I've been trying to figure out how to get some actual working experience with real estate investors up to and including posting ads on Craigslist to see who would respond.

@Chad......Thank you so much for welcome and responding.

I was thinking about using an email auto-responded to train bird dogs in the basics of driving for dollars, how to look-up public records, and so forth.

The suggestions of the group of respondents to my question was very helpful in making that clear quickly.  

I will spend a week responding to and dealing with the let-down applicants here.

You need to talk with agents and ask them leading questions about investment to see how they respond.  

My footprint is significantly wider, but I basically did a multi sequence drop to companies that met my criteria.I'm sure your next questions will be, where did I get my data and how come so many people responded?

People respond when you make that connection between their problem and your solution.I often see good call volume from mailing 1, then crappy call volume on mailing 2 to the same group.  

I send mail to them until they either respond or I find out the property has been sold.

I just want to give credit were credit is due and get the word out to other investors about quality vendors.Details below.A little while back I responded to a forum thread giving advice to another landlord about tenant screening companies.Up until that point I had used a few tenant screening companies.