JP Moses: Hey guys, JP here, just driving through the neighborhoods and I got an interesting email recently that I think is especially interesting, not just because of the question that was asked, but the question under the question. Let me tell you what I mean. So almost every investor actively buying and selling properties these days is looking for the best, most effective, kind of the path of least resistance to get motivated sellers calling them about their distressed properties or distressed situations. Right? So with everything from letters to postcards to bandit signs to billboards, the aim is to get the right people's attention and to get them to call, but when they call, should you answer the phone live you or someone on your team or should it go to a well crafted voicemail to prescreen them first? Interesting question and I've actually changed over the years and how I've handled that for a specific reason. Let's talk about that.

Hey, what's up, awesome people? Welcome back. So the question is, should you answer the phone live in person when motivated sellers call or should you instead use a strategic well crafted voicemail to screen them first? Well, as you might guess, there's different schools of thought on this one and really neither of them are wrong. They're just different from each other. Investors across the board nationwide are successful using one model or the other. On the one hand live answering the phone when sellers call always outperforms in conversation quantity. Meaning more conversations with more people, but also unfortunately more isn't always better, right? You're also wasting a lot of time with curious tire kickers who got no intent of ever letting go of their property at a price that's going to make sense to you, but on the other hand, advertising a 24 hour voice message with a carefully crafted message designed to number one prescreen and filter out the tire kickers.

And number two, set the stage for a productive conversation with the right people. Well, that's another story… in my experience we found in our business that offering the 24-hour recorded voice message is more favorable. Number one, it gets us more calls from people who might be motivated but really aren't ready to kind of field that pressure of a live conversation or make the commitment of talking to somebody in person unless they can figure out if you're not really a scam. And number two, it gives us a perfect platform to set the stage as a real friendly human being. It lets us better define and refine really who is and isn't a good fit for selling their property to us in a friendly, nonthreatening way. So basically using a 24 hour voice message like this, you may end up actually speaking with fewer people versus live answering, but I think you'll probably experience like we do a higher quality of conversation more often than not.

Yes, it draws out the curiosity seekers and then it filters them out before you waste your time on the phone with them. So for us it moves the ball forward with a much higher ratio of the right people. Even if we're actually speaking with fewer people by comparison, but how do you do that effectively? Well, good news in my 18 years in the game now I think I've got it down pretty solid. A finely tuned voicemail script you're looking at right here for seller calls. That's part art and part social science. I think it sets the stage for people and filters out tire kickers, sets the ball beautifully for us to then pass it over for a proper conversation. So I want to walk you through my script and I want to walk you through the 24 hour script for absentee owners in this video.

Now I should say we use basically the same script for other types of leads as well. Probates, Craigslist leads just a little tweaking to make it more contextually relevant to the type of lead, but not a massive overhaul or anything like that. But first I want to let you listen to my actual voicemail and my actual voice. When people call and sellers call, this is literally what they hear. I want you to hear how it doesn't sound like I'm reading a script. You know, it just sounds natural. There's kind of an art to reading a script and it sounding like you're not reading a script, so let me just play it for you so you can hear how it sounds and then I want to walk you through the script a little bit just so you understand some of the subtle nuances that we've baked into this as a starting point for crafting your own version of this script. So let's listen in.

Voicemail: [You can listen to the above video to hear my actual voicemail, and you can also snag the scrip verbatim by simply leaving us a comment below, tell us how you feel about it. 🙂 ]

JP Moses: Alright, so there you go. Let me walk you through some of the nuances that I think make this a strong script and uh, some of many things have been tweaked over the years since I first wrote it. You may have noticed some of the purple when I passed the script along to you as a starting point for your own version of it. It will not have the purple, but I just made that before I started making this video. So I remembered that these are some of the things that I want to point out. All right? So what you may have already noticed when you listened to that recording as compared to the script, is there's a couple of minor tweaks that I made on the fly as I was recording the script because I just, when I encountered it, it didn't sound quite as natural as it would normally sound in me speaking just off the top of my head.

So, I added a, you, uh, your, uh, just a pause or maybe a little chuckle in here or there just to make it sound organic. So right off the top, if we've already spoken about your house and you just need to leave a message, press pound now and leave a message after the tone. So that obviously has a practical use because if sellers call back because that's the only number that they have, maybe the second or third time, I don't want to have to make them endure the entire message before they leave us a message. And that is actually how Vumber works.

By the way, pro tip: I use Vumber, Vumeber.com for this service. And as you can see from the pricing is very reasonable. $10 a month gets you to local phone numbers in your area and you can use up to 500 minutes on those two numbers, three cents for each additional minute.

And I think if you just want to add like let's say you want three numbers instead of four, because that's the next pricing point is four numbers instead of two. You can add a number at any of these levels for just $4 a month. So if regardless of which level of Vumber you have and you just want an extra number over and above what your account allows for bucks gets you a free number or get you a $4 number, all right, back to the script. So that's the way Vumber works. You can press pound and it skips the rest of the message and goes right to the beep.

Now moving into the second paragraph, me and my wife and my partner James, our local Memphians, there's a reason that I refer to my wife. No, she's not involved in our house buying business actively.

At least I want people to associate me as a family man and us as real humans and locals to the area. It's increasingly popular for out of town investors to put advertisements in various areas. We even do it ourselves in different areas. If we've learned anything from our friend, Justin Wilmot at the 10 Hour Wholesaler, you don't have to be local to your area to wholesale houses, but in this specific situation with this script, I am local to Memphis and this was a script for advertising in our local area. So I want to emphasize the localness and the family connection just so I can start the possibility of them feeling warm and fuzzy and like I'm a real human, not just a business. I also gloss over quickly our experience of many years that may or may not apply to you, but it's certainly worth a spotlight and passing if it is the case. In conversations like this, I like to frame us as a solution to house problems.

That's a common word that I use. And it includes really anything that involves, uh, a junky house, just a house that they inherited, no matter the condition, a house problem could mean the house itself or the situation. So I let the seller know we specialize in hard to sell homes and I go through a laundry list of things that that might include and yes, we can help. I want them to begin connecting me as somebody that helps people in their mind.

Moving on. I asked them to tell us not just about their house in their message, but their situation. I invite them to at least open the door and describing whether or not this is an inherited property or a road old rental property or what have you. Obviously they can choose whether they want to include that at all or how much they want to say about it, but at least asking for it makes sense to me.

I offered them a fair cash offer in a timely fashion and then that's a major benefit, a quick easy sale, you know, when dealing with motivated sellers in tough situations, that's really what they're looking for. You may deal with some people sometimes who are just focused exclusively on the price, but I find more often than not, sellers just want a quick, easy solution to the problem that they're in, which means a quick, easy sale and which is why I say you can avoid all the hassles typically that come along with selling your house through an agent or on your own.

Now, here's where the embedded commands begin. I don't know if you've ever heard of Neurolinguistic Programming, NLP. I'm no Ninja at it, but I've learned a little bit about it through the years and if you can embed commands that aren't direct commands, not explicit, I'm commanding you to do this, but a subtle statement of a thing that embeds as a command to your subconscious mind, it can have an influencing effect on the other person.

So, some of the embedded commands that are in here, I made them purple but are also in all caps. Just to make sure I remember to emphasize it a little bit as I'm talking, so just to give you an idea, Mr. Seller, here's how I make it easy and convenient when you sell your house to me.

First, I'd like to pay all your closing costs. When you sell your property. To me, this will save you thousands of dollars because normally when you sell your home, I'm just trying to speak to their subconscious mind, sell your property, sell your home, sell your house to me, sell your house to me. It's not overt to them, but I'm being intentional about not just saying that, but subtly emphasizing those embedded commands.

Again, “sell to me”, “feel comfortable”. I want their subconscious to hear me say, speaking of which, I found a lot of sellers who reached out to us are just wondering when we're going to try and pull the wool over their eyes or whether the up to something scammy, so I like to just drop in indications that we understand that they're a little nervous about this and the whole transaction is going to be handled by a licensed attorney and a local title company, no kitchen table closings, so everything is being done above board.

Now, towards the end, I want to be sure and set the expectation that I'm probably not going to be in a position to pay you full market value for your property and I explained why. However, I can pay a fair price based on the condition and the situation you have at hand.

So bottom line, I come up with a fair value. If my fair offer is acceptable to you. Again, speaking to their subconscious mind. I'm only a fair guy and all I'm going to do is treat them fairly. You'll subconscious mind get cash in two to four weeks or less, and here please know. Again, I'm just speaking to their nervousness. Nobody's going to try to sell you anything. Rest assured. I'm not interested in convincing you of doing anything. I'm just a local guy, friendly guy, and I'm looking to find a few properties.

Wrap up with a call to action, an explicit call to action again speaking to their subconscious mind. So here's what you have to do next. Take a moment, leave me a message with your name, phone number twice, including your area code, the address of the property you're thinking of selling, your asking price. A lot of people don't like to include that because they don't want the seller fixating on a price. I like to know what's on their mind if they even have a starting point. You noticed, I don't say what you're asking, what, what you need to get for the property, because I'm probably not going to be able to offer them their asking price, but I'd like to know what, if anything, they have in mind.

Once upon a time I was calling sellers back, I handed it off to my partner James in 2015, so I set the stage for that interaction so they don't expect to hear from my voice as the first call back by saying either I or my partner James, we'll call you back to discuss it with you. And then again, warm and fuzzy. You can decide what's best for you. Please share as many details about the property you would like to sell in your situation as you can.

Alright, so that's it. I'm done walking through the nuances of the script. I hopefully highlighted some of them that I think were tricky to discover and are important and subtle, but help accomplish a connection and a friendly vibe and at least a baseline. I'm just an average local guy, not some big fancy business. Uh, and uh, more likable, trustable posture.

All right guys. So there you go. That's my voicemail message that I've crafted carefully over the last 18 years in the game. You need to use this as a starting point only for creating your own version of this. And then I'd really like to hear from you what you think about this and how it works for you. Tell me a comment below. Just talk to me. Tell me how this strikes you. Is there anything about the script that you like or don't like especially? I'm open-minded… talk to me. Thanks guys. Keep it awesome. Happy investing. JP Out.