Bulletproof Motivated Seller Follow-up Machine

Scott Corbett: Hey, everybody. Thanks for joining us today. My name is Scott Corbett, and my company is Lightmark Media and we’re known mostly for real estate lead generation for buyers, sellers, tenants, private investors, and things like that. And it is my great pleasure to let you know that we’re meeting today with my good friend, Gary Boomershine. Hey, Gary.Gary B.: Hey, Scott. It’s an absolute pleasure, my friend. I know we’ve been working on having this webinar for your group for at least six to eight weeks, and I’m super excited.

I think this is gonna be a share all, and I know that we’ve been working with you and your team. You’ve been doing my pay-per-click for quite some time, and I think this’ll be a lot of fun. I think it’ll be a lot of value for your group of people, and investors and agents and lenders.

Hopefully they get a lot out of the stuff that I’ll show and share some of the stuff that’s worked and not worked, et cetera, around real estate, and systems and marketing, and an integrated sales team and follow-up, and anything else you want to pick my brain on today.

Scott Corbett: Well, that sounds fantastic because I think real estate investors, maybe like all business owners, get caught up in the minutiae. They get really focused for a time on sales, really focused on marketing, really focused on the hiring.

And what I love about you is that you always manage to help me kind of put the big picture back together, help me see the overall ecosystem that makes up a business, and you just help remind us the way that everything is interdependent inside a business, all the systems are. And I really see you as a real systems thinker, which is so needed, I think, for a lot of us out there who just need to be reminded that it all works together if you really want to grow your business.

Gary B.: Aww, that’s awesome. Did you say system thinker or system stinker?

Scott Corbett: (laughs) Well-

Gary B.: I’m tongue-tied, by the way, so I would never try to get those two words connected ’cause I’d butcher it up. (laughs)

Scott Corbett: Thinker.

Gary B.: Awesome.

Scott Corbett: You are a thinker. Yes, and a doer. So maybe I’ll just kinda intro what I see as one of the biggest challenges that I hear about from our clients, okay? And then I’d love to get your thoughts on ways to address this challenge. Sound good?

Gary B.: Awesome.

Scott Corbett: So, the challenge I’m talking about is that lead generation. You know, we have the most experience with PPC. We run PPC in, I dunno, 50 or 60 markets around the country. And what we’ve seen over the past few years is a steady increase in how much clicks cost, how much leads cost, and then of course, your deals are getting more expensive as the market is tightening up. It’s a real bind.

That said, people keep doing it because, as you know, the great value of a PPC lead is that this is someone who has initiated action. They’ve gone to their phone or their computer and they typed in something that basically says, “Hey, I’ve got a problem and I need some help.” And so the leads are really good.

But they’re really expensive, and they’re getting more expensive. And you’re getting all these private equity companies coming in the space bidding on these keywords, it’s getting more crowded. I feel like every week you get a whole new crop of people who have watched just enough HGTV shows to finally wanna get in the house flipping game. So there’s a lot of competition and it’s expensive. I think what that means is that the people who are gonna be able to continue to do PPC and take advantage of it are people who run really tight ships.

So what I see the breakdown being, and this is where I would love to get your input today, is what happens after the phone rings or after the web form comes in from a PPC lead. And by the way, it could be a direct mail, it could be an organic website lead, it could be radio/TV lead. PPC probably is a little more urgent because they’re more likely, I think, to go somewhere else fast if you don’t jump on ’em, but it’s true. I imagine what you’re gonna talk about is true beyond just PPC.

Gary B.: Yeah.

Scott Corbett: But for PPC in particular, share your insights from all the investors you work with, from running your own business. What can you tell us about what should happen immediately after that lead pops up in your world?

Gary B.: Yeah, awesome. I’ll definitely do that. So, just for point of reference for those of you that don’t know me, my name is Gary Boomershine. I actually live in California, about an hour from San Francisco. I’ve been a full-time real estate investor since 2004. So I’ve definitely seen the multiple markets and the shifts in market. I actually became a licensed real estate agent when I turned 18. Actually I just turned 49 just a couple days ago.

Scott Corbett: Happy birthday.

Gary B.: Actually happy to say I’m under 50. How ’bout that, brother?

Scott Corbett: All right.

Gary B.: I came out of the technology world. I worked at Accenture and I did four extremely well-funded software start-up companies – one that went public and got sold to IBM, and a couple of others. And then I decided to take the full-time plunge in real estate, and have never turned back from it. I mean, I just love real estate.

I run a company, well, I do real estate in four markets. I’m also a private lender. I do a lot of first position notes. I was doing a lot of rehab lending back early cycle, which was like 2010 through 2012.

And I run a group called REIvault. I’ve got a staff of over 40 people. We’re a virtual sales and marketing agency for real estate investors, managing all their Podio. Very, very focused on direct mail, and more importantly, all the follow-up drip. So I’m definitely gonna share the expertise around this market, where if you don’t have a really tight follow-up process, not only are you losing money, you’re only taking down about 10% of the deal flow that you should be. So the money is really made in the follow-up, and I’ll kinda walk through some of the things that have been working well for us.

And for your people, if they’re already doing this, some of the techniques that have worked for us, and if you haven’t, then you’ll definitely, grab some paper and something to write with, ’cause this stuff definitely works. I have about 250 mostly pretty seasoned, experienced investors using REIvault, where we do all their direct mail for them. Just like you do pay-per-click, it’s super complementary. I know we probably got 20 members or clients, just like you, 20 that are actually using pay-per-click. You’re doing the pay-per-click, we’re doing the direct mail, and then we’re using our common system that we manage for them for all the follow-up, right?

Scott Corbett: That’s exactly right. We share a bunch of clients in common.

Gary B.: Here’s the rule. And people have heard this, but I think it’s like a lot of things they hear over and over again, it goes in one ear and out the other. [7:44] But 80% of the profits in real estate are gonna come, 80% of all the profits, come between the fifth and the 12th interaction with the seller. And by the way, that’s a national statistic and it’s not just real estate. And less than 10% of all real estate investors and agents in the entire country ever follow up more than twice.

So I wanna make sure that everybody realizes what that means. That means 80% of the deals take multiple interactions. And so what we see is investors do direct mail or they do pay-per-click, and they’ll jump on a lead, and they’ll talk to a lead, and then maybe they follow up with them one time. But all the money is on the fifth through the 12th interaction. And so we’re seeing is that we’re finding people that come in and say they’re not interested in selling, and we’re finding that we’re converting a substantial number of those that are four or six or eight months old.

So some of the best leads, we’re finding, that came in into their pipeline. I’ll give you an example. Nasar El-Arabi. He uses us. I know he does a lot of pay-per-click as well. But he has 17,000 leads that we generated for him over the last couple years. And he’s on track to do about a million bucks. I just had a conversation with him a couple weeks ago, and he’s like, “I’m not converting. The costs are going up, I’m getting a lower response rate on my marketing.” Right? That’s a common theme everywhere in the country.

Scott Corbett: Yep.

Gary B.: But he’s not working the follow-up. And so, 17,000 leads, he should be closing about one out of 60. So imagine that. Take 17,000 divided by 60, and that’s the number of deals that he should have either closed or should be able to close over the next six months. That’s multiple millions of dollars.

So the gold mine is in the follow-up, and I’m gonna actually walk through some of the ways to do that. And ’cause a lot of it can be automated, especially if you’ve got a really good lead processor phone person that should be nearly free. It’s a huge ROI of having somebody that’s able to call follow-ups, schedule appointments for you.

And in fact at REIvault we actually built a sales ninja team that does nothing but that. So leads come in and then our team can actually work and follow up, and if we’re either getting them qualified and they’re motivated to sell, and we’re generating an appointment, or we’ll continue to follow up for the next two or three years until they are ready. Right? So that’s a real quick thing.

Let me do this. Just to jump into it, Scott, I have a slide here that I think would be a really good jumping off point. And let me move this. This is a new webinar. I haven’t even rolled this thing out, but a lot of people in our group said this is a really great way to kind of share our process.

First and foremost, we’re in a real estate cycle similar to the cycle in, I’d say, 2007, 2008, where at the beginning of the cycle, real estate is not that hot, right? The market turns, a lot of stuff goes back to foreclosure. And so all the deal flow in 2009, 2010, and ’11 were all bank-owned REOs, right? Bank-owned REOs or HUD properties or you could buy at the foreclosure auction. And then the market got super hot. And so today, all the deal flow is off-market, which means you have to go direct to the seller. Right?

Scott Corbett: Right.

Gary B.: That’s where all the money is. That’s why the hedge funds are jumping in to direct mail and pay-per-click. So our business is really a funnel, right? This is a classic funnel. You can see this on the screen in front you, right?

Scott Corbett: I sure can, yeah.

Gary B.: Okay. So really, the money, and I have all the little cash, is at the bottom of the funnel, and so all of these pieces have to work, right? Properly. If you have any hole in any one piece, the whole system breaks down. So it starts with marketing, right? Your clients are working, just like ours, are working a specific zip code, set of zip codes, or a set of counties across the country. So they’ve got a finite number of properties. What we want to do is market to them. So marketing means going out and identifying the best direct mail postcards and letters, the best pay-per-click campaigns, dealing with all the spreadsheets. You guys are figuring out the ads to pull and the ones that convert, right? But that’s all marketing.

There’s also the execution of that marketing. We call it fulfillment, right? So if you are doing direct mails, as an example, it’s the mail house, it’s managing the weekly mailing list, and making sure they’re cleaned up, managing the weekly drops. Right? Sending out postcards, as an example, is super easy to do, but actually managing a long-term drip, ongoing, right, of what sequences are gonna go out, how often are you gonna repeat, what if I’ve got four or five lists, right? I’ve got a absentee type of list or I’ve got a code violation or recently divorced, that’s gonna need different stuff, or probate, right? All of that fulfillment has to be handled. Or for you guys, managing the weekly pay-per-click ads of what’s the spend and what kind of changes, and has Bing or Google changed their algorithm. You have to constantly, constantly manage that.

And then you’ve got the systems, because once you’ve got the marketing and the fulfillment, you’ve gotta have the tracking device, the systems in place, to be able to manage the deal flow. So a lot of people are using Podio, maybe they’re using REIvault, or they’re using InvestorFuse, or maybe they built their own homegrown system. They also have to make sure that they’re managing the phone system, like CallRail, making sure everything’s set up, right? If you’ve got all the marketing working, but then the phone system doesn’t go to voicemail or it’s got the wrong message, or it’s going to an empty line, the whole thing blows up, right?

Also, you’ve got things like text messages, so if somebody comes in, they should automatically go on a text message Slybroadcast sort of drip, right? Making sure that they get the right message. You got the inbound seller leads, so if somebody calls, people always ask me, “Can I send somebody to a prerecorded message or to a website or to a live person?” And really, all the sellers should really be answered live, by somebody. You’re spending the money, right? Having a live person will always get you the highest product, but you gotta make sure that you got a good person that’s actually answering the phone. If they’re not good, the seller’s gonna hang up immediately, right?

Then once you’ve got the lead, once you’ve got the lead, really, before you get on the phone with the seller. This has been huge for us because before getting on the phone with the seller, just having a little bit of research done, knowing what does it rent for, being able to go out, getting a picture of the property. So if you know that there’s a gate in front of the house, or it’s a blue house versus a orange house, right, you’re gonna be able to get back on the phone and act smart to the seller. Like, “Gosh, is your house the blue one on the corner with the red Ford in front of it?” It just builds rapport.

So, also knowing the comparables, knowing what’s sold, right? Or what the property value should be, is gonna give you an upper hand when you get on the phone with the seller. So that research is super important.

And then the phone team, the outbound phone team, of who’s actually talking to the seller and prescreening, qualifying, asking the right questions, building rapport, doing the ice breaker, really to get a no to a yes. You know for pay-per-click, pay-per-click leads are amazing, but you’ve gotta be on those leads really fast, right? If a lead comes in, they’re also going out and talking to two or three other people, so whoever’s there fast and actually can build some rapport is gonna win that deal, right? And if it’s worth $20,000 to $50,000 to $100,000 in profit, it’s worth jumping on that lead in two to three minutes.

Scott Corbett: Yeah, Gary, I mean, a client of ours, in a very hot market in the country, just shared the very painful experience of having a PPC lead come into his system, but then they got busy, whatever. They chose to prioritize other things that afternoon. First thing the next morning, they got an email in their inbox. Another wholesaler had already locked down the deal and was advertising it and the assignment fee in this market is often six figures. So yeah, it’s all about speed.

Gary B.: Yeah.

Scott Corbett: They didn’t [crosstalk 00:16:52] somebody else did.

Gary B.: Yeah, absolutely. What we’re finding, like direct mail, the urgency, the turnaround time, is not as important. You can call them back a week later, a month later, and we’re still converting the deals. But pay-per-click, we’re finding pay-per-click leads are usually a lot better. Substantially better leads than coming off a direct mail. And the cost per deal, we’re finding, about the same. But the quality, and being able to turn a deal into profits, is substantially better with pay-per-click. But you’ve gotta be on those leads.

So the outbound phone team is really important. A lot of real estate investors say, “Oh, no problem. I’ll call them.” Right? But if you’re running a business and you’re doing the direct mail and you’re managing your system, right, and everything else, it’s almost impossible to be working the deals. And so somebody’s gotta do that work, and that’s where a lot of the problem is. There’s no reason why you can’t have somebody that you’re paying less than 10 bucks an hour doing this value, right? You should be doing, as a real estate investor, the $1,000 to $10,000 an hour work, which is working the biggest deals, raising money, managing your team, getting better resources, not setting up ads and doing all the tactics. That’s the biggest.
You and I talked a little bit before this call. Lot of real estate investors, right, they call themselves business owners and entrepreneurs, but really what they are, is they’re building a job, right? And if we go back and we look at the funnel, I kinda say, “Where are you in all these things?” Right? “Are you kinda doing all the stuff, are you really focused in on the high money-making activities?” So marketing, right, marketing should really be in fulfillment of the marketing, and all the systems, managing the inbound stuff, even pulling research and comparables, even your outbound phone team. That’s all $10 an hour work. So if you’re a real estate investor, doing any one of these things is actually pretty easy, right? Sending out some direct mail, maybe even trying to do your own pay-per-click campaign for a week or two, is pretty easy. But as soon as you start dealing with sellers and working to close deals, right? Everything else goes out the window.

So the $10 an hour work, though Outbound phone and sort of the follow-up is really sort of $100 an hour work. Some of your best leads, and I shouldn’t say, “Some of your best leads,” your best leads are gonna be the leads that’ve already come into your system. So the best leads are gonna be ones that you’ve already talked to. Remember, 80% of the profits come from multiple contacts, between the fifth and the 12th interaction.

Even the house I’m living in, Scott, I’m living in a house, I bought it in California, with $250,000 of equity in it. This was in 2010. The seller told me to remove her from the mailing. So I was mailing to her, she called, basically said, “Hey, can you take me off the mailing? I’m not interested in selling.” So we got on the phone, basically built some rapport, said, “No problem.” I actually had a couple of words that I said, “Gosh, if you know of anybody,” her name was Ruth, and I said, “If you know of a neighbor or a friend, I would love to give you a thank-you present, like maybe pay for your gardening for six months, or maybe donate to your favorite charity.” And so that really warmed her up, and then I put her on a follow-up campaign, and three months later she called me, and I bought her house. Right?

So 99% of the investors would’ve removed her from the mailing list, right? So the value is in the follow-up, and if you’re doing all the other tactics and managing all this other nonsense, right, all important, but not by you. So really, negotiating and closing with sellers, and working the phone, is the $1,000 an hour work. And then the $10,000 an hour work is really building a business, right? So are you an investor creating a J-O-B, or are you a business owner, really entrepreneur, building a scalable, sustainable business?

This is a big one for REIvault, it’s like, when we’re talking to members, it’s like, “Hey, where are you spending all of your time right now?” And so what we do is we basically built a shared team, right? Over 40 people, it’s really an agency, that sort of manages all this stuff for them.

I told you, I just got back from India and China. I’ve got over 20 people in India, and the Indian team actually used to work for one of the largest real estate hedge funds in the country. They bought over 30,000 houses. They sold, they went public, and got sold to another hedge fund.

And I acquired this team, and they’re the ones that are doing all the tech work. So basically building the proprietary mailing lists, setting up the systems, managing all the tech, right? For all of us. There’s about 250 of us, doing everything that you see in black, including a phone team. We’ve got a large phone team in the United States and in the Philippines that are actually sales ninjas that are doing all the follow-up, right?

So leads come in, they’re being put on a long-term drip, which means text messages and Slybroadcast. I can talk about what that means. A lot of your guys probably have heard of Slybroadcast. It just is like a voicemail that gets automatically dropped at a particular time to a seller, right? At a 30-day interval, and then 30 days after that, another voicemail. And then a salesperson actually picking up the phone at a very specific time, calling the seller off of a script, right, of exactly what to say and how to say it, to see if they can get a yes out of the seller. And if they can get a yes, then they’ll schedule an appointment. And if it’s a no, they’re not ready yet, right, then we’ll schedule to call ’em back again.

And it’s relentless. We call it this no seller left behind. Unless the house is sold to somebody else, right, that should always be a lead. Even the people that say, “Remove me from the list,” those are some of the best leads if you know how to work ’em. Cool?

Scott Corbett: Very cool, very cool. Yeah. This stuff applies, I think, to real estate businesses of all size, too. I mean, clearly, if you’re a very small shop, you’re just gonna get killed if you’re trying to do it all.

Gary B.: Yeah.

Scott Corbett: But even shops that are bigger, some of the things you’re putting in the $10 an hour category, they have a pretty steep learning curve to get to the point where you can do it. And it’s getting now, I think with all kinds of marketing, that the landscape is changing, you have to constantly keep up with this stuff, and it’s just a matter of where you wanna put your resources.

Gary B.: Yup, absolutely.

I think this will really help. You were talking about the cost per click, and the cost per deal going up for pay-per-click across the country. By the way, that’s exactly the same thing in direct mail. So it’s becoming more competitive. Two to three years ago, very, very few people were doing any of this, right? Very few people were doing pay-per-click, very few people were doing direct mail. And now it’s becoming more competitive.

Here’s the way to look at it. What is the true cost per deal, and then what’s the profit per deal? Here’s what we’re seeing. We’re seeing about the return on investment off of the marketing is about the same. We’re seeing some of the profits that are continuing to grow, right?

Scott Corbett: Yup.

Gary B.: And maybe the cost is growing. So let’s say it costs $8 a click, and direct mail, let’s say it was $10 per call, right? So now, all of a sudden, what are you competing on clicks? Just a generic number. $20? $25? $100?

Scott Corbett: $25.

Gary B.: Okay. So let’s say $25, right? So the trick with $25 is, well you guys go with opt-ins. We usually go with kind of a unique “Somebody dials” We may have 10 sellers, 10 phone calls, that’ll actually produce seven leads, okay? Because we’ll get somebody that calls two or three times. And then it’s how many of those are gonna convert into a deal. And what we’re finding is it can be anywhere from about 10 to 30 of those leads that are gonna convert into a deal.

Now, you’ll have two people, right? You’ll have somebody that’s really good on their process, and they’ll convert even higher than that. And then you’ll get somebody else that will say, “Oh, these leads suck. I’m not converting any of ’em.” And since we’re managing their system, it’s really easy for us, ’cause we’ll go right in and we’ll look at the leads, and then we’ll say, “Hey, let’s look at these 30 leads, and tell me, this person came in and said they wanted to sell their house at 123 Main Street, and what did they say?” And then, “Let’s look at the next one, the next one.” And what we’re finding is they’re either only talking and do it one time, or maybe they’ll dial and they never got a live person, maybe they tried two times and they couldn’t get the seller back on the phone, and they quit, right?

And so the other person that just made $50,000 off of the same number of leads, they were relentless. They called multiple times, right? Maybe the person wasn’t available, so they found out and said, “Okay, we’ll call you back. How would next Monday work for you?” They got ’em on the phone, and then they’re converting ’em, right? And the ones that they didn’t convert, they’re kinda teeing up for two or three months down the road.

So you get one person off the same number of leads that’ll convert and make 50 grand, and you’ll get somebody else that makes 10, or maybe nothing. So it really doesn’t matter what the cost is. It’s really what the return on investment, and really looking at your follow-up process.

Here’s some things that’ve worked really well for us. If you’re following this, especially if you’re following live, you can write a few of these things down, ’cause they absolutely work.

So hang-ups. The hang-ups that come in, or even people that opt-in. Let’s say they opt-in to one of Scott’s web pages, but they didn’t fill out the full form, right? They didn’t fill out the full motivated form, but they filled out a little Contact Us page. Be relentless on following up on those people, whether it’s email, have a very simple follow-up email sequence. For hang-ups, we’ll follow up on hang-ups for three years, right? We’ll call them four times in a row, as an example.

Never leave a message, by the way. We found that if you’re calling a cold lead, don’t leave a message. I mean, this is the value of 250 of us working together and sharing the data. We found that the results are like 400% to 500% increase if you don’t leave a message. Right? Only talk to people live. And then once you have ’em on the phone live, it’s fine to leave them the message a second or third time. But when you have not talked to somebody for the first time, dial ’em, if they don’t get on the phone, hang up. And try ’em the next day. And do that four days in a row, and then schedule a task or make sure that you’re following up again.

The text messaging is huge, we’ve put in an automated drip, so if a hang-up comes in off of some kind of marketing, right? Let’s say they dial the phone number on one of Scott’s web pages, and they dial a phone number, 60% of those calls, 40% to 60% are gonna hang up. It’s national statistic. It doesn’t matter what the message says, what have you. They get nervous, they just wanna see if it’s a live person. So we put ’em on 31 sequences over three years. They’re gonna get a combination of text messages, emails, voice broadcasts, and also somebody that’s gonna call them live. We’ve found the conversion off of that is huge, right? And different wording. The different wording of what to say.

And then if you do talk to somebody, maybe they’re not ready to sell today, right? Or maybe you make ’em an offer. We have what’s called offer, no close. Most people, again, 95% of real estate investors, if they make an offer to a seller, they’re not following up at all. And those deals are huge. A lot of sellers are just emotionally not ready to sell right then and there. And you’re leaving all the money on the table, right? It’s just like any other process. Buying cars, right? How many people walk into the car dealership and are ready to buy, right then and there? They’re not. They’re usually shopping. But it typically means that within 60 days, they’re gonna be buying. So whoever’s following up with that buyer, is usually the one that’s gonna get the deal.

So we automate as much of that as possible, right? That’s just huge. So yeah, if you’re spending money today on pay-per-click or direct mail, you’ve gotta have a really tight process. And I like to set it up. The thing is that if you’re a real estate investor, your time should be spent closing sellers, not dealing with all the tactics and the right wording and getting a Slybroadcast account and recording voicemails. We do that for everybody automatically.

Scott Corbett: I think you’re making some incredible points here, and I hope everybody is noticing a few things about what you’re saying. First of all, that the money is in the follow-up. I don’t know how many times we need to say that, but let’s keep saying it. The money is in the follow-up. And second, I guess it would be possible for you to view something like a hang-up or an incomplete form fill as a substandard lead, but what Gary is saying here is that someone who’s interested but nervous. And they’re absolutely worth following up with. And in fact, maybe even being more persistent than usual. So follow up with your hang-ups.

And I also love that little tip about not leaving a voicemail. I personally think, Gary, that what some people do with the voicemail is almost a way to check something off your own list. Like, “Well, I left a voicemail. It’s up to them now.” That’s not how it works.

Gary B.: No, no, you know, I share this a lot with our group. Think of people that come to your house door knocking, right? I’m not gonna give any specific group. Actually I will. I had a bunch of Mormon kids. Super, super neat group of people. Came to my house, and they came eight times in a row. And like everybody, I’m sitting there, I’m like, “I’m busy.” I don’t open the door. But they knock on the door, and then a week later, they came and they knocked on the door. And after eight times, I’m like, “You know what? I’m gonna open the door.” Right? Or a solicitor. It’s just the way it works.

And really, the follow-up, you’re doing a huge disservice. I think of it as a disservice to the seller. Which is if you’re thinking that you’re gonna close deals off of the first call or somebody giving you an opt-in on a website, and you’re gonna close ’em, then it’s almost like you’re looking for, I call it a dog with a note in its mouth, right?

Scott Corbett: (laughs)

Gary B.: That says, “Hey, come buy my house for 50 cents on the dollar.” Right? There’s a relationship that has to happen. And there’s so much profit on that deal. Let’s just say that you knew that on average, if you just called eight times, right? Let’s just assume you’re not gonna close any deals on the initial leads. And every lead that comes in, you’re gonna have to call them seven or eight times over the next month or two. And if you do that, you’re gonna be making $25,000. So you divide $25,000 by eight, right? And that’s what your time is worth for every time you pick up the phone and just say hello. So a lot of the time, my phone people, the people that work for me, I tell ’em don’t even try to get the deal on the first or second call. Build some rapport, find something out.

We had one, the husband said, “My wife’s going in for surgery.” And we captured that. We captured as a little note that the wife’s going in for surgery. And then when we followed up with them, it’s actually via text message. When the lead comes in, our system will go out. It’s called number verify. So we’ll send out a call and find out if this is a cell phone or if it’s a landline, so that we know whether we can text them in the future. That’s something that we did. We had that built for REIvault, so every phone number that we capture, we know hey, can we actually text message them. And then you can actually put the text message right into the system in Podio.

But anyway, we texted him and just said, “Hey, I hope your wife’s doing well and she’s recovering nicely from surgery.” And it was those words that actually got him to call us back and said, “Thank you.” And he wasn’t ready, and he said, “You know, my wife’s still recovering, but I’d love to chat with you in a month from now.” And we said, “Well, great. Is there a specific day of the week or a time that would work best for you?” Right? We’re always coming from a service perspective. Most real estate investors are so hungry, right? For today. They live in a scarcity model and it’s all about, “I gotta close something today.”

But if you knew that okay, you’re gonna get these lay down deals, you’re gonna get about 5% or 10% that are gonna happen right away. But 90% are gonna happen somewhere between the fifth and the 12th interaction, right? So it’s worth spending the time and the follow-up. As a real estate investor, that’s really where all of your time should be. Your team’s focus should be all around the follow-up.

And if you do it right, you’ve got a system to do it and you’ve got a small, I call ’em sales ninjas, right, that know exactly what to say and when to say it, and how to say it. In fact, you can. I think we have a script. I’ll pull it up if you want. You can see my screen right now, right?

Scott Corbett: Yeah.

Gary B.: Let me show you our script. I’m actually gonna pop into Podio here. Here’s Podio. We set this up for everybody. And if you’re using InvestorFuse, it probably looks similar. We actually kind of give this away. The system, from our perspective, isn’t the value. The value is the people that are running the system, right? I mean, you can set up a pay-per-click ad, but if you don’t have an expert like Scott and his team of experts, right? That’s where the work is. And so, same thing for REIvault. We have multiple teams that are managing the marketing, that are managing the set-up, VAs that are pulling comparables.

But I go to the seller leads, as an example, I’ll just pull up this one here. Let me just look at this lead here. Lead came in. Okay, this lead, as an example, came in four days ago. So Adam Keller came in. This one actually shows that it’s qualified by sales. We had one of our sales ninjas fill out and call this person.

But here’s the script that we have, and this is for our phone team. And I can give this to you and your group, Robert, if you wanna train your phone team on what to say and how to say it, I’ll actually give you a free tool that you can use.

But this comes right out of Podio. This is typically for the phone team that’s calling the leads. But this is an existing lead. And then here’s the right words to say, in the right order. So, “Hello, I’m responding to your call about a property for sale at,” here’s the address, right out of Podio, “2701 Omar Street. You possibly have five minutes so I can ask you a few questions about the property, like the condition? I’ll then pass this on to one of our buying specialists who’ll be able to call you back to make an offer.”

And if they say, “Yes, I can talk now,” then we move forward. If they say, “No,” then we’ll immediately say, “Well, great. When would be a good time to call?” And this automatically gets scheduled, right? So that we don’t miss calling them back, right? And this would be one contact. This would be the first. And it may take seven or eight more to close ’em. Right? But if they say, “Yes, I can talk now,” “Well, great. Do you mind if I just confirm a little bit of information about your property?” Right? Get the name, the address. We ask a couple of different times for their phone number, including their email address. These have been really magic words. This came from John Martinez and his group. “Do you have an email address where we can send more information about us?” More information about us is one way to get the email address, because if you have their email address, now we can also drip on them with email, right-

Scott Corbett: Right.

Gary B.: … over the long haul. And then, “Is the property listed with an agent?” If the property’s listed with an agent, we’ll automatically have a follow-up drip so that we check that property in, say, 90 days, and see if it’s still listed. And then we’ll continue to follow up with them, right? ‘Cause we spent the money on this lead, right? A lot of businesses, right, if you really look at this, really what you’re paying for, what you should be thinking about paying for, is phone numbers and email addresses, right? If you just had phone numbers and email addresses, right, now all the work would be in follow-up. So that’s the way that we kinda look at it.

But let’s say that the property’s not listed with an agent, and then we have an ice breaker, right? Because we’re gonna start working to build rapport. “Can I ask you a few questions about the property? It’ll take maybe three to five minutes, and I’ll pass it over to our specialist who’ll be able to quickly get back to you with an offer.” And then, “How long have you owned the property?” We’ll ask, “Is it currently occupied?” Right? We’re asking some basic questions because then we’re gonna be moving forward into the condition, and then into the negotiation questions, which is around price. Right?

And then all this stuff goes right back into Podio. So there’s a script. Let me see if I have it for everybody. REIvault.com/salesninja. Yeah, so REIvault.com/salesninja. You can get, I think I can give this script away. I’ve got the right words and you can actually hear some of the phone people in terms of what they’re saying, and there’s objection handling document. This is really what we’ve been using and what we train our phone team on. So if you guys are interested, you can definitely have that. Let’s see.

Scott Corbett: Highly, highly recommended because not only does it make your phone team consistent, but I mean, Gary, you guys have already done this with hundreds and hundreds of phone calls, you’ve worked out the kinks. The flow is correct, yeah.

Gary B.: Here’s the other one on the follow-up. I won’t get too geeked out on you, but let’s say Adam Keller comes in. I’m gonna change the phone number here ’cause I don’t wanna send Adam a text message. (laughs). It’s a demo site, but it’s live data. Let’s see here. You’ll see where I’ve got the phone number. Okay. Now, okay, this is fine. I’ll just put it on Caller ID. All right.

So here’s how our follow-up system works. Some of the other systems work similarly, but you wanna make sure that you’re using it properly. For us, let’s say a seller comes in and let’s say we make an offer. This was a lead, it was qualified, seller said, “Yeah, I wanna sell.” But let’s say we made him an offer, but they didn’t do anything. They just went silent. So we’ll move this to an offer made, and then what will happen here in a few seconds, behind the scenes, we’ll automatically put these people on a offer made, a standard offer made, no close, follow-up campaign.

So this is a series of 17 sequences that are predefined, where all the wording and all of the prerecorded, the actual voicemail that’s been recorded, will be dropped. So there’s no work, there’s no guesswork, for all of us. And then this will happen automatically. So the first sequence will go out and then we actually wait. The first one just went out, and then you’ll notice the second one scheduled for Wednesday, so in two more days. In fact, at a very specific time in the day. So this’ll go out at 12:15 PM local time. I’m on Pacific, so this’ll go out local. And then once this goes out, the next one will go out. And some of these sequences are scheduled to go out on a Saturday because we know that hey, some people work, so-

Scott Corbett: Sure.

Gary B.: … we’ll change the date and time, so some stuff we’re sending out at 9:15 in the morning, some in the afternoon, some at 8:15, some on a particular day of the week. Right? Because we know that if we’re interacting long-term in a way with as little human intervention as possible, we’re gonna maximize and close these people. And this is done, typically, by somebody else, not us as the real estate business owner. Right? This is where a lot of real estate investors get stuck, is they’re trying to do all this themselves, and they’re trying to save nickels when it’s costing them $10 bills.

Scott Corbett: Yeah. I have to say too, people have paid us quite a lot of money to set up systems like this in the past, and what you’ve done here is pretty remarkable in terms of how comprehensive it is. So-

Gary B.: Yeah.

Scott Corbett: I just wanna add, for those of you who are watching this right now, man, if your system doesn’t do all of these things already that Gary’s demonstrating for you, then I’d say it’s … I mean, the good news is you just found an opportunity to really improve a critical part of your business. And Gary, please make sure you show people how to find their way back to you-

Gary B.: Okay.

Scott Corbett: … before you wrap up, but-

Gary B.: Okay.

Scott Corbett: Yeah, this is very impressive.

Gary B.: Yeah. Now, so at REIvault, we’re not really a vendor model. I will just share. It’s a fundamental difference. We’re not really a vendor. This is a shared system approach. So the way I originally set this up is I was involved in a couple of really big masterminds. Masterminds are awesome, right? That’s how you and I met, Scott.

Scott Corbett: Yup.

Gary B.: [crosstalk 00:45:00] CG, and I’m a huge believer. But you go to a mastermind with super smart people. We’re sharing great ideas. But the problem is then each of us had to go implement ourselves. And I came back and said, “What if we just, as a mastermind, we had one centralized group of experts?” Like, Scott, you’re our PPC. Your team is phenomenal. People come to us and they say, “Hey, I’m doing direct mail. What else should I be doing?” I’m like, “You should be doing pay-per-click. If Scott has the market available, take it immediately. It’s a huge ROI for you.”

But we’re managing the systems. You set up and we just plug you in, and then our teams work together to just make sure everything is right? Pay-per-click comes in, the leads come into Podio, our system, everything else is automated, and our phone team can actually even be doing the follow-up work, right? Relentlessly for the next three years, following up with all these leads. We have over five scripts right now of what we say to the seller, right? Inbound lead comes in. If it’s a hang-up, it goes on a hang-up script, which means very specific words of what we say to the seller on a hang-up.

If they say they’re not interested, right? We don’t do anything with a not interested seller except wait for 120 days. In exactly four months, the phone team starts to work and call those people, and text message, and Slybroadcast.

And so we have a shared team of 40 people that you can tap into. It’s typically about the cost of one VA. So you’re gonna get a shared marketing team that’s gonna plan the marketing, they’re gonna pull the mailing lists or take the mailing list that you also have, we’re gonna put it into a very integrated plan, right? And then we’re gonna execute the plan and make sure that mail is going out. We guarantee the lowest cost mail because of our volumes.

And we’ll manage the systems for you. If you’re using InvestorFuse, as an example, that’s fine. We have some people that actually have been using InvestorFuse and then we’ll just still deal with the marketing. That’s fine. But it kind of misses some of the backend capabilities that we have. Again, we don’t care what the system is. It’s really the people who are making sure the marketing is going out, and then the phone teams working the leads and all the follow-up happens.

And so if you’re interested to learn a little bit more and see if this is a possible fit for you, you can go out to JoinREIvault.com. I’ll actually pull up that page right now, JoinREIvault.com, or REIvault.com, either of those pages, and it’ll kinda walk through. You know, we do everything for the equivalent of about one VA, which is a little bit less than $9 an hour.

But you’re tapping into a shared team. So we’ll have a team that actually plans your marketing, executes your marketing, sets up the systems, makes sure the systems, the VAs that process all the leads and possibly even the phone team that will follow up with your leads. And then there’s a section at the bottom that says, “See if you qualify.”

And then if you’re a fit, our team will call you. We’ll interact, make sure that we’re answering questions and make sure it’s a good fit for you and a good fit for us. And then usually we have everything set up within a couple of days, and if we’re doing direct mail, you’ll have leads come in about 10 days from the time that you sign up. And we’ll manage that, ongoing, forever, as long as you want.

Scott Corbett: Cool. Well, you know, my purpose today was not to sell your program, but I will say this. It’s fantastic. I know some clients of ours who use it. It’s very effective. Let’s just say you’re perfectly satisfied with what you’re doing now. I hope everybody’s really paid attention to the points Gary’s making here about how to structure a follow-up campaign, how to deal with it across all the communication channels – SMS, email, Slybroadcast, outbound phone calls, and email. It’s a truly well-oiled machine, like you’ve got there on your headline, is what you have to have. Or, you’re either choosing to not make as much money as you could, or you might even be choosing to put your business at risk, as these very well-funded companies come into your market over time.

So Gary, your system is the kind of thing that I think could really not only free up someone to actually spend their time at those high-value tasks, but to provide a real competitive advantage in an increasingly competitive place as the market heats up. It’s gonna be hot like this for at least another couple years.

Gary B.: Yeah, absolutely. Scott, I wanna do a couple things for your group.

Scott Corbett: Yup. We got about five more minutes here, Gary. Will that be enough time for you?

Gary B.: So I wanna be able to make, regardless of whether there’s a fit for REIvault, ’cause I love what you do, Scott, and I know that you and I acquire the same type of clients with the same set of core values. You and I have chatted about that so many times.

Scott Corbett: Yeah.

Gary B.: It’s a big one for us. But I’d love to be able to make 15 to 50 grand for each of the people that are following this today. Is that cool?

Scott Corbett: That’s very cool.

Gary B.: So here’s the best direct mail piece that was ever invented for the real estate niche. And I promise you, even the house I’m living in today comes off of this. This will be the highest-producing marketing piece. And I’ll make sure, if you want, you can send in, and you tell me, Scott, they can either send an email to us for this, ’cause I don’t actually have it on a webpage yet. Actually, you know what I’ll do? I’ll put a page together that is REIvault.com/Scott, okay?

Scott Corbett: Okay, I like that.

Gary B.: And if not, just email [email protected] and just ask for this special follow-up letter. So this letter, we’ve been doing this for a long time. This will probably get somewhere between a 20% and 25% response rate, okay?

Scott Corbett: Wow.

Gary B.: And I’ll actually show you a couple other things here too that work really well. So this is the follow-up yellow letter. So this is the best way to use yellow letters. Let me just tell you what this is.

For all the leads that have come in from pay-per-click, that you have an address on, or any list that you have where the lead, you’ve already talked to the sellers, but you have not closed the deal, right? Your existing leads. You’re gonna send out this letter. This crushes it, and so many real estate investors have no idea or they are too cheap. You’ll send out 10 of these and you’ll close a deal. All right? And tell me if that’s not accurate.

“Hi, this is,” whatever your name is, “Ryan Joseph, and we recently spoke about buying your property at 123 Main Street in San Diego. I’m writing to see if it’s still for sale or not. If your other options have not worked out, we’re still interested in buying your property. If you’d like to talk again about how we might buy your property, then give me a call,” aways put a local number on this letter, “preferably within the next week. Thanks, and wishing you and your family the best.” Name, and then the local number, and, “P.S. If your property is no longer for sale, please let me know.”

And we put this in a small invitation envelope. You don’t want to put your name on it. Needs to have a live stamp. Make sure it’s in the exact font and red ink. We do this automatically for everybody. You click a button and it automatically goes and we send out, for eight months, this particular letter. But this crushes it.

Scott Corbett: Wow.

Gary B.: And the other thing is, it’s a really good letter for your phone team. So let’s say you get on the phone and maybe you can’t get the seller back on the phone. We’ve just clicked a button, get this out, because it’s a great reason to call or text, “Hey, we sent you a small package in the mail. We just wanted to see if you received it.” Right? Or a little letter or a little note. We don’t usually say a letter or postcard. We always use the word, note. That will actually improve. This has been huge.

We also have an offer package. I won’t show you that right now, but that follow-up letter is amazing. Here’s the way we do it. We literally just go down and click a button on, Send the Follow-Up Letters, and then this will automatically trigger to put them on a follow-up drip, and we can even push it out six months. Let’s say we know that they’re gonna go on vacation. I closed a deal in Fort Collins, Colorado. The people were going out of the country for three months. I say, “Well, great. Maybe, would you like me to call you back in June?” And they said, “Yeah, that’d be great.” Most investors will skip and forget about that. And so we ended up buying the house. So the follow-up is key. Cool?

Scott Corbett: Oh, that’s fantastic. Yes.

Gary B.: We’ll put that out there. It’ll be at REIvault.com/Scott. I might add a couple of other pages. There’s an ROI calculator that’s really cool, on calculating, for pay-per-click or direct mail, what your true return on investment is. And so you can kinda plan, hey, if I spend $4,000 on direct mail, right, and my average profit per deal is $15,000, you can really calculate what your return on investment is, and then how many times you actually have to follow up with sellers. It gives you all the numbers, and then you can pass that onto your phone team and say, “Hey, do this for me, and then produce the results.”

Scott Corbett: Sounds very motivating-

Gary B.: Awesome.

Scott Corbett: … to know what you gotta hit to make your money. I love it.

Gary B.: Awesome. Cool. Anything else, Scott, that I can share with everybody? I know that we’re about at the top of the hour here.

Scott Corbett: Well, we could go on and on. This is so much fun. It’s so exciting to see what you’re doing and I just so appreciate you kinda opening this up and showing what’s inside the system that’s, I know, helping a lot of investors. So-

Gary B.: Awesome.

Scott Corbett: Gary, thank you for your perspective, which is, it’s always keeping us focused on what you’ve gotta do to generate results for your business, and that’s what it’s really all about, so-

Gary B.: Awesome. Great! So yeah, I’ll put all the resources, REIvault.com/Scott. So that letter, there’s a return on investment. Also, if you wanna see the way that we do our follow-up drip campaigns, I’ve got a video that I recorded for our members. I’ll put that out there as a link.

And then if you have an interest, if you don’t have your sales and marketing systems super tight and it’s not working, or you’re tired of doing all the stuff yourself, or you’ve got a team that’s not producing, we’d love to chat with you. You can go out to JoinREIvault.com, and there’s a little button there to see if you qualify, and you can schedule an appointment.

There’s no sales process. You’re not gonna feel strangled. We just wanna see if it’s a good fit for you, if it’s a good fit for us, make sure that we set all the expectations, saying, “Hey, this is exactly what we can produce,” and we try to be conservative, and then we go execute for you. And if it’s a fit, then great. We’d love to have successes together.

Scott Corbett: Well, excellent, excellent opportunity for a lot of people. And as always, Gary, thank you so much. I always learn something every time we talk and today’s no exception. I’m sure a lot of people on this call are excited to take the next step. And if you have any questions, contact me, contact Gary, and we’ll do our best to answer ’em for you.

Gary B.: Yeah, absolutely.

Scott Corbett: And I think that’s it for today. That’s been great. Thank you, Gary.

Gary B.: Awesome, Scott. Appreciate it. It’s always awesome hanging out with you, brother-

Scott Corbett: Ah, likewise.

Gary B.: … and to all of you on this call.

Scott Corbett: Talk to you soon.

Gary B.: Yeah.

Scott Corbett: Bye.