Epic Real Estate Investing - Cold Calling the Right Way with Brandon Barnes | 873

Episode Date: December 21, 2019

This weekend, Matt is joined with Brandon Barnes, an accomplished entrepreneur and real estate investor, a co-founder of B&M property solutions, and a founder of Might Estates, L.L.C. Stay tuned because Brandon is a cold calling expert and reveals the right way to approach sellers and put a deal under contract using this all-time strategy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Terrio Media. Success in real estate has nothing to do with shiny objects. It has everything to do with mastering the basics. The three pillars of real estate investing. Attract, convert, exit. Matt Terrio has been helping real estate investors do just that for more than a decade now. If you want to make money in real estate, keep listening. If you want it faster, visit REI.

Ace.com. Here's Matt. Hello, and welcome to the epic real estate investing show. I've got a great show for you today. Our guest is an accomplished entrepreneur and real estate investors. He's the co-founder of B&M Property Solutions and founder of Mighty Estates LLC in Atlanta, Georgia. His approach to with business is very, very simple. He focuses on win-win solutions in every transaction. And today, I invited him on the show to tell us about how he does it. So please, without further ado, please help me welcome to the show, Mr. Brandon Barnes. and welcome to the epic real estate investing show. Hey, thank you. Thank you, Matt. I appreciate it.

Glad to be here. Yeah, likewise. Yeah, we met in, where was that? That was in Atlanta where we met, right? Was it Eddie Speeds event? Very good. We got to talk a little bit, and it sounds like you're doing some interesting things. So I wanted to bring you on the show, and let's talk about it.

So how long have you been investing? Yeah, so look, I got my start in early 2016, from zero to six, figures that first year just by chance. No, that doesn't happen by chance. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Blessings, fortune, destiny. I literally had gotten fired a few weeks after getting married.

Mm-hmm. And I had a buddy. Started everything off, right? Right. I had a buddy that I met in Pittsburgh while I was interning up there with Heinz. And I always was talking about real estate. and rentals and stuff like this. And I called him like right after I got fired and I said,

hey man, what's this real estate thing all about? It was like, man, bro, like, how about this? I actually moved to Atlanta. I'm down here in your city right now. And I have this great mentor. His name is Tom Crowell. You come check him out, man.

He'll fire you up. And I was like, oh, for sure, I'm there. And I got started literally January, 2016. And I'll never look back. Sweet. So what does business look like for you today then? Yeah. So I'm primarily wholesaling. Of course, the wholesaling ink model kind of starts off of direct mail. I did a bit of that. Then I got into doing some probate deals, probate letters. And then towards the end of 2016, I started hearing about Brent Daniels

and Cole calling. I was like, hey, this is a way. He was breaking down the cost. versus the revenue he was generating. It just seemed like, no, far and away, a lot better way of generating leads. And I started to follow him, pick his brain. And so I started cold calling early 2017. That next year, we did a good amount of deals. We got about 200 grand that year.

But I went on and hired some cold callers and hired an acquisition, man. manager and your three just shy of a million this year, just north of a million. And revenue, 100% cold calling, 100% calling list sourced leads. Congrats on that, bud. Nice trajectory there. So it's hard for me to even believe that you just said something that you said, that you're doing direct mail and then you got excited about cold calling.

Nobody gets excited about cold calling. So what was it about the cold calling that you found so appealing? Yeah. So I think that, you know, Brent Daniels and the whole TTP method, I know cold calling has been around for forever, right? But for a wholesaler, I think he really championed it in that late 2016, early 2017. And were not that many people doing it. And the numbers that he was showing is, his profit margin just seemed way better than the folks that were sending massive amounts of mail

at that time. Right. You know, so for, you know, 15, 30 grand, generate, you know, six figures a month, just with a few callers, acquisitions, guide, dispositions, and some, you know, some data and systems, it just seemed like a great opportunity. And I don't think that many people were doing it at that time. So I jumped on the bandwagon very early. And I think that's why we hit our stride and are, you know, one of the better, I think,

co-calling teams here in Atlanta that's consistently doing deals. Nice. Yeah, there's two ways to do this business. You can pay for it or you can earn it, right? And you can pay for the marketing or you can earn it through the picking up the phone and knocking on the doors. Okay, so all making sense. And then you got on here so humbly saying by chance you did really well.

No, you worked hard. That's hard work. So I wanted to shine some light on that because that ain't easy. So congrats on that. What, who are you calling? Who is your favorite people to call? Yeah, honestly, you know, we are taking the most generic route. We are literally just co-calling list source leads.

So the list source.com? Listource.com. Yeah. So we're purchasing lists, large lists, because we have, you know, we're dialing. 90 hours per week or so amongst three cold callers. So that's a lot of data. We got to feed them. So for us,

it's going in and dialing, pulling down an absentee owner list, maybe an owner-occupied list. At this point, you know, I blast the whole city, 30-mile radius of Atlanta, equity filters off.

You know, I want to... You're just calling everybody. You're just going through the phone book. For sure, 100%. They didn't even make phone books anymore? you can save a lot of money than going to the list source. It reminds me my first day as a real estate agent broker put this big giant yellow or the white pages on my desk that start calling.

I was like, man. Anyway, I just remember that. I thought it was illegal. Like, we had to stop calling because that darn do not call list. Does that even exist anymore? No, it does. We do a good job of when somebody says do not call, we definitely DNC them immediately. you know, but anytime, you know, we hop on a phone with somebody that may, that say that, you know, they may have been on and do not call us, you know, immediately apologize and back away and make sure that we don't call them again.

But I think some of the lists are naturally scrubbed against the DNC registry. But I haven't heard many people get into too much trouble with it lately. Okay. Well, that's good. That's good to know. I've heard this just on one instance. And he says, no, it's far reach. but I've only heard about it once.

So it's secondhand information about, you know, there's guys out there that just wait to be called to fire off their lawsuits. Have you heard about that? Have you had any experience with that? Yes, I haven't had experience with it. But I think there was a guy I can't think of his name. He's out of Virginia. And he did a video, YouTube video about a guy that was like suing every wholesaler

that was sending him ringless voicemails. and the attorney that he took it to said, hey, I know this guy. He just knows the playbook. And, you know, he can a little bit of a settlement, $5,000, $10, $15,000. Okay. Excellent.

So I know that. I heard about that. I guess I heard about the same dude. All right. So there's a YouTube video on it. I didn't know that. Interesting. All right.

So, hey, they're all out there. And then this is part of doing business sometimes. So when you're actually calling the people, what's the approach? You just pick up the phone and. and hey, you want to sell your house? Yeah, I mean, very, very, you know, general conversation, you know, hey, Mr. homeowner, you got to be really energetic, of course, looking to purchase property. I went to the Main Street.

Just wanted to see if you consider selling. If you can stick the introduction, the rest of the call is downhill from there. You can get on the phone with a homeowner and they feel like they either know you or they may know you and, you know, they're not going to hang up and ghost you or think you're a telemarketer. The rest of the conversation is downhill. That's when you're just engaging, you know, building a report, asking questions. You know, of course, our people know how to engage and they know, you know, what stories to tell about past deals and really dig in. But if you can stick the introduction on a cold call, it's game over.

I mean, if they're willing to sell their house, you're going to find that out. Yeah. Now, there's so much to that. People that call me with so many marketers today, you know, if they call and, you know, if they call and, they fumble it. I'm just annoyed and irritated. Can't wait to hang up the phone. Right? So what's one of the tricks?

How do you stick? What's your go-to move to stick the intro? Yeah, so always say hi before the other person says hi. Hello? So you say you're greeting as soon as you think that the call is live and refer to the person by first name. But hey, Jim, how's going? You know, like it just has to be really quick.

really upbeat, going high, referred to them by first name. You know, just want to see if you consider selling your property. You want to the Main Street, and then you go on into your spill. But get through it quickly. Got it. Be respectful of their time, telling what you're calling for, and get out of there. So that's kind of the big thing.

Got it. Yeah, no, my wife is so good at every where we go. She's always reading whoever's working, like she'll read the name tag and use their name. And it gets her in so many doors just by using the first name. name, right? And oh, yeah, it's remarkable. It's like almost voodoo. Anyway. Well, you know, so, I mean, cold calling is great and everything. But what has made us successful is how we follow up with these homeowners. I think that I heard, I mean, I listened to, of course, your podcast. And I heard you on a recent podcast talk about, you know, you're sending offers to

everybody or you're sending your handwritten offers. We're not doing that, but we are making sure that we get an offer in front of everybody. My team is all virtual, even though I'm doing deals in Atlanta, we're only going to the property once it's under contract. And the way we're able to do that is because we're sending massive amounts of offers and we're constantly following up. My acquisition manager actually lives in Mexico. And the difference between our system, I learned this from Adam and Luke Swanley out of Philly. They said that they wanted to kill Podio. They said, we're doing our deals and we're calling out a Mojo dialer.

Mojo is a CRM. Why are we dealing with Podio? And as soon as they, as soon as they're talking about that, and I engaged him on some calls about that, we made that leap of faith too to think that we could lock up deals over the phone without going to the property. It was a mindset shift. And so once my prospectors

say that this is a lead, they're assigning a follow-up to my acquisitions manager so where every day he comes in and he just looks at his calendar and power dials all of the leads that have been assigned to him, you know, categorized specifically by,

you know, whether he thinks they're high, not cold long term. And he's able to follow up and have long conversations with each of the leads that come through. Versus the average wholesaler, a real estate investor, that gets their leads in the podium and then has to sort through and hand down and pick who they want to call one by one. Acquisition managers always in the power dollar having long conversations and setting tasks for my VA system and offers. That's how we win.

Nice. I like it. Okay, so a few different things came up. Which one did I talk about first? Yeah, we killed Podio ourselves about four years ago. Nice. Yeah, I thought that was a disaster. Some people love it, and God bless them.

I'm glad they were able to figure it out, and I'm glad they're doing well with it, but it was just terrible for us. For sure. I mean, it can be a rabbit hole. We still use it, but we only put, the deal only goes there once it's under contract. And I track it through the dispositions process. Got it. Super.

dollar. All right. So you got your acquisition manager. He's got all the leads set. The prospectors have separated the leads from everything else. They put the leads in front of the acquisition manager. He goes and power dials through there. And then he has his, he sticks his intro. And then it goes from where? How do we end up with the offer? What's that process look like? Yep. So his script is a little bit longer. I'm actually pretty proud of it. Something that I create. kind of merging some of my favorite mentors, if you will. It has a few elements of Todd Tobac. It has some John Martinez.

It has some advanced agreements. And the Akronin method, so where you've come up with your Mayo, and then you anchor 66%, 75%, 83%. So he takes them through this longer script where he's, you know, asking for permission out the gate, qualifying, diagnosing. It's our sales cycle. Then he's getting into delivering offers or, you know, how we can fulfill.

And then he takes them through the offer process at, you know, anchor level one, level two, level three, and then mail. So his script is a lot longer. He's having longer conversations. and then he's looking at the property on Zillow, looking for sole comps, and backing out equity and our margin to make his offer on the fly. That's the difference. He's doing this on the fly.

So he's got Zillow set up in front of him, brings up the property, and then you guys got your own little formula, right? You set your anchors first and come in with the real formula. So then when you come with the real answer, it probably seems better than what they thought they're going to get maybe right. Yeah. And, you know, the average, you know, most people go, you know, ARV times point seven minus repair, minus your margin.

I have taught my guy to look at the sole comps that, you know, are similar characteristics and look for sales either to a rehabber, to a landlord buyer, or somebody that bought, you know, owner occupant, move in ready. And you can tell by the, pictures in the description. So, for instance, if it sold to a rehabber, the house is fully renovated, you look at what the sales price is, the sales history,

and you'll see what it sold at to that rehabber before we flipped it. Every time we find that number or we find something that was turned into a rental and purchased and turned to a rental or like a purchase moved in ready, like that's my B2C price. So we just knock off 20K, our margin, and that's our mail. He anchors below that. I think we can add more value. We can come up with a higher offer price to homeowners.

If we're just going in and basically not like finding the B2C price based on the sole comps, knocking off our margin 20K and that's our mail, he can quickly make offers, quickly just look for the comps, get a feel for it. Of course, there's some touch. There's some feel that he gets over over time. He's not worrying about repair calls. He's not doing, you know, his ARV. calculation where he's in the end up always going to come in with a low ball offer.

Yep. Doing that number also gets you to offer price that works for a landlord buyer. Mm-hmm. It works for somebody that, a house that is not going to be completely renovated. Good stuff. Good stuff. So a totally different approach. So you're looking at the pretty houses that were obviously just rehabbed.

And then you look at the history to see what that person is. what that person bought it for and that gives you an idea where you need to be that yep that's my b2c got that's what i want to sell that that's where i want to sell that's my b2c purchase a price right that's where i want to sell the property so if i just take out my margin off of that okay so hold on you you see you find the the flip price right i mean you find the the the retail price of it one of the pretty properties right and then you look at what they bought it for correct before the they rehabed it, right? Correct.

Correct. And that price, that's your target price there? That is where I assume I can sell this home at. Ah, to wholesale. Got it to an investor buyer. I understand. I got you now. I'm going to knock off my margin and that's my mayor.

That's my maximum allowable offer. It works. It works. It's crazy. And I don't know. I like it. It's short and sweet. And I always say you just want to, you just want a ballpark number anyway.

you just want to get something that you know you'll probably be able to make work. And then if worse comes to worse, then you know, you'll have to make an adjustment. But if along you're in the ballpark and you got under contract, you're kind of winning, right? Exactly. And then again, I mean, everybody getting an offer, that's just another marketing piece. I know Tom Crow will say that, you know, all day. Your offer is just another marketing piece. So if we get some good ballpark offers out there, they're either going to reply via email or reply via a phone call.

And then we can continue that conversation. fine tune that number and lock it up. I like it. Tom Crowle, man. Love that, love that, dude. Anyway, all it energy.

Yeah, totally, right? I was like, every time I talk to him, I just, I leave energized and I was like, I wish I had some of that. Todd Toback's kind of like that, too. Yeah,

they're my original mentors. Yeah, you had good ones for sure. Okay, so you come to, your acquisition guy comes to an agreement over the phone, then now it's time to get the signature. How does that process work? We docusign, vast majority of our agreements.

Yep. Okay. And he'll set a task for our virtual assistant who she actually can put the details in a podium. Web form and actually merges, web merges, the document, zaps it to docusign and sends it to seller. Sweet. I'm working on that functionality at this very moment.

I thought I was smart, but someone's already done that before. No, it makes sense. A quick, quick little offer app. I'll send you a form so you can see the back end. But we're actually considering Pipe Drive and PANDoc, you can actually create the form within their CRM, and they'll send it out. It'll save you on the web merge costs.

We'll try about that. All right, yeah, you can show me all about that. We've been doing the texting and I've been, I was like, well, if I could just, instead of mailing people offers, what if I just texted them a link to the docus sign? Yeah. Right? See? They're just another marketing piece. For sure.

For sure. Yeah, totally. Texting is heating up. We're trying to get into it. You know, we're slowly. You should check out, one of my students created his own. It's really hot called Go for Close. And it's working really well.

Wow. Go for clothes. Yeah. forclose.com is pretty ninja and it's cheap too. So at least it is right now. So check it out. Get it. But anyway. Cool. So you send over, you get the offer on docky sign. You send that over. So tell me that when I was doing virtual wholesaling, we did a lot, probably about six years ago. And still, even with like the people that said yes, yes, I will sell my house to you, we still had a big,

challenge in getting them to actually sign the document and solidify everything. Do you guys have any sort of challenges with that? Or how do you improve those numbers? Yeah, for sure. He's usually, you know, anecdotally, because I don't speak to so many sellers anymore, thankfully. But it usually is telling me like, yeah, I got a few people on the ropes, a few people I'm expecting to sign today. But because he's able to like power down all those leads.

Yeah, I'm thinking that's the difference. is he makes up for it in volume. See, we didn't power dial like that. We were just doing direct mail, follow up, and try and close the deal, and then send the contract over. And I'd say even with everyone that said, yes, still 50% of them wouldn't sign. But you just said yes to me on the phone. But if you're power dialing, then that doesn't matter as much.

Right. They may say, yeah, I'll sign like three times, right? Three different conversations. But because he's touching them on a regular basis, more quickly and efficiently, he's getting them to that point to where they're finally ready. Yeah. Plus, you're talking to so many more people than I was.

So that also makes up for it, right? Yeah. Cool. All right. So now you got the property under contract. What's next? Now you go out to the property and what do you do? Yeah.

So we actually go, you know, we've finally fine-tuned and we actually tell the sellers up front that we need two inspections. You know, first to get pictures unless they have them for us. And then a transition agreement, right? right right we need two inspections i like it yes up front like hey we want to get in there and take pictures just to make sure that the house checks out and then a second one um where we'll bring in buyers and partners and um i've i've learned again from my mentor's tato back um it's all about the expectation that you set with the sellers um so for sure john and my acquisition manager in his

script is letting them know the vast majority of the time we're going to immediately resell your property for a profit. So we don't have to worry about, you know, them, you know, freaking out at the last minute, who are all these people? All these are potential buyers. Do you want to sell your property quickly, conveniently with us and we can make it happen? This is our process. They're doing that.

That second inspection, big walkthrough. We do have listing language in our agreements. My disposition manager is an agent. But out of every call it five deals, we get only one or two make it to an MLS buyer. Even though we have them listed there and then we market internally, we're usually getting it under contract with an internal buyer because the net margins are going to be better than on the MLS. But I will say the reason that you still do list everything on MLS is because there are deals that we could not sell to are one of our cash buyers, that some person in the far reaches of MLS,

right, want that really unique, you know, unique property that you would never think that would ever sell. So it's worth it to list everything, I think. Yeah. Exposure creates the demand. So MLS is probably the best exposure out there for, for buyers. So super. So you flip on everything, then? Everything, everything wholesaling. I've done three rehabs on my life. The first two were mildly successful, should have been wholesale, would have been better off wholesaling those. The last one was a really slam dunk deal that was earlier this year. It was like a condo near Linux Mall. So, very small repair, didn't have the word about anything outside.

If I got a unicorn deal like that, I'd rehab it. But that's about it. Since that you're about to tell me, I need to start holding. property. No, I'm going to say nothing. And I just, I'm going to hold everything. Y'all can do what you want to do. I'm going to hold, though. I know. I know it, though. I will too. I will too. Yeah, so it does leave me to my next question, but it's not what you think.

So what do you see for the next year and how is it changing the way you're doing business right now? So the one thing that I want to make sure that we continue to do is really get a feel for our buyers. I think even in a downturn, a downturn, you know, there will be, you know, buyers, landlord buyers looking for properties to, you know, acquire and hold. So being, you know, having a good pulse on who to go to for those, that's majority of the deals that we're locking up are from tire landlords in the first place. Right. I don't, I think that, you know, some of the folks, the fly-by-nighters or the people that don't have a system in a process in place will go, way, we'll still continue to find the deals that will be great holds and we'll still, we'll still do deals with them.

Nice. Yeah, get your systems and processes in place. Run, be a well-oiled organization and you're going to be fine in any market, I think. That's my opinion. I will say, though, I know that we've relied too much on just list source leads. We've got to get back to some more niche list, as well as, you know, we've dabbling dabbling in with text messages. So a few, have another marketing channel.

I don't want to go, you know, spread myself too thin. We're going into that and figuring out that and then we'll move on and do some different things. Nice. Sweet. So what's in the future that you're excited about? Man, I am excited about R.E.I. Live at Lent. Tell me what this is. Yeah. So R.E.I. Live is the baby Brian Tripp.

Brian Tripp is a friend of yours, I believe. Yeah, definitely. And he is the founder of the RIA Live brand. It was the biggest Maria in Birmingham and in Alabama. And he licensed that out to Sarasota, Florida, as well as Columbia, South Carolina, and came into Atlanta this past year. I had the great opportunity to taking over this brand, RIA Live Atlanta, as of like May this year.

It's a monthly meetup where we bring in the, you know, best and brightest national speakers. We've had Tom Crowell, of course, Brent Daniels, Joe McCall, Eddie Speed, Jamel Danji, Pace Morby. So it's, I think it's the only meetup, monthly meetup, where we're usually having a national, you know, recognized coach, thought leader, or guests coming to speak. I really look forward to hoping to having you, Mr. Teriel, come out and grace us at some point.

But yeah, for sure, it's a great group, you know, where, you know, we're looking to educate and instruct people how to go out and make money, take action, and real estate. And we're bringing in the national guest and website is R-E-I-L-A-T-L.com. R-E-I-L-ATL.com. All righty. So if they want to get in touch with you, that's the best place for them to go. Yes. Or I-M-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-F-N-Face,

Facebook and Instagram. I actually do some coaching, some small group coaching as well. That's the other thing that I'm really excited about. And, you know, what I'm showing people was that way of coming up with their offer prices. power dialing their follow-ups and doing deals only over the phone. So, you know, if anybody's interested in that, replicating. Oh, I'm sure there's plenty.

I love to coach and teach. Yeah, sweet. Well, Brandon's a good dude, as you can all probably tell by now. So if you would like to reach out to him, now you know how to do it. All right, Brandon, it's been a pleasure. Let's stay in touch. Let's do it again. For sure.

Can't wait. All right. God bless to your success. I'm Matt Terrio, living the dream. cash flow. Huh. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow.

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