There's Money In The Follow-Up

[Larmon Cummings Jr]

Hello BP Community,

Just wanted to take the time to share my experience on a deal that I just closed recently. I wanted to share the experience on this particular deal to maybe motivate someone out there to keep going, and to show the value in being persistent and always following up. Now I do not share this to brag at all, I am a very humble person, but the objective here is to illustrate how important it is to always follow up with your leads, even when they constantly tell you no. I mentor/partner with a handful of newer investors and I constantly stress the importance of following up on a regular schedule with the leads that come in from our marketing campaigns, so hopefully this speaks to someone out there. I will try to be brief.

This particular deal came from one of my campaigns that I was running on my own, targeting absentee owners with high equity over the age of 65. This criteria is used very ofter by wholesalers in my market, and the particular zip code this deal came from is very hot right now. This call came in towards the end of last year and the seller was looking to get $50k for the property. It belonged to her uncle who passed away and he left it to her and two other relatives that lived in different parts of the country. The property was not in bad shape, very outdated, and it needed to be updated along with some other repairs. I estimated it would need close to a $50-60k rehab budget. When I went on the appointment we walked the property and talked the entire time, most of the time not even about the property. She was an older lady, very nice, and we really established a good rapport that day. I told her that I would send her the offer later that evening. I sent an original offer of $35k +buyer pays all closing costs. She was ok with the offer, but the family members who lived out of state she explained had a real "emotional" attachment to the property since it belonged to their now deceased uncle, so they said they would need time to think about it. I told her that was fine, and that I would follow back up with her. 

Each month Podio would send me a reminder to give her a call, and everytime she would tell me that her family was still thinking over my offer. I told her I definitely was not going to pressure them into making a decision, and would just keep touching base with her to see if anything changed. Several months went by with me doing this and after about 6mos she said her family wanted to know if I could possibly come up on my offer some. I told them I could come up to $45k with the same terms and they finally agreed. I was excited that we were finally moving forward. What I didn't know was that one of the family members lived in a very rural area, was elderly, did not use email, and had a PO Box that she only checked once a month. Getting the documents signed from their attorney took us an additional 3mos to complete. 

After about 10mos of chasing this one deal we finally had the contract signed by all parties and it was time to schedule the closing. During this time I was pretty confident that the deal was secure, so I sent it to my main VIP buyer for $55k. He said the numbers would be kind of tight for him based on what his contract would charge to rehab the place, so he would pass on this one. This was earlier on when I was working on the deal. Once I finally got the fully executed contract back, I sent a text to another one of my buyers and she wanted it immediately. We agreed on $52k sight unseen, other then the picture gallery I sent her. I focus on building relationships with my buyers, so they have trust in me that my information I give them is accurate and they know I am very honest when describing the condition of the properties I send them. I assigned this contract and we closed this deal a couple of weeks after that, and here is my paycheck for this deal. Not a bad payday for consistently making a quick call once a month..... 

I shared this to really emphasize how important it is to constantly follow up with your leads that come in from your marketing. A NO today definitely is not permanent, and I take that as only meaning NOT YET. Always make sure you have a CRM that will give you constant updates to remind you to stay in touch with your leads. People spend a lot of money on leads, and they rarely keep in touch with them after speaking with them a few times. I am still following up with leads from campaigns 2-3yrs ago!! Hope this motivates/informs someone out there , and I hope you get more deals from your campaigns. Good luck out there, and stay blessed.