by: Lou Castillo
Editor’s note: If you are a real estate agent trying to build your rental property business, you might find this author’s suggestions on ways to to find a real estate investor who is motivated to sell helpful.
So many of you have been telling us that you’re ready to get started investing, but “you can’t find any deals! and what are the steps and secrets to finding great deals?” Some of you have even written asking us if there still ARE any deals left… OF COURSE there are! We find them all the time. But you ain’t gonna find them looking at for-sale ads in the paper, for-sale signs in the yard, or by concentrating solely on short sales, foreclosures, REOs and agent-listed properties.
You need to dig out the motivated sellers from under the rocks where they hide, and get THEM to call YOU!! Imagine how stress-free and easy it is to earn a huge income when real, genuine motivated sellers call you and you can pick the best deals out of your calls. It really is like shooting ducks in a barrel.
Alright—enough already! Now you’re wondering : how can you get those same motivated sellers out from under a rock, and calling you too? The secret is in a multi-step campaign, and one of the important steps is using direct mail, meaning postcards or letters that make the motivated sellers pick up their phone and call you.
We’ve got tons of examples and much more in-depth explanation of an entire investor marketing campaign from low-budget on up in our $69 book/tape course Marketing: Secrets to Exploding The Quantity & Quality of Your Deals and we actually design and implement your own full marketing campaign with you in our 6-month Coaching Program: Secrets to Your own $80,000/year, no-bull, Real Estate Investing Business
So, here are the 14 key secrets to writing Killer Postcards that create a tidal wave of motivated sellers.
1) Write all your text or copy with WIIFM in mind. WIIFM stands for What’s In It For Me. The “Me” means the seller, the recipient of your postcard. Write purely in terms of benefits to them, NOT what you’ll get out of it, nor very much about you. Focus on what will excite them, what will you do for them, what can you truthfully say to make them believe you can help them.
2) Headline with WIIFM. Develop a large, bold headline of 10 – 20 words that gives your best, boldest “WIIFM punch” to them, and put it at top of both sides of postcard. For example : “Can you really sell your home in days? Don’t list with an agent or put a ForSale sign out, until you read this”. Another example: “Are you frustrated because you want your home to sell overnight? You now have an easy solution for problems like: fixer-uppers, bad tenants, back payments, estate, eviction, bankruptcy, divorce or foreclosure”
3) Make the recipient’s name/address as personal as possible. You don’t want to look or seem like junk mail, so when you address the postcard don’t use ‘Resident’ or ‘Homeowner’ or ‘Mr. Smith’ or ‘Mrs. Roberts’. Try to simply use firstname and lastname : ‘Susan Johnson’. You can also consider handwriting (or using a handwriting font) the recipient’s info.
4) Use a photo of yourself—a head shot taken at a studio—to make you ‘real, friendly, likable, trustable’ to the seller. The sooner the seller feels like they know and trust you, the sooner they’ll call you and sell you their house.
5) Include the address of non-owner occupied property (ie rental house) in your headline, if you’re mailing to an absentee-owner or landlord elsewhere, at their home address. This allows the recipient to know which one of her houses you are interested in purchasing.
6) Your return address should not be a “junk mail indicator” either, so consider leaving off your business name and instead just using your personal name and/or handwriting the return address, too.
7) You need testimonials from all your happy sellers (include their full names and occupations), so you can include as many as possible on your postcard so that the seller can identify with them and come to feel like they know you and trust you—quickly.
If you’re too new to have testimonials from your sellers, then write brief “Success stories”. Just a paragraph or two describing how you helped “Frank and Joanne save their home from foreclosure…”. Make these truthful and cut write to the WIIFM, but don’t use last names since you don’t have written permission.
9) Show the seller that you regularly help their neighbors and/or have a history of helping sellers, by including the number of sellers you helped last month or last year, and/or their (nearby) addresses.
10) Sellers need to see your phone number printed on the postcard at least 3 to 6 times. So that each time they read it they have yet another chance to lean toward and make the decision to call you.
11) Sellers trust you more when you can give a genuine Guarantee that’s meaningful to the seller and that you’ll truly stand behind. For example: “we guarantee you’ll receive a written offer within __48__ hours, or we’ll buy you dinner or send you to the movies” (give them a gift certificate to pizza joint or theatre, if you don’t abide by guarantee).
12) Tell everyone, including in your postcard, that you pay referral fees if they know someone who’d like to sell their home quickly and hassle-free.
13) Give the recipient a “Not Quite Ready response mechanism”. If their not ready to call you and speak to you just yet, but they are more than a little interested tell them how they can visit your website or call your free 24/7 recorded message for more info. This is a great non-threatening way to still allow people to start to know you and trust you.
14) Lastly, the “P.S.” at the bottom of your postcard has been researched as the MOST-read part of any postcard or letter. So include a P.S. that summarizes what you do and your phone number at the bottom.
Best of success,
Lou Castillo
About The Author
Lou Castillo
FREE! Real Estate Investing Secrets To Earning $100,000 Your 1st Year! — 11 Overlooked Real Estate Statregies That Will Turn Your Investing Business upside Down And On The Fast Track TO Success…Guranteed! Plus A Bonus Track With A Secret So Successful It Can Double Your Investing Income Overnight!
http://www.InvestorSuccessTactics.com
josh@joeandlou.com
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