The Right Side of the Desk: To Chase or Not To Chase People

I was fortunate enough to have some great real estate investing mentors over my career as a real estate investor and one of my mentors, the late Brent Grove, taught me the importance of being on the right side of the desk.

He taught me that you should set up your business to have people come to you and ask you if you want to buy their house. You do not want to chase people and ask them if they will sell you their house. There is quite a bit of subtlety to this business philosophy, which I will explore in this article.

One of the biggest benefits of having people approach you instead of approaching them is that, when they come to you, you are automatically established as a credible expert. They came to you for help with their situation or problem and while you still have to strengthen your credibility with them, it is much easier than having to convince someone you’ve called – who has never heard of you – that you are credible.

This benefit often shows up for us as real estate investors when we ask those somewhat sensitive questions about the seller and their property. For example, in my script for gathering information about a property, I ask if there is a mortgage on the property. If you have not established yourself as credible or you are chasing leads, this is a very, very difficult question to get answered – but when people call me I rarely run into a problem getting an answer. If you don’t believe me, try calling 10 sellers from the newspaper or from a classified ad website and ask them for info about their loan balance. Even though it’s on public record, you’re likely to get very few people who will feel comfortable enough to tell you.

Now, try asking that same question to someone who calls you on marketing you have out saying that you buy houses. For me, the difference is extreme: better than 9 out of 10 give it to me without hesitation.

The benefit of not chasing and being on the right side of the desk is also apparent when you make an offer. Make a lower than expected offer to someone who you called out of the blue and they’re likely to be offended. Make a lower than expected offer to someone who called you and you will get a much different result because they came asking what you could do and you told them what you could do. A different perspective yields a much different outcome.

Overall, I think you will find a huge benefit to having marketing out and having motivated sellers and buyers calling you rather than chasing down sellers that have not already pre-sold themselves on you and your service before they picked up the phone to call you.

Until my next post,

James

P.S. I had some great consultants and mentors… do you? Sign up for our Real Estate Investor Bronze Membership now.

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