Anshul Sharma : GoldSoil Realty

Brandon Parker00:00My guest today is Anshul Sharma, CEO of Gold Soil Realty Investments. They've done a 100 deals for three or four years in a row. Anshul holds an MBA in strategic leadership and marketing. He's a former product marketing program manager at Dell. He's crushing it. You can find him online at Gold Soil Realty Investments on Facebook. In this conversation, we talk about what it really takes to scale and business. We get into cold calling, some of the specific tactics around that, how to incentivize teams, and how to grow into something bigger than you think you can.

Brandon Parker00:43Business. It's great to meet you. Thank you, Brandon. I am excited to be here. Yeah, it's great. It's just, that's a serious amount of deals. You're doing a 100 deals a year and you've done that for multiple years. You're obviously doing something impressive there. Just let's get into what it takes to scale a business to that level, what your operation looks like.

Anshul Sharma01:12Man, I mean, scaling is a mindset game. Before you put all these pieces together, you have to make a commitment, I want to scale. And scaling can come in different ways. Hey, I want to scale in terms of, I want to do just one deal, but it got to be a really big deal, right? That's all I want to do in an entire year. I'm coming from a different background. I'm like, I started as a wholesaler. For me to scale a business, meaning just doing more wholesale deals. And so I think, first of all, you have to come in terms with the idea like why you want to scale. Because if you don't know why you want to scale, you wouldn't do it.

Anshul Sharma01:44And then you wouldn't be able to put all the pieces together because it's hard to scale. Had it been easy, everybody would have scaled and would like to scale and would have done those kinds of deals. It's hard to scale. So first of all, I've got to make a mindset why I want to scale. I have always been a top line guy. Hey, we have done $2,000,000 in revenue this year. How can we do five next year? How can we do 10? Why? Hey, I mean, it just brings more income to me, to my family and to my team members. So first of all, it's like, Hey, I want to scale.

Anshul Sharma02:15I want to make a commitment that I want to scale to increase my income, whatever that is, right? I want to create a brand, you know, I'm doing right now. And then comes all the operational pieces to it. My formula to scale is create a problem because you're not going to scale until you create a problem. And what I mean by that is everybody asks, Hey, what to scale? And I always say, Hey, look, if you want to scale, you need more leads. Okay? You need more opportunities. If you're doing one deal, you rather have doing 10 deals in a month.

Anshul Sharma02:49How do you do that? You increase the activity level, okay? You send more letters, you make more phone calls, wherever that thing is, you need to increase that activity level. Okay. Otherwise you will never be able to move forward from where you are today. Okay. So that's number one thing. That's where you need to start. If you want to scale, you need to know how many leads it takes to close a deal and you say, 'Hey, today it takes me a 100 leads to close a deal.' Okay, great.

Anshul Sharma03:20Where do you want to be? You want to close 10 deals in a month? Now you know how many leads you have to approach, how many leads you have to call. Okay? Those many people that you have to go hire, right? I mean, I know we are living in an AI age, but hey, humans are not here to be replaced for some of those things. You've got to hire people, okay? And then you'd be like, Man, who better do all these comms? Of course, you need to hire people who can do some comms for you, maybe land acquisitions manager, right? But create the problem first. If you're not going create the problem of having more leads than you can handle, you wouldn't be able to figure out the other pieces down the street.

Anshul Sharma03:54So I will create the problem first and then go find the solution. Some people noodle too much or want to analyze what it takes to scale. And I'd say, you know what? Create that filter at the top so big that you're almost in a panic situation. Like, oh my gosh, I send this 50,000 letters. I don't even know what to do with. Create that problem. Go ahead and create the problem. Okay? You'll be sweating for the first month, second month, third month. By the third month, you have to figure it out. You hire the right people. You know you can scale. You find the acquisitions manager who can do comps for you.

Anshul Sharma04:27You're going to find people that you know, that you never realized that you need to fill, then increase your activity level. So go increase the activity level because that's in your heads. And then start figuring out pieces as you go downstream, right? So, hey, increase whatever you do. You do cold calling, you have one person cold calling, have three people cold calling, okay? Some of these things you can anticipate. If somebody cold calls, you have a qualified lead, you need somebody to comp. Now, if you want to be that guy, that's okay.

Anshul Sharma04:58But you can scale if you're doing comping and you are calling and all that kind of stuff. You need to find a person who can conquer you. Is it an easy skill to find? Absolutely not. But hey, if you want to scale, you need to start delegating, right? And you need to figure out where my time goes today. If your time goes thumping, you'd probably better hire somebody who can conquer you, okay? So you solve for one bottleneck. Then you'll be like, Man, I have so many properties to list on the market. How can I list on the market? You need to find a marketing manager.

Anshul Sharma05:29Have somebody who knows how to list properties on the market. Find that person. But create the problem first. Don't try to find solutions that you don't even have a problem for. So that's where I started. That's how I started. I trained one person on my team. He can do comps. Guess what? All she was doing was comps. We were sending letters. She was doing comps. Before we know, we have these 25 properties under contract. How late? I need a transaction manager now. I got 25 properties. There's no way I can open escrow on these 25 properties all by myself. These are different states, different cities, like I have to call different escrow managers.

Anshul Sharma06:00Okay, now we need a transaction manager. Okay, so there's a little bit of element of risk, leap of faith, and the mindset that I will figure it out. Everything is going to be figured out as we go down the line. So that was a long answer for your question, but that's pretty much how I started and I keep scaling. Right now we have 12 people who cold call. I did not start with 12 people. Do we have a problem? We have a big problem right now. We have more needs that we can look into and we are solving, we're trying to solve that problem with AI.

Anshul Sharma06:34If AI can read some of our seller conversation and give us a better read on what's going on in every call, right? But I created a problem first. I hired 12 guys. Hey, 12 guys, you're to make woke up for me. And they are qualifying like six to seven to five leads every day. So we are getting like 50 to 70 leads in a day.

Brandon Parker06:54Beautiful, beautiful. Yeah. When you were first going about, so first I love the concept of just the human mind's an amazing thing. If we put it under stress and it's got this problem, now we go to sleep thinking about it and our mind's working all night and we're getting solutions when we demand it of ourselves. And I think that's a really cool concept. Mean, I haven't heard someone put it that way for the way to scaling, but yeah, it is a mindset thing. Like make your mind figure out a solution by putting it under stress, putting it on a deadline.

Brandon Parker07:26And that's cool. So creating the problem, as you call it, is step one. So you create this problem and now you need to hire someone. Where did you go to hire those people? Like tactically, what are you doing to find that role and then train that role? And are you doing the same approach? Like just get someone in there and figure it out or how's that happening? Yeah, this is how we started. Like, Hey

Anshul Sharma07:48Leslie, do you think you can do comps for me? Yeah, boss. I mean, if you teach me, I will. Let's roll. Okay, that was like five years back. Yep. Now we have a very more sophisticated process, but going to your question, hey, who do you hire? Hey, if you can find somebody who has done calls for some other land investor, hey, steal them, whatever you need to do, okay? But if you can find that person, it's hard to find those people because good people are working for great bosses already. Okay, let's be honest.

Anshul Sharma08:19Okay, so I look for transferable skills. Okay, can somebody who has great computer understanding, have great understanding of math, is comfortable with technology, might have done a little bit of real estate in the past. Can you work with them for a couple of weeks and have them teach comps? Maybe you want to record these trainings, okay? And then you hire the next person with similar skillset and have them go through all those trainings. And then before you know, now you have a system going on where every time you have to onboard this person or somebody leaves, you don't have to start over.

Anshul Sharma08:51You have recorded trainings. You know what kind of skillset really matches with somebody who can do prompts. And there are plenty of people out there with that kind of matching skill set. But now if you're like fixated, man, I got to find somebody who has done comms and land business for the last three years, otherwise I'm going have, you will have a hard time. Okay? And that's something that you have to be comfortable with. And some of this could be mitigated by a process, a training. We have a whole internal training going on for comms, right? Anybody join my team? I don't have to teach them comms. We have recorded training. We have somebody in the company who can show them comms, teach them comms and all that kind of stuff.

Anshul Sharma09:25But you don't have to get that sophisticated on day one if you're just starting out. Okay? You have to be practical and you have to devote some time in really learning the business and having somebody teach it. I mean, is no shortcuts here. I mean, people find out what do shortcuts here, right? If you can find somebody, hallelujah, hire right away. Great. There

Brandon Parker09:49is no shortcuts and it does land on its surface, seems simple, and then the further you get into it, the more complicated it gets. And to some extent, it becomes growing a business the same as growing any other business. You are scaling, monitoring your cash flow, finding bottlenecks, eliminating the bottlenecks, and then continuing to press. You never feel like you get to a spot where it's like, oh, I figured it out. I got systems and it runs itself. That's there if you want to slow down, but for people who keep pressing probably like yourself, you probably have problems right now that feel like when you first started, you're just going harder.

Brandon Parker10:26Absolutely.

Anshul Sharma10:27Yeah. Land is not one of the most scalable business. It's not a repeatable business. Every time you have a new buyer and you have a new seller and you have a new property, there is nothing repeatable about this whole thing, right? For the most part. That makes it hard to scale versus if you have some other kind of other business, like, Hey, I'm in the business of selling laptop. Okay, it's the same laptop we sell over and over and over again. At least your product is not changing in that We are looking at a new property with a new seller, kind of sell it to a new buyer every single time.

Anshul Sharma11:00We have to repeat that cycle. So yeah, that makes land, I would say, hard to scale as a business, for sure. But the margins, I think, are decent enough for you to kind of take that pain.

Brandon Parker11:13When you sell 100 properties in a year, what

Anshul Sharma11:18type of target margins are you looking at? Last year, had a gross profit of around $30,000 per deal. That's the gross profit. Are you targeting

Brandon Parker11:29a narrow range of like, what do your filters look like? What type of properties are you filtering types of deals?

Anshul Sharma11:35We pretty much look at anything. What I really don't do much is infill lots. I like to do more unrestricted property, mobile home friendly, outside of big cities, maybe an hour, two hour, three hour outside of big metros. You know, you call it Nashville, Dallas, and Atlanta's kind of stuff. So yeah, that's what we do. I have an infill lot. We still do infill lots, but that's the final property. So you can imagine one acre, a five acre, 50 acre, 100 acre, unrestricted by a county road, private road, palm to market, on a highway, that kind of stuff.

Anshul Sharma12:08Pretty straightforward.

Brandon Parker12:09I'm interested with the cold calling since I do cold calling myself. What dialer are you using? And yeah, I guess that would be the first question. Then like what type of, any interesting thing that you have in the script that you think works real nice or?

Anshul Sharma12:23Yeah. So going to your first question, we tried Mojo. It's okay, but my agents reported a lot of connection problems. Voice quality is not that great. We switched over to Ready mode. We found better voice quality, better just kind of connection rate in general, the better how it rotates your numbers and connecting with sellers. Overall, we improved our cold calling quality, just switching over to ready mode. And matter of fact, our agents are able to qualify more leads just the way it kind of helps you connect or have more dials in a day per agent.

Brandon Parker12:58Yeah, agreed. We were with call tools and went over to ready mode and things started working better. One drawback that I see with ready mode, it's minor, but they don't have good APIs for connecting to outside AI and things like that. Like we want to do some things where we start pulling in transcripts to and then going through. I think you were talking about that. Go through the transcripts and qualify or rate leads, you can't plug into ready mode and say, okay, so we're looking to test with the small batches, a couple other dialers that have better backend connections so that we can start integrating AI because that seems like there's some low hanging fruit there.

Anshul Sharma13:38A 100%. Right now we are doing that manually. This is a very meaty conversation because right now we are downloading every single conversation manually and having it run through our custom API to listen into these calls and just kind of understand the motivation level, how our agents are doing. We have started ranking our agents on the performance on the call. So I agree with you. It would be really nice if ReadyMore can come with an API where we can just take that piece and run it through GPT or whatever.

Brandon Parker14:06Yeah, but I mean, I guess you can just get someone to download those and push them through human API. I see what we're doing right now. Yep. And the other big benefit there is, yeah, the QA, because right now we pop in and we QA just randomly and as much as we can. But if we could QA every single call and then start looking for patterns, that's a much different thing. So I think that cold calling, we're just a couple months out from getting some sort of solution, but I think cold calling in general, the teams who are able to do what you're doing there are going to start getting a lot more effective.

Brandon Parker14:40So what do you look for when you qualify a lead? So you got a cold call lead that comes in. How are you thinking about which ones are worth talking to?

Anshul Sharma14:52Yeah, that's a great question and it's kind of work in progress. We have a motivation score and we have custom that thing in the back end, what we're reading off of the conversation between the seller and one of our land intake managers, and we're looking for those keyword sentiment analysis and we're ranking them on a scale of one to 10. So anything that we say, hey, go past seven, guess what? It goes to our acquisitions team. They're making an offer and calling within two to four hours of doing it. Matter of fact, a couple of days back, I posted something, a lead came into the system at a motivation level nine and got caught.

Anshul Sharma15:26And guess what? By next day morning, we had that thing under contract, spend a 100 K. I mean, we are qualifying 60 to 70 leads. It was highly likely that we would have not had a motivation score. That lead would have been kind of, you know, may not be attending the first day, maybe next couple of days, whatever. But hey, the opportunity was right there and we were able to look into it. So those are the things that we find tuning into our saying, Hey, how can we find that opportunity now and not two days from now? Right? Because guess what? They're motivated. They're calling five more people.

Anshul Sharma15:57They want to get this thing done. What's an example of like a sentiment analysis? Like what are keywords that you look for? Are you tactically doing that? All kinds of stuff. I mean, some of these from experience, what sellers say, that kind of we can figure out they're motivated, but some are very obvious. I broke this. I'm in a hospital. My wife is in a hospital. We had a situation. So stuff like that is pretty obvious to capture, but then we also matching what they think they want to get for the property and then what we can offer. And if that is in a very close neighborhood, guess what?

Anshul Sharma16:29We're making a phone call pretty quick. Say, Hey, we want to offer $7,000 They're asking $85,000 $9,000 They're probably a deal here. We can probably meet somewhere in the middle and get this done. So it's various things, price, where they are, what kind of situation they are in, the words that they say, I'm not interested. Or, Hey, you know what? Yeah, I'll be more than happy to look into an offer. That'd be a great offer. But if it is, we'll probably can, you know, ready to move forward. Okay. All right. That's a lead that we want to quickly look into and kind of get an offer going because if we can meet at a price, they're likely to sign the contract sooner than later.

Anshul Sharma17:04So those are the things that we are working on right now.

Brandon Parker17:08And when you say price and knowing if that's reasonable or close or not, does that mean that you're pricing these properties? Are you doing like blind offer and you have a price range and then you know when you're talking to them or what's that? No, it's after the fact. So once we ask for a price and they give us a price or whatever,

Anshul Sharma17:24then it goes to a person who comps this and if they see a matching price or close enough price, then we kind of make it a priority with our acquisitions team to pick the phone, go back to the seller and close the deal. I'm not making blind offers. We're just taking one lead at a time and we calm them right that second or same day or early next day.

Brandon Parker17:48Okay. So it's almost like you have two prongs of qualification. One, you're pushing it through an AI filter, you're looking for some sort of keywords sentiment And then two, if there's a price in there,

Anshul Sharma18:00it's getting routed to a comp person who is checking that price or are you comping every single one? We're comping every single one, but as soon as we find the prices in close neighborhood, we're taking that on priority and asking the land acquisitions manager to make a phone call and get this done. So yeah, it's still a work in progress thing. Every day there we are making some fine tuning the system, but that's what we find working for us. We were actually an appointment company where we were trying to put people on appointment like, Hey, my acquisitions manager will call you tomorrow at 2PM.

Anshul Sharma18:34How does that sound? I mean, it was nice, but it wasn't very practical. They don't care about appointments. Right. And so it sends it over to motivation score. If you're motivated, guess what? I'm giving you a call back in next two to four hours with a solid offer to get you into contract.

Brandon Parker18:51Yeah, it's funny. I found that too. It's like people don't use their Google calendars in the regular world, they, you know, so yeah, it's like we're all on Slack and Google Calendar driven, but you give it to a land seller and they're like, don't have Google Calendar. Don't what you're talking about. Yeah. It's a different audience. Yeah. That's interesting. I'm trying to crack the same nut. That's why I have so many questions around it. We did the calendar booking. We have qualified and we landed somewhere similar to you. We've qualified with, we call them and then we qualify them on motivation, like you're saying, but with a human and with pricing.

Brandon Parker19:25So similar thing, we have an idea. And if they're in the ballpark on price or if there's some sort of key motivation, like, you know, oh, my son moved out of town. We don't go to property anymore, that type of thing. Those seem to be the key indicators. And it's almost like first we were going on price as the filter and there was like holes in that. Then we were going on motivation, like you're talking about, but then there's holes in that. And then so we started doing motivation and price, and now I'm starting to think about it almost like looking at it to disqualify people as opposed to focusing so hard on qualifying them.

Brandon Parker20:01Because with cold car, there becomes a lot of tire kickers and it's like, okay, what if we just now eliminate tire kickers? Agree, agree,

Anshul Sharma20:10the way I'm thinking about it, it's not like even like elimination. Hey, look, you might not be ready today, but I want to keep the doors open. Can I send you something? Can I send you something about our company? So when you are ready from ten years from now, and a year from now, you should be remembering that we should be your preferred choice. You should not be, you know, that Anshul called, he provided all this booklet to me, looking nice. Everything is like buttoned up. I want to call this guy first. If they don't want to buy, then I can go to Brendan or I can go to Mark or whoever, right? So we want to be that company like, okay, not today, but I want to be in front and center.

Anshul Sharma20:43I want to be with you. So whenever you're ready, we can take it from there.

Brandon Parker20:49Yeah. So do you do that by mailing them a packet or by sending them an email, text? What's that look like? Whatever

Anshul Sharma20:55they prefer. You know, our audience love to have mails. Oh yeah, send me that packet. Would love to have something sitting in my living room. I don't mind that. Please. Okay, sure. Here goes the packet. Keep it.

Brandon Parker21:09And what's that packet look like? Like how are you delivering value that they're going to kind of keep that around?

Anshul Sharma21:14I mean, what kind of business we have done? Maybe a case study. This is a family property. This is inheritance. I don't want to get rid of it. Hey, maybe a case study, how we help the family who have been holding on to this thing for a hundred years and now they're happy having cash in the pocket. You don't have to make a decision today. Maybe, we have worked with 15 different tile companies. Yeah. The people make a phone call. All that kind of stuff. Why do you want to sell your property? What else can you do once you sell it? What you can do with that money?

Anshul Sharma21:45Okay. Whatever value you can add, why we are the best, why you want to consider us. We might not be the highest cash offer, but we are the one who's going to take you to the finish line. Mean, testimonials. So.

Brandon Parker22:00Yeah, and what do you think of the nurture sequences as far as text, email, follow-up calls in the future? How much time do you put into that and what do you think? We are working on that stuff right now.

Anshul Sharma22:13That's a big project for us going into quarter two, how we can smartly sequence all this stuff. Because I think where we are going, Brandon, with this whole land thing and wholesaling thing, it will become a very deep relationship game. And the better hooks you have with the seller in terms of providing value before you ask for a sale, the better off you will be in the market. I mean, they're going to call you if you have provided all that great value, like right off the gate. They're not going to go online. They're not going to call a realtor.

Anshul Sharma22:44They're going to call you for sure. Hey honey, call Brandon first. Let's see if he, I mean, those guys are interested, then we can always call a realtor or call somebody else, but let's call Brandon first. Let's see what they got.

Brandon Parker22:56And with technology going the way it is, do you think that's what's going to drive the relationship part of it? It's like there's so much AI and computer stuff and automations happening that we're going to have barbell. People are going to really appreciate the personal relationship or why do you think that?

Anshul Sharma23:11I think, I mean, I could be wrong, but I think with the land business, given the kind of audience we have, I think AI will be more behind the scene and we still got to keep the relationship very human touch, right? I'm not to push them online if they want to see a letter or a packet in the mail. I'm going with what they are comfortable with, what their preferred choice is. But in the backend, I can use technology and have a custom letter written to them based on the conversation, right?

Anshul Sharma23:42I had a great conversation with you. You're not interested, but how can I use AI to capture that conversation, write a custom letter based on the conversation and send it out to the seller? They feel like, Oh man, yeah, that's the conversation we had. This guy took time to write this whole damn letter, a three page letter, on exactly what we talked about. They cared. They were listening to me and they're making some notes.

Brandon Parker24:05Yeah, that's a big one. That's a really good one. Oh, what are you using like as your tech stack? Are you CRM and then, yeah, what other technology tools are you using? We kind of figurmented

Anshul Sharma24:16kind of stuff. I would like to consolidate and collapse a couple of these tools, but we are using Salesforce as a deal management. We are on follow-up calls, ready mode for the first time, cold calling kind of stuff. But yeah, that's pretty much it. Salesforce kind of helped put some DocuSign or just one of those tool embedded inside the thing. We kind of send out contracts using Salesforce now, but it's all embedded. But yeah, that would be my technology stack. That's pretty much it.

Anshul Sharma24:47Okay. Yeah, seems

Brandon Parker24:49right on target. That's nice. Are you thinking, is there a letter sending service or is that something that you're thinking of building in house or is there somewhere that you can send formatted letters and addresses to that'll do that for you?

Anshul Sharma25:05How are you thinking about that tech stack or getting that done? Yeah, no, I agree with you. I have heard that there are services like that. Right now we have an on-site manager who prints it out, said it's very in house right now, but I can see using a service who can just take my letters and just send it out. That would be nice. Yeah. There's like,

Brandon Parker25:26people use RocketPrint for all kinds of stuff. It's like, there's going to be so many of these connections on the back end with technology and things like that happening because everyone's trying to build as fast as they can to keep up. That's really cool and I like that one, Anshul. Unschool. Yeah. So what's your conversion rate with cold calls? If you get a 100 warm leads that come in, or

Anshul Sharma25:545,000, how many do you turn into a deal do you think? I wouldn't have a great answer for you on that. Maybe in six months from now, I'm going to have an answer, but because the reason is we are changing counties, we are changing dialers, we are changing, there's a lot of flux to give you a great answer on that. What we're really trying to do, like stay at 5% of all the contracts we send out. And because with cold calling, there's a lot of time to grace. You know, like back in the day where we used to send mail, it used to be like 10%, 7% conversion.

Anshul Sharma26:26We send out a 100 contracts. We get five, seven to 10 back. I don't see that conversion right now. Maybe somebody is getting, but it really depends what your definition of qualified is, right? There's another thing we kind of moving away from, what's a qualified lead, okay? And we are more leading towards like, what's the motivation level? Yeah. Okay. So what we're really trying to get to, how many leads do we get every day, have a motivation level seven and up? Okay. I can think of a 10% conversion on those guys, maybe 10% conversion. If I'm getting motivation between five to seven, maybe 5%.

Anshul Sharma26:59If I'm getting everything below five, maybe one or 2% is the conversion at best, right? So that's what we are doing and we are in a flux right now because AI just came in and we're just complementing and fine tuning all of that in the backend, but this is how I'm looking at business right now and how I want to run the business. So is lead qualified? Maybe some leads are more qualified than others. It's not a yes or no answer. Is the lead qualified? I would be like, hey, how much is the lead motivated to do this thing?

Anshul Sharma27:30Right? Whatever your motivation level is, and that's how you're engaging when these leads come in now.

Brandon Parker27:37Yeah, that's a good point. I like that you're qualifying them like that and kind of getting to the specific ones really fast. What we're doing with the price and motivation, I think it sounds like we're quite possibly similar. It's almost like if we have 100 leads come in, probably 15 of them are worth a quick follow-up, like talk to them now. It sounds like maybe the same range. And so 85 of them are like you're saying, we need a way to keep in contact with them over time, nurture sequence type of thing.

Brandon Parker28:09Yeah. But same thing, it's like we change our tools and markets and we're tweaking things so much that it's like, to say a number, it's like, well, that's going to change because we've changed every single variable in the last three months. Yes.

Anshul Sharma28:25And that's what we are going through right now. We are changing so many things that to get to a number, say, Hey, my conversion rate is 5%. I don't know at this point in time. Everybody's under contract. Yes. Is it worth our money? Yes. But we are in a flux right now. How we look at business, how we go about this. But one thing that I really learned pretty fast, we are in a more relationship business. Going on the way, you're like, you know what, I'm not going to even call you back. I mean, you should call them back. If they called you one time, you should call them back. Send them a package, send them something, build that relationship.

Anshul Sharma28:56It will go a long way. Like you need to start planting those seeds because as the competition get higher, guess what? The person who has the best relationship is getting the deal.

Brandon Parker29:07Yeah. That's why that letter idea that you have is so sharp because they're getting a personalized letter for you that'll sit in their desk drawer or wherever with their mail for a year. I've heard stories of people picking up a letter out of a pile, a stack of papers five years later and calling. So, yeah, put those feelers out there. Do you think that's like eightytwenty the biggest thing you can do for a nurture sequence is build some sort of unique relationship where you've sent them something special, like something physical, a letter or a packet that sits with them. Do you think that's kind of the lowest hanging fruit?

Brandon Parker29:38Is there anything else like that?

Anshul Sharma29:40I mean, yeah, nothing beats you calling them three months, six months. Letter is one thing. Yeah, I sent you that letter. You asked me to call in twelve months. Here I am, right? And it all comes down to technology, how your processes and your technology is all lined up, right? I would send a letter, keep the doors open, maybe call in six months, be that guy and just keep doing it. I think it's human connection. The more times you can be in front and center and add value. Do not be like, Hey, I called you. I'm calling in four months. Are you ready to sell this thing?

Anshul Sharma30:11I would be like, Hey man, had a conversation four months back. I'm not sure if anything changed. Can I be of any help? You don't have to sell it today. You don't have to sell ten years from now. Could I be of any help with that property that you have? Even if you need a car, more than happy to. If you need a connection with a tile company, I don't know whatever you need. Let me know. I'm a land guy. I can help you with that stuff. That's it. Right. And just move on. If they're interested, they'll tell you.

Brandon Parker30:41How much are you getting on the phone yourself with so much going on in your business?

Anshul Sharma30:46I am negotiating a subdivide deal right now. Nice. Nice. I do, I do. I take some appointments, let's just say on my calendar here and there. Do. Last year, I think last quarter, I've been on the phone quite a bit just to kind of understand the audience because our sellers are changing, man. Like every six months, the market is changing, so you want to have a feel of like where the market is. So once you get on the phone, you kind of know what sellers are thinking, what they want for their property, have things changed, what they think about the market, Are you in the right market?

Anshul Sharma31:25Maybe you want to be in a different market depending on how sellers are talking about their property. I'm on $2,000,000 Okay. Understood. Right? And if you're getting way too often, maybe you want to be in a different market because people have totally different perception of what their properties are worth. Maybe that market is being overdone, whatever the case is. So yeah, I like to hop on the phone and negotiate and call the seller myself.

Brandon Parker31:48Yeah, and as a CEO, I like this concept of zooming in all the way boots on the ground to each little part, just like almost like a surprise in the company. It's like, okay, this month I come in and I'm looking at how we do comping and I just show up in the meeting and I'm like, okay, show me how you're comping and then watch every single part and like, okay. It's like you get in touch with that part and you have ideas and you're the guy, so you know. Then you do the same thing with calls. Okay, now I'm actually on the phone. Now I know what's happening. And zooming into each department, just getting your hands dirty, I think is important for people who are thinking about...

Brandon Parker32:25This is something they come across. When people want to scale their land business, they want to just outsource. It's like, okay, I want to hire a comper. I want to hire an acquisitions manager. They'll just do it. You still have to do it. You still got to get in there and get your hands really dirty and then fix it. And then you can go away for like a month, but you can't ever just go away forever.

Anshul Sharma32:44Mean, find a leader in your company, delegate it have them, but be an advisor. Right now I call myself an advisor. When I run the comms meeting, so we have workshops for everything every week. We spend two hours every week and we call it comms workshop, okay? My lead comms person come in and we pick five or four or three properties that we go over in detail, okay? He runs the show, I'm there as an advisor. If I feel I can add value, I add value to it. Otherwise, they got it, okay?

Anshul Sharma33:14There are days I can't attend. They are running this thing. Same goes with role play. Every morning, we hop on a forty five minute role play. This is how we start at the 08:30, role play. Okay? And those are the meetings I'm really plugged into. One, I get to know what sellers are thinking because my guys come in, Man, all the calls I had yesterday, everybody was asking like really outrageous price. Okay, good to know, right? Maybe we need to look into our data. Maybe we are in the wrong counting. Maybe we need to switch things over. Or, Man, I'm getting this objection over and over again.

Anshul Sharma33:45I don't know how to overcome it. Okay, let's role play. So I role play a lot and that helps me also get in tune with the market and all that kind of stuff. So that forty five minutes in the morning, I feel is worth spending with your acquisitions manager, whoever is going on the phone and negotiating these deals for you.

Brandon Parker34:01That's a really good tip. That's probably a lot more than most people do. That's more than I do for sure. When you're role playing, tactically, how are you doing that? Are you role playing an entire conversation? Are you role playing just like an objection multiple times?

Anshul Sharma34:17How are you approaching that? Yeah, so we have a sales process. Sometimes we just role play the entire sales process. We have steps how to close the deal. So if somebody wants to like, just like a new person is coming onto the team, okay, we're to roll play the whole thing. But if somebody is just stuck in that one situation, okay, let's talk about it. Hit me with that objection. I'll be the buyer, you are the seller, let's do it. And then we just take that piece and then we just role play it. Okay.

Brandon Parker34:45And what's your thought on scripts? How close do you stick with them? Are you kind of like a chunk it out and free flow or are you like a follow the script type person? Yeah, we are not entire script, but there is nothing

Anshul Sharma34:59called script in a company. We call them frameworks. Okay. Okay. It's not a script. You do not have to read it from a script at all. You can make it your own, but there are certain key pieces in a conversation that need to happen and maybe in a certain sequence. How you deliver it is on your personality. Because if you put them in a script, one day they sound robotic, they won't be their natural self and you don't want to do it. So we have a framework instead. Hey, these are 14 things that you want to hit on your conversation with a seller.

Anshul Sharma35:32Okay? You need to have a great reading. You need to have to build credibility, you have to do objection, you have to do fact finding, you have to figure out the dominant selling motive, you have to do a little bit of demo about the company, you have to do a trial close, You have to do negotiation. Then you have to do close, and then you have to do a follow-up and then a service walk. Okay, all right. As long as you're going through this framework in a certain sequence, you're good. You don't have to say the same thing the way I say it.

Anshul Sharma36:02Your breathing might be different from mine. I like to say, Hey, Brandon, this is Anshul from Goldsweil Realty. The reason for my call is you had an amazing conversation with my land intake manager. I want to pick that conversation back up. I got an amazing offer for you and just kind of roll into it. Somebody wants to do it differently. Hey, this is brand new, right? I'm calling from da da da da da. I hope you got two minutes for me. I have something really good for to discuss with you. Everybody has their own style, but you need to go through a framework. But here's the thing. If you do not have a framework, you do not have a process, you cannot teach people how to negotiate.

Anshul Sharma36:38Everybody is doing their own thing. How do you teach people how to negotiate? Where are they in the sales cycle? You need to know where are you in the sales cycle. Are you in fact finding or are you about to close this thing? Where are you? So I can help you get to the finish line. Because sales is freaking itself. Negotiation is freaking itself. You got to have a process, you got to have a framework, and then you have a common lingo to talk to your guys, Hey, where you are in the sales process so I can help you? Man, I'm still in the fact finding.

Anshul Sharma37:09I'm still trying to figure it out, why they want to sell their property and why now? Okay, all right. And then pick it from there. So I'm not sure if I really answer your question, but this is what we do. We have a framework and there are key components to it, and we make sure as we go through the call with the seller, we are touching all those key components before we have a close.

Brandon Parker37:31And how many acquisitions managers do you have to handle 12 cold callers?

Anshul Sharma37:37Right now we have four. Okay.

Brandon Parker37:39Yes. And I've heard so many different ideas on compensation structures. Like, how do you think about acquisitions managers? Do they need to be US based? Can they be South America? Can they be just offshored? What is the compensation structure and... Yeah. How do you think about all that? That could be a podcast in itself. Here's

Anshul Sharma38:00my short answer. Closing is a mindset game. It got nothing to do what part of the world you belong to. Period, end of the story. I had killer closers overseas, okay? And I have great closers here in The US. And the common thread between all of them, they have a clear mindset and they know how to close. As long as you have that kind of mindset and attitude, it doesn't matter. Two things you need to have, you need to have a mindset and you need to provide value on the phone.

Anshul Sharma38:33And you could be anybody closing any deal sitting anywhere in the world. Okay. Like when you get on the phone, you need to know how you can add value to the conversation. Because if you are repetitive, if you're saying the same thing, you're not adding value. So regardless, wherever you are, you're going to lose the deal. If you do not know how to handle objections, I don't care what part of the states you are, what kind of accent you have, it doesn't matter. You're not able to handle the objection of the seller. You don't even know how to respond to it. You're going to lose the deal. Worse this, nobody will know how to handle objection, who know how to add value, will win that contract.

Anshul Sharma39:09Doesn't matter what action they are coming from. Doesn't matter. So my answer to that is it's a mindset game and then how you are adding value, and then of course, it's a skill set. Sales is a skill set, closing is a skill set. So either you have it or you can learn it. It's not like so much dependent on like your accent or where you go from, so that's my answer to that question.

Brandon Parker39:32I think that's a common misperception. I get that question all the time about cold callers as well, my answer is, with cold calling, want to be able to hear them smiling through the phone. I want to be able to feel that they like their job, they're interested in the conversation, and we're just it's a human that you're talking to, and you can feel a lot more on the phone than people think through the intonation of the voice and all that. And so it's all about culture and if they like their job and if they're into the conversation, and that's what converts leads.

Brandon Parker40:05You could have someone sitting in California who went to UC Irvine, but they're cold calling and they hate it and they're going to get crushed by someone in The Philippines who really likes their job, loves where they work.

Anshul Sharma40:18If you don't know what to say, if people say, I'm not interested, it doesn't matter who you are. If you don't know how to handle that objection, you're going to lose the deal regardless, period.

Brandon Parker40:29And do you think that there's incentive in giving... Is it worth giving bonus incentives for like deal value and things like that for acquisitions or energy? Do think there's enough incentive there or do you think it just muddies the water? Like, what do you think of compensation?

Anshul Sharma40:49We have base and we have a commission percentage based off of the gross profit on that deal.

Brandon Parker40:56That's your question, yeah. So do you wait for it to close? Yes. You wait for it to close, you look for the gross profit and then go Yes. From Okay. That's been like

Anshul Sharma41:06expectations has been set. It's not the time when you put it in the contract, it's the time when we sell because that's the only time when company makes money. I get paid when I sell properties, not when I put them under contract.

Brandon Parker41:18Yeah. How do you think about getting them to negotiate the last $5,000 It's a $100,000 deal and the seller will sell it for $105,000 but you could probably get it for $100,000 but whatever, it's worth $160 How do get your acquisitions manager incentivized for that last $5? The question centers around, if I'm an acquisitions manager, let's say I make 10%, and if I can close it right now and get a $60,000 profit and I get $6,000 right now, or I can negotiate an extra day and I can get a $6,500 profit and I could get $650 tomorrow,

Anshul Sharma42:02I'll take the $600 a day, if that makes sense. I mean, they should negotiate for the best price they can negotiate. They can wait. You bring it back at the lowest price possible.

Brandon Parker42:12Yeah, of course. Of course. I'm just wondering if there's any like little tricks. It's just something I think about if there's any tricks to incentivize that because, like, for example, a real estate agent, you know, real estate agents will sell your house for $50 less. They're going get their commission and they don't necessarily care about that little bit of extra profit they could have gotten the buyer, if that makes sense.

Anshul Sharma42:33My guys, too, want to use They piece of the like you. Yeah. Yeah. That's what they're getting trained on, man. Get it in the best price. If it takes a day, it takes a day. Do your thing. Do not give away the price. So they have been preying on the fact that you do not lose or win deals on prices. We don't talk price. Our negotiation is not price. We don't even speak about price in the whole conversation with the seller. It got nothing to do with price. We have framed them, I have framed them differently. Price got nothing to do with you putting the property in the contract or not, so get away from the price stigma that, Hey, manage the price, not the price.

Anshul Sharma43:09You add value, right? And they will sign the contract. People sign contract for lower price than what they're getting from other companies. Because you added value, you show them the way, you tell them how we're going to close the deal, you add some, like you tell them that we have been doing this for ten years, they will come with you versus somebody who doesn't even know how to negotiate and they're just throwing the higher price. So price is the last thing that we talk to seller, and that's the whole sales process. That's the negotiation gap. So I'm not sure if I'm answering your question, but we are not so much just about price.

Brandon Parker43:43Yeah. Yeah. So talking about adding value, some of the value you're adding is this is a really professional company, so the surety that they're going to get the deal done, money's going land in their bank account, and then you're walking them through the process, so it's like some education value. Yes. What other ways do you think about adding value? We are very honest. We say, Hey, look, I can put any price on the contract you want,

Anshul Sharma44:07but do not expect me to come close in ninety days. Uh-huh. Oh, okay. That's what other companies do. If you want me to do the same thing, more than happy to, no problem. But if you expect me to close this deal in sixty days or less, that's the price that will work. And that price, by the way, is better than 30% than anybody, any other wholesaler, investor, realtor will bring you in the next sixty days. Price is yours, you can make that choice. Okay? There will be somebody who will call you after my call ends and say, Hey, I can give you more, and I trust, and you can trust them, but they're not going to come to the finish line.

Anshul Sharma44:41It's not even possible to put the property at that price and make it money. I mean, it's just not possible. You can try and people have called us back. Hey man, I was with this realtor six months, the property didn't sell. I'm ready to do business with you guys. Sure, our doors are open, let's do it. Right? So we make them realize the reality, beginning of the process, this is how you're to roll, okay? And we are more like, Hey, I'm going to give you information and you make an informed decision.

Brandon Parker45:11It's like educating.

Anshul Sharma45:12Yeah, education. Rather than fighting on price, we're to figure out the price. This is what we say. Don't worry about the pricing, you're not saying that we do not do the zing today. Take care of the dice.

Brandon Parker45:26A lot of what you do is a bigger picture mindset, like almost first principle mindsets than getting into those smaller things, which is cool. What do you think this year holds for land investing in general? What are the big story arcs, predictions? Like, what do you see happening?

Anshul Sharma45:48I'm not a prediction guy, so probably not the best question for me. I know one thing, that the more professional we get about this business, the better our chances to keep going in this business. And being professional means how can we add more value? Okay. How can we train our teams better so when they get on the phone, they provide the highest value? That's what I know. Okay. I'm not prediction. I don't know where the market is going. I'm going to adjust as the market goes. Where margins are going, I have no clue.

Anshul Sharma46:20But I'm going to train my team to be the best and I think that will take care of any kind of minutiae or whatever we're to go through for the rest of the year. I just want to make sure that we are the best in the competition. Yeah,

Brandon Parker46:34you've got this underlying theme. It's like your whole philosophy is very human based. Get good people, teach them, treat them good, treat the sellers good, add value.

Anshul Sharma46:44Everything else follows behind that, it feels like. Yeah, because I cannot predict the market. I don't know where this thing is going. It's out of my control. I'm very receptive to the market. I'm not blindsided. I keep my eyes and ears open, but I don't know where the market is going. But what is in my hand to get professional and serious about this business, if you want to continue to do this business, for how long you want to do this thing?

Brandon Parker47:10I think you have an MBA in strategic leadership and marketing strategy. Sure. It feels like that plays into a lot of what you're doing here. Have you started other businesses or what other things that you've done previously that

Anshul Sharma47:28paved the way for where you're at in land, you think? A lot of it has to do with my corporate background. I'm coming from who has done, who's been in corporate, looking at those businesses, how they run, how they think about numbers, how they think about quality, how they make decisions. A lot of decision making on my side is influenced from what I've learned just working with Fortune 100 companies in the world, right? They're thinking about scaling, they're thinking about top line. Every great company has a great sales team. They have the top guys, Okay?

Anshul Sharma47:58They let the sales team go. If they let the sales team go, how are they going to make money, right? So all these concepts, right? Yeah, I'm going to outsource my salespeople. You know, there's some key components that you have to have in your company in order to keep the company going. That's why I have a dispo team. I don't want to be just relied on realtors, right, to sell my properties. If I'm doing eight twenty properties in a year, I need to have my own dispo team. I need to have people who know how to push all these properties in the marketplace. I cannot be dependent on some external party to move my business.

Anshul Sharma48:34So I think maybe I just, I'm kind of jaded at this time because that's all I know. That's how those big companies run. So I think no value in this kind of put into my company.

Brandon Parker48:44That's beautiful. Well, you've grown amazing company and a 100 deals for three or four years straight, a 100 deals plus. So you talked about top line goals. What are your top line goals for 2025?

Anshul Sharma48:5610 mil in revenue, top line sales in wholesale. We have started to do some subdivide stuff. We have two amazing properties in the contract and I put on the third one in the second month of twenty twenty five. I think we can do 10, maybe 5 mil in revenue from subdivide. Maybe we can do 10 mil in subdivides. These are quick subdivides, right? So yeah, that's the goal. It's a pretty audacious goal when it comes to subdivide. I think we can do definitely on the wholesale side, but when it comes to subdivide, probably pretty audacious, but we'll see.

Anshul Sharma49:27I don't know. I'm that guy who just throw a number out there and say, Hey, can we do it? And see, kind of go from there.

Brandon Parker49:34Well, it's got you this far and what an exciting conversation. I would love to have you back six months from now or next year and talk to you after you do something and grow that big because it's amazing. What are your final thoughts? Like any final thoughts for people listening to this as we start to wind up, round it up or anything that we kind of glossed over you want to hit on a little bit more?

Anshul Sharma49:58I don't know, man. People have different goals, right? But I would say that land business is shifting. It's changing every six months. If you've been here for a couple of years, you know what I'm talking about. If you're just getting into the land of in market this year, we are getting more sophisticated. So if you're coming in, just be serious about this thing. It's not the same land business as it used to be. I've never run my business like kind of side hobby, so which is a good thing, but I see people coming in, so that would be a suggestion.

Anshul Sharma50:29Just be professional from day one. Think about adding value. Think about scaling. Yeah, So that would be my piece of advice here. Always think about the goal. Hey, put a goal in place, 500,000, million, whatever you want to do, and just kind of put everything in place accordingly and you'll get there.

Brandon Parker50:47Awesome. Where can people find you online, I'm sure? What's the best way? Facebook, Instagram, TheLandDude

Anshul Sharma50:53is my Instagram handle. You can hit me up there. You can DM me on Facebook.

Brandon Parker50:59All right. Well, wonderful to have you on the show today. You're a legend. It was a pleasure to get to talk to you for this long, can't wait till next time. Yes, sir. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Bye. The Legends of Lands show.