Hiring an acquisitions persons

[Don Chambers]

I need to hire an acquisitions person to handle leads as they come in.  I just started using direct mail and got 23 responses today for my first batch of 600 letters and another 400 are already in the mail.  I saw 7 properties and talked to 2 more people.  All wanted to sell but they wanted near market value.  I have 14 missed calls that I could not get in touch with.

I am the bottleneck here and I need to delegate this.  I need someone that will answer the phone and work the leads.  Preferably they will go to the property and make the offers.  I can go the first few times to help them estimate repairs, or maybe I should hire a handyman type person.

• What skillset am I looking for?  I am not sure how to find someone that can do this.
• How should I pay them?  It's not enough work for an hourly rate - some days there is nothing to do.  

I don't want their incentive to be to close the deal and get paid - even if they pay a little to much.  It's easy to over-estimate comps and under-estimate repairs to make a marginal deal work.  Probably a percent of profit is good on a flip but then their payoff is far out.  If it's bought as a rental I don't know how to pay them - I don't want a long term rental partner.

How do I find an acquisitions person?  And how should I structure their pay?