7 Deadly Mistakes You Can Avoid – Part 3

(This article is continued from Part 2 in the August 2013 Edition of The Profit Newsletter.)

3. Lack of action. There’s an old saying that goes “Even a turtle won’t get anywhere until he sticks his neck out.” Another old saying (that I made up) is “You’re never going to get rich sitting on your behind and waiting for it to come to you.” You have to make it happen. You have to get things started. You have to put the wheels in motion. And if they get stopped, guess who has to get them started again. You guessed right.

   Movement, action, activity, progress… they’re essential in any successful business. Without activity on your part, nothing positive will happen for you. It starts with that first call, that first conversation with a seller, even the first visit to a Realtor. But your ship can’t come in if it never gets launched.

   By action, I don’t mean running in place. Sure, you can go to the seminars and listen to the tapes so often you memorize everything I’ve ever said. You can acquire all the tools you need to do this business. But then the time comes to fish or cut bait and you find yourself standing by the creek bank watching the water flow by. My friend, all the education in the world is worthless until you put it into practice.

   The best time to start is now. And I mean right now. I want you to get up after you’ve finished reading this newsletter and do something that will get you going on your first deal. Call a Realtor for leads. Call a couple of sellers in the classifieds. Drive around looking for FSBO signs, or place your own “I Buy Houses” ad in the paper. Just Do It. You’ll be surprised how taking a tiny step will propel you forward towards your goals. You see, any one action on your part can produce a result. Of course the more actions you take, the more results you’ll get.

4. Wasting time with un-motivated sellers. They may be interesting. They may be wonderful people. They may have heartbreaking stories to tell. But if they’re not motivated to accept your offers, they’re wasting your precious time and sucking dollars out of your pocket. If you waste enough of your time waltzing around with people who aren’t serious about doing business, then you’re not going to be in business for very long. It’s just that simple. Trying to deal with unmotivated sellers is like trying to pick fleas off a dog. Neither you nor the dog is going to benefit.

   Unmotivated sellers will think up so many reasons “why not” and give you so much crap, you’ll soon become convinced this business doesn’t work for you, only for other people. I can’t stress enough that these are people that you must avoid like the plague. But to avoid them, you have to learn to recognize them, figure out their game and move on. If you have listened carefully to my courses, it shouldn’t take you more than five minutes to pre-qualify a seller.

5. Chasing dead-end leads. Chasing dead end leads is very similar to dealing with unmotivated sellers and can be a tremendous waste of time and energy. Unfortunately, many people never really learn how to avoid it. Well I can solve this problem very simply. Pre-qualify every prospect that comes your way.

   I’ve found if you spend as little as five minutes getting pre-qualifying information out of a prospect, you may avoid spending hours and hours gathering details about a property you never have a chance of buying. And any time you can spend minutes to save hours, it’s like putting money in the bank. Some students of mine have a tendency to take a phone call from a prospect and rush right out to look a house hoping something will develop. Especially if business has been slow. They’ll be out there measuring for carpet and gathering useless facts before they even know if they have a chance to put the house under contract. What a crazy waste of time, especially when you know you should never leave your desk without a solid reason to do so.

   Properly pre-qualifying a prospect will help you to determine if further action is warranted. When making the initial contact with a prospect, you should ask yourself three questions to determine whether you can make a deal:

   1. Can I buy the house wholesale?
   2. Can I create a subject- to deal or seller financing or both?
   3. Can I option the house? If the situation doesn’t fit one of these three models, you don’t have a deal. It’s that simple. There is no reason for you to waste any further time on the conversation, much less traveling across town to look at a house you’ll never own.

   Five minutes is all it should take to determine if you can create a deal with the prospective seller. Of course, you’ll have to take the seller’s word on things like the condition of the house, mortgage balances, liens, judgments, etc. However, if the information seems reliable, and you feel the seller is motivated to pursue one of the three money-producing models we discussed above, then you should arrange a meeting and verify your assumptions about the viability of a deal.

When I leave my desk, my chances of putting a house under contact are about 80%. By the time I ease the old Mercedes out of the driveway, I’ve fully qualified my prospect and I know I won’t be just collecting a lot of useless facts.

So instead of being professional fact finders, we should get into the business of being professional offer makers. If you follow this pre-qualifying procedure on every lead, you’ll save yourself a lot of wasted, un-productive hours and you’ll start to find this business really coming together for you.