Top 3 Differences Between Extraordinary Real Estate Investors And Everyone Else
Recently, a student in one of my seminars asked a really interesting question. He asked:
"What kind of results does your average student achieve?"
What he really meant was: "How much money does your average student
make?"
That's not a question I get in that form every day, so I had to think
about it for a moment. Some of my students go on to make literally hundreds
of thousands of dollars and change their lives virtually overnight.
But some other students never really do anything at all.
That provoked me to think about the differences between those who end up
being real winners versus the people who never achieve any real success...
I'll tell you the answer to the question about the results of my
"average" student in just a moment. But first, let's take a look at the
differences between those who are big-time winners versus everybody else.
Difference #1 - Forget The "Creative
Strategies" - Focus on Marketing
For the first 18 months of my experience as a real estate entrepreneur, I
was a dismal failure. I spent a lot of time reading books and listening to
tapes about creative real estate strategies, but I made no money at all.
Not a penny.
But then, as if by magic, things began to happen for me. Deals started
to appear that I'd never seen before. Finding the fabled "motivated seller"
was suddenly much easier than in the past. And that led to deals where I
actually made real, spendable cash. It was truly amazing!
What was the difference?
Instead of focusing on learning every detail of the technical strategies
of creative real estate investing, I began to focus on "marketing".
Marketing is the process of reducing down the entire population of the world
into a small subset of people with whom you can do business.
Marketing requires you to answer these questions:
1. Who is your "ideal" prospect? If you're trying to find homes
to buy, your ideal prospect would have certain characteristics, such as:
- The prospect is a home owner
- The prospect is "motivated" to sell their property
- The home is in a certain geographic area
- The home is in a certain price range
- The home is in (excellent, good, fair, poor) condition
There are a lot more variables to fully defining your ideal prospect, and
you might even have different ideal prospects depending on which strategies
you're using. But the point is simple: You must know who you want to do
business with.
Example - "My ideal prospect is a home owner who is motivated to
sell their property as soon as possible. The home should be in average or
better condition and should be located in the 30281 zip code. The home's
value should be in the range of $100,000 to $195,000."
2. What are you going to offer to your prospect that will motivate
him/her to do business with you?
Another way to state this is: What is your "message"? What is the
reason you'll offer for someone to do business with you?
Your message must be simple and should convey a very clear benefit to
your prospect. Some of the most commonly used "messages" among real estate
entrepreneurs are:
- I Buy Houses
- Sell Your House in X Days
- Fast Cash For Your Home
- Stop Foreclosure
- Cash For Homes
Important Note: These are all very common marketing
messages, but not all of them are particularly good messages.
Here's a Better Example - "I offer immediate debt relief to home
owners by buying houses in 7 days or less."
3. How will you physically communicate your message to your ideal
prospect?
Will you use
- Newspaper ads
- Road-side signs
- Cold Calling
- Direct Mail
- The Internet
- T.V. commercials
The list of available communications media is literally endless. Your
job is to use a few (not just one!) of those types of media to communicate
your message to your ideal prospect.
To summarize - marketing means that you're communicating a desirable
message to a suitable prospect, at a time when that prospect needs what
you're offering.
Why is marketing so important?
Isn't it true that creative home-buying strategies are totally
worthless unless you've got a relationship with a home owner who is willing
to sell using your strategy?
And isn't it true that unless you have a qualified buyer, it
doesn't matter if you know 70 different ways to sell a house - you still
won't sell your house.
That's why marketing is so important...and why most new real estate
investors fail so miserably. Instead of focusing on the people that they
can help, they focus on the technical strategies that they'll use.
And here's the hard truth of the matter: Nobody cares about
how great your strategies are. All that people care about is what you can
do to help them.
So your job is to:
- Identify your ideal prospect
- Create an offer that motivates your prospect to do business with you
- Make your prospect aware of your offer
Important note: That was a very short discussion of
marketing and prospecting, both of which are very big topics.
You can never know enough about marketing, prospecting and even sales!
That's all for now...we'll cover Differences #2 and #3 in a future
article.
BryanE:
You aint Sayin Nuttin Slick to a Can of Oil wit the Lid Off!
GRRRRREAT ARTICLE M'Man!
I test all my mktg possiblities and b/c this is such a forgiving business(REI) I don't get burned any longer being an Advertising victim...nor do I wrestle any longer with the
PARALYSIS of ANALYSIS -
(The financiallly debilitating Disease and Inertia from DOING NOTHING!!!)
I am looking forward to your part 2 and 3!
Best of Everything to You!
Derrick Ali
Very informative indeed. And you have whetted by curiosity -may I ask you a question ? "How much money does your average student make?"
Best regards.
Thank You for that article! Finally someone I can relate to! I am just beginning in this chosen field. I gues I'm in the "dismal" stage. I have so many real estate books, and since I don't have a wieght set, I actually put them in a back pack and lift them over my head. I should be banned from places like Half Price books. (grin)
Your article was has reinforced my desire to proceed.
This has been on of the most helpful short cut to the point article I had read!!!
Thank you
Looking forward for the next on
Rocio
But if your students started marketing, "selling their product" and can't deliver good results because of a lack in fundamentals, what does that do to their reputation?