All Forum Posts by: Omar Johnson

The ultimate purpose of any marketing effort is to persuade your prospects to do business with you. Gaining the trust and commitment of a prospect is a necessary step to gaining a client. In order to become a client your prospect must feel in some way connected to you or your company. This connection is a quality known as rapport.

Rapport is simply the feeling of trust, likeability, and similarity that creates a bond between people. Rapport consists of several different components. Being able to identify these components makes it possible for you to consciously build rapport in your marketing and sales efforts.

Rapport is based on similarity. The more closely you match certain components of a person's demeanor the more likely you are to develop strong rapport. One possible component of this similarity is in how people use their voice. Pitch, intonation, speed, accent, and volume are all different components of speech that can be noticed and matched to invoke similarity and thus build rapport.

Another component of rapport is the language a person uses. This includes such features as emphasis, vocabulary, dialect, and even such distinctions as whether a person is speaking primarily in visual representations ("I see what you mean"), auditory representations ("I hear what you're saying"), or kinesthetic representations ("I feel where you're coming from").

Another possible avenue of rapport building is physiology. Many features of how a person uses his or her body can be matched without the person consciously noticing, but this mirroring of physiology will have a subconscious effect on their impression of you. These features include elements of body language such as facial expression, posture, gestures, proximity, orientation, as well as other features of physiology such as breathing, walking, and other forms of movement.

People also develop rapport based on the contents of communication, such as ideas, interests, and attitudes. If you express ideas, interests, and attitudes similar to those of another person, this can be a bridge for building rapport as well.

In addition to looking at how rapport is built, it is also important to look at the factors that inhibit or damage rapport. In particular, there are two things that will kill rapport or keep it from developing: insincerity and inconsistency. Of the two, insincerity is more immediately dangerous, but over the long run inconsistency will kill a relationship just as surely as insincerity. This is why you must be careful to match people's speech and physiology with subtlety, and match their ideas, interests, and attitudes with honesty. If you come across as being mocking or fake your attempt to build rapport will backfire.

Any form of communication provides opportunities to build rapport, especially those that provide repeated contact. When developing your marketing message and materials, focus on how your marketing will build rapport with your prospects, ideally before you ever meet them.

Voice can be used as a channel for building rapport any time you can talk directly to your prospects, such as over the phone or in person, but it can also be used any time you are able to include recorded voice audio as part of your marketing strategy. There are a number of Internet technologies that make this feasible.

Language can be used as a channel for rapport building whether it is spoken or written. Almost all marketing materials contain some sort of language, so this is one of the most versatile tools at your disposal for building rapport.

Physiology is most important when you are face to face, although components of it can an also be detected and influence rapport building over the phone. This is also relevant whenever your marketing materials contain photographs or recorded video footage of your body.

Practically all marketing conveys ideas, interests, and attitudes as well, so you should constantly be seeking ways to make these components of communication work in your favor to build rapport through your marketing.

Although many real estate entrepreneurs have had broad success with marketing by email, direct mail, telephone, and other channels, why haven't such technological forms of marketing come to completely replace the oldest and least complicated form of marketing, the sales call? The reason is that person to person marketing will always be an effective but cheap method of winning sales for businesses in all stages of development.

Getting close and personal with a prospect allows you to have the maximum number of channels of influence available to you to persuade the prospect to complete the sale. If your prospect encounters you by email or direct mail marketing, your words are all he or she can be influenced by.

If you are marketing by telephone then the prospect will be influenced by your choice of words as well as by your tone, inflection, and personality. Being in the same room with a potential client allows you to access every sensory channel available to influence that potential client to come to an agreement.

So where and how do you meet prospects face to face? If you maintain an office or place of business that is open to the public and you can get prospects to visit you in person, this is one solution. If your prospects are in business themselves, as may be the case if you are dealing with wholesale buyers or other investors, then you can visit them at their offices, if they have them.

The most common prospects to meet with are sellers, and the most common place to meet them for in person sales calls is at their house. You can either preface your visit with a telephone marketing campaign from which you set up appointments to meet with individual sellers, or you can simply go door to door, knocking on the front doors of houses that you think are likely to belong to prime prospects.

While this last practice may seem overly challenging or even burdensome, it is a sales technique that will always be available to the motivated entrepreneur and that has withstood the test of time while getting many new and under funded business ventures on their feet.

Your appearance when meeting the prospect plays an important role in creating the right impression and achieving a positive influence, but not in the way that many people think. Real estate is a business where it's best not to dress to impress but rather to identify with your prospect, or more precisely to allow him or her to identify with you.

If you project the appearance of belonging to a socioeconomic class that is far below or far above that of the person you are meeting with you stand a very good chance of triggering that person's unconscious prejudices, which will get in the way of making a sale. Ideally you want the prospect's first impression to classify you as "decent, normal folk". The more you appear to be like your prospect the better this will work.

Never meet a prospect without having a ready supply of your own business cards, as well as circulars or brochures if appropriate. Think of this as some of the cheapest, most personal advertising you can get. And always ask for a card in return, whether the person you are talking to is in the real estate business or not; it is good business karma and making a habit of it will lead to some pleasant surprises. It is best to have a physical or electronic filing system for business cards, and keep every single one you receive.

Business is like a game where the more people you are connected to the more points you have. Being connected means that not only do you know who they are, what they do, and have the means to contact them to make a request, but also that they know who you are, what you do, and have the means to contact you to make a request.

The relationship must reflect both ways in order to be of value to you in business. The name of this game is networking. Networking is the practice of accumulating points by getting to know people and getting them to know you through direct contact and referrals. The best part about it is that it's free; all you have to do is be creative and persistent about meeting people and be skilled about making a favorable impression.

One way to network is by telephone. Generate a list of potential clients and their phone numbers, and then call and introduce yourself. Once you are acquainted give them your spiel. Your manner should be informal but purpose oriented; you should aim to make a friend on the phone, but have a definite picture of the information you want to both impart and receive.

If you can come up with a list of individuals looking for investment properties or a list of owners of investment properties (such as absentee owners or landlords), this is a great place to practice this technique.

You can also use email and internet technology to network. The main advantages of this practice are that you can communicate with larger numbers of people simultaneously, and much of the work can be automated by designing a web page with a sign-up link and an auto responder. Many people are doing more and more business exclusively by email these days, so this form of networking is becoming more accepted all the time.

Of course there will always be the old fashioned method of networking, meeting people face-to-face. To do this you have to go to where the people you want to network with are located. If they have an office or place of business you can meet them there, or you can seek them out at functions designed to draw the right type of crowd.

Many localities have real estate clubs that hold regular meetings and networking events just so that people in the business can get together and get to know each other. And of course, as you meet people on a day-to-day basis and out in the field you should constantly be seeking out networking opportunities.

The most important tool for this activity is your business card, which you should have several copies of available at all times when other people might be around. And of course you should never part ways with a new acquaintance without exchanging one (or more) of yours for one of theirs.

Referral business is the reason for all forms of networking as well as the fuel that drives it. The more people you know, even non-prospects, the more chances you have to receive referrals and the more business you will have. The best way to get referrals coming to you is to give out as many as possible.

Opportunities to send referrals to people you know should be something you consciously seek out. Providing referrals to those around you is a free and highly effective way of generating good will towards yourself and establishing a favorable reputation.

In the world of real estate marketing the closer the contact you make with your prospects the greater the likelihood that you will be able to influence them to do business with you. Marketing by email or direct mail can cause you to seem distant to many potential customers, but meeting people face to face can take a lot of energy as well as be very time consuming.

Marketing by telephone can provide an acceptable balance between these two modes of communication. It allows the prospect to get to know you and get a sense of who you are by hearing your voice, while allowing you to work from a centralized location and maximize the use of your time and other resources, including money and energy.

So how does telephone marketing work? It starts with a list of phone numbers of your prospects, who may be either potential buyers or sellers. These may be landlords, phone numbers from the classified section of the newspaper, for-sale-by-owner listings, captured incoming calls to your business that you are returning, or any one of a multitude of other possible target demographics (see how many you can come up with if you use your imagination).

In addition to a list of prospects to call on you also need a list of pre-specified data that you intend to collect from each prospect and a pre-written script to keep the conversation smooth, timely, and outcome focused.

No matter who you are calling on, it is almost always a good idea when marketing by telephone to introduce yourself first. If the prospect is someone known to you then this is a polite way to start any conversation, and if the prospect is someone who is not known to you then you need to remedy that situation as quickly as possible.

Remember that if given a choice between doing business with someone they know and someone they don't know, most people will choose to do business with someone they know. And if given the choice between doing business with somebody who is a friend and somebody who isn't, most people will choose a friend.

You would do well to keep this in mind and not only make your identity known to the prospect first thing, but strive to form a true personal connection each time you are on the phone with someone new. You want to be not only remembered but thought well of.

The more information you gather in your initial contact over the phone the better, at least if the person you're speaking with is a genuine qualified prospect. However, it is important to keep your manner conversational and friendly and not give the impression that you are attempting to dominate the conversation. On the other hand, you should be prepared to get off the phone as soon as possible if you discover you are not talking with a valid prospect; this conserves your valuable time.

Marketing by telephone takes more guts and endurance than many people realize. It can even be one of the main barriers to new entrepreneurs just trying to get started in business. If you can generate the energy, though, it is a technique that can pay off handsomely.

And if you would rather spend the money and conserve your energy it is an easy function to hire out. Simply supply your help with a calling list, a script to use on the phone, and a way to conveniently and accurately record the results of each phone call.

Of all the different media available for broadcasting your marketing message to your target audience, one of the most effective places to get in front of prospects under certain circumstances is in their own homes. Marketing by direct mail allows you to do this as well as to establish a relationship with the prospect before they even meet you.

The basic principles of direct mail are simple. Craft a marketing message that can be written in a letter or on a postcard, obtain a list of the mailing addresses of members of your target audience, and mail your marketing materials to the list. Direct mail marketing is both easy to implement and scalable, meaning that you can send just a few mailings or a very many, and your responses will be proportional.

Do be aware, however, that a certain critical number of mailings will be required to get results; the normal range for responses rates to direct mail marketing is in the .5% - 5% range.

So where does a good mailing list come from? Generally it comes from a data service company that specializes in supplying this type of information. You can request just about any type of list you can imagine, but here are a few that you might consider:

- Owners of abandoned or condemned properties.
- Owners of properties with delinquent taxes.
- Owners of properties in pre-foreclosure.
- Owners of properties in probate.
- Absentee owners or landlords.
- Owners of free-and-clear properties.
- Owners of properties with expired listings.
- Owners of properties with code violations.
- Owners who live out of state

The list that you choose will be targeted according to the types of properties you want to acquire, and your marketing message will be targeted to the types of prospects you are mailing to. It should be something that speaks to and motivates the type of seller you are trying to persuade to call you, something they will identify with.

Your marketing message will include your phone number and instruct the seller to pick up the phone and call it. Make sure it is answered by a live person or you are likely to lose the interest of your prospect immediately.

The types of mailing materials you can use include postcards, letters, or anything else more creative you can think of to send through the mail. It is important to keep in mind that people often will not respond to your offer the first time they see it but will eventually respond if it keeps appearing in front of them. Therefore repeated exposure is key to increasing response rates.

Rather than sending the same letter or postcard over and over again, you might want to create a series of sequential mailings so that the prospects on your list will receive certain mailings in a certain order. This allows your direct mail pieces to tell a story and build confidence in the mind of the prospect.

If you are serious about growing your business then direct mail is something you want to be serious about implementing as one of the most effective ways to both get your marketing directly in front of your prospects and to scale your business to any size conceivable.

Excellent post Jason! It's All About Thinking Big.

As a quick turn real estate entrepreneur one of your highest priorities for growing your business should be marketing. Obviously there is more to the business than just marketing, like negotiating and closing deals, but your marketing efforts are what drive the whole process by providing a steady stream of leads for you to negotiate and turn into deals.

All other things being equal, the strength of your bottom line is proportional to the strength of your marketing, period. Many educators even say that you should consider yourself to be in the marketing business rather than the real estate business, and there is considerable wisdom to this advice.

Getting lots of business is no accident. An effective marketing campaign cannot be begun or sustained without a detailed and goal-oriented plan. There are at least four elements that are crucial to designing a marketing plan with wings that will take your business to new heights of success. They are the target audience, or who you want your marketing to speak to, the marketing message, or what you want your marketing to say, the method of delivery, or how you will say it to them, and your marketing budget.

Without having a clear idea in your mind of who you are marketing to, all of your marketing efforts will be a shot in the dark. Who are your customers or clients? What do they do and what are they like? In quick turn real estate there are two main classifications of customers that are important for your business: sellers and buyers.

Buyers can be further classified into wholesale buyers, who buy professionally, and retail buyers, who buy to have a place to live. Your plan should include a detailed description of the types of individuals you are marketing to, including what their habits are and how to reach them.

Your marketing message should not only get the attention of your target audience, but should also inspire them to take action. Figure out who your customers are, what they are in need of, and how you can provide it. Then let your marketing message tell them how doing business with you can solve their problem, and command them to contact you by phone, fax, email, website, singing telegram, in person, or whatever works best for your business.

Once you know what you want to say and who you want to say it to, you need to know how you are going to say it to them. How will you get in front of your prospects and get their attention? There are many ways of doing this including through email, postal mail, bandit signs, outdoor advertising, business cards, and classified ads, to name just a few of the more common ones. Your plan should include as many methods of delivery as you can consistently handle and track the results of.

Finally your plan should also include a budget that details how much you will spend to implement it over the coming months, preferably all the way out to a year. This could be conceived of as a dollar amount or as a percentage of gross business revenues. However you plan it, you should plan to consistently reinvest profits into marketing and growing your business if you don't want to keep working as hard as you are right now for the rest of your life.

Once you have designed and begun to implement your plan, stick to it until you see results. Use common sense of course, but realize that it takes time for the full effect of a marketing plan to be felt and don't expect results overnight. Allow your advertising time to saturate the market and build up the momentum that will keep your business rolling for a good long time.

A basic real estate contract stipulates that on or before a specified date the buyer agrees to bring cash for the purchase and the seller agrees to deliver clear title to prove that they have the right to sell the property. Although according to the contract it is the seller's responsibility to ensure salable title, you as the investor are responsible for seeing that the deal gets done, so the process of ensuring clear title is something that you want to take charge of.

All deals must be screened for title issues prior to closing and either necessary and appropriate actions must be taken to clean the title or the deal must be scrapped because of unsolvable issues.

A title issue, also called a cloud, is any recorded document or state of affairs that prevents the transaction from getting through the title policy underwriting process because of a potential claim to the property in opposition to the seller's. Common clouds on title are liens, which can be attached to a specific property, such as a mechanic's lien, and judgments, which can be attached to a specific individual, such as a judgment for child support.

If an individual who owns property is the defendant in a lawsuit and a judgment is awarded against that individual, then the judgment will automatically be attached to any property belonging to that person. So a property may have involuntary liens or judgments attached to it that the seller isn't even aware of. Also, if a significant amount is owed in past due taxes then this could be attached to the property as a lien.

Another type of title issue is one involving probate. If the survivors and heirs of a deceased person do not take the will through the probate process in a timely fashion, it will eventually become null and void for purposes of transferring the property and the heirs will have to pursue other means if they want to take title.

Fixes for title issues will be individual and based on the situation, but there are a few common techniques to have in your mental toolbox. First of all, if the issue is a lien or judgment that is attached to the property, it may be possible to contact the lien holder and ask for a release of lien. Or, it may be possible to negotiate with the lien holder to accept a discounted amount to satisfy the lien.

In cases where there is an unprobated will, the usual remedy is an affidavit of heirship. This is a document that can be prepared by your title company and that requires detailed information and signatures from the survivors of the deceased, and which can be used to transfer the title of an unprobated property to the rightful heir. And finally, in some situations nothing simple will work and you may have to bring a suit to quiet title, which can fix some problems but involves a court action. You should have an attorney advise you if or when this becomes necessary.

Realize that title issues unsolvable by most buyers can be a reason for a seller to become motivated. Being able to fix problems that others don't know how to deal with can be a major source of profit in your real estate business. If you can recognize and capitalize on the hidden opportunities in title issues then you will have one more competitive advantage.

With all things that are done intentionally, education comes first. Education is primary to your success in business, and in all circumstances there is an identifiable pattern of learning that leads from thought to action. When experiencing something new, first you hear about it or learn of its existence. Next you learn what it is. Then you learn how it works. And finally, you practice it, which is where experiential learning begins. This article is intended to discuss education, separate from experiential learning (but a little more on that below).

Your real estate education should not be looked at as a phase you go through, but rather as an ongoing process. This is a requirement to stay in business and to excel. There are at least three very good reasons why education should be continuous and ongoing.

One is that having new information can allow you to improve the process of what you're already doing, so that you can do it better. Another is that having new information can allow you to do new things that you're not already doing, such as implementing new profit centers in your business. A third is that the world is always changing so that knowledge needs to be continually updated to be useful.

The fastest way to develop yourself educationally is to actively seek out as many sources of education as possible on a continuing basis. There are three common modes of education to be aware of that can help inform your search.

One is private education that you digest on your own, which can include books, audio recordings, video recordings, websites, and online and offline newsletters. Another is participatory education, which involves some sort of interaction with an educator, and can include seminars or boot camps, conference calls, and webcasts. Yet one more is hands on education, which can be gotten by working with others already in the business.

This could take the form of a mentorship or an apprenticeship with another investor. You could also take advantages of all the resources of a local real estate club, either online or offline, which is dedicated to helping investors further their education in all sorts of ways.

As an ongoing business activity, your education deserves management and balancing against the other ongoing activities of your business as well as all of the other demands on your time. You should work it out however is best so as to ensure that a dedicated portion of your time and resources on a regular basis go to furthering your real estate and business education.

A final word on education from experience, or experiential learning, comes last. Education can be overrated by beginning real estate investors. While it does have a large role to play in your overall progress and success, the amount you actually learn from studying educational materials is negligible compared to the amount you learn from actually performing an action or having an experience. Keep this in perspective if you feel paralyzed by an insufficient education.

Motivated buyers and sellers are the fuel that drives a quick turn real estate business. Buyers are discussed elsewhere; this article is about creating sources of motivated sellers and getting them to talk with you.

There are many reasons why a property owner might be motivated and flexible enough to work with an investor, but there are a few common types of property owners that are especially worthy of targeting with your marketing efforts. These include pre-foreclosure sellers, who are listed publicly on the notice of default list available through a courthouse or title company; abandoned property owners; landlords, lists of whom may be available from the section 8 housing authority, and owners with listings that have expired.

One method of gathering leads for motivated sellers is by farming. This involves canvassing a neighborhood street by street, becoming intimately familiar with local property values and capturing potential motivated seller leads photographically, including abandoned properties and properties for sale or for rent by the owner.

While you are in the neighborhood you are also distributing business cards to people you talk with, leaving fliers on doors, and leaving signs placed in visible but non-invasive locations. With a consistent approach this method will result in fresh leads being brought in on a regular basis from the field as well as over time a steady stream of phone calls from the cards, fliers and signs positioned in the neighborhood.

Another broad method of drawing sellers to you is marketing. You can market to any of the types of sellers already mentioned as well as to any other type of homeowner you can imagine or classify using any of several classic methods. One of these methods is direct mail, which involves sending postcards or letters to particular property owners. This can be targeted towards abandoned property owners, landlords, pre-foreclosure sellers, or any other type of homeowner.

Repetition is what gets results here. Another method is telephone marketing. If you can acquire lists of phone numbers of the types of homeowners you are interested in, you can execute a telephone marketing campaign. Yet another method of drawing sellers that is available on a reasonable budget is placing ads in print and internet publications.

These can be in general media or targeted to a specific audience. In addition there are several other forms of marketing, such as radio, television, and outdoor advertising, that can be useful for the real estate investor but which are beyond the scope of this article.

The bottom line is that if your business is not getting a steady stream of motivated sellers to buy properties from then it is suffocating. You should have a definite goal for how many sellers you want to talk to per week, and if you go a week without meeting that goal you should interpret it as a sign that something needs to be fixed.

Don't let it continue if you want to make continual progress with your business. More sellers coming to your business will equal more and better deals and bigger profits