We were at Max Maxwell’s wholesaling event last weekend, sitting about 6 feet from the stage when someone came up to ring the “real estate deals bell” in the middle of Gary Vee’s keynote.
He was shocked and confused to say the least…
Max instructed the audience on day 1, “Every time you get a deal under contract this weekend…you gotta come up and ring the bell!”
The thing must’ve been rung about 7 times an hour.
These were signed contracts coming in DURING the event…all from different people…literally the entire weekend.
This was the largest wholesaling event I personally have been to, after 9 years in the business, with over 1000 deal junkies new and old in the room.
The combination of attending an event for our niche at THAT scale…and hearing that freakin real estate deals bell every 10-15 minutes…has really put things into perspective:
THERE IS STILL AN ABUNDANCE OF REAL ESTATE DEALS, despite there being more wholesalers than ever before.
In this post, we’re going to break down the tools, tactics, and team you must implement in order to truly thrive in this new tech-driven and competitive landscape.
It’s your turn to ring the bell.
Real Estate Deals Abundance: The Tactics, Tools, and Team of A Modern 6 Figure Wholesaler
There’s no question, there’s an abundance of opportunity and real estate deals, and they are yours for the taking.
No matter what your exit strategy is, we believe the one common denominator across all the successful companies we see is:
The person who can convert the most qualified leads into contracts wins.
Sounds obvious, but let’s break that down.
Part 1. Creating qualified leads
See, generating any old seller lead is no longer enough.
To demonstrate how easy it is now, I created a video showing you how to set up a cold calling system in under 5 minutes.
The technology, data, and services out there have made generating leads a level playing field with a very low barrier to entry.
In order to generate QUALIFIED leads, that is, opportunities where a property owner NEEDS or WANTS to sell their house, you need to think of your business as a funnel:
You must fill the top of the funnel with phone calls and inquiries by using the tried and true lead generation tactics:
- Geo-targeted niche lists with motivation filters like equity, vacancy, and length of ownership. The usual suspects:
- Inherited properties
- Pre-foreclosure
- Tax Delinquent
- High equity, absentee owner
- High equity, owner-occupied
- Expired MLS listings
- Lists you need to work for
- Driving for dollars leads
- Building permits, fire-damaged properties, divorce/bankruptcy etc.
- Use Propstream for these lists (this is an affiliate link that gets you 7-day trial)
- Direct mail with tracking numbers on the mailers, sent out consistently over time
- Online marketing
- Prospecting
- Driving for Dollars (most common strategy for newer investors)
- Use DealMachine for an app-based experience, limited bird dogs.
- Cold calling (you can skip trace actual cell phone numbers using Propstream, or using BatchSkipTrace.com)
- There are services like LeadGenPros that will literally just take your list and cold call for you…
- Ringless voicemail
- This is where you drop a voicemail without the phone ringing. It can generate a TON of phone calls, but you need to have a process in place for qualifying all those incoming leads. Use REIRail or Propstream
- Driving for Dollars (most common strategy for newer investors)
Opinion: Between Propstream and InvestorFuse (our software), you can grow a multi multi-million dollar acquisitions operation with a very minimal, yet powerful suite of tools.
All of this is a lot to cover on a blog, but we sell a training course called the Modern Marketing Masterclass that features 17 experts teaching each of the above lead gen strategies in detail (including Propstream training).
Here are the modules:
We’ve included full system breakdowns and SOPs for EXACTLY how to execute these modern lead generation strategies at a world-class level.
If you’re serious about this business, you should learn from the best. Have a look at the roster and get access instantly here.
Wrapping Your Head Around All The Technology
It’s best to think of real estate tools in two different categories:
You’ve got your marketing/prospecting tools:
- Phone systems
- Dialer systems
- RVM systems
- Direct mail systems
- Data tools
All of these feed into your Lead Conversion tools via integration:
- InvestorFuse (IF3)
- Podio/InvestorFuse 1.0 (warnings about Podio)
- Other similar companies, most of which use Podio (again, see warnings about Podio)
Don’t overcomplicate it.
Our team can help with all the integration techy stuff so you can get that out of the way and just focus on the qualified leads.
If you’re still confused watch this video:
**We will be releasing a full Tech Tools Masterclass blog post over the coming weeks, providing full operating procedures and how/why/when to use all of the major tools. For now…keep it simple**
A note on consistency
The way to win lead gen is by doing all of the above consistently over time.
Consistent effort, applied to the right things, executed correctly over time, WILL yield results.
If you’re wondering why you haven’t done a deal after a month or two of effort…know that you’re two inches from gold. Keep diggin’!
Hint: Outsource as much of it as possible.
Now that you have the phone ringing, it’s time to qualify.
Qualifying the lead
This is typically where most investors fail.
It’s when the need for organization and systems comes into place, which is not a natural occurrence for most REI entrepreneurs 🙂
TLDR: This is the FIRST thing you must outsource or hire for.
You can use a company like CallPorter or Ruby Receptions to handle all your incoming leads, weed out the junk calls, and only put in opportunities where a real house is involved in your Lead Conversion System (more on this later).
You are looking for signs of inherent motivation.
You are looking for “Need to sell” vs. “Want to sell” situations and taking action.
Having a system for processing leads is what separates the good from great REI teams.
The actual act of qualifying leads is more of an art than a science and can be considered a function of sales.
You’re “developing” the lead to be “sold” to later by your acquisitions team.
I’ll let our friend Brent Daniels explain this in more detail:
***This video is from another one of our pieces of training, the REI Lead Conversion Masterclass, but don’t worry about that right now…**
You need to think of your business like a mining operation.
You pour a whole bunch of dirt into the top of the funnel, then you use a sifter to pick out the little particles of gold…ie. your qualified leads.
Now, what do you do with the qualified leads you’ve sifted out?
Remember the common denominator that brought us here:
The person who can convert the most qualified leads into contracts wins.
Let’s talk about that “converting into contracts” part.
Part 2. Converting qualified leads into contracts
The biggest need for your business at this level is having a hub for all your qualified leads.
Commonly, this has been known as a CRM.
However, a CRM is not what you need, because you just need to do a single transaction with the seller (typically).
CRMs are for ongoing business with customers, like what a hotel uses to get you to stay at their hotels all the time.
See how that’s not really a fit for this phase? You can ditch that “CRM” term now.
We invented something new:
LEAD CONVERSION SYSTEM
At InvestorFuse, we believe in calling things what they are.
So you really need a Lead Conversion System to get that deal under contract the one time…
And do this at scale with ideally thousands of leads.
It turns qualified leads into contracts you can do whatever you want with.
Bird’s eye view, you want to turn your business into lead conversion MACHINE:
If you’re a process freak like the team over at InvestorFuse, there’s a simple and effective way to process all leads. You are simply just doing one of the following actions to each lead:
- Adding a follow-up reminder or adding to an automated follow-up sequence
- Disqualifying/removing from list
- Making an offer
- Scheduling an appointment
- Assigning to someone to analyze further
Failure to choose the next action means your leads will slip through the cracks and you’ll basically be wasting money on generating the lead in the first place.
Why Follow-Up Matters:
That image says enough.
The thing is…most investors think they can get by just by picking the low-hanging fruit real estate deals.
This is no longer enough to succeed.
In fact, the MAJORITY of your revenue will come from the fruits at the top of the tree over time.
We have members on InvestorFuse who consistently get appointments each week from leads they forgot about long ago and put on an automated drip messaging sequence.
You will not feel the power of follow-up until you make money from it, but mark my words…
He who has the best follow-up system will ALWAYS beat you at the same game.
Get the most out of your leads, and use a simple process to follow up with your leads.
InvestorFuse provides an easy process to all of that at a high level…
But there’s still a missing piece to all this:
The human element.
Tying it All Together: The Team
The goal: Set up your business so that you are doing ONLY WHAT GIVES YOU ENERGY
This is important.
Remember why you got into this business to begin with.
Time, freedom to do what you want, to provide for your family, to enjoy life.
#1 rule of REI entrepreneurship is to avoid getting trapped in stuff you hate as soon as possible early on, or you will burn out, give up, and thus fail.
I recommend creating a Freedom Focuser List, which helps you conceptualize everything you’re currently doing in your business, what you enjoy doing, and what the first things you can outsource would be.
You can use this org chart as a basic framework for what you want to work towards building:
It may be you in all of these roles at first…
Start with outsourcing your lead management and initial call screening.
Use VirtualLeadManagers to hire a trained Lead Manager that will essentially do ALL of your follow-up and tee up real estate deals for you all day.
Use CallPorter for your initial call screening.
OR…hire someone in-house < this is always the best option, although the most challenging because you need to hire a “rockstar.”
For more info on team building, here’s a detailed blog post.
Here’s a video about creating an awesome culture, which is a fancy way of saying “this is the way we do things and how we have fun doing it).
Parting Words:
If you’re determined and willing to take a modest amount of action, there’s really no excuse not to “ring the bell” many times a month.
You might wonder why people STILL don’t close real estate deals despite detailed blog posts like this that tell you exactly what to do.
Here’s why:
They stop.
They stop marketing, they stop following up, they stop making offers, they stop talking to sellers, they stop going to events.
Giving up is the only surefire way to fail.
All other outcomes are merely just outcomes…they are paths on the zig-zag of real estate success.
Do not confuse bad outcomes as failures.
Persist, and you will eventually succeed.
-Dan Schwartz and Team InvestorFuse
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PS. The subtler arts of Lead Conversion like sales and negotiation, lead management, acquisitions management, writing offers, and transaction engineering warrant more advanced training.
Check out our newest course, The Lead Conversion Masterclass, for over 24 hours of advanced expert training on:
This is a much deeper dive, with over 20 of the world’s best investors and coaches teaching all of the above subjects in detail.
We provide full written action guides on each module, and each video is broken up into its component questions for quick navigation and knowledge access.
If you have a team, just give them access to this course so they perform with proven best practices on converting qualified leads into real estate deals.