In previous articles I talked about various methods of building a strong dream team for your real estate investing business. In this article I will be sharing with you some tips on how to reply to dream team members that are already advertising to get the best response.
Before I get started, I have to tell you about my experiences, and the experiences of other investors who I have worked with and talked to about this exact process. If you have not tried to call or e-mail a business that has marketing out – expecting a prompt call back – you will be shocked (at least I was shocked) at the very small percentage of them that actually return telephone calls or e-mails.
Personally, I just don’t get it. If, as a business owner, you were going to advertise something, wouldn’t it make sense to return telephone calls from potential clients calling on your ads? Wouldn’t it make sense to reply to e-mails from people that are asking for more information? Well, that’s what you are up against.
Recently, I was considering selling one of about 10 different rental properties in one of the cities that I invest in. So, here’s what I did: I went to my favorite search engine and to CraigsList and I contacted, via e-mail or via their website “request info” form, 10 different real estate agents/brokers to contact me about selling my rental property. To each one I submitted a different property address, as if I was just a regular seller looking to sell just that one property. Guess what happened? I received ONE return call; that is 1 callback from 10 inquiries. Every time I tell that story I am surprised anew with just how unbelievable it is.
So, let’s look at some quick tips when replying to ads for finding dream team members:
Tip #1: Tell them What’s In It For Them
When you contact someone for information, you should tell them why they should reply to you. If it is a lender, tell them you are an investor and you are looking for someone who can do loans for you and your buyers on your investment properties. If it’s another investor, tell them you are looking to buy properties if they have any for sale and/or that you occasionally come across deals that do not work for you and would like to be able to pass them along if they are interested (wholesaling).
Tip #2: Make It Easy For Them To Contact You
E-mail and web forms (which are often sent via e-mail to the website owner) are not perfect. E-mail you send can get sent to spam folders, get lost in cyberspace, and, occasionally can be swallowed whole by your computer. Likewise, responses to e-mails have the same challenges on their way back to you. Always include alternative ways to contact you like a phone number, fax or mailing address when you contact people via e-mail. And, if it is important enough for you to get through, follow up yourself (remember my 1 out of 10 from above)?
If you are calling and leaving a message, please speak your name and number slowly. Repeat your telephone number slowly. Repeat your telephone number slowly. Yes, I said that twice for effect. I can’t tell you the number of times that someone leaving me a message from their cell phone had a momentary, fraction of a second, interruption in service just when they were saying an important name or number on their message. If they repeat it, the chance of it happening at the same moment is small, but when you only say your number once or really, really, fast – you are telling me, “Don’t bother calling me back.”
A tip on saying names: you’d think that with a popular name like James, I wouldn’t have a problem with people getting my name wrong from voice mail messages. You might think my name was Jane though if you knew how many people mistake “James Orr” for “Jane Orr” when I leave a message in my adult male voice, so I will usually spell my name when I leave a message now. My name is not that hard folks, so if people are getting mine wrong, they might have some trouble with yours too.
Tip #3: To Follow Up or Not To Follow Up
I hate chasing people. But there is a gray area between chasing someone who is intentionally not calling you back and giving someone the benefit of the doubt that maybe they really didn’t receive your e-mail or couldn’t make out your number from your voice mail. It is possible that their phone service deleted your message (yes, it happens rarely) or that some other unusual event occurred that prevented you from making contact.
So, I do recommend following up, especially if you see a potentially good fit from the ad they put out. Wait a day or two and try again, referencing that you already left a message, but have not heard back.
Until my next post,
James
P.S. I am looking for a couple more folks that want to take their real estate investing business to the next level and become a Real Estate Investor Bronze Member to get access to my personal systems, checklists, forms and over 100 real estate courses of training materials plus consulting sessions. Interested, sign up as a Real Estate Investor Bronze Member now.
In previous articles I talked about all the different ways to build your real estate investing dream team. I talked about how to use two amazing shortcuts for finding the absolute best dream team members and why you should consider using those instead of the traditional ways of finding dream team members. For those that missed the last article, the shortcuts were to tap into the dream teams of other real estate investors that you know and to tap into real estate agent and broker’s dream teams.
Today, I will be sharing with you some strategies for using CraigsList or other classified ad websites for finding and building your dream team.
First, if you are looking to network with other real estate investors to ask them for recommendations to key dream team members, you will also want to review the material I have on how to build a buyers list of real estate investors. Those strategies are great ways to find real estate investors that you can ask if they know a good (fill in the blank with a dream team member you are trying to find) that works with investors.
You can also post ads directly seeking key dream team members. What category do you post these ads in? I post them in the jobs section. Why the jobs section? Aren’t you looking to hire that dream team member to do work for you? Yes, you are.
While you can do this with every type of dream team member, let’s take a quick look at how this might work to find a real estate agent so that we can tap into their existing network for other dream team members (which is one of our shortcuts).
You post an ad in the real estate jobs section of CraigsList saying something like this:
Local Real Estate Investor Seeking Real Estate Agent/Broker
I am a local real estate investor looking to hire the best real estate agent or broker to help find me great investor deals in the MLS. I can tell you exactly what I am looking for, so that you can find them and help me buy them. You will be paid your normal commission with your existing broker. You can continue to work with your other clients as well. Call me at (and give your phone number).
Will you get calls from this ad? Yes. Will they all be great real estate agents? No. Will you get the occasional great agent calling? Yes. In fact, from similar ads that I have run, I’ve been told that it was not the great agent that found it, but a friend that shared the ad with him or her, which prompted the agent to call me.
Another method of using CraigsList or other classified ad websites for building your dream team is to actually call on ads that people are posting. I prefer to post ads and have people contact me, but you absolutely can build your dream team by calling dream team members that are advertising their products and services on CraigsList.
Until my next post,
James
P.S. Upgrade today to Real Estate Investor Bronze Membership and get instant access to over 100 real estate courses plus much, much more.
For the sake of brevity, I am going to assume that you already know why it is very important to put yourself in the middle of a great team of people to be successful in real estate investing. If you read any book about a highly successful business person, you will quickly see that that they did not do it alone. So let’s discuss how to build a great dream team for your real estate investing business.
There are many great ways to find key dream team members, which I will briefly list. I am also going to share with you the two key short cuts that I have discovered to help you find truly amazing dream team members faster and easier than you probably thought was possible.
First, let’s talk about the ways that people usually find dream team members.
There are traditional methods, like calling on advertisements in the yellow pages, newspapers, on-line in your favorite search engine, classified ad websites, and so on. This time-consuming approach rewards dream team members that are willing to spend time or money advertising to find more clients.
The second approach is to network or ask for a recommendation from a friend or colleague. I’d like to take a few moments to discuss two variations of this because they can be highly effective strategies for building a dream team.
The first variation is to get recommendations specifically from other real estate investors. Read some of my other articles for ways I go about finding other real estate investors by building a buyers list. Many active real estate investors will already know a great real estate attorney, property manager, title company and so on.
The second variation on networking is to tap into one of the best centers of influence for all of the critical dream team members. Where is that center of influence? Well, who is traditionally at the center of most real estate transactions? The real estate agent or broker.
Great real estate agents and brokers have dozens of experienced dream team contacts. They tend to know who to avoid (many times based on actual experiences with them) and who can get the job done – even in difficult transactions. They know lenders, they know real estate lawyers, they know property managers, they know escrow and title companies and they understand the real estate process. If you’re lucky, you will even find a real estate agent that has experience with investment properties and they can be a source of deals and other investors for you too.
So, you can struggle calling dream team members at random from their marketing materials, or, you can take the easy way and tap into other investors’ dream team members by networking with them. Better yet, take the super fast approach by using a great local real estate agent who will introduce you to all the key dream team members you need.
Until my next post,
James
P.S. We have an extensive list of Dream Team members will notes, tips, interview questions, selection criteria for many of them available in our training materials for our Real Estate Investor Bronze Members. These materials are in addition to the over 100 real estate courses, on-going live training and free consulting sessions we also provide to our members. Sign up today for Real Estate Investor Bronze Membership.
