How to Locate Highly Motivated Sellers Using Business Cards

Finding ways to attract motivated sellers to your Real Estate Investing business is probably the most important element in your business, since without the motivated sellers, there are no deals to be made.

There are several different ways to find motivated sellers for your real estate investing business using a shot gun type of approach to locate as many sellers as you can. A shot gun approach is where you “blast” your message out to your market and hope that there are motivated sellers among the bunch. Some of these techniques include yard or vehicle signage, business cards, t-shirts and hats, door hangers, pens, buttons, business card magnets, flyers and auto shades. What I really want to focus on today though, is using business cards to locate motivated sellers.

When having business cards printed, there are a couple of things you want to keep in mind. One is that your business card needs to have a grabber headline and it needs to catch people’s attention by looking different from every other business card out there.

Use bright colors and a benefit driven message on your business cards. List the reasons on your card why that seller should work with you and how you can help them. Remember business cards are a highly effective inexpensive lead generating tool for your business. On your business card, you want to provide your potential seller with a couple of different ways to contact you so they can contact you in the way that is most comfortable for them. So for example your card might include your phone number, your email address and a website for them to check out. The more ways you give a potential seller to contact you, the more of them will.

Use both sides of the card to relay your message, no need to waste usable space. Make sure that if you put your name on the card, it is small and down in one corner, and don’t waste valuable space with your photo. No one really cares who you are or what you look like; they just want to know what you can do for them.

When using both sides of the business card, use thermo graphic print. This is a raised print that will let your potential seller know there is something on the other side they need to look at. Don’t use the type of cards where you get them for free if you have someone else’s message on the other side. All that tells your potential seller is “I can’t buy your house, heck I’m too cheap to buy a real business card”.

One of the very first things I did early on in my real estate business was to immediately order a box of 1,000 business cards. I will tell you that if your business cards are sitting in the box, they aren’t helping you find any motivated sellers or create deals for your business. You can order business cards in orders of five hundred or one thousand cards. Ordering 1,000 business cards is definitely the cheapest way to go and you are going to need them on an ongoing basis. You should be going through at least 1,000 business cards a month since they are one of the best, least expensive lead generation tools for your business.

The first thing you need to do with business cards is to give them to everyone you meet- your grocer, cashiers at stores, toll takers, vendors such as your pool person, your lawn care provider, pest control person, waitress, bank tellers etc. You can give them to your children’s teachers, other parents at sporting events or PTA meetings, healthcare providers, your hair and nail salon tech if you use one, neighbors, pretty much everyone you come in contact with.

Make sure you stick one of your business cards in your bills when you mail them out. You also need to be placing them in the bathrooms of grocery stores, home improvement stores, restaurants, convenience stores or wherever else you shop. You also need to be giving your business cards out at your local real estate club meetings or seminars that you go to. These are excellent networking opportunities for you to find wholesale buyers, potential deals, and hard money and private lenders. You could throw a handful of cards out when your team scores a point at a sporting event. Don’t be afraid to get creative and think of other ways to use these business cards to find leads. You need to let your market know that you buy houses. If you don’t let your market know you buy houses, you won’t! It’s just that simple. I make it my personal business to give my business card to virtually everyone that I meet.

If you have signage on your vehicle, I would suggest putting your business cards under your windshield wipers and in the slats by your windows every time your vehicle is parked. This makes it much easier for a potential seller to get and hold onto your phone number and your information when they need you. As they pass your vehicle in a parking lot, they will simply pick up your business card and take it home with them. Once we started doing this, it significantly increased the number of leads we got from our vehicle signage.

If you have magnetic business cards, you can stick them to soda machines, gas pumps or on metal cash registers at your local dry cleaner or butcher shop. If you have rental properties, be sure you have a magnetic business card on the refrigerator of every rental unit that you own. Tenants can be a great source of leads for you as well. They will be speaking to friends and neighbors about situations that you would never know about otherwise. We actually use a tenant referral program with our tenants so they are more motivated to bring us leads. Make sure they also get a stack of your business cards with their name hand written on the back so they would get the referral if you get a deal from one of their leads.

You can give a stack of business cards to vendors who are out seeing people all day such as your pool person, pest control person, lawn care person, carpet cleaner, surveyor, home inspection person, cleaning person, mail delivery person, title agent, your local storage facility or anyone who is in contact with people, especially with those clients or customers who might be moving.

Just remember that business cards are one of the cheapest, easiest ways to reach motivated sellers, so make sure they are not left in the box. You can easily go through 500-1,000 cards per month and do lots of deals just from business cards. Make sure you keep some in your pocket, your purse and your car whenever you are out so you can give them to anyone you might meet.

I have a wonderful resource I use for all of my promotional needs including business cards, money cards, magnetic cards and the florescent cards. They have all the verbiage and the layouts for the real estate investor. This mean you don’t have to pay extra fees for artwork or set up. Take a look at some of the items available from this resource and many others when you visit my website at www.marketingmagiclady.com.