All Forum Posts by: Ben Wilson

good point Chris - there are 2 keys to this business IMO - marketing & talking to sellers - it's foolish to spend a bunch of money on marketing until you get good at talking to sellers - if you don't know what to say you might be wasting a lot of money...

We don't call that many sellers before we send them a postcard (we prefer to get them to call us first) so I haven't looked into a tool to systematize looking up phone numbers - but if I did I would use our VA that does other internet research for us - at $1 per hour, she could look up a bunch of numbers for very little cost...

Dee - yes, we do personalize the message side of the card - pretty important IMO. Click2Mail is a pain to set-up, but once the postcard is done, it's easy to send out the same card (or cards) over and over again with new lists. A couple hours working with it will pay off many times over as you continue to send out those cards.

I'm with Mark - forget trying to do the rehab long distance .

Wholesaling is a different story - we've done deals in 5 states over the years...

Another reason why we have a VA return the calls - and she doesn't mind a bit - at the first sign of someone being rude - she tells them to have a nice day and hangs up...

We do yellow letters once in awhile, but postcards are so much quicker and easier so they end up being done more consistently - at least for us.

If you have the time to do yellow letters, go for it.

Pretty close - we spend at least $1k per month on postcards, usually more and another $300 on signs, web, etc.

That usually gets us 2 deals per month from all sources - most come from direct mail.

Agree with Travis 100% on using postcards - we use Click2Mail for all our mailing - fast and easy - well, once it's set up - initial set-up can be a little bit of a pain. We send out at least 2000 postcards per month and it takes us about an hour a month.

I also agree with him to a point about the PO Box, but I still recommend that you use a street address if you can - but definitely NOT your home address - that can lead to unwelcome visitors - ask me how I know that!

We work primarily with private sellers/no agents/no banks - $100 in earnest money is plenty and as Will pointed out, it only gets deposited after the contract is signed - with YOUR title company.

Another reason why working with private sellers is TOPS in my book.

I've never needed to borrow the earnest money from anyone...

Yes, they work off of our script.

Yes we do trust them, because we spent time up front training them. We had them practice with lower quality leads at first, just to get them up to speed. My partner or I would listen in on several phone calls to make sure they were handling them appropriately.

After about 20 calls, they've heard probably every question there is.