Hello.  I'm still a newbie trying to get my act together, and being an analytical, left-brain kind of guy, my RE learning tends to focus on the numbers and financials and quantitative issues.  But when you get down to it, so much of success is people-based, and as much as I cruise BP, I don't see a lot of threads that talk about how to reach the actual motivated seller such that they're sold on you, as the investor, being their solution.  With that in mind, I'm wondering how people have gone about developing and continuously improving their messaging and pitches to convert from prospect to closed deal.  Lots of information on here about how to look and qualify a prospect and run the numbers, but once you know you have a potential deal, what then?  I know a lot of it is so subjective, but with the amount of brainpower in the community, people have to be studying and analyzing conversion to figure out what works.

What kind of actual design in direct mail gets your yellow letter to be opened when these individuals might be in a list that results in them flooded with yellow letters?  What wins out and piques interest?  Once opened, what language helps motivate them to pick up the phone instead of tossing your mail in the trash?  Has the community here A/B tested and studied what psychologically works better for different seller segments?  How about that initial call?  What pitch leads to a sit-down meeting to further qualify the deal instead of "I'll think about it"?  What framing around an offer does better to actually get it accepted than to come across as a lowball or insult?

Are there certain pitches that work better for:

• Next of kin inheriting abandoned homes?
• Owners with equity that are being foreclosed?
• Landlords that want out of their investment?

The opportunity cost for these people could be to instead list the property with a realtor for full or near retail value, so what kinds of salesmanship goes into convincing them the convenience you offer is worth the money they leave on the table?

This is an area I definitely want to learn more about without getting sucked into a bad guru course.  Just curious what everyone thinks.  Thanks for your input.