Nothin’ New Under The Sun — Especially If I’m Involved

by Jeff Brown

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

I learned early on in my career I had no problem whatsoever taking others’ ideas and running with ’em like a thief out of a 7/11 carrying a paper bag full of ones and fives. I’m BawldJapan — I can take your idea, tweak it for my uses, and most of the time make it work to some degree. Ideas don’t have to be new, or even perceived as cool — they just have to work. What a concept — excuse me a sec while I write that gem down.

For the record, often times epiphanies for me are just empirical evidence I may have arrived at grammar school via the little bus. I’m reminded of my never ending irritation with the various business magazines aimed at entrepreneurs. Two lifelong best friends succeed wildly with a Mexican restaurant in their hometown, and are interviewed by Peter S. Small of Entrepreneurs and Stuff.

“Tell me guys, to what do you attribute your wild success?” “Well Peter, one day we were lamenting the dearth of high quality, affordable Mexican restaurants in Southern California. Then it came to us like a flash! We’ll do our own, and we’ll do it right. The rest is history.” You KNOW you’ve read those interviews too. You can’t swing a dead cat in SoCal without hittin’ an affordable Mexican restaurant with good food.

I’m now about to take what I’ve been saying here for quite awhile to house agents, into what I do. The concept of hyper-local has been cussed and discussed into oblivion. This isn’t about that exactly. This is about taking something that’s traditionally been done on a much larger scale, and narrowing it down to its lowest common denominator. Or something like that. It’s nothing new, and you may have even tried before.

For years I generated impressive business volume using direct (mass) mail — it was always successful, once we figured out the winning formula. From 1987 ’till around 2004 or so, no letter sent out yielded less than five figures worth of closed escrows. A few resulted in six figures. Then it stopped cold turkey, no warning, no downward trend, just the haunting sound of phones not ringing. Not one, but two 16,000 piece mailings in a span of about 100 days or so produced bupkis. To this day I have not a hint of a fragment of an X-Files theory as to why. Finally, I just accepted it.

I’m now ready to begin doing what I tried once back in the late ’70’s — sending out letters so highly targeted, only a handful, 5-10, can be sent out every day or two. I didn’t know what I was doing back then, except following through with an idea Dad gave me. I’m now gonna reinvent that wheel.

Before you race to make the obvious comment, I know I’m not Christopher Columbus with this stuff. Of course, if I do this right, it won’t be because I screwed up monumentally only to be hailed as the discoverer of the New Marketing World. 🙂

Later this week, or early next week depending upon the logistics gods, we’ll be sending out our first letters. How highly targeted will they really be? Try a few a day out of an already highly filtered data base of over 25,000 local properties — culled from an original 60,000. We’ll expand past that number of course, but will stick to the principle of only mailing to the cherriest of the cherry at first. With Josh and I each sending out an average of only about 5-7 or so daily, it will take awhile to plow our way through the 24 carat gold cherries.

But what will the letters say to the property owners, who are, generally speaking, ‘experienced’ real estate investors?

It depends upon the recipient of course — which is where the magic resides. These letters aren’t ‘one size fits all’ — they’re customized for each recipient every time.

It gets better.

There are several distinct investment strategies available in markets such as we’re now experiencing — strategies generally dormant during normal or boom markets. We’re targeting about three of them, using the tax assessor’s information as a guide. We can address their status quo in the letter, then give them the strategy to leverage what must surely seem to them a dead end, into a significant positive. They will not have heard anything like what we’ll put in that letter. It will perfectly describe their dilemma, while simultaneously showing them a viable and available exit door — to a better place.

At the very least we expect to get around 10-20% of these recipients to call us before we’re even able to ‘warm call’ them. Anyone familiar with direct mail numbers knows that percentage response is either ludicrous, a lie, or chemically generated. Since strictly speaking, this isn’t mass mailing — I’m gonna stick with that prediction ’till I’m shown to be in full blown denial. 🙂

Note: All letters will be hand addressed, and will be sent using a first class stamp. That alone with get far more of our letters opened before they’re unceremoniously tossed you know where.

We’ll be following up on these letters in 24-48 hours with the aforementioned warm calls. With our experience, expertise, and plain old knowledge, it’s my guess we’ll gain traction quickly — credibility too. That’s nice of course, but all we need is for them to be interested in what we have to say. We think the key to this strategy’s success will be found in the letter’s content and the first minute or so of any phone conversation. Duh? OK, fair enough. But our content will contain something they’ve not seen before.

They’ll get answers to questions they never knew to ask.

What they usually get is, “We’re so bitchen, merely being in our presence you’ll wet your pants.” Our letter’s message is about them — in detail — and it’s correct. It’s that last part that’ll surprise them. We know we’re right about their status quo, a fact they’ll recognize immediately — which nobody else has pointed out, even after having an in depth conversation with them first.

We’re also gonna apply this ‘puny mailing’ concept to a small percentage of expired income property listings. This one holds the most interest for me, as investors unable to sell property are ripe (Hoping against hope?) to talk with someone who actually knows which way is north on the investment map. I’ve never marketed to expired listings before. I think the results of these letters/calls might find me regretting that decision.

I’m also toying with the idea of repeating one of the most successful approaches I’ve ever stolen. Back in the ’80’s I’d say in a cold call or put into a letter that I’d seen their property — which in fact I had. Not only had I, but had a separate page for each property in a 3-ring binder with an attached picture of the exterior, and any data I deemed pertinent. Whenever I mailed or called owners using this approach, my batting average jumped way up. It was especially fun when they’d challenge my claim of having seen the property.

I’d glance at the photo and ask them if they really thought that beat up Pinto really added to the units’ ambiance. 🙂 A bond was born.

How do you, as a house agent, effectively put this approach into play?

Here’s where I go back to the hyper-local concept, though I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary for it to work. If you specialize in an area and are a bona fide expert, you’ll have no problem sending these sort of highly detailed letters to expireds there.

Hey, I have an idea. Why don’t you find all the non-owner occupied homes in your area, and I’ll show you what to look for and what to say in letters and phone calls. Keep your listing commissions, as I don’t want a referral fee of any kind. We’ll speak to them together about what they should be doing with the proceeds of their sale. They’ll love how you brought in an investment expert to help them with the proper strategies.

Since I don’t sport a Red Cross on my forehead, you might be wondering what’s in it for me.

It’s simple, they’ll remain your ‘house’ client locally, but become my investment client from close of escrow forward. Everyone leaves the table smiling — a true win, win, win scenario. I’ve done this around the country and it works big time. Bottom line is, you as the house agent end up listing properties you’d never even approach before, because it’s likely you don’t know how to answer the investor’s most crucial question — what do I do now? I do. You gain a new and appreciative client, who’ll be loyal because you solved his problem.

Make sense?