This episode explains the strategic decision to reopen phone-based customer engagement after previously scaling to text/email-only communication, driven by reduced deal volume, higher price points requiring better service, and recognition that personal touch remains a competitive advantage during market churn.
Key Takeaways:
- Market Churn Demands Availability With fewer qualified deals flowing and significant industry turnover, being accessible by phone for investors showing grit signals commitment to the relationship.
- Flexibility Beats Rigid Rules Business constraints that justified email-only communication six months ago don’t apply at higher price points with more slack in the system—adapt strategies as conditions change.
- Customer Success Builds Brands Returning to foundational strengths like responsive phone support leverages what differentiated the business originally, especially when competitors maintain rigid processes.
Hear the full reasoning behind this strategic reversal and what it means for operational flexibility.
(Podcast transcript below)
Welcome to get serious. so just a little bit of an update on our internal processes here. again, like no surprise, it’s been a more difficult real estate cycle to, work with. And, know, as we’ve transitioned our own target properties that we’re going after, like, you know, we just won’t even consider properties below 50 K purchase price at, at this point for funding.
because it hasn’t been worth it to us. mean, we can earn some income off it. Like, yeah, we are technically leaving money on the table, but for the level of effort involved to go after a little bit extra profit, all told, especially after splits, it just has not been worth our time. The brokers are less than sundevised. Typically, the operators aren’t as high of quality either.
from that end. like that naturally kind of shrinks our funnel a bit. and we can go after fewer larger projects. is really the, Transition that we’re working through in our business. And again, like being super cautious just because of really difficult, real estate market and just, you know, we’re in a very fortunate position where we’ve,
you know, retained a lot of profits over this past year, roughly in a very liquid position. And so we don’t immediately need to rush into anything or, you know, try to solve disposition at the moment. Like we can be more patient as we consider next steps in like, again, a rapidly evolving industry. And something that
You know, we had kind of scaled out of, you know, again, you just have to be open-minded running a business. Like things just change over time and you can’t just necessarily say, okay, we’re done doing this. We’re never doing anything again. And I know I just mentioned, you know, we’re not doing anything below 50 K purchase price deals. I’m saying that now it’s, it’s seems hard to imagine. Would we ever reopen that again? But I also never, you know, fully say, okay, we’re at that chip, you know, or that bridge is completely.
burned here, like we could reopen that at any time. but nevertheless, like that one feels a lot more firm, at the moment here, just given our strategy. But one thing that we had done is just like, were, you know, having so much inbound volume, for, for quite a while, that in order to
kind of qualify folks who are reaching out to us and what type of operators we’re going to be solid. we would try to push a lot of communication to email and texts a lot of the time. so that would free up more slack within our system as well as focus for, okay, really lock in on the key deals that are actually moving forward, that are actually deeper in the pipeline. or, you know, through the disposition process or maybe just like core marketing and.
business development options to keep going after. And so like when I first started this company, like it was a lot more, know, one-on-one outreach, phone calls, longer phone calls, especially, know, even like non-qualified folks or, yeah, just, I can’t talk like that. There are a handful of, you know, calls that I had done over the last, you know, two plus years. And I’m like, I cannot.
leave how much time I spent on some of these calls that like just were not that qualified of investors to work with, but you just kind of have to learn and you also get the reps in and like pitches down and how I kind of talk through things. And now I just do it in my sleep, I just talk about our business. I don’t need to reference any materials just because it’s just like everything is just top of mind here.
But had to get a lot of those reps in and figure out and get our brand out there. But as we scaled, it’s like, I backed off a lot of that and would only really want to take calls for more serious deals and ones that actually seem to have real traction. And again, we were only in funding maybe 2 % of deals that were coming our way. And so there was a lot that was just delegated to.
know, text communication, and that probably pushed some people away. there, there’s no doubt about it. Some folks even said that like, you’re not willing to get on a call. Like, know, take my business elsewhere and it’s like, you know, I’ll have to live with that. I w we’ve got enough on our plate. but as we’ve gone up market now, and again, just like a tougher industry where I think there’s like just a lot of churn ongoing right now, like I’m more open to having calls and I’ve been more open to just, I’m just going to answer.
answer the line here, just like be more available on like a sales marketing perspective. People want to chat. Okay, fine. Like we’ll, have, you know, five, 10 minute conversation. Usually I can answer questions very quickly and folks really appreciate that. No one’s really abused our time from, from that perspective. And I think they kind of appreciate the quick service. It’s still a few folks who are like, I’m about to send you the deal. What do you need from me? Like, okay, I’m going to, I’m about to send it over to you and then I don’t see anything. So it’s like, you know,
uh, still a little bit unqualified from, from that standpoint or folks that are just like, I don’t know what, I don’t know what the incentive is. Like why, why tell me you’re going to send something over and then like, just, it doesn’t happen. Um, but you know, nevertheless, that’s kind of, it’s still kind of the risk of, you know, um, client relations, um, effectively. Uh, but nevertheless, I feel.
because of the extra slack we have in the system and the fact that our volume is less, both on an inbound perspective as well as the type of deals that we’re looking at. And I’m kind of valuing the folks who are still trying to figure it out in the land games. Again, I think there’s just a lot of churn going on. So I want to kind of still be available for the folks. Hey, they’re willing to fight the battles and stick with the tough times. Like those are my kind of people anyway. And showing some of that grit and determination.
that yeah, let’s hop on a phone call. I don’t mind, or I’ll just be like available to answer some cold calls coming in. And so that’s something that I thought, hey, like we were just fully scaled out of, I’m just not gonna do that again. But when I started to consider the evolution of our business and where relationships and kind of customer service, customer success is…
foundational to what has built our brand to be in the first place here, that it’s something we can return back to. And I think it’s one of our know, strongest points we have within our business that, hey, we can afford to go back to it.
If it ever becomes like too crazy to deal with again, and I just don’t see that at the moment, then we can always retract again to like business. Oftentimes it’s just like a push and pull. You solve one problem, others arrive. And then maybe that original problem that you solved again, you get to another point in your business or maybe the market evolves that that becomes a problem again, you got to solve it in a different way. So that’s why I just, really try to maintain that flexibility.
very rarely having like, you know, firm, and fast rules, at least for, you you can have hard and fast rules for like a certain point that you are in the business, especially when you need to only have one priority to solve at any given time. But, you know, as things change, you just, have to have that actual mindset to understand, okay, the market I was in a month ago, two months ago, six months ago, a year ago, it’s just not the same as we are in now. And
we can afford and it is to our advantage for me to be more available from a phone and meeting perspective with possible customers or existing customers and so forth. Existing customers like no problem, yeah, we’ll hop on a call. We’ve already made money together. It’s just more like the qualifying side of things that we’re more open to.
pursuing again too. So I just wanted to mention that. and maybe you can think of other avenues within your business where it’s like, you made a shift, but does that shift really continue to make sense where you’re at at the moment? Is it possible, that you could kind of retract or backtrack a bit, and reopen, a channel of engagement that was working really well for you in the, in the past.
and you kind of underestimated it. It’s it’s impact on the business. Like these are just questions we have to ask ourselves every day and be willing to try things and experiment over and over and over again. so hopefully this one is helpful from hearing from our experience as well as thinking about your own, SeriousLand.Capital for any of your funding needs, Land, Daily Diligence, Facebook groups, zero costs for your land deals and landpricer.ai.
most reliable land pricing tool on the market. Subscribe and share everybody. Looking forward to next time. I will see some of you at Ajay’s live event in Dallas driving up shortly. Actually, by the time you hear this, I’ll already be there, but hope to see many of you there talking to my future self. So take care everybody. Bye.
