35. SELLING YOUR HOME- COMMUNICATING WITH THE OTHER SIDE (PT. 2)

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

client, agent, deal, happening, hard, expert, negotiator, neuro pathways, negotiation, price reduction, roof, people, transactions, real estate, price, fizbo, absolutely, competitive, data, broker

SPEAKERS

Rob, Intro, Adrian

Intro  00:02

Welcome to the get rich, slow podcast. This is the stuff we and our expert guests wish we knew a decade ago to get the most out of our financial life will provide you with insight into wealth building activities and practices that can expand your net worth exponentially. get insight from top professionals who will reveal how to build wealth the long way, work smarter, not harder, and identify your financial blind spots with over 25 plus years of experience as licensed real estate professionals and a long track record of winning for their clients. Robin Adrian will teach you what it takes to be an everyday real estate millionaire.

Rob  00:44

And what happened, conversely, and you can take the exact same issue in a collaborative way, and say, hey, let’s figure out how we can solve this problem. You know, I have a buyer that wants to buy, we have a seller that wants to sell, and we have a roof that leaks there is there is a solution to this problem. And it’s collaborative. And it’s, let’s, let’s bring the two together. Yeah. And there’s a way to do that without, you know, and we can create huge wins. But remember, if I’m representing the buyer, and I create a huge win through the condition of the property through bids through strategically, getting, positioning we that hey, this is what it’s going to actually cost to solve the problem. Well, there’s a flip side to that. But we’re coming at it in a respectful way of saying, hey, I’m not throwing numbers at the wall, I’m not just guessing, okay, we need $5,000 Yes, that sounds good. Because that happens to be what the closing costs is gonna be, you know, it’s no, this is actually a $15,000 roof to fix. And we’re not buying new construction, and we recognize that. So we’re not trying to get 25 years out of a new roof, but what we are trying to get is, hey, it doesn’t make sense to spend 2000 on repairs, that will just have to be done next year, in the next year. So let’s have five years of a 25-year roof. And okay, that’s gonna be six or $7,000. But it’s six or $7,000, out of the 15.

Adrian  02:19

It’s the difference between it should cost this much you should be fixing a new roof, you know, typically costs data, that’s such a weak presentation of data. And again, you know, we talked earlier about what kind of level commissions can be, it’s just doing the research for, you know, the, let’s use the debate as an analogy, if you come in with data, factual figures and write an accurate, you know, datasets that you bring to your argument, it’s much harder to disagree with, that if you come in with Well, as we all know, you know, that’s, that’s something that someone can just refute. And they can make their own equally dishonest or flimsy claim, right. But it’s hard to argue numbers, and it’s hard to argue, or a quote for that, you know, this router will cost, right bring to the local licensed bonded roofing company.

Rob  03:11

And there’s another layer to that, that’s super simple. I mean, what we’re doing is this is not rocket science, it’s, its treating people, you know, the golden rule, treating people how you want to be treated. Yeah, it’s, hey, we came in at 15k. And this is what it’s gonna cost to repair this, this roof for the next few years. And it’s gonna be five or 6000. So we’re going to ask for that, rather than the 15k. We welcome you, as the other side, the other broker who’s representing you know, the seller, if you will, in this scenario, to get your own bid. And as soon as now we’ve, they have a bid and we have a bid, quite often we’ll get a bid on the other side. And it’s more expensive than ours, you know, and it’s favorable for them to go with our person. Yeah. And that’s where it gets really interesting. Because at that point, I’m saying, hey, oh, okay, well, can I get, you know, 20% of your bid instead of mine? You know, kind of chuckle? No, no, we don’t, we’re not trying to do that. We’re not trying to destroy you. We’re trying to collaborate on a deal that works for everybody. And I can’t tell you how many times we’ve been in a position where our client says, Okay, we’re good. And we say, well, actually, let’s address this in this also. And, and we have a good enough relationship with the other side, that, you know, we’re not we’re not endangering the deal. We’re not saying this is our line in the sand, you know, fish or cut bait right now. That’s it. So there’s just there’s ways to do it. Now, you can’t always be collaborative with someone who’s competitive. But we can ask them to be collaborative, if they’re being competitive and we can be a broken record and ask for that. Yeah. And sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But at the end of the day, we’re trying to figure out something that’s actually going to be a long-term win for everybody.

Adrian  05:04

Yeah. And I know the answer to this is going to be yes. But I’m gonna ask it anyway. Do you change your negotiation tactic based on who you’re up against?

Rob  05:12

Um, we may vary it a little bit. But for the most part, if you just lead with kindness, and logic,

Adrian  05:24

it’s hard. Really, yeah, they, you know, it’s hard for even the most robustly angry agent to they need something to throw around.

Rob  05:31

Right. And, and one of the things, one of the things that I’ve really grown in the last few years myself and really worked with the team, and frankly, they’re getting to the point where they’re so much better at it than I am, which is incredibly fulfilling, is it’s okay to be wrong. In a negotiation. Sometimes you get the most out of being wrong. Okay. Just tell him Oh, okay. You know, if they make some outrageous remark, I actually put a on speakerphone. Rachel, one of my brokers also my sister, called an agent in front of, I don’t know, there was 10 or 12 of us in the room, we were doing our weekly meetings. And I the reason why I had Rachel do that is because I wanted to hear the rest of the group, hear the negotiation style and hear where this agent was losing it. And we had an inkling that it was already happening, it was competitive. She had made some accusations that weren’t accurate. So we just said, Okay, let’s get her on the phone. And you know, had to keep the rest of the team quiet. Sure, if they’re kind of chuckling and, you know, that sort of thing. And, you know,

Adrian  06:41

I mean, we’re, we’re trying to be serious and go through this process. But yeah, humans do. And it’s important and is a genuinely important process. Like, right, this sounds like some sort of Wolf of Wallstreet hijack phone situation. But be aware this does happen in the industry. And it happens usually in the most talented groups, because they glean information from each other,

Rob  07:00

right? We’re just teaching and we’re teaching nuance, we’re teaching style we’re teaching, right? You know, things like that, not just, this is how it’s got to be. So she was sweet as molasses because she was trying to as every agent is trying to get you to buy what they’re saying. And at the end, you know, she kept kind of repeating herself over and over again. And at the end, you know, it was obviously not in my client’s best interest to take her offer before seeing the other four or five offers that ended up coming in. And she was getting the fact that we weren’t going to go that way. Because we were going to act in the best interest of our client. And I said the words, well, we’re going to do what’s best for our client, or we’re going to advise our client accordingly. And I’ll get back to you. And we’ll see where it goes. And it was that little last little salmon, and we’ll see where it goes. And she finally turned in and I could tell it was kind of simmering underneath. But she turned and she said she said Well, that doesn’t sound very promising does it and just got bitchy, right, you know, and, and that’s what I was actually trying to say I wasn’t manipulating towards that. But I, I suspected that that’s what was going to happen. And that’s why I wanted the group to hear that. Because then she proceeded to make a number of accusations about because we had done a price adjustment and some different things. And it’s a hot market. But we were we were overly optimistic on the price listing. And then I just went we went, we came way down, just to test the market because it was a unique property. And there’s some reasons for it. The client was on board, and it was no problem. So we had just lowered the price significantly. And at the end of the day, she’s going well, I’m giving you a list price offer and this and that and I haven’t had and then she you know, okay. And I’m just saying, okay, you know, all right, thank you just and letting her go. And she was winding herself up. And she made a statement. Well, I’ve been doing this for 18 years. Wow, that’s, that’s great. You’re, you’re very experienced. And she says, and she says, and I’ve never had to do a price reduction. Well, everybody in the room had to like, you know, it obviously wasn’t accurate. And what she probably meant because she was speaking from a motion was, I haven’t had to do a price reduction in the last year or time when the market was really hot. Because these conditions exactly, you know, there was I’m sure a validity to her statement. But she had found herself up so emotionally, that everybody in the room is just like, What the hell is this lady saying? Yeah, and it was obviously false. And at that point,

Adrian  09:51

if anyone listening is confused, that’s just, that’s just not possible. There’s no There’s no way that you could have the chaotic nature. Have the client experience, which is that people will come in with an amateur attitude. And you’ll have to, you know, we can only give advice, we cannot force people to list at a certain price or whatever it may be. Conceptually, that’s, that doesn’t make any sense. There’s no way you could do that.

Rob  10:16

Right. So the short of it, and the long of it, I guess, is at the end of that conversation. I was, I just said, well, you know, you’re obviously very experienced. And that’s incredible that you’ve never had to reduce your price. And I just, I’m just going to agree with the like, there’s no reason for me to disagree with her at that point. She’s obvious. And she knew when I said that some title offices and so on for exactly that the conversation was over. Yeah. I mean, I can look her up. If, if I would have taken 30 seconds. I could have if I was a competitive negotiator, right? Yeah, I would have said, you know, hey, you know, I’ll call her Julie, that’s not a real name. Hey, Julie, hold on a second. I could have looked her up, I own a brokerage, I have access to the listing service. And at the end of the day, as my headphone here falls down. At the end of the day, there is a, like, I could get that data. And I could prove her wrong. But what’s that that wouldn’t move the bar for you? Yeah, we’ve already established this. He already knows. And you already know, she’s competitive. She also knows that she just lost the deal for the client. Yeah. And we ended up with four offers. And I did give Rachel the satisfaction of calling her back personally, the following week, and saying, you know, hey, we went with another offer. Thank you for submitting and just being kind and that there was a little bit of you know, best revenge is life served, or life Well, right. I

Adrian  11:50

love Absolutely.

Rob  11:51

But and there was no revenge there. I have no hard feelings towards this agent. She just wasn’t able to control her. Her emotions in that negotiation. Yeah. And it obviously went left fields. So

Adrian  12:05

and we talked about the reputation, you better believe when it comes to the table again, with the Elven Realty Group, she’s gonna know these are, these are experts. And they when they say something, they are not testing the waters to see if it’s gonna work this time. It’s an it’s a plan that’s being executed, you get on board, or you can expand your clients why this slipped through the hands?

Rob  12:25

Yeah. And when we presented the four offers to our client. And she, you know, of course, we explained what the different spots were, that they came in and their situation and what they were reinforcing and that sort of thing. And we got to her client’s presentation, it was, you know, obviously, it’s a little bit lower. This is probably not a person that if we have any choice we would want to work with, because it’s not going to end well. So those are those are those conversations, where, you know, that’s the sum total of it is, you know, we would do well, if everything else was equal, we would not work with this agent. And that’s, that’s the piece that at the end of the day, is that agent by losing it, they basically did a disservice a fiducial violation. Right to their client. But you don’t really see it that yeah, you know, and it never, it never really shows up that way. Absolutely. Oh, absolutely. So that’s, that’s a long story to show. Just that concept of

Adrian  13:35

great one, though, because it’s, you’re gonna go exemplification of that, you know, raise a fantastic negotiator. Right. She’s probably better than you, frankly, probably the best I’ve worked with. And a huge component of that is that, I mean, I talked to the other side of the conversation. They don’t dislike her in the slightest. There’s never, you know, if anything, that rapport and that trust that’s built sometimes in the first five days, I’ve watched other agents give too much because they, I mean, some of them honestly even enter a phase of almost like they treat her like their mentor, because she lays it out so effectively, that they’re just like, Man, I’m out class here. I’m just going to trust what she’s saying. Because she’s really got this game plan that’s so expertly executed, and it’s so well designed, that, you know, it’s hard to poke holes in something like that.

Rob  14:34

Yeah. And at the end of the day, yeah, that concept is the reason why they trust her. Is because she’s not bullshitting. No, she’s actually trustworthy. Yeah, she’s not saying anything. That’s absolutely he’s not presenting us this made America safe. Yeah, you know, so they just they get it, and she solves a couple problems for them usually at the towards the beginning of a transaction so that there’s that emotional currency that she can cash in. When it comes time to hey, this person isn’t BSA, this person is solid, they dotted their i’s and cross their T’s. And this is what it’s going to take, let’s put, let’s make sure that the deal continues. And that’s what ends up happening. So love that vocab. Yeah. So, um, let’s see, did you have any more questions for me? We were all

Adrian  15:26

I would say, I had this down as could you give any advice to an up-and-coming broker, but I think we’ve kind of laid this out in by nature of kind of walking through why it works and why it doesn’t. So you know, what, what’s the advice, the advice is like, rewind and listen to why this works, and how people just burn themselves by attempting these, these more. I don’t know shoot from the hip cowboy real estate, you know, Bs tactics that just don’t really have any place unless you’re working. Unless the person on the other side is a total amateur that you can take advantage of. I’m sure there are situations where that may be, you know, work in some anecdotal way. But yeah, I mean, it’s the most difficult transactions I have are often involved the Phys. Sorry, for sale by owner, you know, concept where, where we have some amateurs in there. And they’re asking me questions that they just should not be asking a lender, you know, and I often have to say, like, I can’t answer that for you, you need to provide me a contract, I’m not going to talk you through writing this thing. I’m not going to help you. Because I literally legally can’t, it’s not because I don’t want to be right an aid. But that margin that that Honda Accord worth of margin is absolutely pennies in the bucket, to just hiring someone who can make more than that money up for you. It’s not unfeasible that you It’s honestly, it’s the norm statistical data supports that agents more than pay for themselves on the

Rob  17:03

right, right. And something like I was looking it up, I believe in 2020, it was something like 8% of homes sell for sale by owner. And really a percent and back when they when I would have thought when they first started keeping that statistics, this was through the National Association of REALTORS stats, it was about 15%. So it’s come down roughly in half. And I believe it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of and this I may be kind of blown some smoke out of my backside here. But it’s something you know, have, maybe somebody in the comments will look it up. But it’s like 70 80%, it might even be 90%. But it’s up there that most fizz bows end up selling with an agent. Just it just it just doesn’t end up happening for him for whatever. Yeah, and there’s multiple fail points there. But in in addressing your question, as far as you know, speaking to that up-and-coming broker, that new broker, what I would tell them to do and frankly, I would tell a Fib to do this, too, is attend and get a certification in at certified negotiation expert. Yeah. And then masters certified negotiation expert, which I’ve gone through which my some of my staff has gone through. And Rachel definitely has, and we ended up realizing that you get those designations, the negotiation that the real estate negotiation Institute is the group that puts that on, and its multiple days of courses. But yeah, I mean, we’re talking hundreds and hundreds of 1000s of dollars. Yeah, I mean, millions of dollars, actually, that we’ve negotiated, you know, on into the favor of our clients, since we’ve gone through those courses over the last, I don’t know, three, four years. And we were doing it before but now we’re doing it unintentionally because you know, I have the designation on every piece of marketing material that we have and see any master certified negotiation expert. So talking ,I just you know, hey, are you a master certified negotiation expert, and everything that goes with

Adrian  19:24

that in in real estate specific right to that’s the thing, general skill, I cannot stress enough how specific these conversations are. And again, we the prime example is the lawyer super smart person might even be in literally real estate law. I have watched you guys run circles around them because it’s a very narrow band. It’s not like a lot of other transactions and you got to deal with a lot of these different weights, and you got to be able to you know, it’s almost like an instinct You know, it’s not it’s based in raw data. But to do it quickly and on the fly, just takes experience, you know, you can’t go out there, I can’t watch a YouTube video on how to fly fish and nab the biggest fish in the lake on the first try. There’s a, there’s an innate sense of, you know, there’s all the data and you can take all the lessons and classes. But if you don’t go out there and work the muscle memory and write and work the, in this case, then the neuro pathways for this to be so normative, that you can put your poker face on, and make everybody feel good about, you know, the difference that you’re making up for your client. There’s not, you have to do the class, but there’s no way to teach the execution. So the class and then you’ve got to get the experience by testing it in the real world, and then hopefully, going back for education and doing this kind of

Rob  20:44

loop and you just got to you got to do it. Like you said, I do it 1000 times. And every time I ask the question, how could I have done better? And just you keep doing that, like you said, you’ll build that much muscle memory, its neuro pathways, but and it will, the interesting thing is yes, it’s hyper focused on the real estate industry, you got to know your, your subjects, and you got to have the resources to be able to negotiate that win. But it’s also going to help you know, every level every relationship you have, personally, professionally, friends, just everything, it is incredible how studying these concepts. I mean, this is where, you know, we already pointed out, never split the difference. Like Chris Voss, the guy was a hostage negotiation, negotiator, expert, whatever it was through the FBI, he’s the guy that and yeah, I mean, it was it’s insane. And he’s dealing with insane people. And he had to figure out the humanity of the individuals that he was dealing with. Yeah, and, and apply whatever pressure he could in that area. And he had a lot of success. He had a lot of failures, too. You know, and I mean, talk about the deck, the deck stacked against you. Sure. Man, kind of puts it in perspective, what we do it isn’t really that hard. The stakes are low, relatively speaking, right? We’re not dealing with lives here. Yeah, that was not the same way. It was a

Adrian  22:14

bigger, but it’s important, and it’s important to you, especially if, you know, you’re listening to this podcast, because you want to build wealth, we all do, right? When we work in this, and this is what drew me into this industry. And I think it’s for you to Rob is, you know, there’s a possibility to build a lot of wealth for ourselves and the roles that we have, we got a different episode on that, you know, what our roles are, like, what kind of pay is involved. And it’s fascinating to me, because when I was first in this industry, I was like, oh, man, these guys make so much money, you know, it’s crazy, all they do is this. And then the further I’ve gotten in, the more, I’ve really appreciated, they earn that money super, super hard. It’s a difficult process. And it’s, you know, there’s lots of businesses that you can start that can make you six figure careers, once you reach the 10-year mark, and once you reserve, you know, certain bars, but it’s hard in those industries. And it’s hard. And this one, I think, when you speak of that data, you know, the percentage of realtors who are actually making that kind of money, it really speaks to just how hard it is to make it in this. More real estate agents failed. And restaurants, restaurants, one of those ones that, you know, people showing up how new businesses have a chance of failure. But you can move the bar a lot on that by taking the time and it’s interesting, because some of the best ones I know, they will tell you that they are not at the top. And it’s because they see this room for improvement. And it’s always that it’s always right above their head thinking, I can do this, I can do this, I can do this. And you that’s adaptability, there’s no way I could just transplant you if I threw you in a time machine and we dumped you out 10 years from now, it would take you some time to readjust to what’s currently going on. So that state of constant improvement is such an important part of what I like about how you and your folks operate. So

Rob  23:59

you just you have to because everybody else is getting better. Yeah. So all the time. So you know, that was the old Michael Jordan thing. somebody’s out there practicing harder. And I am so one of those things. Maybe it was a Kobe Bryant. But anyway, so awesome. This was a fun one. I appreciate. Yeah, fantastic Ty’s coming on this, this particular journey with us. This is this is near and dear to my heart. So

Adrian  24:23

absolutely. Thank you all for your time. We appreciate you joining us, and we’ll catch you again next week on the get rich low podcast. Have a good one out there.

Intro  24:31

Thank you for listening to the get rich, slow podcast. If you like what you learned, please subscribe, rate and review so we can grow wealth for even more families.