BiggerPockets

I am currently investing in short sales and trying to increase the numbers in my pipeline. I am considering signing up with either sales team live or yellow letters complete but I wanted to see if any of you had ever used these companies and what types of results you saw?

Thanks,
Michelle

Hi Michelle:

This is Gary Boomershine, Founder of SalesTeamLive. Probably surprised that I would personally respond to your forum question! :cool: Hopefully, I can personally shed some light on your question that will be insightful and provide some helpful tips for your business.

I am a full time REI investor and founded SalesTeamLive because I found that it was a huge amount of time and work to get the phone ringing with a consistent flow of motivated sellers and buyers AND it was almost impossible to do marketing (direct mail) and creative real estate. I found that the money was in closing great deals once I had sellers to talk to and buyers to flip to (or rent/lease option). Back in 2005, I decided to allow other people to use the same system and service as I put together for my own real estate business that would eliminate the 'brain damage' that I went through getting my marketing out.

Getting the perfect combination of the Targeted List (e.g. absentee owners, free & clear sellers, NODs, etc), with the right message (words that get the seller to call), with the right media (postcard, yellow letter, check letter) is super important. Any one thing wrong can make or break success. Once you these 3 things right then comes all the hard work of doing the direct mail (writing, stuffing, stamping, etc). MelissaData is a good source for your list if you're doing it yourself or a fulfillment house. I think Realquest.com is better. Just make sure you're filtering your list with Loan To Value and Homeowner Age. It makes a big difference.

I think both SalesTeamLive and Yellow Letters Complete are good outsourced solutions for you. I know Tracy at YLC and she's a cool lady with a good service. What you'll find with SalesTeamLive is a) fully Done-For-You service that works. We do absolutely everything - and we even pull the targeted list of names and addresses and so much more without additional costs, b) we have a proven formula to get your phone ringing, c) we'll keep the mailings going month after month, d) we continue to work with you ongoing. Marketing should never end as long as you're still in the business. We'll continue month after month keeping your phone ringing. If you do the math, we'll be significantly less expensive than any other solution or doing it yourself or with an assistant. Contact us and we can show you.

With Yellow Letters, it's really important to PERSONALIZE each mail piece including the homeowner's name and property address. You can print 20,000 mailers in bulk, but the number of motivated seller leads will be dramatically reduced. Personalization can be the difference in getting 1 call vs. 100, mailing the same number of pieces. We've found yellow paper to get a much high response rate over white paper (don't ask me why). Blue ink will also get more responses than red ink! You'll also do better with your own name on the envelope vs. a business name. White envelopes will outperformed colored big time. Branding does not improve the number of motivated callers. In fact, branding will reduce the results.

Here are some other nuggets that I hope may help you: 1) Free & Clear homeowners over 50 years old is the best big list right now for high equity properties. Yellow 4x6 postcards are the most effective and cost efficient method to drive these really good deals; 2) Absentee owners with 50% Loan-to-Value is also really good right now, especially for wholesale deals; 3) Check Letters are probably the best approach to drive quality short sale deals; 4) Handwritten Yellow Letters are awesome for the smaller lists, typically if you're mailing less than 1000 pieces. SalesTeamLive is the only company I know who tracks all the response rates of every marketing piece being mailed. We're sending over 1,000,000 mailers per month for real estate investors and we are super focused on what works and what doesn't work. Our business is getting good results at the most cost effective price.

[SOLICITATION REMOVED]

Hope that helps you in your search.

Warm Regards,

Gary Boomershine :cool:

Originally posted by Michelle Kasper

I am currently investing in short sales and trying to increase the numbers in my pipeline. I am considering signing up with either sales team live or yellow letters complete but I wanted to see if any of you had ever used these companies and what types of results you saw?

Thanks,
Michelle

Neither, I used Sales team live before. I spent $10K in postage plus another $3,500 start up fees and I got Zero deals from it. (Ouch :cry: )

Since your looking to attract short sales, getting your leads shouldn't be that hard. Just check your local foreclosure listings, most of those are short sales. Stick to postcards thats your best bet.

Use the US Post Office feature called Click2Mail. Like anything, it takes a little getting use to but once you get it up and running you can do your mail outs in no time and its much cheaper.

I'm not knocking STL, but you can set up your own 800 number and mail your postcards for ALOT Less.

Well let me pose a question...

As I stated I am just beginning my marketing. I still have a full time job and do real estate investing on the side (I own 8 rental units, am in the process of closing on a flip). My job is not a "9-5" type of job, it requires an immense amount of time and effort from me. In addition I travel about 50% of the time. With that said I don't know that I would be around or have the time in the beginning to take care of much of this myself. I am looking to minimize my time involvement since its a precious commodity for me.

Would you still recommend click2mail? Or would in my case, STL or something similar be better?

*Edit*
Would you recommend either of these for all mailing campaigns, or only Short Sales?

Originally posted by Gary St. Armand

... Cris Chico, seems to do ok with click2mail. Everyone of those guys wil tell you they're not RE Gurus, It's as if they all reading from the same script but they all are. Greg Clement, Josh Cantwell, Watson the Lawyer, Nathan Jurewicz, Chris McLaughlin, Than Merrill, Tim Mai they're all great salemen pushing "the latest and greatest" discovering that is going to change your life and make you lots of money. I know because I've bought all of their products. None of their products ever live to the hype. None, no exception

Gary,

If you have purchased products from all of these folks that you have listed, you might want to go to the BP forum for reviewing the gurus and post a review for each. I'm sure that many visitors to the BP forums would welcome the opinions of somebody who has actually purchased those products.