Epic Real Estate Investing - 15 Methods for Finding Off Market Deals Before Your Competition | 1038

Episode Date: June 3, 2020

In today’s episode, Matt shares 15 sure-fire methods for finding off-market deals before your competition! Learn how to be successful with direct mail, discover new technology to help you find deals and follow up with leads, get Matt's best tactics for networking, and much, much more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So today I've got a great show, special show. I'm going to be sharing with you 15 surefire methods for finding off-market deals before your competition does. This is Terio Media. Success in real estate has nothing to do with shiny objects. It has everything to do with mastering the basics. The three pillars of real estate investing. Attract, convert, exit. Matt Terrio has been helping real estate investors do just that for more than a decade now.

If you want to make money in real estate, keep listening. If you want it faster, visit rei-aise.com. Here's Matt. Number one, I thought I'd just get this out of the way. Direct mail. Still probably the leader in attracting motivated sellers to call you. Having said that, for this to be your number one source for finding off-market deals, you need volume, right?

You've got to send out a lot. and you've got to be consistent with it. And you have to have a long-term vision in mind. It can't be, I mean, it can be, you can certainly make some money and pull some deals by just sending out one batch of postcards of $500, and you might get a deal out of that. But if that's all, if that's what your budget allows

and that's all you can see yourself doing, I wouldn't use your budget that way, not for just those $500. You need to project it into the future and envision yourself doing this long term. Like, this has got to be a good three-to-four-month run. and I need to be sending out at least a thousand a month and plus, okay? So for the direct mail to really get the results, that's got to be your vision.

What do you send? You can send postcards. You can send letters. We've been sending offers lately to a smaller list, but we've been sending signed offers. We've had great results with sending the three-option letter of intent that we use inside of the Epic Pro Academy. Yeah, postcards still work.

Letters still work. But it is marketing. With your marketing, you should always be testing it. And so, I mean, you're just going to find frequently what's new can be old very quickly. And what was old can be fresh all over again. So just make sure when you do that, though, when you're testing, this is going to go with everything I'm talking about on today's episode. But just make sure that you give your approach. Give it some time before making any drastic changes.

Give it some time before you say, oh, that didn't work. Like if you try it for a week or two or you try to even for a month or two and it's like, oh, nothing here. It takes time. Okay? It takes time. All marketing takes time for you to get real results, especially this type. When you're dealing with people's homes and you're dealing with their distress, all of that. Okay?

It takes time. People's lives don't happen instantly. Sometimes it does, but then sometimes, you know, you could have contacted them today and, you know, they're not really ready for you until three months from now. But if you stay consistent with your messaging, who are they going to call? They're going to call the one that's fresh in the top of mind. And if you're consistent with your marketing, that's going to be you. All right. So that's number one, direct mail.

Number two, live events. Live events. And it's going to be your meetup groups. It can be your Rhea meetings. It could be networks, networking groups, Chamber of Commerce, anything like that, live events. And when you go to these live events, and this is one of the ways that I've built my business from the ground up with zero marketing budget was going to live events. And that was becoming a person of value at those live events. that's a real generic way

when I say a person of value. What does that actually mean? It means when you go, you focus more on what other people need than what you need. A big reason I think people don't like to go to networking events is because they see 100 people there and they're overwhelmed.

Oh my God, I have to talk to these 100 people and they all have to know what I do and they all have to want to help me and none of them are going to want to help me because I'm just meeting them for the first time and it's just awkward and strange and weird and blah, blah, blah, blah.

and yeah, you're right, that approach won't work very well. But if you go in with that initial mindset of being a person of value, they're there to help people, you're there to find out what they need and see if you can provide it for them. So that could be a referral. It could be some business of your, like you doing business with them, or it's finding out what they're looking for investment-wise, you know, or what are they doing with their business?

Like if you're at a real estate specific meeting, what is their biggest challenge? Is it finding money? Is it finding properties? Is it finding buyers? And taking note of that and being able to start connecting those dots for people. That's going to create some really powerful relationships for yourself.

And this is a people business, right? You've got to talk to people. I mean, everything I'm talking about today is all different ways and approaches for you to get in front of people so you can actually talk to them. And at these live events, they are there. They are ready to talk. They're there very much for the same thing as you.

And most of them are there. with the wrong mindset, thinking about what's in it for me. And if they meet someone like you that's thinking about what's in it for them too, just like they're thinking about what's in it for them, then boom, magic can be created. All right? So live events. And one of the strategies, if you want to get real tactical, one of the strategies I would always take was,

I'd always take a property flyer with me. Whether it was my property or someone else's property, I'd just take this property and I'd share it. This is what I'm working on. This is what's in it for you. Okay, so that's been a really good one. Number three, bird dogs. Bird dogs.

I wish they'd come up with a different name than bird dogs. Maybe I should think about coming up with a different name and moving that forward in the conversation. But anyway, bird dogs are people who will give you leads or the inside scoop or make introductions to key contacts and motivated sellers for you. These people could be, they could be newer investors, they could be wholesalers, fellow investors, professional relationships. It could be someone looking just to make some extra dough on the side. You can call through the classifieds. You can go to events like we just talked about, meetups and rea meetings. and you can meet bird dogs there.

You can place ads. Inside of REI Solutions are the CRM that we use and the marketing system that we use here inside of RIS solutions. They have a little portal called Property Finders. And it's a little website. And we've had some really great success with the Jack and Josh in Fargo. They've done brilliantly with this. They are getting deals this way.

And the reason they're getting deals and I don't have a lot of other stories is because most people just don't work it consistently and with the intensity that they do. But what they've done is they've placed ads in, like online classifies, they've placed like job ads, looking to make some extra bucks, da-da-da, and it sends them to a website. And that website, it has a little video on it, explains to them exactly how being a bird dog works. They opt in for it. And then there's an auto-responder that trains them exactly how to do it.

And all of that is built in right into REI solutions. So all they have to do is place the ad and put the right link in there to take them to their web portal. And all that gets done for them. So they've really embraced that. I've done extremely well with that. So bird dogs. Let's see what else. Bandit signs.

Yep. Banded signs. Tried and true. Place signs around your market. It's an effective and low-cost deal-finding strategy. Like all lead generation strategies, though, this two needs to be consistently performed. And you can do it in different ways.

You can approach this in very different ways. You can do it on the weekends, 20 to 30 at a time. You can do a few, like each day, like put out three or three for each day. Just make it part of your errands, have your trunk full of signs. And, you know, when you stop at the Home Depot, make sure you just put a sign or two out on your way out. Or you can have someone else do it for you, which I think is probably, once you get to that point where that's going to make sense for you financially, I think is what you should do. Make sure whoever you hire, though, they document and take pictures of your sign placements

to make sure that they're actually putting it out. And then on the sign, you're going to want to use one of your business lines. Don't put your cell number on there. But you want to use one of your business lines from your call capture service. And a lot of different cities and counties, they frown on this practice. And so it's up to you based on how you feel about it. You can do it or not. You don't have to do this, but it is an effective way that people use every single day. And none of them are going to jail.

And if you use one of your business lines from your call capture service, it's really difficult if impossible for them to track. So they can't serve you with any sort of notice, but if they can't find you, right? with all that said, if you do get fined, it's just a cost of doing business. You're closing $5,000, $15,000, $25,000 per deal, then just maybe paying those fines is just a cost of doing business. But that's up to you. Not every city is that aggressive with it, but some are.

So, I don't know, move forward at your own discretion and your own judgment. Okay. And then just take the signs, place them at busy intersections, shopping malls, in front of your existing house that you may have for sale, just anywhere where you think eyeballs are going to see it. And it could just be as simple as I buy houses, cash, fast, and easy. Or it could just be, get a fair offer for your house, any condition, and put your phone number there. All right?

So there's four, ban of science. Now, relationships and referrals. I talked a little bit about that with the live events. And that's exactly what you're going to be creating at those live events. You're going to be creating relationships. And relationships take time to nurture, right? Just because it might be a relationship that you found online doesn't make it going to happen faster. Right.

Think of the person that you would do something. something for right now. It's not some stranger you just met. It's something that, someone that you've probably known for a while and you've got this connection there. So you've got to build relationships. You've got to let people know what you've done. As we mentioned before, you've got to become a person of value, especially in your new relationships. Do that first. Even your existing relationships. Just treat people right, give them what they're looking for. Be helpful. And then let them know, this is what I do. And should you find anyone that's looking to sell a house fast and they're in a situation?

where they don't have time to hire a realtor, you know, think of me, give me a shot, and be happy to help them or help them. All righty, so relationships and referrals, a lot of the stuff that I'm going to talk about here can really help you go fast and get deals fast, especially if you have a marketing budget available. But the relationships and the referrals,

those are going to help you go far, and it's going to get you to a point where you don't need a marketing budget. We do very little. Our marketing budget is probably just 20% of what it was, I don't know, maybe four years ago, five years ago. It's shrunk dramatically because we just don't need to do it,

do it, and it's because we've created those relationships and referrals. Let's see. Online Classifieds. Now, online classifieds, there's so many different ways that you can use this information, but just think about it. These are all these classifies, the people that got ads there, they're people that have houses for sale, and they're people that have a need for housing. And so you can approach this in so many ways. You can place ads of your own to inspire them to call you or reach out to you, or you can call the ads, or you can email the ads. I think you should do both, call people with properties for sale, make them offers and build relationships, and then call people that are looking for properties and share your deals and build relationships.

Your whole goal is to be talking to people. So if you're not talking to five, 10 people a day, it doesn't matter what else you do. This business is going to be a real struggle for you. So you may think you send out some direct mail, but if nobody called you, then nothing's going to happen, right? If you go to a live event and you don't talk to anybody, and even though the room's full of people, nothing's going to happen. You put out bandit signs and no one calls those bandit signs

or they call and you don't call them back, nothing's going to happen. You have to be talking to people. All righty. And online classifieds is a way that if you're out of people to talk to, you're never out of people to talk to because you have access to online classifies

where it's just filled with people that are hoping that you have the solution to what they're looking for. Else they wouldn't have placed an ad. And then you can also place ads that solve people problems. You've got the solutions that solves their problems and inspire them to call you as well.

So I can go back and forth. So unlike classifieds, a lot of different ways to work those. Let's see. Voice broadcasts. It's a newer, that's not really a newer technology, but we all receive those phone calls where people, where you can tell it's a recording, they just start talking and we all instantly hang up, right?

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about a newer technology over the last few years called ringless voicemail. Slidebroadcast.com was the first service that I stumbled upon that offered this. I don't know if they were the first, but I think they're the first that got it really popular. And several copycats have come out since. But what this is, you record a message, you broadcast it to a list of phone numbers, and it doesn't ring their phone, it goes straight to their voicemail. It's ringless voicemail. And so it goes straight to their voicemail,

and then it shows up on their cell phone as a missed call. It has a super high open rate. And if you record your voicemail, right, they won't know that it's a record. So it also has a higher level of authenticity. It's kind of, I guess, an oxymoron. It's still a recorded voicemail. But it feels a little bit more authentic to the person that you're sending it to and more likely to get a response. Like I said, slide broadcast is probably the pioneer of this technology, I think.

Several copycats have come out. REI solutions by chance even has this capability now inside of the software. So you can incorporate that as a broadcast or incorporate it into your follow-up. system as well so we can send those out automatically for you. All righty. So what you do is you gather up a group of phone numbers, you record a message, and you broadcast it. And these could be numbers from your existing database.

It could be a list of phone numbers that you buy. It could be a list of missed calls from past marketing efforts, people that you haven't gotten back to. Or just an old list. I think who was telling me this, Parker? Parker was sharing this actually inside of the private Facebook group that we have at the Epic Pro Academy, how he loaded this all up. but I think he pulled two or three contracts out of these numbers that were just dead through ringless voicemail.

Or, you know, you can go out and that mailing list that you're sending your direct mail to. Go ahead and you can get that skip traced, pull the phone numbers from there, and then you can broadcast to that numbers as well. So you're hitting people with mail and you're hitting people with ringless voicemail as well. So next one would be, I don't know, can you guess? It's another kind of broadcast, text broadcast. So really everything I just shared with you, but instead of sending a record, message, you're sending a text message. And we do both here.

On the first Monday of each month, we send out a voice broadcast to all of our leads. And then on the third Monday of the month, we sent out a text broadcast. And we just alternate that every single month. So text broadcast. Let's see. The whole point in here is to reach out to people in the way that they prefer to be communicated with. Some people don't like to answer the phone.

Some people don't want to return voice messages. But some people like to text. And so that's why we do that as well. Let's see. Number nine, pay-per-click. right pay-per-click advertising online advertising through google and other search engines what you can do is you can place an ad using a very similar message that would be in your say your online classified ad and when people click it that's when you pay for it so you don't

have to pay anything until they actually click on it and when they click on it you send them to your your landing page and then they opt in and then now you've got a lead so that's become a very good strategy for us very effective strategy for us here we're starting to do it in-house for our clients. We brought all that service in-house, and we looks like we're getting much better results in-house than we were with the company that we used to refer people to. Actually, several companies.

We've been through several of those companies of different ones that we referred people to, and we brought it in here. And so far, the initial results were like we should have done this a long time ago. So pay-per-click. And what's good about pay-per-click is these leads are going to be a little bit more expensive, but they're people that are actually looking for you. They're people that want your help. They want you to buy their house.

They want you to buy it quickly. They want you to give them cash for it. They don't want to deal with a realtor. They don't want to fix it up. They don't want to pay any fees. Those are the people that you're looking for, but through pay-per-click advertising, although they're a little bit more expensive for the leads, they are looking for you, and they reached out to you.

So consider pay-per-click when your budget allows. It's a really good strategy. Number 10, social media. Okay? So social media, look at it for several different reasons. definitely you want to work on the brand of your company. You want to have a good strong brand online and be represented through as many social media accounts

as you feel comfortable with and can manage. You want to build credibility, so it's a good place to post your testimonials from sellers and buyers that have been happy with your service and happy with your performance. And then the other thing that you can do with social media, I think is really important and often overlooked, is just be helpful.

Be a source of information for the person that you're trying to attract. You know, because in one of the best ways to attract people is to, one, promote the solutions that you offer, right? And that attracts people. What helps convert them is if you can help them before you even ask anything from them. So don't be afraid of giving too much, okay? Just because you gave them a tip doesn't mean they're necessarily going to go out and not need you. It's probably going to attract them. Like, well, that sounds great.

They sound like they know what they're doing. So I think I'm just going to call them. So those are three different things to use social media for. And the other way it comes in organically, which would be number 11, is search engine optimization. The social media aspect and the search engine optimization aspect with your website and videos, you can have those all working together, all going for the same thing. And the search engine optimization still works. In fact, Kevin, an RIA's client, just got a deal from his organic website reach two weeks ago, I think.

And he shared that with us on the follow-through crew call. So writing posts that are helpful on your like blog posts and just being helpful and doing that specifically with the search engine keywords in mind when you create that contact or that content. And then videos. Videos can rank even easier. You know, there's an example inside the Epic Pro Academy of how I got ranked for my keywords in under two minutes. And I walked you through the process and just let you look over my shoulder, follow on the screen. And we just went through that. So videos can be a little bit easier, actually a lot easier to rank than a blog post, but consider all of that.

And if you don't have the time for it, consider hiring out and have somebody else do that for you. So that's number 11 is SEO. Number 12, driving for dollars, door knocking, and door hangers. So I kind of put all those together, even though those are all, could be individual methods all by themselves. But if you use all of those in conjunction with each other, they can be really effective. So you could drive your neighborhoods, the neighborhoods that you want to conduct your transactions in, the neighborhoods you want to make your investments in, and you can look for the distressed houses, you know, maybe peeling paint, overgrown weeds, newspapers, or just something that looks,

any sign of distress, you know what that looks like. It doesn't look like the rest of the houses. It's in the lesser condition than the rest of the houses in that neighborhood. Go knock on the door, right? Knock on the door. See if they'd consider selling it. You don't need any fancy words or anything. Just, hey, you guys saw this house.

and I want to buy in this house or in this neighborhood and I just wonder if you consider selling your house. If they don't answer, leave a door hanger. Write down the address. Go back to your office. Search the owner. You can send them mail. You can call them via skip tracing.

You can get their phone over that way, EpicskipTracing.com. I mentioned a little bit earlier. But you kind of using those all in conjunction. You can do all of those individually. Like you can just blanket a neighborhood with door hangers if you wanted to. You could knock on the whole entire neighborhood, knock on the doors of the entire neighborhood. You can drive for dollars.

only taking note of the address and I'm coming back and creating a mailing list out of them or creating a calling list, a cold call list out of them. You could do all that. And that would bring us to number 13, which would be cold calling. And we just went over this in-depth on episode 438. And so go back and listen to that. If cold calling seems like something you might do, or you consider doing or adding that into your arsenal, go listen to that episode number 438.

And the link referenced in that episode was Epic. cold calling.com. There's a lot of resources there that can help you get started. Epic coldcalling.com. All right. So that's 13 and 14. Car signs and clothing. Right. Wearing your advertisements, letting people see your we buy houses sign on your t-shirt, on your polo shirt, on your actual car. And I'm telling you right now, everybody that does that consistently, they all say it's good for a few deals a year at least. Jeff Garner out in St. Louis, that helps me with the ground and pound boot camp he says the wrap around his van that has his whole company's information and i saw his rap it wasn't that great looking it was just some clip art and a phone number and i even teased him about a

little bit i said jeff what's up with the the clip art on your van he says i know i told him to do this and they didn't take the erections very well but but then the paint job was already done so i just took it and but you know what i still get a couple uh a couple deals out of it every single year and it pays for the car and a good portion of my marketing from those two deals so Consider car signs and clothing. Most people won't do this, though. Most people won't do this because their fear of looking bad. They think it looks silly.

They don't want people to see them actually in that vehicle or wearing those clothes with this advertising of their phone number. And so I just have something to say to that. And you don't have to do this, but really, consider if this is your business, don't let that fear of looking bad, or what I like to call your addiction to looking good. Don't let that interfere with your money. Right? You've got into real estate because you want to make money.

This is a job. It's a business. You are working for yourself. And if you're out working during working hours, you better advertise and promote yourself. You're missing a grand opportunity at that moment. Because remember, your job is to get in front of people and talk to your customers, right? You've got to talk to people. This is just another way that makes it really easy for people to talk to you when they know what you're doing or they know what you do. And they can come up and talk to you when you want to. weren't even with the mindset of looking for a deal right now in the store, in line at the grocery

store, or just, you know, driving to drop your kids off for their baseball practice. And you've got those car signs there, or you've got that shirt on. And you just create opportunities when you didn't even know there was an opportunity to be created or where you weren't even a business mindset and all of a sudden, boom, you got a deal in your hands. Right. So car signs. Number 15. Now, I talked about social media a little bit, but I've wanted, I gave Facebook its own.

its own category. Because a lot of people have tried to break the code on finding motivated sellers on Facebook. Like it should be just an instant thing. And it can be. But like everything I've mentioned up to this point,

you've got to be consistent with it. You've got to be consistent with a marathon-type vision. And Facebook's ad platform, it's just so powerful in the way that you can get so targeted where you place your message and where you place your solutions

in front of people with problems. It's just, it's so powerful and it's really a, affordable when you start looking at other ways that you could do this. Like you could do this on TV. You could do this on the radio. You could do this with billboards. But it's, it's such a wide, such a broad reach that's so expensive that it's cost ineffective. And it's becoming less and less effective. That type of advertising and marketing is becoming less and less effective by the day. And Facebook is still, you can get really targeted with a fraction of the budget and get your

solution right in front of the people that needs it. Right. So with, that said, I mean, remember you're a problem solver. You have solutions. Facebook enables you to place your solutions right in front of the people that have the problems. Facebook also, another thing that Facebook does, because their ad platform is just, it's so amazing. And it just, you know, you start getting through there and looking to see how it works. And you can just go Google, go to YouTube and how to place a Facebook ad. It's really, it's not rocket science. But when you start learning all the features and you start looking into what it's really capable of, I mean, Facebook makes it really easy for people with problems to raise their hand and identify themselves

so that you can then follow up with them. For example, next week I'm going to dedicate this entire episode, the Monday episode, to a killer Facebook strategy that you can use and you can start using it the second that the episode ends. Okay. So it's so worth it. It's working so well that I just want to give it its own episode. So that'll be next week. Okay.

So there's 15. Number 16, I'm going to give you as a bonus. And this could be potentially the most important one. And this bonus one is the follow-up. The fortune is in the follow-up. You've heard this before. So if you don't have a CRM with auto-responders attached, with action sets in place,

with reminders for you to, you're really cheating yourself. And this is why? Because only 5% of the deals you're doing right now are going to be made between that first and third contact. Only 5% of the deals that are available to you are made between the first and third contact. 80% of your deals will come after the 12th contact.

The 12th contact. So if you don't have a follow-up plan in place to touch your leads at least 12 times, you can see how much money you're leaving on the table. You're leaving 80% of your opportunity on the table. This is why I would say when people get started in this business and they give it 60 days and it didn't happen for them and they quit and go look for something else, like you didn't give it enough time. You got to touch these people 12 times to pull out 80% of that business.

And RIA Solutions conveniently has all that in place. It's all built in an entire follow-up system for every single type of contact. And, I mean, there's lots of choices out there for this, by the way. It's not just RIA solutions. There's lots of choices. And it's not so much which one you pick for yourself, then that you actually have a follow-up system in place. And from every single strategy here we're talking about,

every deal is finding strategy through direct mail. to use a call capture phone number that drops them into your CRM so you can follow up at live events you're going to collect business cards and meet people get their information put them in your CRM so you can follow up bird dogs you're going to have their information in place so you can follow up bandit signs anyone that calls those bandit signs you want to make sure that you capture their information so you can follow up relationships and referrals you got to systemize that you're going to meet a lot of people you're going to have a lot of people in your database not all of them are going to be real estate related, but they can all be source of leads. And if you have the right follow-up

system in place, you can check in with them regularly and you can get deals or you're going to figure it about people and you're going to lose out on really good, valuable relationships. Online classifies. Anyone that reaches out and responds to one of your ads has to go into your follow-up system. Anyone that you reach out to and you get their information has to go in your follow-up system. Same with voice broadcast. Same with your text broadcast. Same with your paper click. Same with your social media building, your social media campaigns. Also your search engine optimization with your websites and videos. You're driving for dollars, your door knocking, your door hangers, your cold calling, your car

signs and your clothing and your Facebook ad strategy. All of that needs to be captured. Every single person that ever responds to you, you need to capture their information and put them in your follow-up. If you don't, you're only getting 5% of the opportunity that's available to you. You get 5% of the opportunity that's available to you through that first and third contact. 80% of your deals are going to come after your 12th, and you couldn't possibly follow up with all of those people all on your own all the time.

So you need something automated in place that sends automated emails, automated voice broadcast, automated text messages, automated reminders to you, hey, you haven't talked to this person in three months, you need to reach out to them. You need all that stuff in place, okay? Like I said, RIA Solutions has it all in one place. There's lots of different choices out there. it's not so important of which one you pick. I don't care which one you pick.

I suggest that you pick one. You've got to have that in place. That's the leverage inside of this business that's available to you. That can really, that that's the game changer for lack of a better word and shamefully using a cliche. But that's exactly what it is. If you're not following up and touching each person that contacts you at least 12 times, you are missing out. All righty. So that's it.

Yep. That's it for today. If you like what you heard, click subscribe. Share it with a friend. Keep doing what you've been doing. I really appreciate you. So God bless to your success. I'm Matt Terrio.

Live in the trip. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. You didn't know home world. We got the cash flow. This podcast is a part of the C-suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-sweetradio.

com.