Mike, you're a big hugger.

Yeah, I'm missing it. Haven't hugged my parents since this all started. I haven't been able to see my grandmother. And, you know, she's 99 this year, so I want to go see her soon. And yeah, I'm missing the hugs, by the way.

Speaking of hugs, did you get any birthday hugs? Happy birthday.

Well, from. From the kids and whatnot. Yes, I did. And we had a wonderful day. Thank you. Yeah, it was great.

What'd you guys do?

We went down to Salem, Mass. Which is sort of like on the ocean, and had a nice meal outside, and it's just really good. And then we walked around and got some coffee, looked at some little shops and just had a great day. Started off the day with yoga and a nice long five mile walk too, so. Full day.

Yeah. Well, I got a gift today that was sort of a surprise. It was David Schmidt's Father's Day gift. And the gift.

We're running out of time.

Sorry, we don't. We don't know what you're saying.

We really.

Nobody can hear you. Crazy.

Nobody.

Nothing. Mike, can you hear him? Tate, can you guys hear Mark?

Hear a word?

Scott, just close us out then. Close us out.

This is how you silence the mind. This is how you silence Mark, right? Like you just. Just talk over him. He can't. Like, don't worry, we can. We can take his phone out. We can take his mic out too.

You know, I feel like you guys would really think thrive in, let's say the Chinese government.

Right?

I mean, last I checked, there was freedom of speech in this country. Fellas.

Was there something to say?

I'm. I'm gonna exercise it because David Schmidt shaved with the Merkur razor. Your guys razor. And I believe the word was decent. Is that right, Mimi?

He had to use the galette to go over it because it didn't get close enough.

Mimi, you're not helping. You're not helping us, Mimi.

But he loved how easy it was to clean. He loved the heft. I think I asked him if he was holding it at the right angle.

See?

So.

Oh, if he doesn't hold them. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen, when he gets your razor, Mark, he's gonna be like, this thing just moves the shaving cream around this is the biggest waste of money. I cannot wait.

I will be sending him the tutorial videos. You just do a little 30 degree angle. Let the blade do the work. You know, this guy is a freaking pilot, okay? He flies jets. I think he can. I think he knows how to use a straight edge razor.

Okay, send him the videos, we'll get him the razor, we'll do a part two.

Yeah, it's all good. Continued. Continue. Yeah, you know, at least he's not using a. An electric like some other people we know.

Could I change the subject? Is that okay? I gotta. I wanted to point something out that I feel bad, Tate, that you have bad lighting today, because it's probably the best haircut I've seen a long time. I really. I'm thinking that's pretty sharp and you can't see it because of the lighting, but that has got a nice part on it, and I think it's wonderful. I think we gotta point it out because the listeners can't see it because of the bad lighting. But I can see it.

Thank you. Yeah. My wife's getting really good at this whole haircut thing.

Looks great.

Yeah, it looks really good. Yeah.

Unlike my mop. I gotta get a cut.

I got a video from Racine, the deal machine. Sugai who. This is her industry. And it was like a 33 minute YouTube video on how to do like a home. A good home haircut. Wow. So next time you guys see me, maybe I won't look as jacked up as I do now. She'll be pretty good, so. Well, this was fun. And again, Mimi, thank you for that wonderful gift. Mike, glad you had a great birthday. And this is a phenomenal time. It's always great getting together. And Tate, enjoy Idaho. Catch some. Some fish. Enjoy getting out of the heat, and see everybody next week. Thanks, everybody.