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Hi, in this article I’m going to looking at an essential, but often forgotten aspect of the motivated seller marketing funnel, and that’s the all important process of following up, and how automating this process can be incredibly lucrative. Yes, motivated seller declined offers can be worth a fortune!

Following Up On Motivated Seller Leads

Whichever way you collected that information you know that during the conversations you have with the motivated seller, you will give them an offer on their property. Now from this conversation there are a few answers, one could be they need to think about it. If this is the case, you would go into an immediate follow up process, making a detailed note to call them back in a few days to encourage them to make a decision.

Outside of that scenario, there are two options left, either they are happy with the offer and want to proceed with the buying process, which is great, or they decline your offer. Now for many investors, this is the end of the conversation. They may make some mental note to call the vendor back, but most people never do. They are always focusing on marketing to new people, and this is really where your efforts should be focused. However, you also need to follow up people who to all intents and purposes are, or may seem a lost deal.

This is where the tech comes in. When we work with a client, building their property funnels, we create a sequence of emails that will drip out over time, automatically following up with all those who declined an offer, and let’s face it, most people we speak to decline our offers or fall off the radar, so this is a sizable audience. This is a big chunk of the leads, you worked hard to get.

So this tech is triggered whilst on the call. You see we install pipeline technology in the systems we provide, so not only can our clients know where every lead is and at what stage of the process, but because we use a pipeline, if a motivated seller is slightly less motivated that we’d like and rejects our offer all our client does is move them in the pipeline to the DECLINED OFFER column.

This is all it takes to trigger our email follow up sequence. This is why I love automation, If they decline, you can get on with generating new fresh leads whilst the software does the follow up.

The sequence is what you want it to be, but we have found the following get’s the best results, and while I go through this I’ll touch on the psychological reasoning behind the timing and wording of the sequence.

The first email goes out immediately which just says something like

Email #1

This is designed to keep a good vibe going between you and the vendor. You understand their position and consequently their decision to decline and you wish them all the best for the future. You are also saying if you change your mind not to hesitate to call.

All this does a couple of things, Firstly it leaves the door open to them to call you back if they need to, The fact that you’ve stated that you understand leaves a pleasant taste in their mouths and they feel able to come back.

The other thing is, if the seller manages to sell their property for a price and a timeframe that suited them, then they would be more than happy to recommend you to anyone else that finds themselves in the same position. Their experience of dealing with you should have been a good one, no matter what the outcome.

Treating people fairly and professionally is really important, and you will pick up deals in the future because of your attitude today, I know that from personal experience, and because you’ve left the door open, there are people who find themselves motivated enough to change their minds quite quickly and ring back to accept the offer you gave them. Motivation increases as time goes by.

The next email in the sequence would go out around 14 days after the initial email. It can be sooner, but 14 days is a decent amount of time to leave it, it seems to be a bit of a sweet spot, because your email would say something like:

This one email has proven to pull in deals that were thought to be lost. When someone is trying to sell their property at speed, two weeks can seem an eternity, and I repeat… Motivation increases as time goes by. I’ve spoken to lots of experienced investors who have used this follow up process and one thing is incredibly important, never change your original offer.

I’ve seen training from so-called Guru’s who will tell you, if someone comes back, they are more desperate and you can offer them a lower figure. This is wrong, every successful and ethical investor out there will tell you to keep to your word, come from a position of service rather than a nickel and dime merchant. Integrity in business is key to success. If these vendors have a great experience with you, they will give you a great testimonial, they will tell their friends and you would have helped them solve their problem.

So this email will either bring some people back to the table, these are the people who’s motivation for selling is now higher and so more likely to do the deal, or you’ll hear nothing from them. Which is why we have another follow up email that goes out automatically in the background aboy 30 days after the last one.

The content is similar to the last one and goes something like this:

Email #3

This could easily be the last email in the sequence. The reasoning on this is that if they have declined the offer, ignored your two week follow up email and then ignored this one as well, you would be justified in thinking that the deal is a lost one and there’s no point going further.

But this email sent a month after your last email works… the further from their initial inquiry you’ll notice a diminishing return over time, but this email does work. You will mop up a few, and this is really important.

When in business, and you are. You will find that to acquire a customer, and a motivated seller to all intents and purposes is a customer in their scenario, costs money. This is the cost of client acquisition. What these follow up emails are doing is pulling in desals that you would never have got if you hadn’t put the automation in place. Consequently the cost to acquire these motivated seller deals is in reality zero. They were already (in some people's opinion) lost deals.

So that’s the basic sequence, very simple: 3 emails that go out on a decline of offer, one immediately, one two weeks after that initial email and a last email after a further 30 days.

Now just as bittle bonus, we have tried a 4th email with some of our clients which has brought in a few results. This is an email that goes out 90 days after the last email in our sequence. This is not essential but is an option. We just decided to try it with one of our clients and they did get a few responses and they did get one deal.

The email was slightly different, we went in with a slightly different approach.

The email was as follows.

Bonus Email #4

Now you need to understand this email is very speculative, however, communication and respectful communication at that, is the key to any business and this last email has got results. The client we did this with, as I say, got a deal (I don't believe this is typical, but you never get anything unless you ask), but they also got some replies and some feedback, saying thank you for you email and then going on to tell them where they were in the process, some had sold their property, but said they would recommend my client, some had not but their circumstances had changed.

The point is this whole follow up sequence can be set up and forgotten about. It works on autopilot in the background and can bring in the occasional deal that you may have thought of as lost.