A wholesale acquisitions script works when the rep gets commitment before the number comes out, not after. Dakota Bailey’s shop at LTD Property Group in Fort Wayne, Indiana runs a five-item intro checklist, then asks a commitment question up to three times, then deliberately pulls back — all before anyone discusses price. At roughly 8.5 leads per closed deal and an average profit of $20,277 on leads created this year, the sequence holds up under measurement.
Below is the full call order: what to collect in the first thirty seconds, the exact commitment language and the objections it triggers, how the offer gets qualified before the manager-on-hold handoff, and the rule that no call ends without a next step the seller owes you. The numbers Bailey’s operation produces are included as a benchmark set so you can judge whether your own call process is the problem.
Key takeaways
- Collect the property address, the seller’s name, and the marketing source before moving to any property questions — Bailey’s acquisitions reps are not permitted to advance to step two without all five intro items.
- Ask "if I’m able to get you the right amount, is this something you want to move forward on today?" up to three times before giving a number. Sellers deflect twice, then usually say yes.
- Immediately after the yes, reverse the pressure: "we don’t buy every property we come across." That line moves the call from negotiation into discovery.
- If the contract isn’t signed on the call, set an in-person appointment so the seller owes the follow-up, not the rep.
- Benchmarks from Bailey’s shop: 8.5 leads per closed deal, 4.3 ROAS, roughly 40% contract fall-through, and a break-even of about $100K/month.
From the Real Estate Pros Show
This article draws on an interview with Dakota Bailey of LTD Property Group on the Real Estate Pros Show, hosted by Quentin Edmonds.
The Five Things to Get Before You Discuss the Property
Bailey’s acquisitions reps work from a written checklist with a hard rule attached: you cannot move to step two until you have all of it. The items are simple and reps skip them constantly, which is exactly why the rule exists.
- Property address, first. Obvious, but reps forget it and end up asking condition questions about a house they can’t pull up while the seller talks. Get it before anything else so you’re looking at the property during the conversation.
- The seller’s name — even if they already said it. “Hey, by the way, my name’s Dakota. What did you say your name was again?” Bailey’s point is that inbound calls are often confrontational, and asking for a name changes the temperature instantly.
- Where they heard about you. Sellers will say “I got your letter,” when the letter only reminded them of a TV ad or a Facebook post they’d already seen. Attribution collected on the call is more accurate than attribution inferred from the lead source field.
The remaining items are the commitment question and the discovery handoff, both covered below. The structural point is that these are gates, not suggestions. Bailey’s acquisitions team gets the checklist as a document with the instruction, “before moving on to step number two, I want these five things.”
The attribution question matters more than it looks. Bailey’s operation runs TV ads, direct mail and social, and TV is the top performer — but it performs by making every other channel convert better. Without asking on the call, you’d credit the mailer and cut the thing actually doing the work.
The Micro-Yes: Getting Commitment Before You Give a Number
This is the piece most reps skip, and it’s the reason a good wholesale acquisitions script outperforms a bad one. The question is: “Hey Mr. Seller, if I’m able to get you the right amount, is this something you want to move forward on today?”
You will not get a clean yes the first time. The two standard deflections:
- “Well, I don’t know. You just sent me a letter. What are you thinking?” — Response: “I’ll definitely get you that. I just want to make sure, if I am able to get you the right offer, this is something you’d want to do.”
- “I don’t even know what terms you’re talking about.” — Response: “I understand that completely. But if we are able to make everything work out perfectly, is it something you’d feel comfortable moving forward with right now?”
Ask it up to three times. Bailey’s read is that most sellers say yes by the third ask, because the only thing they want from the call is a number, and agreeing feels like the fastest route to it.
That is also the reason the micro-yes exists. A seller who calls in is there to extract an offer; once they have it, they’re gone. The commitment you collect beforehand is the anchor you return to when they start backing away at the close. It does not guarantee a contract — Bailey is clear that sellers still say no. It raises the probability, and in a business measured in conversion percentages, that’s the whole game.
The only thing they’re trying to use us for is an offer. Once they get an offer, they’re gone. That’s why you get the micro-yes first — now you have something to anchor back to.
— Dakota Bailey, LTD Property Group
Pull Back Right After They Commit
The moment the seller says yes, reverse the pressure. The line Bailey’s team uses verbatim:
“Well, perfect. Hey Bob, we don’t buy every property we come across. It really comes down to the exact condition, what you’re hoping to accomplish, and the timeline. But what can you tell me about it?”
Three things happen at once. The seller who just committed now has to qualify for you, which flips the posture of the call. The rep stops sounding like a buyer chasing a deal. And the sentence itself hands you your discovery agenda — condition, objective, timeline — so step two begins without a transition.
Step two is where calls go sideways, because sellers lead wherever they want. Bailey’s team works from key points rather than a fixed path:
- Exact condition of the property
- Motivation — why now
- Payoff amount, what they still owe
- What they’re actually trying to accomplish
That last one carries the most weight. Bailey’s framing, carried over from six years in car sales: find out what they’re really trying to accomplish, not what their surface answer is. A seller who says they want top dollar may actually need to be out before a court date, or need enough to clear a lien and nothing more. You can’t structure around the surface answer, and you can’t help someone whose real objective you never asked about.
The Offer Handoff and the Mandatory Next Step
Before the rep puts anyone on hold, the number gets qualified. The sequence Bailey runs:
- Re-ask the commitment question: “If I’m able to get you the right amount, is this something you’d want to move forward on?”
- Seller counters with “what number would you move forward on?”
- Frame the market without making an offer: “This isn’t my offer, but it looks like other investors would be around 50% of Zillow. What would you say if another investor offered you that?”
- “What’s the lowest you’d want to accept?”
- “If I’m able to get you that, would you be ready to move forward right now?”
If the seller stalls, the rep uses the manager as the reason to hold firm: “I don’t want to bring this back to my manager unless we’re ready to go. We’re not appraisers — we buy properties. When he makes an offer, he likes to know somebody’s ready to go. So what number would you say yes to?”
Once you have that number, put them on hold, talk to the manager or dispo, come back with the offer and try to sign on the call.
The newer rule is what to do when they don’t sign. An in-person appointment gets set, immediately. Bailey’s reasoning: “Oh, I’ll sign it” followed by endless rep-initiated follow-up is how deals die. Establish a next step the seller owes you, not one you chase.
Going from virtual back to in-person has been a real fight inside his shop — reps push back that they have too many leads to be driving around. His answer is a dedicated lead qualifier, so acquisitions reps spend their time on appointments instead of triage.
What the Process Actually Converts: Leads, Fall-Through, and Fee Size
Treat these as one operator’s benchmark set, not a promise. They come from a Fort Wayne shop running TV, direct mail and cold outreach, and they are blended across lead sources that convert at very different rates.
- 8.5 leads to one closed deal. Bailey’s blended rate across all sources.
- 4.3 ROAS. He rates his own marketing an 8 on that number, noting that below 4 he’d call it merely sufficient and at 5+ he’d call it a 10.
- ~40% contract fall-through. His own math: 17 signed contracts yields about 10 closings in a month.
- $20,277 average profit on deals from leads created in the current year.
- $12,365 average profit blended across all deals regardless of when the lead was created, including leads two and three years old.
The gap between those last two numbers is worth sitting with. Aged leads close for roughly 60% of the fee that fresh ones do. If you only track blended average profit, you’ll underprice your marketing and misjudge which channels deserve budget.
Context on the year: $1.2M gross so far against $2.3M last year, pacing to $1.6M, with monthly revenue around $125K against a break-even near $100K. Bailey called it “a freaking horrible year” outright. The process produced those conversion numbers during a down year, which is arguably a better test than producing them in 2022.
Why the Script Breaks Down in Practice
Bailey rates his sales process a 10 and his actual conversion a 7. The gap is not the script. It’s that experienced reps stop running it.
“When you get really good, you shortcut. You try to get to the end faster.” His longest-tenured rep has been with him five years, started in high school, and hit a million dollars by 22 — and still drifts off process. The newer rep hasn’t learned the full game yet. Same script, two different failure modes, one combined result of a 7.
The fix he’s building is group accountability rather than owner-enforced accountability, borrowed directly from car sales. In finance, if the paperwork was incomplete, the finance manager sent it back — no manager intervention required. He’s building the same checklist handoffs between acquisitions and the transaction coordinator, TC and dispo, and dispo back to TC. The receiving person rejects incomplete work. That makes each person’s standard enforced by the next person in the chain instead of by Bailey chasing everyone.
The broader lesson comes from the flip side of the business. In 2022, when anything listed went $30K over asking, Bailey started underwriting loosely — “close enough, boom, let’s do it.” The losses started in 2023, and when he went back through the files, the numbers had shown the problem up front. He’d convinced himself he was good enough to outrun his own underwriting standards. Same disease as a rep skipping the micro-yes: competence breeds the belief that the process was the training wheels.
Frequently asked questions
What should an acquisitions rep ask before anything else on an inbound seller call?
The property address, then the seller’s name, then where they heard about you. The address first so you can pull the property up while they’re still talking — reps who skip it end up asking condition questions blind. The name second, because asking for it visibly de-escalates a confrontational caller, even if they already gave it.
Dakota Bailey gives his acquisitions team this as a written checklist with a rule attached: no moving to discovery until every item is collected.
How many times should you ask the commitment question before giving a number?
Up to three times. Sellers almost always deflect the first ask with “what are you thinking?” and the second with “I don’t even know the terms.” Acknowledge each objection, then restate the question: “If we’re able to make everything work out perfectly, is this something you’d feel comfortable moving forward with right now?”
Most sellers say yes by the third ask, because agreeing feels like the fastest path to the number they called for. That yes is not a contract — it’s an anchor you return to when they hesitate at the close.
What is a realistic lead-to-deal conversion rate for a wholesaling operation?
Bailey’s shop runs 8.5 leads per closed deal blended across all sources, with roughly 40% of signed contracts falling through before closing. That means roughly 17 contracts to produce 10 closings in a month.
Your own number will move with lead source, market and brand strength — his operation runs TV ads and has 350 Google reviews, which lifts conversion on every other channel. Measure by source, not blended, or you’ll draw the wrong conclusion about where to spend.
Should the seller appointment be virtual or in person if the contract isn’t signed on the call?
In person. Bailey moved his team from in-person to virtual and is now pushing back to in-person specifically for unsigned calls, because “I’ll sign it later” followed by rep-initiated follow-up rarely converts. An appointment creates a next step the seller owes you.
The predictable objection from reps is that driving to appointments costs them lead volume. His answer is a dedicated lead qualifier who screens the pipeline so acquisitions reps protect their appointment time.
Why would a wholesaler push a deal through when there’s no spread left in it?
Because the reputation is worth more than the fee. Bailey has closed deals he knew would lose money — typically when a payoff surfaces late and the spread disappears — on the logic that the buyer still gets a property, the seller still gets a good experience, and the company still gets a review.
His shop has 350 Google reviews, which he names as his single biggest competitive advantage. That didn’t come from maximizing every assignment fee. Note that this is a brand-building decision with a real cost, not a rule that works for every operation’s balance sheet.
The bottom line
Pull your last twenty recorded acquisitions calls and check one thing: did the rep get a commitment before the number came out? If the answer is no on most of them, you don’t have a lead problem or a marketing problem — you have a sequencing problem, and it’s the cheapest one on this list to fix.
