Do You Have a Real Estate USP (Unique Selling Proposition)?

Every business should have a USP (unique selling proposition). If you don’t you’ll get lost in the crowd of every other investor out there and you won’t differentiate yourself.

So today I’m going to show you how I built my own personal USP for dealing with other investors, which has led to me to doing millions of dollars worth of deals.

First, I picked my niche. Far too many investors decide they’re going to be wholesalers one week, lease option experts the next week and then do short sales the week after. Yes, I think you have to try multiple investing methods to find the one you like best, but once you find it, stick to it.

What investing method do I specialize in?

I personally do subject-to’s the most. As soon as I decided I liked the subject-to method the best, I let everyone know that I was the subject-to specialist. Every time I was at a REIA meeting or a networking event I would always tell people that I was looking for my next subject-to deal.

Surprisingly, only a small percentage of investors know how to do sub-2’s, and I ended up getting (and still get) a ton of referrals from investors who didn’t understand or didn’t want to deal with sub-2 properties. I get emails often from people that are like “Jason, you don’t know me but I heard from so and so that you do sub-2’s and I have a deal right now where this would work, but I don’t know how to do it.”

What to do after you have your niche…

After I decided on my niche, I continued to carve out my USP by letting people know that I don’t tolerate people wasting my time and that I am the type of person who follows through.

If you’ve been investing for any length of time, you know that most sellers, other investors, and team members, do not follow through and cannot be counted on. I made sure that when investors brought me a deal, or referred someone to me that they knew I would deliver and was reliable.

Now, about the wasting my time: In the past I’ve had meetings at a restaurant where someone showed up 15 minutes late (with no apology and no reason why) and I told them that I couldn’t work with them because they weren’t punctual. Word has spread about this fact, and people know that I only work with non-flaky investors who keep their word and show up for all appointments on time.

At this moment, the above paragraph may not matter to you, but…

I can promise you, that when you become very successful your time will become precious and you won’t be able to grow if people are wasting your time all day.

In short, my own USP now is that I specialize in subject-to’s, I’m reliable and I don’t tolerate anyone who wastes my time. This has allowed me to surround myself with a very tight network of “partners” who share the same values as I do and we all help each other become more successful.

So if you don’t have a USP start carving one out today and make sure it fits your personality and what you enjoy doing. (Don’t become a shortsale expert if you hate doing shortsales, like I do.)

Photo: tipiro

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.