Preperation for Your Marketing Success

The next thing that we will cover is your product. You have to have “product” if you are going to market, and in our business your product is a multitude of things. The first thing is realizing that you are going to be marketing yourself, and in this business you are marketing your ability to solve people’s problems. You have to be ethical and believable to start with, especially since you will be hearing about all of the clients family issues and financial problems. People don’t share that type of info with people that they don’t trust, so keep that in mind. The next thing to think about is “proving” your knowledge level and your ability to actually do something about the problem that they have. You must be confident and knowledgeable when it comes to talking to the client so that they will believe in your abilities. The next part of the ability is the ability to actually close, or have a network that can help them out of their situation in a timely manner. Conveying this to the client is usually where the average investor is separated from the great investor. Ok so you have person on the hook to sell you their house, what is next? Next is having the paperwork together to complete the transaction and being able to explain that paperwork to the client so that it is easily understood. A lot of investors use the standard realtors type of contract, but I think that you should have your own version of a contract. Without digressing too much, you want to have a contract that is best for you as a buyer, because most of the BOR contracts are slanted to the seller. In reality you should have a contract for every occasion and from any point of view, but more on contracts at a later date. They key here is that a contract is a road map for the closing, and a legal document, and most “civilians” get scared when they see legalese and think about contacting a lawyer immediately. Your job is to ease that feeling so that they are confident at your ability to convey the meat and potatoes of the contract sufficiently so that they do not need a lawyer. This does not mean tricking them or fooling them, but it is full disclosure to a point of them understanding and believing in you and your ethics, and trustworthiness. So what does that mean, well much like other parts of this business it takes practice and knowledge. You must educate yourself on contracts, and especially yours, and be able to convey what yours says. Knowing all of the parts of your contract to the point where you can easily and confidently paraphrase it when you are at an appointment sitting in someone’s living room is a skill that every investor must have. Now all of this is great, but there is another part to think about and that is design. You have to design something that everyone can recognize in the market place. Now I am not saying reinvent the wheel or something, but you need to have a consistent color pallet. Choose colors and stick with them. If you are going to use red, white, and blue, that is great but do your business cards, signs, car magnets and everything you do in those colors. With this in mind you have to think a little ahead of yourself. You need “I buy” types of signage, along with sales signage, business cards (marketing ones, and professional ones), car magnets, flyers, letterhead, and website design as well. I am sure you may even think of a couple of others as well. Once you have your product set and feel sufficiently educated so that you can deal with your clients, it is then time to start your marketing plan. When working on a marketing plan you are going to have to take it on the chin that you are going to have ups and downs, and hits and misses. The key is to keep the misses as small as possible, and the key to that is to track all of your leads and know what gets you the best bang for your buck. So where do you start from here? That is going to depend on the type of budget that you actually have and can spend on marketing. So be honest with yourself, and make sure that you can handle the amount of money that you are going to commit to. Start small if you have to but nonetheless start. So now we have to cover one of my pet peeves……..answering the phone, or at least not answering it. If you drive around your town and call every one of the “ buy houses” advertisements, I promise you will get a 50% or less answer rate. If you are going to market be ready to answer the phone. If you have a job and cannot answer ALL the time then hire a answering service. Another part of it is the call system itself. I use Onebox.com for our call service, it is a PBX system that is internet based, so you forward your land line to the call center or you market the number that you choose from Onebox. You can make the Onebox number forward to your cell phone, or have extensions (up to 4 for $49). It also has the capacity to have an outgoing message if you would like, or accept faxes for you. So it is very powerful for your business to use. Once you have people calling in you need to be prepared for the volume of calls, so ask yourself if you can handle it or if you need someone to answer it for you. Once that is settled you can then take calls right? Well I would say wait a minute, do you know what you are going to do with the calls when they come in? You need a call log so that every time the calls come in you know where you are going to record the information. The next thing is to determine is how you are going to prepare to meet with your potential appointment. Do you know where you are going to get the comparables from for the meeting? We use a service called Site X that is web based and pulls all sales, not just MLS sales. How are you going to figure out the amount of the fix up on the property? What LTV will you need to offer for it to be a deal for you? These are all questions that you need the answer to BEFORE you go to the appointment. You must be prepared to make an offer when you go and meet with the seller, not afterward. These are motivated sellers here and they want their pain, which is why they are motivated, to be eased. The only way that will happen is by you fixing and agreeing to buy the house. The level of professionalism that you portray is what they will remember and will most likely determine if they are going to shop your offer. Seem like a lot? Well it is, and you have to prepare for it. If you thought that you could just get a call and go out and buy a house, I guess you now know you were mistaken. The preparation is the key to get a house bought at the right price. I guess that is enough for now, I will attack some more of this tomorrow.