How Real Estate Agents Can Work With Investors Without Wasting Their Time

Ask a room full of agents how they feel about working with investors, and you'll hear a lot of groaning. Crazy low offers. Endless questions. Deals that never close.

I get it. I've wasted plenty of hours on investors who were never going to buy. But I'm also an investor myself, and I know how valuable the right investor clients can be. So on a recent Tuesday training, I brought in someone who has literally written the book on this.

Gary Wilson runs Global Investor Agent, has written eight books, and has more than 1,300 training videos on YouTube. He trains agents to think like investors and work with them successfully. Mike Pillow from our team and Jad Sandi, a Realtor on our team, joined us too. Jad speaks Arabic, French, and English, and much of his business comes from international investors. Here's what I took away.

You attract the clients your marketing attracts

Gary's first point stung a little. The clients you're attracting are a direct result of the marketing you're doing, or not doing.

If you came up in a traditional brokerage, your training was probably built around the general public: attract as many people as possible and sell as many houses as you can. That doesn't work with investors. They think differently. You have to learn their terminology and their methods. When you do, you start attracting the serious, honest, communicative investors instead of the ones who drive you crazy.

Three questions that tell you who's real

Once Gary has built some rapport with a new investor, he asks three questions, and he's careful with the wording.

1. "Do you have savings?" Not "How much money do you have?" Serious investors will usually tell you what they have ready to put to work.
2. "Do you know your credit score?" Not "What's your credit score?" The softer phrasing gets honest answers.
3. "Do you have an available line of credit?" This is the one Gary loves. An unused line of credit means they can move quickly to lock up a property. It also tells him a bank thought they were creditworthy enough to extend one.

I do something similar. Instead of letting a new investor grill me, I start with my own list of questions to sort the ready-to-go investors from the ones who aren't there yet.

The assessment test

Gary's best filter is what he calls an assessment. He used to call it a questionnaire, and almost nobody sent it back. Now he frames it differently.

After the first conversation goes well, he asks something like, "If I can show you how to do this the right way so you succeed, are you open to doing it my way?" That small commitment matters. Then he sends the assessment with a deadline: please return it by tomorrow night at 9 p.m.

According to Gary, the investors who complete it almost always turn out to be good clients. The ones who hem and haw get one more chance. After that, he moves on. It may sound cold, but it protects his time for the people who are committed.

Mike Pillow and I just had a seller who was unrealistic about pricing and very hard to work with. We'll never get those hours back. A simple filter like this up front is how you avoid that.

Teach first, and the business follows

Gary didn't build his business by chasing investors. He taught them. He started free in-person classes on Saturdays with about six people, and it grew to thousands over the years. Instead of charging for the training, he asked investors to sign an agreement making him their agent. The commissions and referrals became his pay.

Jad's story started the same way, on a smaller scale. He took great care of one international investor, with honesty, respect, and good communication. That investor referred others, and it snowballed from there. Jad didn't chase leads. He served the client in front of him.

Investors are some of the most loyal clients you'll have

Agents complain all the time about client loyalty. But Gary says his investor clients are consistently better referral partners than his traditional clients. Jad has seen the same with his international investors. Once you've earned their trust, they come back, and they bring friends.

Meet them where they communicate

A lot of international investors live on WhatsApp. Some agents treat it like a dirty word because scammers use it. Gary points out that it's end-to-end encrypted and free, and every one of his international clients uses it. If that's where your clients are, be there.

Jad's other lesson: be responsive. International clients don't like to wait. Even when he's busy, he'll reply with, "I'll call you within the hour." Time zones are a real challenge, sometimes 12 or more hours apart. Gary has found that many clients are willing to meet early in your morning or later in your evening. You just have to plan for it.

Work in a group, not alone

Gary's team works in huddles of about ten people. They share wins, compare notes, and support each other. He says the group creates its own accountability. Nobody wants to show up having done nothing that week. It's very similar to the mastermind groups many of us are part of, and I've learned as much from my peers' successes and failures as from any coach.

Don't quit when the market gets hard

Gary closed with something every agent should hear. He's been through five market cycles since buying his first rental in 1986. From 2007 to 2011, his business did more than 5,000 transactions, over 3,000 of them bank-owned properties. He says the only reason he got them was that he already had the investors.

His advice: be persistent and be consistent. The people who stick it out through the down markets are the ones who build the most wealth. As my coach Tom Ferry likes to say, you take market share during shifts.

To learn more from Gary, search "Gary Wilson Global Investor Agent" on YouTube. And if you're an agent who wants to work with investors as part of a team, email me at mike@21mike.com.

Want to see the full session? Watch our Tuesday training with Gary Wilson.

Mike Ferrante
The Mike Team at LPT Realty
www.21mike.com
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