Using Tried and True Sales Techniques to Close Deals with Investors • with Mauricio Botero

In this podcast, host Kim Lisa Taylor, Esq., explored “Using Tried and True Sales Techniques to Close Deals with Investors” with special guest Mauricio Botero. If you’re in the capital raising business, you need to learn sales skills. In this podcast you will learn how mastering tried and true sales techniques can help you raise money from private investors faster than ever. And it could even help you land a few more deals!

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Transcript

 Edited Transcript from the podcast episode ‘Using Tried and True Sales Techniques to Close Deals with Investors’

With Special Guest Maricio Botero

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. 

Welcome to the “Raise Private Money Legally” podcast, where we talk about topics of interest to real estate syndicators with the opportunity for live questions and answers at the end of the podcast.

I'm your host, attorney Kim Lisa Taylor. Before we get started, please note that all of our podcasts will be recorded and may be used for future promotion, posted on our website or broadcast on a platform that's available to the public. If you don't want to have your voice recorded, please schedule a one-on-one appointment at our website instead of asking questions during this podcast. Information during this free podcast is of a general educational nature and should not be construed as legal advice.

This is an audio-only podcast, although for those of you that have joined us today live, you will get to see us. But when we do post it as a podcast on all of the 20 podcast platforms, it will be audio-only. Today our special guest is Maricio Botero. Maricio is a former Marine, or, I guess “once a Marine, always a Marine,” right?

Maricio Botero:

That's right.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

He's joining us today to talk to us about how you can apply tried-and-true traditional sales techniques to your conversations with your investors. Because when you boil it all down to the basics, it's nothing but sales. You're selling securities, you're selling interests to investors in your company, and the same techniques to selling ... You tell me, Maricio — we're going to explore this on the call today, but can you apply the same techniques that you'd use to sell a refrigerator or a car to a selling interests to investors?

Maricio Botero:

Absolutely. Haven't you heard the stories of the former Cutco knife door-to-door salespeople turning into real estate investors, or the Comcast people that knock on your door? Some of that stuff absolutely still applies. It's just a different customer, different avatar, different product you're selling, but it's very, very similar.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Well, I can't wait to dive into this and find out more, because I learn something every time that I host one of these podcasts and a lot of the people that I invite are people that I want to learn from. And I'm always hopeful that the information that you're going to impart is going to be of value and perhaps change somebody's life that is listening to the podcast. Maricio, go ahead and tell us a little bit about your background and what you do and give us a sense of who you are.

Maricio Botero:

Sure. Born and raised in Miami, had to get out of there. That place was not looking good for a C-grade student, but really, really smart and a computer nerd. I joined the Marine Corps to do computers. I got to the center of all headquarters of computers here in Virginia. I took that opportunity and made the best of it, became an expert in my field. When that happens, the computer world, like the Microsofts of the world, they look for people like that to turn into salespeople.

I was an expert in a data storage company and they came and hired me out of working with the Marine Corps, to be a sales engineer for them, for the company that actually makes the product. But then to sell back to my customer, which was the military. I did the computer thing and became an expert in my field for about a decade. Then after that I've been doing sales now in the sales engineer role for close to another decade. I'm working for a few different companies that make the products.

I'm a Miami kid. Going into the Marine Corps out of Miami was a big culture shock. I come from a background of a Hispanic kid, a big melting pot of the city. Then coming out to Virginia, I used some of that experience and just being likable and being a big people person … I'm a funny guy, I try to be, that's what people tell me. Using that, and apparently that's good for sales, so that translated into my role and making me successful so far in sales.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

That's great. Well, I'm glad to talk to you. I think our original conversation is that you'd come to our firm and were inquiring about our services, and during the course of our call, I learned about your sales experiences and said, "Well, gee, maybe we should have you as a guest on our podcast." I'm really glad that you decided to join us.

Maricio Botero:

Absolutely.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

You mentioned the word “sales engineer.” What in the world is that?

Maricio Botero:

It's like a undercover sneaky role. I am taking my experience, my credibility, my certifications … I'm a Microsoft nerd, a bunch of other companies or vendors that some of your listeners may know about if they're in IT … I'm using that, or my company and my team is using that credibility. Again, I'm a former Marine and I'm selling to my customer, which are Marines, Navy. I'm using that credibility, that experience.

I'm using that, but blended with these people's skills that I've developed in my life. Whether natural skills or learned skills, I like to argue with people whether some of these skills are natural, and I would disagree. Some of them can be learned. But I'm blending them together to be the smart guy on a sales team. For example, I'm selling this widget and there's a sales person, a true-and-tried account executive, a sales person paired with an engineer.

This widget is a very technical thing. The sales representative probably doesn't know how the widget works. They know basic five-minute version of the story of how this thing works, what it's going to do for you, how it's going to change your life, whatever the thing is. My product is cybersecurity, so I'm a cybersecurity expert. But I don't appear and speak like one necessarily. 

I can break very complex things into very small words or phrases or expressions, enough that I can speak to very executive people. Or I can put on my engineer hat on, my former subject matter expert hat, and go talk to smart people, too. That's my role. My role is to be a trusted advisor, to take my experience … people see me and hear me know, "That guy, he knows what he's talking about" … but to have everyday conversations and break down more complex things into very simple ways.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Well, that's amazing, because we've built our firm on that. One of the things that we pride ourselves in is being able to explain things in plain English that anybody can understand. And also, we've even scoured through our legal documents and tried to get rid of all that legalese and just make it plain English so that everybody — our clients and their investors — all understand what their bargain is and what they're agreeing to.

Our hope — and it seems to have been borne out since I've been doing this for 12 years — is that if everybody understands what they're getting into, then there's no dispute later on. Certainly in my career, I’ve seen a lot of very technical legal documents that only an attorney could interpret and I find that those are the documents that also often make their way to court.

But in your context, the fact that I think that's been a sales technique for us as well, is just going out and explaining to people in plain English what it is you're doing and how you can help them. That's certainly worked for our firm and it sounds like that's pretty much what you do too, right?

Maricio Botero:

Yeah, absolutely. I can get super-sophisticated, use big complex words and phrases but... I’ve got to know who I'm selling to, and I’ve got to know who my customer is. Like I've said a few times here, my customer is, sometimes it's 22-year-old corporals in the Marine Corps, or sometimes it's maybe a 29-year-old lieutenant in the Navy who maybe hasn't been doing this job for a long time. They don't have the 13 to 18 years of experience in this field. You’ve got to know your audience, you've got to know your customer. It's got to make sense to them, or else there's no point. You’ve got to be self-aware of what you're saying and how you're saying it and how they're going to receive it.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Well, and again, translating that into how our clients can use that when they're talking to investors, I think it's important that you know your investor. We're constantly talking about the fact that you should be developing substantive relationships with every prospective investor, even if you're planning to advertise. Developing that substantive relationship and learning about your investor before you start trying to sell them something is really going to give you that trusted advisor role.

They're going to start to see you differently: “They're not just trying to sell me something. They're trying to give me information and advice.” One of the things we also tell our clients is, give presentations. If you create a pitch deck or just a little educational presentation … and it could be 10 minutes, it could be 30 minutes, it could be an hour … where you just explain the process of syndication and how it works and what you do so that you can really convey to your audience that you're the expert in that field, that automatically builds trust and gets you a lot of points with prospective investors.

Because they think, “This is too hard for me to do on my own. Why don't I do it with them? They seem to know what they're doing.” And again, that's been our model, because I go out and I speak and I teach people all around the country at different real estate training events, how to syndicate real estate. And because I'm up on the stage and I'm the one teaching and I'm teaching them in plain English, that trust is built and then they become clients of our firm.

That same exact thing can work for you, for all of you listening to the call or listening to the podcast, when you're selling securities to your investors. 

All right, are there certain sales techniques that apply to all sales, no matter what? Can you name a few of those?

Maricio Botero:

Yeah. You just hit on one and that's one that I know that I try to do in my day job, and I know that it's going to apply as I'm raising funds for syndication. It’s making that personal connection, but then also making people trust you and believe in you and know that, “Well, if I go with Kim, she knows what she's talking about.” Or, “If Maricio is telling me about this apartment deal and he believes in it and I can feel the passion coming from him, how much he believes in it”… then also, like you said, with the presentation … “and he can back it up and he can really talk about it, then I'm going to trust him and I'm going to go with him.”

That's a huge part of selling in any world. The Cutco knives, like I mentioned earlier, to securities … if you know everything about your product, if you become an expert in your product, it's going to resonate with whoever you're talking to. I'm doing a coffee farm thing. As I've been telling people about it, they keep telling me, "Wow, you really know what you're talking about. I don't even know that much about coffee but I'm in. I'm excited; I'm in."

It's because, the feedback I'm getting is that it's my passion and it's my expertise coming through in what I'm saying. That applies both to me selling my cybersecurity thing in my day job, and the same thing in me with my syndication or with the coffee farm fund that I'm raising now … just being able to express my passion. It's just natural; it’s because it's something that I really believe in.

Another tip is: believe in your product. Really, really believe and back up your product. It would be harder for me to sell something if I didn't believe in the product. In my day job, I'm not going to go to a company when I don't believe in the product, just to be a sales assassin, just to make some quick bucks. That's a hard sale. People know when they're being sold to. People don't know that they're being sold to when a guy like me, so passionate and talking about a thing of love and a thing of excitement. It's like, "Oh man, that sounds cool. I want that." It doesn't seem like we're being sold in that way.

That's a couple of tips. Definitely, bringing the passion and the confidence in your product and the expertise behind it. People can tell that. They know that you really know what you're talking about. They can quickly tell about that. Those are a couple that I can think of.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

I wrote down five tips out of all of that. These are really great tips. I'm just going to recap them for the audience, because I think you should all write them down, too. First: “Make a personal connection.” Well, how do you do that? You don't do that by talking about yourself? Do you?

Maricio Botero:

Absolutely not. One tip I give, more tactical tip to give is, first and foremost, if I know I'm going to talk to Maricio Botero, I'm going to get on a call with him, I'm going to Google him. Five minutes, Google. If you can’t spend five minutes to Google the person that you're about to talk to, you're missing out on a really, really easy opportunity to learn something quickly about them that you can then use to pivot and make a personal connection to them.

If I Google Kim, I see Kim wrote a book. “Hi, Kim. Hey, how are you doing? Hey. Oh my gosh, you wrote a book. How cool.” Instantly, I've just made a personal connection. What if I've written a book before, I can make a person connection on, “Hey, I wrote a book, too. Oh my gosh. I wrote a book as well.” A quick five-minute search on the internet to help you make a personal connection, whether it be sports teams, where you're from, your ethnicity. We made a connection, Kim, about how I was in the Marine Corps, right?

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Right.

Maricio Botero:

So immediately we had just a quicker connection from five minutes before you found that out and before I found that out. That's a quick tip on personal connection.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Okay. All right. Then the second one I had was, “Become the expert.” Let people know you know what you're talking about. That means you got to be very versed in what you're trying to get them to purchase. The best way that I became an expert was by teaching. They always say, if you don't know what that means, learn about it, teach it.

Maricio Botero:

Absolutely. That's so true.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

If you start teaching it, you have to learn about it and you become more comfortable talking about it. “Thank you for putting together a little educational presentation.” That's something that we can help you with if you need some help with that or you want us to review it. Anybody on this call, those are certainly some ways that we can help you become the expert. That's the goal.

All right, “Speak in plain English,” we got that one. “Be passionate.” You said be passionate. I've heard that a lot, especially in the startup world. In the startup world it's like, you have to really believe in your product. Because sometimes you're trying to bring in investors when all you have is just an idea. At least in real estate, usually by the time you're talking to your investors, you might've put your team together, you've probably been through some training and maybe you even have a deal under contract. But it's a little different in the startup world because sometimes you've got to just start with the idea, and then you got to get enough money to get that idea to market, and maybe generate some paying customers, and then you can go out and raise bigger money.

Then the last one I had was “Believe in your product. Believe in what you're selling.” If you don't believe in the product, then maybe this isn't the business for you. It's not the right business for everyone. I have known some people in the past that tried it before and just said, "It's not for me. I don't care for it. I don't like having to answer to investors. I'm a lone wolf, like doing things on my own." That's okay. This business isn't for everyone.

But if you do have certain skill sets that you can put together a team where your skill sets are just one of the skill sets needed and you can bring in other people on your management team that have the other skill sets — so maybe you don't want to do the sales, and you want to just find the deals and talk to brokers, or you want to be the guy behind the scenes that's just analyzing the deal —  all those are valuable services.

Maybe you're going to be the person that's going to be overseeing the property manager. Figure out what skill sets are needed to syndicate and try to put all that together with a team so that you can each excel with your own personal strengths. But it sounds like you definitely need to have somebody with some sales techniques on your team.

Maricio Botero:

Absolutely. If you don't have it, partner with someone. Absolutely. I'm even personally doing that. I'm never going to be the best analyzer, underwriter of an apartment building. But I know someone, and this someone, she does not want to be in front of a camera. She does not want to be speaking in front of groups of people. Me, I love talking to people. This is easy for me. It does not take much mental energy to get in front of a stranger and speak, and talk.

But to this person it would be paralyzing. But I know my strengths and my weaknesses and that's what makes another good salesperson, is know your strengths, know your weaknesses. Be very self-aware because you could be missing an opportunity to partner with someone who's better at what you need to be doing than you are doing it.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Exactly. All right. Is there some sales strategy that our clients could be implementing? Let's think about this though. Okay, I'm going to pivot a little bit from our questions. Once you've met someone, you've had that initial conversation and maybe you've talked to them a little bit about your product and your expertise and you've gotten those preliminary steps out of the way, what do you do next? How do you keep in touch with people? What's your strategy for doing that?

Maricio Botero:

I would say even before getting to that point, me personally, I would want to build more of a personal connection, more of a relationship, before even necessarily pitching the product or the opportunity. If I was syndicating a fund, or even in this coffee farm thing, I would want to get to know the person first, see if they're even my ideal avatar to begin with. Are they my ideal client?

I'm going to learn that from them as I get to know them, as they're going to learn from me. “Do I like him? Do I believe in him? Does he seem passionate? Does he seem like he knows what he's talking about?” Obviously I'm going to try my best for them to feel that for me and get that experience before I even get to the point of making the pitch or the ask of, “I have an opportunity. Are you interested?”

I would really work on doing that first personally, and the way I would do things is using my sales experience. But once we're there, once we're at that point, one thing that I'm going to use as a sales strategy is consistency and touch points. I've seen that work in my day job in sales of IT stuff. Same thing applies in syndications and real estate, is just being consistent with your audience.

Things like the newsletters, things like the email marketing campaigns, so much of this stuff is automated now. It’s really easily done with websites and email platforms. If you don't know of any of these, look at ActiveCampaign, look at Mailchimp. Just Google email marketing, and there's a bunch of them out there now. But they even have that built into their products and their platforms, is the consistency. Setting up routine touch points with the customer, don't go cold.

Because maybe one day I'm trying to have Bob have an opportunity for an apartment building and Bob is a potential lead who wants to invest and be a limited partner, but he's not ready yet. But that one day, one thing will happen in his life where he is ready. Because of my consistency and because of my constant communication, just letting him know how things are going, letting him know what I've been doing in my life and my projects, just keeping him interested, maybe that one that he says, “All right, I'm ready. I sold the house and I have some funds. I feel like I can do this now.”

Kim Lisa Taylor:

What I got out of that is build a relationship first. Make sure they're your ideal avatar client. Then at some point, you're going to talk about what you do. Just in organic conversation. You're going to be asking them about what they do and about themselves to get to know them, and then they're going to ask you, “Well, what do you do?” Because it's a normal reciprocal thing. Is that correct?

Maricio Botero:

Yeah, absolutely. This just happened to me recently. I communicated and met a investor relations person from a syndication, from an apartment building syndication. It was a soft intro to him, but I had not met him specifically yet. He gets on the phone with me, he goes, "Hey, how are you? Where do you live?" Immediately he was asking me, where do I live? I realized, I respect this, it turns out he's a former sales guy. Sales in medical industry. Something in medical sales.

He was asking me tons of questions, and he did not really, within the first five, 10 minutes, I didn't even realize we were not talking about real estate at all. Did not even mention the word apartment building at all. Fast-forward after the call, two or three calls later, we started talking about return on investment, equity multiples or whatever. But I already like this guy, he already likes me, and I'm in on the brand, I'm in on the company now. And so, it happened to me personally.

That's the way I would do it, is similar to that experience I just had recently … get the relationship going, make the connection. Is this someone that I like and I want to do business with? Too, hopefully, they want to do business with me as well.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Well, that's pretty interesting. I actually start all of our potential new client calls with, where are you in the world? Because I talk to people all over the world and it's just interesting to know where they are. But hearing you, I'm thinking, maybe I need to take that a step further and start talking to them a little bit more about, “Hey, what do you do now?” And stuff like that before we just jump into, “What do you want?”

Maricio Botero:

Absolutely.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Good. Well see, I'm learning things. I learn things from my clients and my guest speakers every single day. All right, then I heard you say use consistency and your touch points. Newsletters, marketing campaigns and all of that. But what about personal touch? The SEC believes that in order to have a substantive relationship with somebody that's defensible enough, that you could offer them interests and a Regulation D, Rule 506B offering, that you can't do that all electronically.

That there has to be at least a conversation in there where you're talking to the investors about their financial goals and their financial qualifications before you actually start making offers to them. But just from a pure sales perspective, do you think that the personal touch is important or do you think that these relationships can be built all electronically?

Maricio Botero:

I am 100% certain and I've seen this in real experience, that personal touch, in-person meetings beats all. During COVID, my job, I travel for work. I travel anywhere my customer is, the Navy, the Marine Corps, wherever these bases are, I'm meeting these customers. That's a part of the normal sales person job, is go getting in front of them, seeing them, touching them, feeling their presence and them feeling your presence, your energy. All of those things are going to help you in your sales.

But when COVID happened and being away from our customers, it hurt. We went mandatory as virtual meetings really took an effect, mandatory at least, if we're going to do this virtually, use our cameras. I'm still getting dressed up, I'm still doing my hair a little bit, and people could see my smile, people can see, hopefully my energy and my presence virtually, at least it's better than just my voice. Absolutely, anytime I can get a personal in-person meeting, it's going to be better than not in-person, than just over phone.

That may go back to, if you don't like doing that and that's hard for you, that this may be more difficult for you. Me personally, I know that this is within my wheelhouse, it's easy for me to do. It's not mentally straining at all. I enjoy people. But that's not to say that you can't do this if this is not your strength. You can learn to get good at this, or at least do it in spurts and controlled ways. But getting in front of your potential customers is always going to be more impactful and give you a higher chance of success to get your sale.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

I think that we've actually even seen the results of that. Prior to COVID, we were in just doing phone calls with all of our potential new clients, and because of COVID, when I wasn't able to go out and speak and meet people face to face like I had been in the past, we elected to start doing Zoom calls. I learned a lot of things about it.

At first I thought, "I don't want to have to do that. I guess you always got to look perfect on camera and all that." First of all, I learned that wasn't true. I just learned that I felt more fulfilled at the end of my day, because I had really felt like I connected with these people that I've talked to throughout the day, just by having that face-to-face conversation. I felt like I got a much deeper connection and we're much busier than we used to be, so it's possible that that actually had some positive effects.

I liked that a lot. I definitely think for all of you that are on the call and are thinking about talking to your prospective investors, if you can meet them in person, one of the things I always say is “find investors locally but invest globally.” Maybe not globally, but at least nationwide. But your investors that are in your local community are the ones that you're going to be able to make those deepest interpersonal connections with. They're going to invest with you again and again and again, if you can meet them... We interviewed a guy, Sam Freshman, on two podcasts that are  both available on our website at syndicationattorneys.com.

Sam Freshman is in his mid 80s, and I asked him, "How much money have you raised?" And he said, "I don't know, maybe a billion dollars." I said, "Well, how did you raise all that money, Sam?" And he said, "I joined every single group I could find in my local community and I started showing up every single month." You do that for 20 years, you know everybody. You will know everybody. That's one way to do it.

But if you are meeting people, and let's say now we can start going to an event and you are meeting people, you're gathering contact information, the best thing you can possibly do is go home after that event and then start scheduling appointments with everybody that you met, and do it on Zoom. And do that, now start with “Where do you live and what do you do now, and what's your past investing experience? What's your interest in syndication?” And just touching on whatever other conversations you may have had with them at that event.

Now all of a sudden you're starting to establish that rapport and you can also use the questions from our article on “Developing Substantive Relationships” and start talking to them about those things, documenting the things that you talked about during that call. Now you'll be able to start offering them investment opportunities.

Maricio Botero:

That's such a great point, too. But I would even say even before that, or simultaneously as you're starting to do that if you're newer, start doing the homework now and the groundwork to get a system ready in order to do that initiation of contact and response. Go to these platforms, buy the software, whatever it is, but put in the homework to then set up a pipeline for this type of communication in advance.

As you're starting off, you may not have that yet and you're going to have to do it on a spreadsheet or doc, wherever. But when you have downtime, make it part of your projects that you're going to go to a networking event, then the first few hours after the networking event and then the next day is a critical time to send that first text, send that first email, take that business card, initiate their communication, because they're not going to do it. If you give them your business card …

Kim Lisa Taylor:

They're not …

Maricio Botero:

... if you're still using business cards today. But if you get a chance to get their email address, you got to communicate first. That's the way to go. But you kick off that communication, hopefully you've done the homework to set up your pipeline software or system or whatever it is to systematize it.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

That is critical. I knew somebody early on. Let's me see, she started her business. Her name is Kaaren Hall of uDirect IRA — the letter u — and she is a phenomenal marketer. In fact, she was the first person who will ever let me speak on her podcast or whatever the equivalent was at that time, and that was probably back in 2009 or 2010.

She told me that every single time she went to an event, she gathered as many business cards and contact information as she could, and then she went back to her room at night and she had a little scanner. She would scan in all of that, and then she'd start immediately emailing those people. I remember speaking to her, I don't know, probably three or four years later and she said, "Yeah, I have 14,000 people in my database." 

Let's see. What are the qualities of a successful salesperson?

Maricio Botero:

Some of the more successful salespeople I've seen are the ones that can make such a good job of doing a personal connection, of getting people to like them, that it doesn't even feel like they're selling them. The best successful sales people … I see a lot of them … they make friends and the friends just want to help out their friends. Personally in both, when I was the customer, I didn't realize it was being done to me.

When I was a 25-, 30-year-old subject-matter expert in the military, I was being sold cybersecurity or software hardware. I didn't realize it, but it was just, I got to help my buddy out. Let me see if I can help him. Let me see if I can email my boss to get him in. Now I do the same thing. I do those same successful techniques of making those personal connections, making these friendships with people so that it doesn't even feel like they're being sold to.

Another one is, again, the consistency. Even the consistency of some of the little things. Did you catch what their birth date is in your conversation with them? Did you catch what the names of their kids are? Did you catch where their school is, what their alma mater is? Little things like that. Being consistently able to bring those things up is a great way to keep those connections going, for them to like you and trust you.

Going into just the little things in general, is always what some of the most successful sales people do. Things like when in-person meetings happen, bringing coffee. That's always been a closer type of mentality, is you always got to bring coffee, or bring donuts or bagels or pastries. Another way to help people's heart is through their stomach. Some of the most successful sales people handle the logistics really well.

Things like having refreshments if you are going to have a meeting. Things like the follow-up emails being on time and quality. Thank you for your time. Here's a email of what we talked about. Next steps are the logistics, making sure you're planning in advance. You made sure that we did this webinar and we connected many minutes in advance for any technical difficulties to be figured out before we got on.

That was you handling the logistics well in advance and not just hoping the computer's going to work or hoping that the internet doesn't break. The best sales people I've seen handled those logistics stuff really well. A lot of that is in their control. Sometimes in sales, some of that stuff is not in our control as a salesperson, but the logistics usually are always in your control. If you can at least control those variables, you eliminate any possible things to get in the way of your selling. There's just a couple of more tips off the top of my head.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

That's great. Then I think you mentioned earlier that you have to like to talk to people. If you don't like talking to people and you're one of those behind-the-scenes persons, then maybe you make yourself the expert in setting up the follow-up drip systems and keeping the database up-to-date and things like that. Or some other aspects that doesn't require you to be the upfront salesperson. If you want to meet people in your community — I just learned this recently — get a dog.

Maricio Botero:

So good. Also puppies. I know exactly what you're talking about.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Oh my gosh. I lived in a community for like nine years and I hardly ever met anybody but my immediate neighbors, and then I got a puppy and I met everybody. At least everybody with a dog.

Maricio Botero:

It's better than picking up a smoking habit. That's for sure.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

That's right ... people that you're meeting that have dogs, they have some level of disposable income. They have a dog.

Maricio Botero:

Great point. That's a great point.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

At some point you might want to talk to them about investing with you or invite them over for a cocktail. Okay, let's see. Are there any good books or resources for sales training that you would recommend?

Maricio Botero:

Yeah. One of the best ones I've read recently, and I didn't read this early in my sales career, so this is just more recent, is a book by Chris Voss, former FBI ... he would help handle hostage situations. He wrote a book called “Never Split the Difference.” Holy cow, this guy is like a psychological ninja. It's a really great read. It's not hard to read at all. It's not like you're reading a psychology book, but he's explaining it and he's explaining it with stories.

That's another tip: the best salespeople … some of the best people have … they sell a story about, imagine if you had this or this happened to a previous customer, et cetera, et cetera. Then customers are going, "That's me. I want that. Or I don't want that to happen. I'm going to buy your product." Well, he explains in his book and stories, and there's just some really tactical tips you can learn there. Things like just using the inflection of your voice, or even putting a question mark at the end of a word and it subliminally tricks the person you're talking to into talking more, without even realizing that you just did that to them. It's a fantastic read. If anyone has not read it yet, I highly recommend it.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

I'm going to get that book. That sounds really interesting. I'm sure the stories are fascinating.

Maricio Botero:

Yeah. They're pretty nuts. They're pretty nuts.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Wow. By the way, I actually happened to know somebody that sells kidnap insurance. If anybody's traveling to a country where they think that that might be an issue, then just reach out and I'll send you that contact information. He's military also. All right. What are some of the perks of being in sales when it comes to investing in real estate?

Maricio Botero:

One of the best perks … if I go into commercial real estate … is I'm around a lot of high net worth people. I'm around salespeople that make a lot of money. I realize that is the whole network is your net worth. Cliche is totally true, and that's going to be my super power, my competitive advantage maybe.

Is that I'm around people who like real estate, who like investing, period, but they're not good at it or they just don't want to spend the time. Their higher, best use of their time is being a better salesperson. And probably not learning how to do cryptocurrency trading or syndication and underwriting of self-storage or so. It's not within their wheelhouse. Leave that to someone else who's an expert. That's definitely been one of the perks.

Another one of the perks is the travel. One, because it's cool. I just came back from Hawaii. That's cool of course, obviously. But the worldly part of it, the people experience and the world experience of getting to travel has been a huge perk for me. Again, making personal connections, if I Googled you and I saw a picture of you on a beach somewhere, I'd be like, "Oh my God, I just went to Hawaii. How cool." Like, "I was just in Hawaii. Were you in Hawaii? Were you on an island?" Because of my perk of my job of traveling a lot, again, just another chance that I made another personal connection to make you like me and trust me.

The time flexibility … when I was first getting into real estate, I was coming from a divorce so I didn't have money. I didn't have a lot of capital to start with, but I had the knowledge to hustle and I had a lot of times just like being a firefighter.

When there's a fire, you're working nonstop, you got to get the job done. But when there's not a fire, sometimes there's not a lot to do, so it allows me a lot time to travel to the markets I'm investing in, or go meet up in person with future investors, future partners, get them out for coffee, get them out for a drink. And again, afforded me the opportunity to get them to like me and trust me more. Those are some of the perks I can think of.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Those are some really great perks. 

Well, so if anybody has a question, you can either raise your hand … down at the bottom of your screen there should be a little picture of a hand; you can click on that to raise your hand if you'd like to ask a question live, or you can put something into the Q and A, or into the chat … but if you have a question for me or Maricio, we're both happy to answer those questions right now. 

Maricio, what if somebody just wants to ask you some questions, is there a way that they can reach you?

Maricio Botero:

Yeah, best way to reach me is either through my social media platforms. You could find me on Instagram. I'm sure Kim will send out my contact information after this. Also my email address, so maricio@moborealty.com. Just email me, or hit me up via social media. I'm very active on LinkedIn and also on Instagram. That'd definitely be the best way to contact me. I just love to talk to either aspiring investors or seasoned investors who just maybe want to ask me some questions about the sales stuff. I love to have conversations with everybody, so please email me and let's talk.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

That's great. Maricio, go ahead and put your contact information in the chat so everybody can grab that if they want, and then we will send that out later as well. But I'm super glad that everybody joined us today. If you want to schedule a call with us, you can do so at syndicationattorneys.com. 

I have written a No. 1 Amazon bestseller called “How to Legally Raise Private Money,” and you can get a free digital copy of that at the website, syndicationattorneys.com, there's a tab there that says “Get the Book.” Or you can order it on Amazon, either in a Kindle version or soft cover. Anyway, we're super happy that all of you joined us today, and Maricio, are there any parting words that you want to share with our audience?

Maricio Botero:

I would want to leave your audience with, don't be afraid to get a “no.” There's a statistic out there, it's not very complex, but out of 100 yeses or nos, you're going to get 99 nos, but you're going to at least get one yes. That's made-up math, but the point is, don't be afraid of getting no. Learn from your nos. That's a great sales superpower, is not being afraid to getting that no. Because nos eventually do lead to a yes.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

And realize too that no sometimes means “not right now.”

Maricio Botero:

There's so much behind that no. That's just a pivot to a whole set of other questions and also learning for future experiences to talking to new people, too. But yeah, no doesn't mean no, sometimes.

Kim Lisa Taylor:

I've also heard people say practice on maybe what's not your best group of investors. If you have access to a group of really high net worth people, maybe you want to start with your family and friends first so that you can get used to talking to them about this stuff before you stumble your way into the high net worth people who are used to hearing this kind of information.

Maricio, this has been really great information. I do think that it's something that everyone who wants to sell securities and do securities offerings and raise money from private investors really needs to learn and understand … at least some basic skills. But I think you've given us some really invaluable techniques today. I've learned a lot. I'm pretty sure our audience is learning a lot, and I hope some people reach out to you. If you want to reach out to us, syndicationattorneys.com is the best way to do that, and we certainly look forward to having you all as clients very soon.

Maricio Botero:

Thank you so much. This has been fun.