The Science of Flipping - The Top 5 Questions To Ask A Seller

Episode Date: March 3, 2021

The Top 5 Questions To Ask A Seller

Yo, yo, what is up, everybody? Welcome back to the Science of Flipping podcast. I am your host, Justin Colby. This is a great and short episode because I'm going to give you the five or six very best questions you can take your notes out because these are the very best initial five questions you can actually ask them while on the phone before you get anything else. Now, if you haven't yet gone over to my YouTube channel, make sure to go to youtube.com forward slash Justin Colby. I drop a YouTube every single day all about business, real estate investing, and entrepreneurship. So if you'd like any of that, make sure to go subscribe to my channel over at YouTube. Again, youtube.com forward slash Justin Colby. This podcast is all about all things real estate investing. So the best tools, processes, systems, scripts,

implementations, operations, standard operating procedures to make you not just a killer real estate investor, but to make you as profitable as possible. Now, I get this question all the time. In fact, my coaching students last night were asking me, I do multiple coaching calls every single week. If you have interest in being a student of mine and me holding your hand in through this whole process, just go to the science flipping dot com, fill out the application there for coaching. I'm happy to have one of my executive advisors talk to you about whether you're going to be a good fit. But again, the science flipping dot com. I bring this up because last night we went over this. And one of the big questions was, you know, what are the best questions I can be asking a seller when I get them on the phone. And I know everyone has some sort of phone call script from somewhere that they've downloaded on the internet. I get it. But take out your pen and pad. This is going to be the five to six most important questions you can ask out of the gates when you're on the phone with a seller. The key and why these are the most important

is because you're trying to find motivation, period. From there, the conversation can go multitude of different ways, but let's just start with the question that I typically start out with is, why are you looking to sell? Now, that seems pretty obvious. You want to hear out why they're looking to sell. Sometimes their answer might be, well, you called me, thought you were going to give me an offer. Or, well, I got your mail piece in the mail, so I thought, why not give you a call back? You may have different answers and it may change how the conversation goes, but you're trying to figure out why. Most, most times the sellers are not going to disclose to you out of the gates, the real reason why, which is why,

what a why is in that sentence. You actually will need to have further follow-up questions. So why are you looking to sell now? And then why haven't you sold before? Why haven't you sold yet? And obviously, listen to this conversation. Listen to the answers. Those two start to pry open a little bit of their timing motivation. Okay. The next question, which I absolutely love, you could put it into the third question. Again, this isn't 100% have to be in any specific order, but I like these five or six questions. The next question I would ask is, why haven't you listed it or why aren't you going to list it on the MLS? Feel that out. Now, I know a lot of investors that don't like asking that question because they feel like, I don't know, you're giving them an idea to list it or they're going to all of a

sudden have this incredible, oh yeah, maybe I should just list it. No, you're not giving them that idea, but you do want to know why they're not. Okay. And a lot of times what you're going to get back is a lot about timing. They can't wait that long. Maybe they can't afford their next mortgage payment. Maybe they're just tired of dealing with it. They're a tired landlord. Maybe they inherited the property and they just want to get rid of it because they want

this whole thing to be over with because someone passed on their family. So you want to know why they haven't listed it yet. Then you want to know where are they looking to go? What are they going to do after they sell the property? So again, if it's an owner-occupied home, where are you going to go once you sell this property? If it's a landlord, right, or an absentee homeowner, you're going to say, you know, what are you going to do after you property, you know, how's this going to impact your life once you sell the property, something of that nature, right? So where are you going to go? What are you going to do after you sell the property? Where are you going is really important. And then why, right? Why is that important to you? Right? Why are you moving? Why are you going to go to Minnesota? Why are you doing that? Because where you're trying

to go is why is selling your home important to you right now? And then lastly, guys, I use this question. Besides price, if we can agree on price, what is the most valuable part about selling your home aside from price? And the reason you want to ask that is because you want your values to line up with their values. And if you understand that, and you understand they're selling because maybe someone in their family passed that they just, they don't want to have the memories of this house anymore. They want to get rid of it. Maybe they're going through a divorce. Maybe they can't make their mortgage payment. Maybe they just want to cash out and go buy an RV and drive around, you know, the U S the rest of their lives, who knows what their answers are going to be, but you want to cash out and go buy an RV and drive around the US the rest of their lives.

Who knows what their answers are going to be? But you want to align your value that you present them with their values. Because it does you no good to say, okay, well, I can close quick. I can do all this stuff. It can be really fast. And then they're like, well, I'm not in a rush. I just want to make sure my tenants are taken care of. Well, that's different. Meaning I don't need to sell the fact that I can close in five or 10 days.

I need to sell the fact that we're going to take care of their tenants if we need to. Right. So again, the questions are really important. Rewind this. You want to know why they're selling now. Why haven't they sold before? Why haven't they listed? Where are they looking to go? Why is that important? Why are they looking to go there? Why is it important for them to be selling if they're a landlord? And then lastly, what's the most important part about selling their home besides price. And if you lock those in, essentially the why, when, where, how, and what, right? If you lock those in at the beginning of the conversation, it'll help you navigate the rest of the conversation to find out their motivation,

to figure out how you can provide value to them and ultimately be able to help them and get yourself a deal and help yourself. So this was a short episode. These are the best questions you need to be asking, regardless of it being a cold call, regardless of someone calling in from your direct mail or a PPC lead. These are the very best questions you should ask. Again, sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel.

Make sure to subscribe to my podcast channel. Make sure to subscribe to my, my podcast, the science of flipping. If you guys want to know more about buying rentals and the burr method, we just brought on an incredible coach, Devin burr. No joke. His last name is burr. We call him Mr. Burr. He is now once highlighted here at the podcast, The Science of Flipping, he's also coaching. And I have a dog that is losing his mind right now. But I encourage you to look him up and to talk, you know, listen to his because he is not only a great wholesaler and flipper, he's also building a lot of wealth with rentals.

And he has a great platform for you guys to learn from. So hopefully this finds you guys well. Sorry about my dog who just lost his mind here in my office. I hope to hear you guys and see you guys on the next episode. Talk to you guys then. Peace.