sales team live or yellow letters complete?

Question

I am currently investing in short sales and trying to increase the numbers in my pipeline. I am considering signing up with either sales team live or yellow letters complete but I wanted to see if any of you had ever used these companies and what types of results you saw?

Thanks,
Michelle

Thanks,
Michelle

Gary Boomershine · Answer

Hi Michelle:
            
            This is Gary Boomershine, Founder of SalesTeamLive.  Probably surprised that I would personally respond to your forum question!   :cool:  Hopefully, I can personally shed some light on your question that will be insightful and provide some helpful tips for your business.  
            
            I am a full time REI investor and founded SalesTeamLive because I found that it was a huge amount of time and work to get the phone ringing with a consistent flow of motivated sellers and buyers AND it was almost impossible to do marketing (direct mail) and creative real estate.  I found that the money was in closing great deals once I had sellers to talk to and buyers to flip to (or rent/lease option).  Back in 2005, I decided to allow other people to use the same system and service as I put together for my own real estate business that would eliminate the 'brain damage' that I went through getting my marketing out.  
            
            Getting the perfect combination of the Targeted List (e.g. absentee owners, free & clear sellers, NODs, etc), with the right message (words that get the seller to call), with the right media (postcard, yellow letter, check letter) is super important.  Any one thing wrong can make or break success.  Once you these 3 things right then comes all the hard work of doing the direct mail (writing, stuffing, stamping, etc).  MelissaData is a good source for your list if you're doing it yourself or a fulfillment house.  I think Realquest.com is better.  Just make sure you're filtering your list with Loan To Value and Homeowner Age.  It makes a big difference.
            
            I think both SalesTeamLive and Yellow Letters Complete are good outsourced solutions for you.  I know Tracy at YLC and she's a cool lady with a good service.  What you'll find with SalesTeamLive is a) fully Done-For-You service that works.  We do absolutely everything - and we even pull the targeted list of names and addresses and so much more without additional costs, b) we have a proven formula to get your phone ringing, c) we'll keep the mailings going month after month, d) we continue to work with you ongoing.  Marketing should never end as long as you're still in the business.  We'll continue month after month keeping your phone ringing.  If you do the math, we'll be significantly less expensive than any other solution or doing it yourself or with an assistant.  Contact us and we can show you.
            
            With Yellow Letters, it's really important to PERSONALIZE each mail piece including the homeowner's name and property address.  You can print 20,000 mailers in bulk, but the number of motivated seller leads will be dramatically reduced.    Personalization can be the difference in getting 1 call vs. 100, mailing the same number of pieces.  We've found yellow paper to get a much high response rate over white paper (don't ask me why).  Blue ink will also get more responses than red ink!  You'll also do better with your own name on the envelope vs. a business name.  White envelopes will outperformed colored big time.  Branding does not improve the number of motivated callers.  In fact, branding will reduce the results. 
            
            Here are some other nuggets that I hope may help you:  1)  Free & Clear homeowners over 50 years old is the best big list right now for high equity properties.  Yellow 4x6 postcards are the most effective and cost efficient method to drive these really good deals; 2)  Absentee owners with 50% Loan-to-Value is also really good right now, especially for wholesale deals; 3)  Check Letters are probably the best approach to drive quality short sale deals; 4) Handwritten Yellow Letters are awesome for the smaller lists, typically if you're mailing less than 1000 pieces.  SalesTeamLive is the only company I know who tracks all the response rates of every marketing piece being mailed.  We're sending over 1,000,000 mailers per month for real estate investors and we are super focused on what works and what doesn't work.  Our business is getting good results at the most cost effective price.
            
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            Hope that helps you in your search.  
            
            Warm Regards,
            
            Gary Boomershine   :cool:

Steve Babiak · Answer

If you have purchased products from all of these folks that you have listed, you might want to go to the BP forum for reviewing the gurus and post a review for each.  I'm sure that many visitors to the BP forums would welcome the opinions of somebody who  has actually purchased those products.

Tracy Caywood · Answer

Well, I can't go without chiming in (since you asked about me)...and thanks for the kind words, Gary! I appreciate that very much.

There are some differences between us and Sales Team Live.  I guess the biggest difference and the one that stands out to me the most is the fact that our letters and envelopes are handwritten. We never use computer generated fonts. That really grabs the attention of the sellers and gets a very high response rate.

I love providing real estate investors with the best marketing on the planet - and the most extreme way of getting a seller to call you. It's really a psychological method that's being used when you send handwritten mail - but isn't all sales tactics psychological???

So to break down our simple method:

1. You get a writer assigned to your order who will write the letter, personalize the letter, and hand address each envelope.

2.  The letter is professionally duplicated, but it's in a REAL person's handwriting.  You get to see it before we print it so that you can approve it.

3. We have proven templates to choose from, or you can create your own customized message.

4. Using your list, or one that we provide for you, we personalize each and every letter with the homeowners first name and property into the letter.

5. We stick a gorgeous commemorative postage stamp on an ivory colored invitation envelope and give you the choice of mailing them out FOR YOU or shipping them back to you so that you can control them.

No matter who you choose to take care of your marketing for you, just choose somebody.  Son't sit around thinking about it too long - or you'll never get any deals!!  ALL marketing works as long as you're implementing it and staying consistent.

GOOD LUCK!!!

Gary St. Armand · Answer

Melissa Data is kind of expensive. If you're looking to get targeted lists, infousa is much less expensive. As for what to say and how to say it, I say buy a copy of TESTED ADVERTISING METHODS by John Caples. I think Tony's approach is a really good one, and I intend to follow his example. Yellow Letters Complete and STL are way too freakin' expensive. These people are preying on our need to find a magic bullet. We are being lead to believe that they've had discovered  "the solution" to our real estate needs That solution is to give them some mo' of yo' money. Well I say, phooey. I say take your time, struggle, and split test your own campaigns. After you've closed a deal, hire a virtual assistant, to do some of the things you'd prefer not to do and/or free up your time.Scale up your operation...and continue to split test, and then come back here share your wealth of knowledge. Cris Chico, seems to do ok with click2mail. Everyone of those guys wil tell you they're not RE Gurus, It's as if they all reading from the same script but they all are.  Greg Clement, Josh Cantwell, Watson the Lawyer, Nathan Jurewicz, Chris McLaughlin, Than Merrill, Tim Mai they're all great salemen pushing "the latest and greatest" discovering that is going to change your life and make you lots of money. I know because I've bought all of their products. None of their products ever live to the hype. None, no exception

Bob McIntosh · Answer

Well let me pose a question...
          
          As I stated I am just beginning my marketing.  I still have a full time job and do real estate investing on the side (I own 8 rental units, am in the process of closing on a flip).  My job is not a "9-5" type of job, it requires an immense amount of time and effort from me.  In addition I travel about 50% of the time.  With that said I don't know that I would be around or have the time in the beginning to take care of much of this myself.  I am looking to minimize my time involvement since its a precious commodity for me.
          
          Would you still recommend click2mail?  Or would in my case, STL or something similar be better?

*Edit*
Would you recommend either of these for all mailing campaigns, or only Short Sales?

Jonathan Rexford · Answer

I will put my 2 cents. I was a customer of STL back when I was with roop doran coaching program for a few years. STL offers a super great service.  You pay for the service. I suspect that if you really want to get out of the mailing that they are the best way to go. If I wanted to go back and do the volume that I was doing a few years ago then I would be using them.

I use click2mail today just as I did before STL. My message is still the same. Sure they can get different demographic lists than I can get and I love their automated back end system for address correction and such. But if you can concentrate a set amout of time each day, week or month to do your own marketing and manage your own list then at .312 per copy is pretty cheap.

I like short sales. I prefer to mail, but the best is door knocking.

Bob McIntosh · Answer

Michelle,
  Did you ever decide on one of these?  I have been looking at STL lately, but the cost is what is keeping me back right now.  As a beginning investor I am hesitant to spend that kind of money...

I would love to hear how you have done with either program...

Tony Severino · Answer

Michelle

I have not used either product, however I know that the initial sign up costs with sales Team Live can be up there.

We wrote the content of the yellow letter on a simple white sheet of paper and then gave it to a local printer. They then printed it on the yellow lined paper.

It was only about 2 cents each but we did 20,000 of them.

Much cheaper than the one dollar plus that the services charge..

Tony Severino
.

sales team live or yellow letters complete?

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