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EMPATHETIC PROPOSAL: Step 5 in The Y.E.S.S.E.S Framework

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In this series of episodes, Jeff dives deep into each step of the Y.E.S.S.E.S Framework for Getting Off-Market Sellers to Accept Your Offers. In this episode, Jeff does a deep dive into the fifth step of the framework, the letter with E, which stands for EMPATHETIC PROPOSAL. Listen in and learn how to stop making “offers,” and upgrade to making “proposals” to Sellers. You’ll also discover how to present and articulate your proposal in a way that is most likely to lead to a “yes” that gets the proposal accepted!

Download the Y.E.S.S.E.S. Framework now!

Episode Transcript

People always ask how many offers should you make in a week in a day in a month? The answer, that would be zero. Because as thoughtful real estate entrepreneurs we don’t make offers, we make proposals. And that brings us to step five. In our series of the YESSES framework for getting off market sellers to accept your offers or in this case, your proposals. And step five is the letter E for empathetic proposal. Today we’re going to dive deep into what it means to make an empathetic proposal. Let’s queue up that theme song jump right into it.

Welcome to Racking Up Rentals, a show about how regular people those of us without huge war chest of capital or insider connections can build lasting wealth acquiring a portfolio of buy and hold real estate. But we don’t just go mainstream looking at what’s on the market and asking banks for loans nor are we posting We Buy Houses signs are just looking for quote, motivated sellers to make lowball offers to you see, we are people oriented dealmakers, we sit down directly with sellers to work out win-win deals without agents or any other obstacles and buy properties nobody else even knows for sale. I’m Jeff from the Thoughtful Real Estate Entrepreneur. If you’re the kind of real estate investor who wants a long-term wealth, not get rich quick gimmicks or pictures of yourself holding fat checks on social media. This show is for you. Join me and quietly become the wealthiest person on your block. Now let’s go rack up a rental portfolio.

Thank you for joining me for another episode of Racking Up Rentals, this is Episode 49. And that means show notes for today’s episode are at www.thoughtfulre.com/e49. Please do us a big favor also gives you a big favor by hitting the subscribe button in the podcast app right now. It truly does help other fellow thoughtful real estate entrepreneurs who are stumbling around out there in the dark trying to find us to find us. Okay, onward.

So today we’re going to continue our seven-part discussion of the YESSES framework. So it’s a seven-part discussion, because in the first episode, we talked about an overview of the whole process. And then we’ve been diving deep into each of the six steps one at a time. And today is our penultimate episode on this topic. This is step five of the six steps in the YESSES framework. So I want to just give you a very quick recap of the first four steps. The first letter Y stands for you. First, we have to know what you are trying to accomplish and who you are as an investor and what your investment criteria and goals are. Secondly, we have to engage thoughtfully with our audience. That’s E for engaged thoughtfully, that leads us to S which stands for solve the person solve the person is all about knowing our audience and getting to understand our seller as well as we possibly can before we really try to create something to propose to them. The second s this is step number four that we went over in the last episode is called solve the deal. So once we have solved the person, then we can move on and solve the deal and figure out ultimately what we are going to propose. And that is what brings us to today. So today’s letter is E and E stands for empathetic proposal. I want to remind you that you can actually download a PDF guide on the whole yesses framework and just have it there ready for reference and to look at while we’re listening to these episodes, and just go to yes.thoughtfulre.com and you can real quickly and easily download that PDF guide there for your reference now and in the future.

Okay, so where are we at this point? Well, at this point, at this moment in time, we have engaged with potential sellers who we think are the right people to be able to sell us the properties we want to buy in the way that we want to buy them. We have reached out to them we have taken in their calls. And we have started getting to know them by spending time together with them in person as much as we possibly can. We have solved the person and other In other words, we feel like we have cracked the code and understanding who our audience is and understanding what they want, what they need, how they think how they see the world, and what their one big thing is the thing that’s going to really truly be the ultimate issue that helps tip the scales in terms of them feeling good about selling their property to you. After we’ve solved the person, then we moved on to solving the deal. This is where we got our deal structure skills out. And we looked at this and said what arrangement of financing and price and timeline and process in terms and conditions are going to be the right configuration in order to be able to do a deal that makes sense that that addresses what we’ve learned about the seller and meets their needs while meeting our needs as well. And now, it is time for us to present that solution that we’ve now really been figuring out over the last couple steps in a way that gets them to say, yes, this is where the yes from the YESSES framework begins to happen. So as I’ve been saying, lately, and I think that this is a really important, just way of thinking about it, the thoughtful way involves the merging of the left brain, which is the analytical side of your brain and the right brain, the relational side of your brain into one kind of process where you are using both sides of that brain at the same time, to be able to deliver a proposal to your audience, that also makes a lot of sense, from a logical perspective. You know, your left brain is really where you were thinking about the deal. Your right brain was really where you were thinking about the person mostly. And now you need to join these two brains together again, so that we can deliver a proposal and explain that proposal in a way that is relevant to our audience, understandable to our audience, and most importantly, resonates with them, and makes them feel like we have hit the target, right? Because in their mind, they have a target of what would work for them. In the last few steps, we’ve been trying to get the most possible insight into what that target looks like. And then asking ourselves the question, can we hit that target for them and hit our own target? And at this point, we, we think we can. And so now we’re about to put it in front of them in an empathetic way. So what do I mean, when I call it an empathetic proposal? Well, you know, empathy is sort of the ability to see something from somebody else’s perspective. So we have to kind of put ourselves in the seller’s shoes. And as we, as we look at the proposal, we’ve kind of been brainstorming and the solution, we’ve been crafting over the last couple steps, we’re constantly stepping into their shoes, looking at that deal structure that that solution, that proposal and saying, how would they perceive this? Are they going to feel like this is indeed hitting the mark? And if we only show up thinking about what works for us, and that we think this makes good sense, we’re not going to have a lot of success, we really have to truly stop. Imagine that we’re on the other side of the table in this conversation, and say, how are they going to perceive this? And are they going to perceive it the way and with as much favorable perception as we want them to, as I was drafting my notes up to record this episode, I have a thought that I haven’t exactly framed it this way, in my mind before. But I think that this is a really important and easy way to think about it. When you go to deliver your proposal, your empathetic proposal, you are on stage, at that moment, you are now delivering a performance of thoughtfulness. Now, I don’t mean you’re delivering a performance, like acting like you’re gonna go in there and pretend that you’re something here not. But you know, if you’ve ever made me think about in your in your day job, or other things, maybe back in school, when you had to deliver a presentation, you know, you were on stage, and you had to bring your best self to that moment, you had to do your best job to be articulate and to connect with your audience, and to just just bring your A game. And that’s really what we’re doing now. We’re going on stage. And we’re delivering an amazing performance of thoughtfulness, right, and this whole performance, your audience, you know, the audience’s the audience, the seller is the audience in this case. And we know that we want them to perceive our proposal as being very, very thoughtful. And they want to feel like we have been empathetic in the creation of this proposal. And that brings me to a very, very, very important point, which is a major distinction between the word offers and proposals. And it’s not just a distinction between the words frankly, it’s not just semantics, it’s really a different idea. All together. Offer is maybe the most common word in all of real estate. Location might be another one of those candidates, but people talking about making offers make offers right? And how many offers did you make? Was it a good offer was a high, high offer whatever. We don’t make offers, as thought for real estate entrepreneurs, we make proposals instead, an offer screams Well, guess what? Here’s what works for me. Take it or leave it. Do you want to counter my offer? Oh, you don’t like what works for me? Great. Well, tell me what works for you. And then I’ll tell you if I accept that. That’s not at all how we do that. How we do our thing. offers are extremely myopic, there’s extremely selfish, they’re lacking empathy really. All together. We must have some idea of what price the other party wants. But aside from that, we usually when we make a quote offer have nearly no insight into that person, what they’re really trying to accomplish at all. A proposal, on the other hand, is really a completely different thing. A proposal says, hey, I’ve been engaging in this conversation with you. I’ve enjoyed it. I’ve been asking questions I’ve been listening, I’ve been seeking to understand you. And I feel like I’ve sufficiently done that. And now, now I’ve created a proposal that I really think this hits the mark for you, I think this is delivering to you what you’ve told me, you want, and I can’t wait to run this by you, it’s more like a recommendation. It’s much more about them than it is about us. Now, behind the scenes, we know we are not proposing anything to them that we wouldn’t want to do. So it does very much have our own self-interest in mind. But it’s not packaged in a way that has anything to do with our self-interest and has everything to do with what they have told us they want. And that’s what makes it an empathetic proposal. So there’s really three simple components to this step of empathetic proposal. Number one is you’re simply asking yourself, what exactly am I proposing? What is it I’m going to put in front of them? The second question is, how can I explain the rationale of what I am proposing to them in a way that’s going to actually land that’s going to connect with them that’s going to resonate with them? So number one is what am I proposing? Number two is? How could I explain the thought process behind what I’m proposing in a way that is going to matter to them? And then number three, let’s actually literally deliver and present this proposal to them. So let’s just start one at a time. And let’s just talk through the steps are simple. The first one is What in the world? Am I actually proposing to them? What is the thing that I want them to say yes to? And really the answer is simply the deal solution that we created in the previous step, right? We solved the person and we understood that the key issues with that person, then we moved on to solving the deal in light of what we knew and understood about our audience about our seller. And that deal solution is really what we are going to be proposing to them.

And the solution that we came up with a deal the deal structure is it is actually already a thoughtful thing. Because in that step, if you listen to that episode, I hope you did that that episode. And that step we’re already considering strongly our cellar audience, even in the process of crafting that crafting that deal solution. So the deal solution is what we are going to be presenting to them that we are hoping that they will say yes to and this includes all of the elements that would be in a regular offer. Right, your solution that we are empathetically proposing is going to include all of the things you would have to fill in the blanks on a purchase agreement, you know, what is the offer price? What is the earnest money? What is the down payment? What’s the financing going to be like? What are the contingencies if any associated with this offer? What’s the closing timeline? Like? Where do you recommend, we do close this? Who would the escrow officer be if that were the case? So the elements of a proposal are not any different than the elements of an offer. But it’s the way that we present it, it is the spirit behind which we present it, that makes a huge, huge difference. So the second step is now that we are clear on what in the world we are actually proposing, the next question is how can we explain what we are proposing and why we are proposing it in a way that’s going to resonate with the seller. And This to me is this is the crux of this whole process. This is the left brain and the right brain coming together to determine how can we unpack this conversation with the seller in a way that’s going to set us up for the greatest bit of success. So back in our solve the person step, we talked about something called the one big thing. And the one big thing is of all the insights you have about the seller, all the things they might want to accomplish all the considerations they have all the things that matter to them. There’s always one that stands out the most. And that’s kind of what we want to lead with. in this situation. You know, imagine you’re a journalist writing a story and you’ve got 10 bullet points you need to convey, but somehow you have to decide like what’s going to be in the headline, what’s going to be in the first sentence, what’s gonna be in the first paragraph and then everything else is kind of a lower priority from that. Well, we’re kind of doing the same thing here. What are we going to lead with here that’s going to create a good impression with you the seller and make them feel right off the bat like we are hitting the target for them? So if we know they’re one big thing, and we do, that’s usually the element that we’re going to frame this proposal around. So for instance, if I knew that the deferral of capital gains was the number one issue on this seller’s mind, I would probably start my conversation, I would start mapping out my conversation in a way that I would, I would begin my delivery to the seller, and say something like, Alright, so as I sat down to brainstorm what it was that I could propose to you, I knew that the main thing I needed to keep in the forefront of my mind was how can we help you defer these capital gains, because if we can’t do that, none of the rest of this really matters or makes that much sense. So starting with that in mind, I have crafted this thought, you know, XYZ after that, so we’re going to frame our proposal around the thing that we know is most important to them, if it was something where they say, or we learned about them, that they are really trying to move to be closer to family, they’ve got a new grandbaby, perhaps something like that, you might start the conversation with our Alright, so I know that my number one objective is to create a plan here, that’s going to get you to Phoenix as soon as you can, so you can be close to your new grandson. So I’m going to frame it in a way that’s directly tied to what is most relevant to them.

It’s so important to note that as we unpack this conversation, all the points we make are about them, it is not about us at all. We know what we want, and we’ve already baked it into the proposal that we are going to deliver here. But none of this conversation, none. And I mean, none has anything to do with us at all, your seller doesn’t even know what it is you really want to accomplish. They don’t know what it is you’re most excited about with this deal. Or they know the basics of why you might want to buy this property that you’re a local landlord, and you’re, you know, looking for a property in this neighborhood, you really like the neighborhood, they know the very, very, very basics, but they don’t really know ultimately, exactly what you want to accomplish. And the reason is, you’ve done an amazingly deft job at facilitating and shepherding this conversation in a way that’s about them and not about you. As you are figuring out how you’re going to unpack this conversation and explain it to them. It’s important that you keep it simple. It needs to be thorough, right in the sense that you have to be able to share with them all of the pertinent details of what your proposal involves. But you need to keep it simple. And I really think it’s important to focus on the rationale and not the actual figures. In fact, as we are delivering our proposal to them, I really recommend that in most cases, you explain the rationale, and get their buy in along that rationale their reconfirmation that your thought process is clear and accurate and is indeed addressing their objectives before you actually show them what the proposal is. So for instance, to make it a little bit more literal. If I sat down with a seller to present my proposal, I might choose to actually start the conversation and say, okay, Linda, let me just step back. When we’ve spoken these last few times, I understood that the number one most important thing for you is that whatever we do here, it needs to make sure that you are deferring your capital gains well into the future. Did I understand that correctly? Right. And then Linda says, Yes, okay, great. And then I might say, and I also know that you need $25,000 right now, because you are going to do XYZ, you’re going to buy that new car that you want to just double checking, did I get that correct as well just say, Yes, thank you. Thank you for listening. So I really appreciate that. Yes, you understand that? At that point. Now, I can go into sharing my actual proposal with Linda. So if my proposal then says great, I’m going to propose to you that we have this purchase price. We’re going to structure this as an installment sale, because it is going to be that capital gains deferral program that we know is so important. And if I need to explain that further, I will. And I’m going to give you a $30,000 down payment, which is going to cover a few dollars of your closing cost. It’s going to give you that $25,000 walking out of escrow that you need for your new car. And then here’s the rest of the terms of the proposal. Now, at this point, Linda can’t really without losing face say no I don’t like that. Because she has actually confirmed to me directly moments before that all the ingredients that lead Up to this are accurate, that yes, that thought process is clear. So if she has confirmed that A is clear, she has confirmed that B is clear. When I say that a plus b equals C, it’s very difficult for her to just look at seeing Oh, no, I don’t like see, because then that, that discounts the fact that just two seconds ago, she said A and B, were right on track. And that’s why it’s very, very important that we keep our conversation focused on the rationale, and get the confirmation from the seller, that our rationale is indeed on target. So that when we present the resulting solution as a result of that rationale, they’re already pre framed to believe that that is indeed hitting the target and scratching the itch of what we said and agreed to that we were trying to accomplish.

Alright, then the third step is now that we are clear on what we’re proposing, we have planned out how we’re going to propose it, how we’re going to explain it, how we’re going to unpack the conversation, it’s now time to do exactly that to deliver and present the proposal whenever you possibly can, this needs to be an in person conversation. For crying out loud, do not send this information as a text, do not send it as an email, take a look at this and get back to me none of that, if you absolutely have to, I guess you could deliver it via phone or a zoom call or something like that. But all of that stuff is vastly inferior to sitting down with him in person, because ideally, the rest of your process up to this point has been extremely face to face. And you need to do this part, face to face as well. I personally like to have a simple bullet point format for conveying the elements of my proposal. So I will have in my in my notebook, a sheet that I’ve typed out that has the primary bullet points of the terms of the proposal, here’s the purchase price, earnest money down payment, interest rate, closing date, contingencies, stuff like that, but basic plain English, and just bullet points. And I don’t get that out of my notebook, until I have properly framed the conversation verbally. And I’ve set up and I’ve and I’ve said, before I share this with you, I just want to make sure I’ve got this correct, you wanted to accomplish this, you want to accomplish that they give you the confirmation. And then I get out just this sheet of paper and share it with them and say, here’s just some high-level bullet points. To convey what it is I think that we should do. Here’s my proposal to you. So, you don’t want to show up with a purchase agreement prefilled, that maybe you have a purchase agreement, you know, in the back of your notebook in case, things go really, really well. And they’re like, Great, let’s write it up right now, you could do that. But this is a major difference between traditional real estate investing or traditional real estate brokerage processes on offer is a purchase agreement. And that’s not how we’re doing this at all. We’re making a proposal, which is an idea. And because that idea has several very specific bullets to it, we type them out so that people don’t have to just remember everything we’re saying, but it’s just bullet points. Once we agree to the bullet points, then we will write it up. And that brings us to the next and final step that we’ll talk about in the next episode, which is AES for sharpen and agree, but we’re not worried about that. Right now. We’re not worried about any documentation. We’re just worried about trying to get as close to a yes. And get some initial feedback as we possibly can.

And that my friends, is it for today’s episode of racking up rentals. So again, show notes are at www.thoughtfulre.com/e49. Please do yourself a big favor does us a big favor to by hitting that subscribe button in your podcast app. And also, if you’d be so kind, head over to iTunes and just rate and review the show just give it an honest rating a few words would be super, super helpful. And we would appreciate that so much. Did you know that we have a Facebook group for thoughtful real estate entrepreneurs as well? Indeed, we do. It’s called Rental Portfolio Wealth Builders and we would love to have you join us over there. So you could just look it up on Facebook or even easier, just go to group.thoughtfulre.com, and it will redirect you right to that page where you can hit the Join button. If you liked this episode, please take a screenshot of it on your phone and post that screenshot to Instagram. Tag us, we are @thoughtfulrealestate, all spelled out on Instagram.

So I will see you in the next episode where we will wrap up our conversation on the YESSES framework. And until then, this is Jeff from the Thoughtful Real Estate Entrepreneur signing off. Thanks for listening to racking up rentals where we build long term wealth by being a win-win deal makers. Remember, solve the person to unlock the deal and solve the financing to unlock the profits.


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