Marketing Makes Sales Easier

Mike: [00:00:00] Hey everybody, welcome back to the show today. I’m here with the one and only job Martinez, good friend of mine, and if you’re listening to this show, you most likely know who John is already. A really the top real estate salesperson trainer in the country, and we’re going to talk about today, is this kind of continuum of marketing and sales, how to take pressure off of your sales by pushing more of the selling into your marketing.

Pretty interesting topic, pretty innovative stuff we’re talking about here. So stick around

professional real estate investors know that it’s not really about the real estate. In fact, real estate is just a vehicle to freedom. A group of over a hundred of a nation’s leading real estate investors from across the country meets several times a year at the investor fuel real estate mastermind to share ideas on how to strengthen each other’s businesses, but also

to

come together as friends and build more.

Fulfilling lives or all of those around us. On today’s [00:01:00] show, we’re going to continue our conversation of fueling our businesses and our lives. I’m glad you’re here.

Hey John. Good to see you, buddy.

John: [00:01:16] Mike, good to be here as always.

Mike: [00:01:18] Yeah, yeah. Good to see ya. Uh, I just, you know, for those of you listening, listen, if you don’t know, John, if you’re, if this is the first time you’re hearing about John. Um, I’ll let him introduce himself here a little bit here. But he, he, you know, it doesn’t really need an introduction, but a good guy, he’s really impacted a lot of people in this industry and impacted a lot of lives just by helping people.

So, uh, John, tell us a little bit about your background for, for those that are listening right now that don’t know who you are.

John: [00:01:42] Yeah. So I’ve been in sales my whole career, mostly in corporate America, probably three fourths of it, uh, 1215 years or so. For the last five or six years, I’ve been running a sales training company that focuses exclusively on real estate investors and their acquisitions teams, whoever’s going out there and talking to homeowners and [00:02:00] trying to lock up deals.

So, uh, you know, that’s who I am. That’s who I work with. I specialize in just that one thing, turning leads into deals. If it can be done.

Mike: [00:02:08] Yup. And there’s really been this big evolution in, uh, in our industry. Like I would say there’s probably, you know, you know this better than I do. There’s probably a bunch of industries that you would say are kind of laggards and the learning curve of just being cutting edge and real estate has probably been a little bit behind, like certainly like technology and stuff like that where people have had the.

Yeah. Maybe they have raised your razor thin margins so they have to be totally buttoned up. Like maybe it’s the margins that have caused us to always be a little bit behind cause you could screw up and still make 20 or 30 grand on a deal. But, um, what there’s really been a big evolution over the past, you know, kind of few years here.

Certainly in the past. Four or five years with technology in our industry. And then I think the past couple of years here with guys like you coming into teaching techniques of how to be kind of more efficient because people have, let’s be honest, people that felt the pinch over the last few years with their marketing costs going up and things like that.

You’ve gotta be [00:03:00] efficient when it comes, when it comes down to actually talking to customers. Right?

John: [00:03:03] Yeah. And I think the, you know, kind of the corporate American where I come from, it’s the exact opposite of real estate. You know, we really focused on sales air because. Most every company I ever worked for, there was almost zero marketing.

You would personally cold call and look for leads all day long, and 90% of your time was prospecting and 10% was selling. So when you got that opportunity to sell, it had to be dialed in and you had to do something. And I think, again, real estate’s opposite where all the focus has been on the marketing and not so much the sales and conversion side.

So I think that’s, that’s what made the, you know, the matchup with me in real estate, uh, acquisitions really works well.

Mike: [00:03:39] Yeah, yeah. And I think you’ve evolved here a little bit too. You’ve talked, I mean, you’ve been talking a lot more lately. When you do, you create a lot of content too, about, um, content marketing.

We’re going to talk a little bit about that today, about kind of basically anything you can put on your marketing that if you have this continuum of marketing generates the leads and sales closes, and there’s kind of [00:04:00] this space in between and it kind of comes down to. How much effort does the salesperson have to make?

And that depends on how much of the selling did your marketing do, right?

John: [00:04:09] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, uh, I’ll be honest, I didn’t put a lot of faith in marketing early in my career cause I just thought you could go out there and kind of muscle through any sales call and just get it done. And I thought, you know, 99% of of a deal was.

Going to be done through the actual sales process, but I’ve really come to understand and believe on the marketing side because the marketing can take a tremendous amount of pressure off the sales side of things. Um, I think you could do probably somewhere between 50 and 75% of a sales call in the marketing.

Somehow. There’s a few ways to do it, but that, that relieves so much pressure off the sales side of things. Yeah, I mean, I’m a big believer in, I think you need both sales and marketing. I’m a huge believer. Sure,

Mike: [00:04:56] yes. This dance, right? I’ve kind of going hand in hand and they really are partners, [00:05:00] right? And so it’s often a different person doing those things too.

But it’s, I just, this just came to mind. I was thinking about kind of car sales historically. You know, you’ve got the car sales guy. A lot of people don’t like to go to a car dealership because you don’t want to have like three sales guys running across the parking lot at me. Right. But if you kind of use a comparison to, and I don’t own a Tesla, but if you go to Tesla.

You know, you buy them online, right? But the, the showroom and stuff really is the marketing or all the online stuff is the marketing and the sales. Just happens because the marketing took care of all the sales pressure, right?

John: [00:05:31] Yeah. They shifted that continuum and made it 90% marketing. There’s probably 10% sales somewhere.

You know, once I had someone makes a decision, I’m assuming you’ve never bought a car that way or bought a Tesla, but I know there’s like Carvana and there’s other industries that do that, so yeah, I mean, you’ve got that, that ever moving continuum, but the, I think the bottom line is that you get really good at.

Both sales and marketing. I think that’s the way you dominate, especially as things tighten up a little bit and markets get a little bit crowded.

Mike: [00:05:57] Yeah. Yeah. So let’s maybe start with, by talking about kind of the [00:06:00] beginning, if you kind of start with marketing and then come through sales at that. Uh, I know talked a lot about content marketing and the idea is.

It’s less call to action based, right? Like I will buy your house for cash, call me now. And it’s more about here’s how we help people and kind of planting seeds kind of start to build that trust. Let’s kind of start from the marketing side. What kind of carried it through to the. So the kind of sales side.

So talk about, you kind of share your thoughts on the importance of your marketing and kind of planting seeds, building relationships. And it’s really contrary to what most real estate investors have done, honestly, up until now.

John: [00:06:33] Yeah. So I think traditional marketing in the real estate space is just, like you said, it’s just a call to action.

It’s just we buy houses, contact us now. Um, and then once someone makes contact, the selling starts. So very little marketing, all the effort sales. Um. But I think you know, the way to get ahead and the way to do it is you take some of that sales conversation and move into the marketing. So I think there’s, there are specific pieces of that sales [00:07:00] conversation you could do that with, right?

Who are you, what do you do? How does this all work? Um, a lot of the credibility type stuff, you can even start squeezing in some of the, I, you know, I think you really need two things for sale to occur. You need to. Uh, you need to have them have some motivation of some kind to take action. And then you need to kind of remove all the obstacles that are going to keep someone from taking action.

So you can even take a lot of those and start addressing them one by one in the marketing. And if you could get 50 or 70% of that done in the marketing, by the time they come to you, it’s just a smoother sales call. It’s easier, it’s quicker, um, and you’re going to get better results. So. I think you can take some of the sales call and really move it into the marketing.

And the earlier you’re able to do that and the earlier you’re able to get your prospect’s attention, I think the more and more you can dominate your, your market.

Mike: [00:07:48] Yeah. Cause we’ve had, you know, over the years it doesn’t, it doesn’t always happen, you know, like this, but there are some people that like, they knew, you know.

Mom or dad is sick and they kind of knew eventually we’re gonna have to deal with that [00:08:00] house. Like they’d been thinking about this for a while. It doesn’t mean they’re ready to take action, but the truth is, is if you’re in front of them, they’re there. They’re watching you, right? They’re like, Oh, well when that time comes, like that company, it looks like they could help us out.

Right.

John: [00:08:13] Yeah, I mean, I could give you two examples right off the bat. So, um, my, my mother’s house that I grew up in and the whole family grew up in here in Springfield, Missouri. Um, we ended up selling it to an investor cause it was just, you know, she lived there alone. It kinda, you know, lots of repairs were needed.

And that was just the easiest way to go. And because I’ve been in this industry, I knew two locally that were really good. So the trust was established. Um, you know, I knew. What they did, how they did it. So when it came time was a simple phone call. Um, they didn’t really have to do any sales call at all.

They walked the property, gave an offer, and we accepted and that was it. So that’s one example of all of that. You know, me knowing all that stuff upfront and making the sales part really, really easy. Another example is in my business, what I’ve seen. Since we’ve put so much information out and trainings and videos and just content in [00:09:00] general.

Um, when we get a new customers or people who apply to work with us, uh, every single day, some of them are, you know, we just heard of you this week, but the vast majority, it’s been three months, up to two or three years. I’d say, I haven’t, I’ve been following you for three years. The time came for me to do something.

So it’s a no brainer. Uh, so our sales calls, uh, for my company aren’t sales calls at all. It’s a 15 minute chat with my wife who’s not a salesperson. And it’s just a simple, like a what, what questions can I answer for ya? And you know, if you want to do it, do it. If not, no big deal. So that took all the pressure off of the sales in my business.

So, I mean, I just, I cannot stress enough how, how much pressure marketing can take off the sales. Now in the REI space, you still gotta be gotta be a killer sales person because it’s a high ticket sale. It’s one of the biggest decisions people most of these people will ever make. Usually it’s distressed situations.

There’s tons and tons of competitions. So unfortunately marketing can’t do all of it. Sure. It can. It [00:10:00] can really help give you a competitive advantage.

Mike: [00:10:02] Yeah. It really can help eliminate some of the competition cause they’re like, well, they’ve already narrowed it. They don’t have to go talk to 20 people to narrow it down.

They’re like. Might narrow it down from a few people, because these are the ones that seem to be the most trustworthy. They’ve got a lot of information out there. You’re right. It’s just kinda kinda helps. It really helps eliminate some of the objections, right? Because they’ve already learned what your stance is on this or that.

It probably takes pressure off of price a little bit, right? Because when people first call you and they don’t know who you are, like they’re trying to weed you out, they often just go right to price. Well, what do you guys offer for my house? Right? And instead of like. We’ll talk about that later cause I already trust these guys.

I know. We’ll figure that part out right.

John: [00:10:40] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you’re exactly right. Do you have that trust? If you see, for example, if you see someone for two or three years and you hear them, you know, they’re buying houses all the time, you’re going to go into it thinking, well, they’re still in business for a reason.

I mean, they’re obviously doing something right. So there’s going to be a certain level of trust, uh, over that. If someone just you, you met for the first [00:11:00] time, never heard the company name before called an 800 number or whatever it is, and some stranger shows up.

Mike: [00:11:05] Yeah. Yeah. So, so the kind of next step, where do we go from there?

So obviously at the very end we’re meeting with sellers, closing the deal, um, kind of in between there we have a, I guess really some followup processes that you can kind of automate and maybe sometimes people are, I know some people are moving in the direction of, instead of just following up and saying, still have a house for sale, so they’ll have a house for sale.

If you sell your house yet, it’s more of like. Let me tell you how we just helped somebody else, right? It’s kind of this branding still building, not necessarily saying, I’m even interested in your house, right? Subtly saying that, but you’re just like. Here’s how we help people. That might be like you, right?

John: [00:11:45] Yeah. I think that’s exactly it. So I think, you know, after all that initial stuff you can do on the front end to build that trust and rapport and all that kind of stuff, you’ve got the sales call and you might close it, but some of those won’t close but can close down the line. And I think that’s really what you’re [00:12:00] talking about is if it doesn’t close, how do you continue to follow up in a way that’s effective?

And I think, again, leveraging marketing video, um, and a lot of. Different types of automation is the way to do it. It saves your salespeople time from having to do it. And, and let’s face it, following up, continually asking, how about now? There’s only so much you could do about it before you start just, they just stop answering.

Right? But what you really want to do in marketing, which is really easy to do, uh, I mean follow up, which is really easy to do with the marketing, is just the messages. Hey, we’re still out there doing the same thing, buying houses. So if your situation ever changes, you know how to reach us. Um, and you can also take those marketing pieces, post-sales call and start to address the most common reasons why people get right to the edge.

But don’t take the leap when selling the house. Hey, a lot of people would get to this point, get really close, but there’s a couple of reasons why they don’t. End up selling, here’s a couple. And how we handle them. You know, cause you can start putting that stuff out there [00:13:00] and continuing the sales call in a pressure free way.

Cause they’re not dealing with the sales person. They can just watch. So I think, um. Pre-call is good, but post-call could be just as effective as far as marketing and automation goes.

Mike: [00:13:12] Yeah, and this is, you know, a lot of the people we buy from have a long sales cycle, right? They just, I mean, let’s be honest, a lot people we buy houses from have been in some sort of distress situation for.

Years sometimes decades, right? We buy houses that haven’t been updated in decades, and so why would you expect to make a quick decision? So sometimes they’re thinking about it, they probably know they need to, but we tend, I, I’d say this, we tend to deal with a lot of natural procrastinators because they procrastinated at taking care of their house at

Paying their bills, and there might be reasons for all those things, not judging anybody, but when it comes time to make a decision, why would we accept spectrum? Make a fast decision then, right?

John: [00:13:50] Yeah, exactly. I mean, in those situations, I think everybody, procrastination or not, it’s a massive decision and we’re, whenever anyone is faced with massive decisions, I’d say the vast majority of [00:14:00] people.

Wait until they have to make that decision to make it. They just, Hey, let’s think about this as long as possible. Um, until I’m really confident in my decision. And usually don’t, they don’t get really confident 100% all in one way or the other. So they just wait and then when it’s time they go. I’m leaning most this way.

I guess that’s what we’re doing.

Mike: [00:14:18] Yup. Yup. So then we get to the kind of the sales part. So that’s meeting with people. Obviously you train a on this, and a lot of people have been through your training. So what are some of the biggest kind of lessons we can talk about here of if you’ve done a good job on the marketing side and you built up that trust about, uh, uh, kind of, you know, maybe not.

Um. Not using. I mean, w if you’ve done those things right, you don’t have to beat them over the head with the sales process. Right. Which I know is not your style anyway, but maybe kind of share the right way to sell somebody if they’ve been marketed to. And you’ve done this right, that we’ve talked about so far.

John: [00:14:52] Yeah. So basically same sales process, but it just goes a lot easier. And, and the, the main, uh, I guess the main two components of the [00:15:00] process we teach is really diving into their motivation. It does two things. Number one, uh, the more you dive into it, the more you talk about it, those types of things.

There’s descend sense of urgency that builds, right? The more more pain you feel or the more you talk or envision something, the more you want to take action. The other piece of it is when you make your offer, you want to make sure you are addressing those motivations head on and the best way possible, better than any competition, even if it’s just the way you’re explaining how you connect the dots and are going to help them get to where they want to go.

So motivation is the one thing. But it’s sometimes really hard to get into that conversation cause it gets personal questions, you know, get pretty deep. But if you have all the marketing done on the first hand, first half, then build up that rapport. That part is just a lot easier. It goes quicker and it’s more effective.

The second piece of a good sales call is just starting to systematically uncover anything that can. Get in the way. Anything that could slow it down, any concerns, uh, you know, commonly known as objections, um, that can get in the [00:16:00] way of them from really capitalizing and that motivation that they have.

Right? Lots of people, as you said, have been in this situation for a long time, but for some reason, even though they wanted to take action, they never did. So you want to dive into those things and figure out what’s holding them back. So again, you can address them or you can. There’s ways to help, even if you can’t address it through your offer or some other specialized service, you can help kind of walk them through that decision so they get over it themselves.

Um, so deal killer is that is that next spot. And again, um, you’re kind of probing into some personal areas, uh, and there’s sometimes some pushback and some resistance. So the more you do on the front end to, to relieve that through, um, you know, rapport building and that type of thing, the easier that stuff goes.

In the bottom line is this. If you’ve got a motivated prospect. They’re ready to take action and do you remove everything that’s going to keep them from taking action? The sale kind of handles itself, right? The sale is really then at that point, you just present and say, here’s everything you told me.

Here’s what you want to get done. Here’s how I’m going to help you [00:17:00] do that through my offer. Here’s everything you’re afraid of, or, you know, you’ve got to address somehow. Here’s how we’re going to take care of that. And then you’ve got, you’ve got the best presentation, you’ve got the best solution, you’ve connected all the dots, you’ve minimized all the, all the risk for them.

And it just gets more deals done.

Mike: [00:17:15] Yup. Yup. So for John John, if, if people are, you know, a business owner and they’re watching this right now versus they work for a business owner, they’re an acquisitions person that might work for an owner, how does it, I guess, kind of from coming from the angle of an owner versus coming from a, uh, an acquisitions person that might be working for somebody else, how can they know.

How well the presale has happened so that they’re not like overselling it when they, when they get there. Right. Cause usually that acquisitions person probably didn’t have a role in the marketing piece. So how can they show up and not say like I have to take it from the top instead of, Hey, this is going to be a little smoother than usual.

What are some questions they can ask to know? Like, this person’s already pretty well warmed up.

John: [00:17:57] Yeah. I mean you could literally just ask that question. [00:18:00] You know, you could start off the sales call with, Hey, you know. Uh, I just want to give you the information you want and not a bunch that you don’t want.

So kind of tell me what you know about us and how all this works. And w you know, any questions that you have, you specifically want me to answer, let me know what those questions are, where I could fill in the gaps. And those are the things we’ll talk about today. You can literally just ask and that will guide you through the sales call.

Okay?

Mike: [00:18:22] Okay. Awesome. So, John, what one more question on the, uh, sales stuff. What are you seeing here. Like what is differentiating people that are crushing it right now from those that are just maybe getting by?

John: [00:18:34] Yeah, so the ones who are getting by or just making offers, I don’t think you can survive by just throwing offers out everywhere.

It just doesn’t work. Um, that you can’t convert a high enough percentage to cover your overhead. So the ones you know there, but here’s the deal. When you start in your newer, um, you got to just survive. So you’re making activity rules. So you make as many offers [00:19:00] as you want. The ones that are crushing it tend to graduate from that.

And they step back and they go, it’s not just activity. I’ve got to have activity and leads and be making offers. But, uh, it’s, it’s the right activity and it’s, how do I take the activity? I’m already doing the lead to Marty producing and increase the conversion rates. Just squeeze more juice out of them.

So I think the ones that are crushing it, or more conversion focused, knowing that. Activity. Just a part of it. And the ones that are kind of still struggling are the ones where it’s all about activity. It’s more phone calls, it’s more leads, it’s more, more everything. Because what happens is if you don’t increase your conversion rate.

Well, you, you just, you, you increase every, you increase the overhead with more deals, you increase everything else. So it’s really hard to get ahead of that because if you just blow up the size of your business and you don’t address conversion rates, well, your margin just shrink and shrink and shrink because it takes more people, it takes more overhead, it takes more everything to manage that monstrosity of a business.

So I think a activity focused versus [00:20:00] conversion focused is the real difference.

Mike: [00:20:01] That’s great. Yeah. And let’s be honest, a lot of salespeople. You know, if they’re not doing as well as they want, they tend to say, well, I need more leads. Right? And it’s like more leads isn’t always the answer. Like, and we’ve, we’ve seen it over time where we put more advertising in and we don’t, we don’t do any better.

And it’s like, well, they just move on to the next leads faster instead of working those harder. And you know, those were probably days where we didn’t put as much effort on marketing. As what we’ve talked about today, it was more just like they’re either going to sell or they’re not. Let’s kind of move them through the funnel and move on.

And of course we have some sort of followup going on, but it was more of an afterthought then. Um, then kind of like by design, right?

John: [00:20:39] But when you have five or 10 other investors, uh, you know, even some virtual or, or the eye buyers competing for that same property. If you’re, you’re, if you’re just gonna throw out an offer and move on, you’re not gonna, you’re not gonna win the deal.

Right. Cause someone’s going to take the time to have the right conversation. Yup. So I just don’t think that’s as effective as it in almost any market.

Mike: [00:20:59] Yeah. I [00:21:00] agree. I agree. Awesome. Well, John, you’ve been a member of investor fuel from the very beginning. So, uh. Kind of referred to you as a founding member cause you were there from the very beginning.

We’ve been, we have our next meeting coming up here pretty quickly and we’re like two, two and a half years in at this point. So would you mind just kind of sharing your thoughts on, you’ve obviously been around a lot of people in industry, you’ve been a part of other mastermind groups and stuff. You might share your thoughts on investor fuel.

John: [00:21:24] Yeah, no problem. You know, I am part of a few different masterminds. I’m a big believer in masterminds, and each one has kind of a different feel and a different, um, kind of deliverable for everybody. And people ask me all the time, you know, what mastermind should I join? What do you know about the different ones?

And whenever I describe investor fuel, uh, for me it’s. It’s a good mix of everything. Um, there’s a very family type of feel where you get to know people. You know, it’s some masterminds feel like events where you go and people speak from stage, but you don’t really get to know anyone. [00:22:00] Um, I like investor fuel because I, you know, uh, I’ve, I’ve done a lot of them.

Tight, close friendships have developed, you know, not just me and you, but I could probably think of a dozen or two dozen, uh, relationships that are strong, that have come from investor fuel. So there’s, there’s that part that I liked. The other part that I like is, you know. The action items are too lofty.

Um, it’s not, uh, there is some, some really good, lofty, high level stuff when it comes to culture and stuff like that, but there’s a lot more focus, it seems on what can I do today and over this next quarter that’s going to have a huge impact and get me where I’m trying to go a lot quicker than anything else.

You can actually take a lot of stuff and implement it. So, um, you know, I’ve. As far as the marketing goes, I’ve taken, I’m not in real estate, but I’ve taken a lot of the marketing stuff and actually applied it in my business. I’m from a couple of the, um, the presentations I’ve seen there and a couple of the tools that were shared and stuff like that.

So I [00:23:00] liked that it’s applicable. I like the family feel, and I think that’s really what kind of defines investor fuel in my opinion. I don’t know if that’s what you were expecting or if that’s your view of it, but that’s kind of what I feel going into it each time.

Mike: [00:23:11] Yeah, that’s great. John. No, we appreciate you.

And, uh, you know, at the end of the day, I think, um, if anything and not take anything away from any other groups, so there’s a lot of good groups out there. Of course, ours is the best, but, you know, whatever. But, uh, at the end of the day, like, we kind of wrap this around. Um, lifestyle design too, right? Cause I think there are other groups out there that are very ego-driven.

And if you’re not like a heavy hitter, you’re kind of left out or, and at the end of the day, you know, you and I know a bunch of those people that are ego-driven and sometimes, you know, they go home and their life sucks, right? At an event they look like they’re a heavy hitter, but they put on a front to who they really are.

And so we just try to focus on like, Hey, do you want to live your best life? So let’s your, if your business is doing well and your life sucks at home. It’s just a matter of time before your business crumbles. So make sure that you’re doing this for the purpose of living a better [00:24:00] life. Right. So cool, my friend.

Well, if folks want to learn more about you, your sales training, all the stuff you’ve got going on, obviously. Uh, there’s REI sales Academy. Uh, we’ll talk about your Facebook group or any other way that they can learn more about

John: [00:24:14] Facebook group, the REI sales Academy. Um, it’s a good group, very active people post great stuff about, you know, acquisitions and deals that are working and how they, you know, kind of figure stuff out along the way.

Yup. Really, our website, uh, is probably the number one place to go. You can go to REI sales academy.com or Midwest rev.com. They both go to the same, same place. It’s Midwest rev short for revenue.com. Um, and from there you can join our email list. You could get scripts, watch videos, do trainings that you can find our YouTube channel.

That’s kind of the central hub. Anything you need, uh, you can get it there.

Mike: [00:24:51] Awesome. Awesome. Well, we’ll have links down below in the show notes for those of you that weren’t able to write that down. So John, appreciate you being with us today. Good to see my friend

John: [00:24:58] Mike. Always a pleasure.

Mike: [00:24:59] Appreciate all you [00:25:00] do.

And for those of you that are watching, thanks for joining us again for another episode. Um, if you haven’t yet, we’d love it if you subscribe wherever you’re watching or listening to this right now. Any podcasts, YouTube. You can see all of our shows on flipnerd.com and of course for the show, you can find it on investor fuel, that column as well, so appreciate you all.

Are you an active real estate investor? If so, and you want to latch onto the power of surrounding yourself with over a

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Mike: [00:25:30] real estate investors. All committed to building stronger businesses and living richer, fuller lives. You should jump on a call with us to learn more about investor fuel.

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