Handling Fear When Talking to Motivated Sellers

Fear… the word that has the ability to conjure up all sorts of emotions in a matter of milliseconds.  A natural emotion we all experience.  It is quite natural to assume you may have to deal with it when working with property.  After all, we are talking about assets that can have several zeroes on the end of their price tag.  Fear can be a healthy thing to keep us in check!

Arguably though, the majority of us will do almost anything to avoid being in a fearful state.  Oh sure, some of us embrace it but usually it takes some maturing to reach that point to ‘confront’ fear.

So how does this relate to Sellers?

Usually we will take something like fear and make it a very, very big deal.  New investors deal with this all the time but so do a lot of experienced ones.  When talking with a Seller, there are all sorts of things we create in our minds to be afraid of.  Some examples are as follows: 

• What if they say no?
• What if they say they have a higher offer?
• What if they say they want to call some of these other postcards?
• What if they are offended?
• What if they are so offended they are threatening?
• What if they say they will bad mouth you or report you?
• What if you just hate the way rejection feels?

These are all legitimate questions that come up repeatedly for many if not most wholesalers.  Some Sellers can indeed be somewhat intimidating, whether it be because of their physical size or attitude or simply what they view as ‘that’s just how they talk to people’.  Or a combination of all of the above!

Before you worry too much and create all these fears in your head, simply decide up front to handle these by asking better questions.  Better questions net better answers.  You may have to practice this skill but it works extraordinarily well.  Let’s take an example of what this might look like:

You make an offer for a house worth 200k for 107k due to roughly 23k in repairs.  The Seller, clearly taken back says No Way!  And you know the deal is in a good area and works all day long.  What do you do?

I can tell you a lot of wholesalers will hold firm or try to negotiate on price alone.  And they tell me rarely does it work because they end up going under contract at too high a price because they were ‘afraid’ of losing the deal or ‘afraid’ of offending the seller a second time or being ‘afraid’ that the Seller is ‘accurate’ in their assessment of the property.  Now the wholesaler can’t close the deal because they succumb to these fears.  Even worse, a contract that has no chance is entered into.  No one wins.

But what if we ask a better question?  How about something like ‘I understand you may feel this offer is low Mr./Mrs. Seller however can you tell me more about why?’  Oftentimes by simply not identifying the Sellers needs clearly enough, you will reduce your fear of not having success MASSIVELY.  Or perhaps you didn’t pick up on how emotionally connected they are to the property?  In this case, you might say something like ‘I know this offer seems low but let me ask you something, if I were to show you the reasoning behind my offer and it made logical sense to you, would you be prepared to move forward?  You may find that all the logic in the world will not move them because emotionally they really aren’t ready at that moment.

Some other examples to consider:

Could a Seller be offended because they still had a lot of personal pain associated with the idea of Selling the property even though it was a burden to them at the same time?

Could they be offended because their ‘real estate expert’ friend gave them bad advice?  This is very common by the way.

By asking a better question, you will usually get a better answer.  Keep your emotions out of it as much as possible and think logically to identify what creates the fear and neutralize it!  It takes practice but you will love the results.

A special note about rejection.  Generally speaking no one likes being rejected, whether it’s personal or business.  And the fear of rejection is oftentimes one of our deepest fears.  However, I have learned that learning to ‘love rejection’ is one of our greatest assets as a wholesaler because it gives us Leverage.  How so?

Leveraging rejection makes you stronger.

Leveraging rejection sharpens your focus.

Leveraging rejection makes you more diligent in research.

Leveraging rejection makes you faster.

Leveraging rejection WILL make you a better investor.

Learn to turn the ‘Fear’ of rejection into a love affair with constant and never ending improvement.  You will get better consistently with this approach at which point it will be very hard to go wrong.

Fear… never let it dominate you again and make it your life long dance partner on every deal.  The results will be quite satisfying!