3 Top Deal Sourcing Tips for Speaking to Investors if Never Sold a Deal

Are you starting a deal sourcing or property sourcing business? Not sure how to speak to an investor when one comes your way?

How do you talk to an investor if you've never completed a deal - surely they will see straight through you? 

We are asked this a lot, and let's face it - everyone has to start somehwere, no matter what you're doing - there will always be a 'first'. However, there are ways you can start a relationship with an investor without having completed a deal before.

We've provided three top tips to share with you in build the ol' confidence when it comes to speaking to investors if you've never sold a deal. 

Tip One: Let Investors Do The Talking

This is very important for a number of reasons. Letting the investor do most of the talking will ease the pressure on you feeling like you might stumble down a rabbit hole if you're not as confident speaking at first. It will also let you get to know the investor better and understand exactly what they are looking for. 

So, ask them about the locations and strategies they are interested in. Whether you're meeting face to face or whether it's a telephone call, be the first one to say along the lines of:

"Hi my name is [name in here]. I'm looking to meet up with investors. What area are you investing in currently and how's it going?"

Open the conversation up and let them talk to you. If you've already done your homework, you'll know roughly where the investor is looking to focus on, and if it's your patch you should already know your own area inside out.

Once they've given you some insights, you can inform them of what you've learned about that area, about the strategies. Have you had a job there? Did you go to university there? Did you grow up there? Have you lived there all of your life as we have done on our patches?

Draw on some previous experience from previous jobs or your current job if you're not full-time in property.

Have you got experience in sales communication? Show off your location expertise, how you know the area, how you drill down to understand which strategies work in what area and this takes time to build up the knowledge.

With our property sourcing business, we were about 'boots on the ground' talking to estate agents, lettings agents. We would never have got lost on the areas anyway because we knew them from childhood but we had to learn them in a different way.

Walking around as a child or even an adult in the area that you live doesn't teach you how to view them from a property investment perspective. So you have to have a different outlook on the area that you're considering to use for your patch.

Tip Two: Present Your Knowledge

You may not have sold a deal, however you can still present example deals and your knowledge into a presentation document. 

So with all of that boots on the ground, all of that research, you can present what you know about the local area. We would suggest sticking to one or two strategies to do this that work for your patch, for example Serviced Accommodation (SA) or Buy to Let (BTL). 

Check what properties are available at that point in time, as if you had an investor to package it up for and send the presentation out to give examples of the types of deals that you can source. It must not state that you have sourced or sold these, however they are examples that match a potential investor's criteria for your area. 

To do this, as in Tip One, you have to know your area very well. This should be a given for any sourcing agent. 

Focus on the presentation being of really, really good quality and providing all of the information that investor would want.

If you're not aware of material information rules and regulations that have just been clarified, shall we say, they've always been there in consumer protection regulations, but NTSELAT have brought out guidance under three stages as to what information we must be providing now. and focus on creating a very, very good quality deal presentation.

Be very, very clear as to how you've calculated any returns that you give, including giving the formula that you've used, so it's very, very clear to the investor how you've come to those figures. have copies with you that maybe you can let them have.

Or better still, get them into your world, get a business card off for more contact details and tell them that you will email them through some examples of these deals. Again, make sure that you don't flat out say that you sold or completed these deals. Tell the truth. That these are the types of deals that you can source. 

Not sure how to present deals? Through NAPSA, we will very soon be offering our Approved Members presentation packs to edit and use.

Membership costs just £195 +VAT for the entire year to get this and a raft of other incredibly useful resources for your business. 

Tip Three: Outline Your Processes

Investors like and respect organisation. They want to work with someone they know is on it, organised and ready to roll when deals become available. 

By the stage of talking to investors, you should have all of your compliance in place - including documents and the structure process that goes with them - from onboarding your investor, through to securing the deal. 

Talk your investor through this process. How exactly does it work - what will you need to know from the investor? If you can confidently outline your business process, you will come across as established and know exactly what you're doing. 

This alone can be a deciding factor between a sourcing agent choosing to work with you or not - nothing to do with how many deals you've done in the past. 

If you're not sure about Day to Day Sourcing and how to outline a process to an investor, we run a fully online course to help you out. 

Day to Day Sourcing (with compliance!) - £395

Or purchase as part of the Complete Property Sourcing Programme (all the training and documents you need) - £1,568 down to £1,198

As with any service, investors are looking for quality and organisation. They are placing trust in a sourcing agent to help them build their portfolio to the criteria they have set. Professionalism and organisation can rank significantly higher than experience (especially if they've had a bad experience with someone who has completed 'many deals'). 

So, there we have it. Three top tips for when speaking to investors. 

Of course, this isn't something that just clicks overnight for most people. If it's something new to you (i.e. your experience is not sales) this might take some practice. 

Remember, knowledge is key. If you know your patch and the strategies that work - an investor will see just that and it could be the swinging point of wanting to work with you over someone else.