Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about one skill that can help you make more money in your flipping business.
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Reseller Hangout Podcast – Rob & Melissa On This 1 Skill That Can Help You Make More Money In Your Flipping Business
Rob: Thanks so much for jumping on today's episode. We are going to talk to about that one skill that if you improve, will make you more money flipping.
Rob: So the one skill that you need to master to be a better flipper to make more money flipping, guess what it is.
Melissa: Negotiations.
That's right, negotiations!
Rob: And there is two parts to negotiation. There is the negotiation in the buy.
Melissa: And in the sale, and this kind of came up this week because on Monday you had a chance, I actually took a video of you, like standing there and your body language negotiating with the guy. And so we were like, oh, we should totally hop on and talk about it because there is, it's kind of an art that you learn.
It's not something that everybody's super comfortable with. So we wanted to just jump on and talk about it for a minute.
Rob: Absolutely.
Melissa: So the first one would be negotiation in the purchase. Like that's a huge piece of improving your profits.
Rob: That's one thing that we always talk about is our money is made in our buys.
The money's not made when you sell the item, it is really made with how cheap you can get that item. So the money's made in the buy. You need to learn how to negotiate that buy when you go out and find it.
Melissa: Now there's two parts to this. There's in person and then there's the apps.
Rob: So, absolutely. I typically like to negotiate if I'm buying something off the app, OfferUp, Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist. I like to negotiate before I get there to set the new line, the new price before I even get there. If I do find something else wrong with it, I can negotiate a little bit more or if I'm already getting it super cheap, I just buy it and know that I have to do it anyway.
So, with the one that we're talking about, that we did last week, it was a paint shaker, commercial paint shaker. It was made by Miller. And it was like I said, one of the ones that you'd go into a it's old, old school. So, but it's still one of the ones that you would go into Home Depot, Lowes, they mix up paint for you.
They put this gallon into this machine or two gallons, and they shake it up. That's what it is. So I didn't negotiate this. We actually were doing a two part to our trip. I was delivering something that we sold and I wanted to make the most of the trip so I found something down there, which was the paint shaker.
Melissa: We found it the day before we went there?
Rob: A couple days before.
Melissa: We knew we were going down there on Monday. So over the weekend, you looked in the area to see if you could find anything.
Rob: And I found one, so I reached out to the guy and said, is this still available? He wrote back a day later and said, yes. Then I wrote him back a day later and said, hey, I'll be in the area Monday at noon. Is that going to be possible?
Could I come by and see it? And he said, yes. And I didn't really want to negotiate in case something fell through with my plans or anything like that. So anyways, I left it at that.
Melissa: Because normally you would negotiate.
Rob: Absolutley. If it was in my local area and I was going to do it, then I would probably have negotiated down to $75.
He wanted a hundred dollars for it. I would have negotiated it to $75, so that was my new baseline when I got there that I could have worked from there. I didn't do it this time. I probably should've, but I didn't. So we got there.
Melissa: But your whole reasoning was that in case you didn't make it, you didn't want to annoy him like to negotiate.
Rob: Yeah. And I was going back and forth and it's not a local area that, yeah, if something happened, I didn't want to negotiate and do it with them, so I should have done it, but I figured I would do it when I got there. And, problem with negotiating when you get there, even if you find something wrong with the item, they're already expecting to get that full price for that item.
So he already had his mindset that he was going to get a hundred dollars for this. When I got there, the good thing was there was something wrong with it that I didn't know, the clasp that actually holds the paint can in, they were broken, so he was using a bungee cord around it. So that was my negotiating tactic and tool.
When I got there, I offered him well I asked him first thing I did always be respectful. That's what you want to do. You never want to tell somebody, hey, it's only worth this. This is broken. This piece of junk, nothing like that. I told him, I said, hey, are you negotiable on the price? Would you take any less?
And he said, no, I really got to get a hundred dollars. Well, I know how to read people cause I've been doing this for years and I knew that he would negotiate on price. So I told him, listen, I, I really only want to spend $75 on this, the clasps are broken, it's going to help me get new pieces to put in there.
If I can get $25 off on the price. And he said, yeah, I really want to stick with a hundred dollars. And I said, that's when you have to learn to read people and if you're able to, walk away. So I told him, okay, to be honest with you, I'm going to have to pass. I kind of was expecting it to be all here and you know, it wasn't anything broken on it or anything like that.
So I started walking away, turned around and he said, well, can you do $80? And I said, yes, I can. Well, I waited a second thought about it, stood there and thought about it, thought about it. And then I said, yes, I can do $80. I'll do that. And he goes, okay, let's do it. So I paid him for it and I walked away with it.
So.
Melissa: No. I was just going to say, I think a big thing to note with this is to be respectful because I know that people get, like, it's not cool to go up and say, cause we get people that do it with us all the time, too. Like not cool to go up and completely bash the item and completely like trying to tear it apart, which is why you like to usually negotiate on the app before you get there so you're not having to do that, but something was broken legitimately. So, so just being nice and respectful.
Rob: Yep. And that's what I told the guy. I said, I would have paid him a hundred dollars for the item cause we'll sell it in as this condition I should be able to get, I probably would say about a thousand dollars, yeah.
Comps, roughly a thousand to $1,500, actually a thousand to $2,000. And there's not a lot of them out there.
Melissa: But that's offering it out on global market on eBay.
Rob: Absolutely on eBay versus a local. So I could have definitely made money off of paying a hundred dollars for the item and do it. But the point was he didn't mention that it was broken on the clasp.
I couldn't see it in the pictures until I got there and saw it. And that was my negotiating tool. That was what I walked up. And I said, and typically, you know, we, our comfort zone is more towards $20 to $50. If this had been $20 to $50 bucks, I would have just paid him and walked away with it. Cause I would've known hey, this is the condition that it's in.
I'm going to make plenty of money on. For this, I wanted to get a little bit less money because I was going to try to order parts to actually fix it. If I could still keep my baseline at a hundred dollars. Then that was what I was really shooting for. So that's why I offered them less money. So, but you can try this tactic.
You can try and offer them money and then walk away and see if they say anything. But it is awkward if you start walking away and come back and I've done this as well. If I try to read somebody, and if I read them wrong, I'll walk away and then I'll come back and say, okay, you know what? I'll figure out how to fix it.
I'll figure out what to do. So I'll do, I'll take it for a hundred dollars. I didn't have to do that in this case. Actually he went down, and he wanted to feel like he was getting a better deal than what I offered him. So he raised it $5. And that is the other point is this is a game sometimes. Some people don't want to feel like they're getting taken advantage of, and the other person wants to feel like they're getting a good deal, so they don't want to pay full price for it. So it is really a fine line. It's a fine line to walk, to really get a good deal on an item and still be in good mood with the buyer and the seller.
For sure.
Melissa: So if you're going to negotiate on an app though, before you get there, what kind of tactics do you use there?
Rob: Yeah. Typically when you're doing it on the app, you just offer them your best price that you're able to do or offer them less than what if you are negotiating. If the price needs to be negotiated, you just offer them what you're willing to pay.
And they're either going to come back. They'll either ignore you or they'll come back and with a higher offer or they'll come back and say, yeah. So, but it's very easy to do that versus in-person and personally it feels a lot more awkward. I've done it for years. So I'm not that awkward with it. I know how to read people, like I said, and I knew that he would come down on the price.
The other thing is he was out in the country, it had been listed for a little while. He hadn't sold it. There weren't people knocking at his door for this item. And those are all things that I take into account when I am negotiating. So I knew that he wanted to get rid of the item. And that was one of the things that I knew on my part that I knew that I could use to my advantage.
So.
Melissa: So when you're on the app, you negotiate and you just send an offer, right?
You send an offer?
Rob: A message saying, hey, would you take this? And I did this on a surfboard. I didn't tell Melissa that I did this week. I found a sweet surfboard. That was a jet powered.
Melissa: To sell or keep?
Rob: To keep. A jet powered surfboard. And the guy wanted $1,500 for it.
It was in really good condition. It was from the eighties. So it was a cool, cool first, first ever surf board, they actually put a jet motor on the back of it. Gas powered. He wanted $1,500 for it. I don't want to pay full price for something. It probably was worth $1,500, but I was going to keep it for a while, play with it, with the kids and then, probably resell it.
So I offered him a thousand dollars and that's what I said. I said, listen, all I have is a thousand dollars to spend on this. I can come tomorrow and pick it up. If you're willing to, actually sorry, back up. I negotiated, I asked him if he was willing to negotiate first, that was my first message. Are you willing to negotiate on the price?
And he wrote back. Yes, it's best offer. So that's when I sent him a thousand dollar offer and said, this is all that I really have to spend on this board. If you're willing, I can come look at it and pick it up. And if you're not, I didn't go that far, but I just said, if you're, if you're willing to, think or consider a thousand dollars off, I can come pick it up. I can pay for it tomorrow and cash and that kind of thing. So that's the best way to negotiate is tell people that you are serious, you have cash. And you're willing to pick it up either today, tomorrow, whatever it is. So they know that. So, but that didn't work out in my favor.
Melissa: Did he ever reply?
Rob: He didn't, after that thousand dollar offer, he replied back later that afternoon and said, sorry, it was sold. So he sold it for more money than the thousand dollars that I offered him. So, but you have to be willing to walk away from it. And I was, it's not something I had to have. It wasn't something I needed.
There was something we would have played with, with the kids for a little while. And then we, I would have sold it later. Probably got $2,000 for it. Made more money on it, but still it's one of those things you have to be willing to walk away, know what your limit is. And the money has to be there to pay what you're paying for it.
And our money's made in that buy. So the negotiation that you're able to do before you buy the item. That's where your money's going to be made on the back end after you're able to get that item as cheap as you possibly can.
Melissa: And, also there's negotiating. In person, at like yard sales and flea markets and stuff.
So that's a little different too.
Rob: It is, nd that's similar to what I did with this guy once I got there. I negotiated in person. I read him. I told you I took that stuff into account that I knew he was a little bit out in the country. He had this listed for more than one day. It wasn't like, it just popped up and it was a hot deal.
He hadn't been able to sell it. I don't know how long it had been listed, but probably over a week. So Facebook doesn't, I think they tell you over a week once it, they'll tell you within the hours and the days. And then once it's over seven days, they say it's over a week listed. So they don't tell you exactly how long it was listed.
But I looked at his feed. I looked at all the other stuff he had listed and he had multiple items listed above it. So I knew, like I said, he had listed it a while ago. All that played into my favor. Knowing that he's had it for a little while he was out in the country, nobody's beating on his door to get this item.
So I knew I could negotiate a little bit with that. So.
Melissa: Yeah, I was going to say it, but in like, if you're going to a flea market or yard sale, you're in-person and you don't know all this history about somebody, so you haven't looked them up on the app. You go and you see an item that interests you, you might look at it and the person says, you know what the price is and you just look at it and sometimes just standing there.
Yeah. Not even saying anything, they'll drop the price just by standing there. So just your body language sometimes is enough for negotiation. So you just got to kind of stand there and always the quieter one is usually the one who gets the best deal.
Rob: I think Stacy just told the story, Stacy, who's one of our students, she's told a story about them buying a golf cart and this was a week or two ago and they got there and the price was $500.
They didn't negotiate before they got there. Got there, it was $500 and they just sat there. And the lady started talking about it and saying this and saying that, that her family wanted her to get rid of it. It needed, needed this needed, that needed this. And then they didn't say anything. They just were looking it over and she dropped it down to $350 and said, hey, I can do $350.
And I think she actually dropped it one more time just by them staying, sitting silent. Looking at it. Then she dropped it down to $300 and I think they bought it at either $300 or $350. Yeah.
Melissa: Yeah. So a lot of times that works in person, just sitting there looking at the, I mean, you're just inspecting the item and just like, like you're just looking at it though.
Rob: It feels awkward.
Melissa: But sometimes one thing that you'll do when you're looking at an item, like the flea markets where usually more than you are at sales, we go to the flea market. Take a picture of the item sometimes and say like, you're going to go send it to a friend. Sometimes I have, it's true.
Like you're going to go and send it to a friend, or sometimes you just take a picture so you can look it up and you'll say, I'm, you know, I'll think about it and then walk away. So.
And sometimes the vendor will come after you right away and say, well, I, you know, they'll tell you the price, it's $50 and you say, okay, let me think about it.
Rob: You walk away and they'll say, well, we'll take $40 for it once you start walking away, because they know they possibly lost that sale. To everybody else. They, if somebody starts walking away, they lost the sale. So a lot of vendors will drop the price to make the sale right then, and that's something to think about then use that walk away tactic. If you're in person at a yard sale at a flea market, something like that, get the price. I typically always walk away no matter what, because a lot of the stuff that I'm attracted to, I don't know what it's worth or what it's selling for. So I need to look it up, even if they start dropping the price, unless it's a no brainer.
Like I remember we brought that
Melissa: shot machine with he got down to like $15 or something. And you're like, I know I can, at least get that.
Rob: It was a Jagermeister. And I had sold one in the past. I didn't know what they're selling for currently, but, the guy started out at $50 and he dropped it down.
It was $25 but he came all the way down at $25. Sold, let's go get that bad boy. So I walked back without even doing any research. I picked it up. I knew it was worth more than $25. We sold it for like $300 or $400.
Melissa: You had planned on coming back, but.
Rob: I did, but I wanted to look it up and I wanted to verify it, but he didn't want to lose me as a buyer.
That's right. So he's, he's negotiating with me as I'm walking away and I, if it comes down that good, it is not that much to invest. I knew some of the parts on it, I could have sold if I had to. And he guaranteed me that it worked in which it did, it worked fine. Which yeah, we made it a couple hundred bucks on it.
So killer deal on that, but, walking away is a great tactic to do. If you are in person, you can walk away whether that's, you've already negotiated over the app and you're looking at an in person. And there's something wrong with it. Yeah. Like I said, sometimes I won't even negotiate if there's something wrong that I didn't know about it.
I just tell them, hey, I didn't know that it was in this kind of condition. I'm going to go ahead and pass and then I turn around and start walking back to the car, and polite, always politeful we are polite. You never, yeah. Politely, you never want to, like Melissa said earlier, you never want to be mean or rude to somebody. Turn around and walk back and sometimes they'll say, hey, what would you give me for it?
And that's when you can say, if you really do want it and you're going to get. Hey, I can give you $40 for it, but that's really all. I really want to go out for this item in this condition. And they'll say yes or no. And then you walk away and go.
Melissa: That was something like, if you negotiate on the app, you don't try to negotiate again.
Like that's not usually a tactic that you like to do if you get there and it's not what you thought then. And that's a big thing too. You have to be, sometimes it doesn't work out and don't try to get stuck buying something. Even if you drove a little bit to go pick something up, say like an item and it's really in worst condition and you don't, it's not worth fixing or cleaning up.
It's sometimes better just to say, sorry, it's not what I thought it was. And just walk, like leave, like not, not pick up the items cause you feel bad and that, and that can give you get hard. You're like you feel bad that you said you were going to get it. But if it's really, if it's not work, you have to think of your business.
Like you have to think of, is it worth your time to clean it up to fix it? If it needs parts or whatever and list it. And sometimes it's not.
Rob: The other thing you have to get good at is asking questions. So if you're driving an hour away to pick something up that has a, a good resale value for you, you're getting cheap.
Make sure you're asking those questions before you go ask, hey, does it have rust on it? Hey, is it cracked? You know, does it have a crack on any chips in it, take a picture, see that, and you, the people know that you're going to come in and inspect it before that, but if you're making a long trip to go on, make sure you get all those questions of what could be wrong with it. Make sure you getting all those out of the way before you make the plans to go pick this thing up. So you can still negotiate with them over the app and still go there and look at it. But like I said, you want to ask all those questions just in case.
They're looking more deeply at the item trying to find any imperfections with it. You're asking about it. So they should be able to tell you, hey yes, it does have a crack or yes, it does have a chip here, a corner on the corner or underneath it. There's a dent. It's not a big deal. All that kind of stuff.
They'll disclose that before you even leave and then you're going to be a lot better off once you get there.
Melissa: Yeah.
And then there's also the negotiation of the sale as you're the seller. So there is negotiations that go on on eBay and a local app. So as a seller, we can talk about those too, because we like to negotiate with people and make a sale.
Rob: So people want to feel like they're getting a good deal. So we just sold, the taco machine two days ago, the tortilla grill. We sold this two days ago on eBay. I had it listed for the only other comp for this exact grill was $999. And they didn't give us shipping quote on it, or they said they would ship it free, but you had to email them to get the quote.
So I listed mine for $1,199, which is $200 over with free shipping. I know I can ship it anywhere for $200. Piece of cake. It's not very big. It's not super heavy. I'm actually going to ship this in FedEx or UPS, so I'm not even going to go on a pallet. This guy was saying that he's going to ship it freight.
I know I can ship it. UPS or FedEx, which costs me a hundred tops, like a hundred, $120. So I know that already going into it. So I priced above him. And I priced it with free shipping. So, where there was an interested buyer and I've had this listed for a good man, it's been six or eight months, it's been awhile.
So it's been listed for awhile. And I've had a couple people look at it. Not a lot of people. It's not a huge demand. It's like a flat cooktop. But it's specifically, specifically for tortillas. So it takes that right crowd to do it. Well, he reached out and said, hey, can you give me a better price on it?
I said, please send me your zip code so I can get a good idea of where I'm shipping it to, what it's going to cost me. And then I'll know if I can negotiate on the price. He wrote back and said, and gave me a zip code. I checked it out. I really didn't even check it out. I already knew that I could do it.
So I say here and I send them an offer through eBay, just through the message cause you, now you can send an offer through the message. I send an offer for $1,099, actually $1,100. I sent him that offer, he waited 24 hours. He bought it, he paid for it and then now I have to ship it out to him.
But, everybody wants to feel like they're getting a good deal. They, they want to do that dance that they're not paying full price for an item. So remember that as the seller, you can negotiate and leave your prices of your items, make it a little, exactly. Make them a little bit higher so you can give somebody a better deal.
And they're feeling like they got a good deal and you're still getting a good deal on the item.
Melissa: Got that one for $25 in California. I remember.
Rob: No, not California.
Melissa: Arizona.
Rob: Yeah. It was in Arizona. We bought this one on our last road trip, so yeah, killer deal on it. We paid $25 for OfferUp or Facebook $1,100. It costs me roughly a hundred dollars to ship it.
Maybe a little bit less somewhere in that area to cost me to ship it. So, it's still great, great profit on it, but the buyer wanted to feel like he was getting a deal and we wanted to give him that deal. So. I have people all the time. I don't typically accept offers on my listings.
Melissa: You don't put that on your listings, but you do accept offers.
Rob: If people offer me less, I will work with them and I will try to get them a better deal on it typically. So that's just one of those things to think about making sure that you're pricing your items properly so you do have some wiggle room to negotiate with a potential buyer, for sure.
Melissa: Yeah. So overall, be polite.
Yeah, don't be rude to people.
Don't be afraid to walk away.
Rob: Yup. Find all the facts before you go. Make sure you know everything about the item. If you can negotiate it before you get there, do that. Cause that makes it a lot easier, a lot less stressful about the whole process. If you negotiate before you get there and then if you have to negotiate or walk away, don't be afraid to do.
Melissa: Yeah. Don't overpay for an item that you don't feel like there's enough profit there for you to make it worth it so you can walk away. So.
Rob: Alright, you rock have a wonderful day and we will talk to you soon.