The Grunt Work of Motivated Seller Marketing
When I am asked by new and experienced investors about how to find deals I stun them when I tell them that I have motivated sellers seek me out. They are at a loss because either they are not getting any leads or those leads that they are getting are by people who do not need to
sell my house quick they just want to sell.
I have never understood why people would do their marketing in such a general manner. They are getting leads from all over the place. Worse yet they are getting people who are really just kicking the tires, rather than serious people who need to do business the way that we do business. I know the reason that most investors do their marketing in this way is because that is what they see other investors doing or they were told to do that from a seminar speaker.
I always have been asked about using the “Yellow Letter”. This is a letter that is hand written or appears to be hand written on a yellow legal pad of paper so that it looks like an investor actually took the time to mail each one individually. This is a good technique used in the proper neighborhoods. It does get people calling in and it makes the investor seem very busy.
I spoke with several speakers about this mailing and one confided in me that he teaches this method because the investor gets responses from it and that it makes him, the speaker, look good. The funny thing about it is that this speaker knows that the number of useful leads is actually below average from his other mailings.
When I do my marketing I do it in such a way that I only talk to motivated sellers rather than every Tom, Dick and Harriet that wants to
sell their house. I would rather direct them to my website or automated information line rather than talking to all of these people.
Recently I had a mentoring student who used the Yellow Letter call me frustrated. She mailed out thousands of yellow letters and had over 200 phone calls in less than two weeks. Her days were spent trying to get the answers to her questions from these people. At the end of the exercise she swore that she would be happy with just buying a single house from those leads.
Frustrated at spending over a week following up and tracking down she had come to realize that there was not a single motivated seller in the bunch. All wanted full retail; a few others wanted more than the house was worth and a few figured that by discounting $10K was enough for an investor to make a profit on the deal. She finally realized that putting people through some prequalification before she spoke with them is much better than dealing with all of these phone calls.
