Something is off...

[Jerryll Noorden]

All I have taken a few steps back to re-evaluate things.

I am struggling with some fundamental issues here.

OK the reason I have had so much success with my return calls is because I did NOT do  the "tried and proven" techniques. You hear everyone say, "do not reinvent the wheel. We did all the trials and errors and we have seen that "handwritten letters " give the best results".

The problem with this is that yes.. YOU have tried "whatever it is you tried", and from what YOU have tried , handwritten letters work best. But, did you try EVERYTHING? No. Of course not. So I did my own thing and indeed, my opening rate of letters was probably between 90 to 100%.

So what is the problem? 

Let's be completely honest. Motivated sellers are not just some weird different species living among us. They are human. Like you and me. (well at least like you...)

Ask 10 people this. If they got a letter in the mail that was sloppily handwritten with: "  $ BUY $ your house at 123 Shenanigans Street"..  in scary red horror movie ink,  basically telling them " [add whispering voice to the following:" I know where you live... MUUUUWaaaauuuuhahahahaha  ahum, sell me your house".  ... yes of course they will think, "what the heck is this".

and sure they are curious.

Now ask your 10 buddies if they got a professional  printed letter. Neatly done, company logo and letterhead. I think they will take that way more seriously, and if they got one of each letter in the mail... and I am a motivated seller... guess which one I will call first. No not the "what the heck" guy buying houses.. in cash, but can't even afford to buy a printer, and do a bit of actual effort representing his image! Because let's face it. You do look like an incompetent poombah if you try to make 15K with a yellow paper red marker scribbled letter begging me to trust you enough to make a deal.

WHAT was I thinking!? And this I realize after so many handwritten letters. Ka kaolo pampa bos joeka friggin bosbana!  (The best thing about being a foreigner is that sites do not censor your swearing in an other language).

What sparked this rage?

Well boys and gurlz, sit down. Uncle Jerryll will tell you a story.

By mistake I sent 2 written letters to some old  woman with a violent and technology retarded husband.

I guess after the second letter they freaked out , called me up, asked me wt EF this was, and they will call the cops. Me being the awesome calm dude, say, sure feel free to call them, but please give me your address to remove you from my list. 

"I am not going to give you my address are you kidding".. (this after I sent a hand written letter to THEIR stinking ADDRESS).. you crazy nut!

So they hang up, and 20 minutes later I get a call from an angry cop threatening me not to send anymore letters.

The point here ladies and G's, I don't care if it is my right to sent letters or not.

The point is this.

A motivated seller is a motivated seller! Having a hand written letter is not going to make them more motivated. 

OK then what is the benefit of hand written?You will say, well it gives a personal touch, so they will choose you over the other people trying to reach them. WRONG!

Hence my story above asking 10 friends their opinion about handwritten vs typed.

Heck man. You are dealing with reaching motivated sellers. You are not trying to MAKE them a motivated seller. Your aim is to have them read the letter! Period. If they are motivated they will call you!

I am not telling anyone that handwritten is a bad idea. I am just telling everyone it is a HORRENDOUS idea damnit! 

:)

So what is the point of this message? Am I the only one that came to realize this?

TO support this notion, think back. To the time when you knew nothing about real estate investing.

Not sure about you but me, I did see those bandit signs with "I buy your house for cash". I was thinking wth is that. How can anyone buy your house for cash. I didn't understand how it worked, didn't believe it, and I just brushed it off. Now correlate this to the following.

You get a letter hand written wanting to by my 500K house in cash, within 10 days. NO ONE will believe this that has never heard of  real estate investing. And sure enough. Most of my calls are from people wondering how it is possible. And then I have to explain how it works.

Thus inherently by default you are starting on negative ground this way. You are having people call you by creating doubt. So you start in the negative. You need people to call you by creating the positive.. i.e. you want to try to have people call you because they are convinced you are their solution. Not the opposite.

So there you have it. A NASA scientist perspective in the logic of yellow friggin ka kaolo letters!

Am I saying you will never get a deal from them? Not at all. I am just saying that you probably would have gotten the deal also if you had sent a normal civilized letter!

[James Wheeler]

All I can say is ... Wow... tirade and rant warning...

Do yellow letters work? Yes

Do they annoy people? Yes

Do other letters work? Yes

Do they annoy people? YES

Can people be unreasonable? Yes

OK, so real estate investing is hard and it can suck because people... well that about sums it up - people... they are fickle and they do not like the idea of anyone knowing that they have what they have or did what they did, even if it is a matter of public record... as for the address of that couple, use their phone number from your caller ID to look them up... if that doesn't work, send them another letter... someone once said something about the fortune being in the follow-up... if they call back and are even more angry, explain that unless they identify themselves they cannot be removed from a list of addresses... as for your "angry cop" - get his/her badge number and precinct... then call the precinct and ask to speak with him/her ... when there is no such officer (as is likely) you can rest assured that people... if there is such an officer, request an in-person meeting at the precinct with both the officer and his/her supervisor (bring your information about your company, your processes and everything...) You will find that police are pretty nice people most of the time and when confronted with evidence and facts... they are usually pretty much just people...

All said, doi whatever works for you. I read once that there is nothing that is true until it is true for you (can't recall who that is from, I still like it). This means that YOUR truth is true because you experienced it, it may not be true for someone else... ie. what color is a rose? when I said rose, people thought of a rose - some pictured one, others imagined one some may have smelled one in their memory... what color was it? Most likely you thought of a white one right? NO??? you thought of the Green one??? Wait a minute, hold on... you aren't one of THOSE people... the ones who think roses are "red" are you?? See, truth is personal for many things... yes I know 2+2=4, always and that means that there is such a thing as universal empirical truth, however, most of our human arguments about "truth" are not empirical ones they are philosophical... 

So what color are your letters? I personally like orange and pink... because yellow and white are so overdone... 

~James