As I travel around this great country speaking with real estate investors of all levels of experience, I get asked a lot of great questions about how I run my business. So I started keeping track of them to see what were the most popular or important questions I was being asked. After a few months time, I compiled them all from the casual question in a hotel lobby, to the most in depth probe from the hundreds of emails I get on a daily basis.

And do you know what the #1, most important, absolutely have to know the answer, like now, question I get is?

If you guessed “Where is the market heading?” you’d be close. If you said, “Where do you get the money to finance your deals?” you’d only be a little off the mark. How about “Where do you get your buyers?”? That one came in second.

The most important question I get, the one that every investor absolutely has to have the answer to or you can’t run your business is….drum roll please…

How do I get so many motivated seller leads each month?

Seems like a pretty simple question, doesn’t it? Well, it is, sort of. We use a multitude of marketing techniques to bring in all those motivated sellers. I will list them for you in no particular order of importance, and then give you a little bit of the good and the bad for each.

Newspaper Ads
Bandit Signs
Direct Mail
Lead Providers (Both exclusive and non-exclusive)

Let’s start with newspaper ads. They work extremely well in some markets and not so good in others. And the only way to truly find out is commit to running an ad for at least a month or two, which will cost you from $500-$1,000 or more, depending on your ad. Plus, chances are there will be at least a dozen other investors running a “We Buy Houses” ad in that same paper. Having said that, we get enough solid leads every month to make it worth the expense.

What about bandit signs? Again, they work better in some markets than in others. It just depends on the sign police in your market, when and where you put them up (or have them put up for you I should say). The good side is you will typically get leads in the areas where you put the signs, so you can somewhat target an area. As with newspaper, you need to commit to putting out signs every week for a few months to truly test the response rate. This can become a bit costly, because you will lose signs each week.

Moving on to direct mail: This is one of the surest ways to get motivated sellers calling you. Mailing to pre-foreclosures, out of state owners, non-owner occupied properties, people in divorce, in probate, etc will yield wonderful motivated sellers. Direct mail does have its drawbacks though. It can be very time consuming if trying to do it yourself. Plus, it absolutely requires a consistent approach. You have to stay on top of your mailings every week to make sure you have a steady flow of leads coming in.

What has come to be my favorite way to get leads is to simply pay for them. Let someone else do all the marketing and I sit back and check my email for leads. Now, there are two types of lead generation companies out there…exclusive territory providers and non-exclusive territory providers. I prefer the non-exclusive, simply because it’s cheaper!! And when the seller is desperate they are going to contact as many people as they can anyways.

Exclusive lead providers can be well worth it if you can actually get the market you want. Most are already spoken for and if they are available, expect to pay anywhere from $2,000-$5,000 per month for the service. I’m not a big fan of the exclusive services, because you’re paying a premium for the leads. And chances are that desperate seller will contact more than just one company to help them solve their problems.

My favorite is the this motivated lead provider that I personally use: Click here to get started for $1.00. The monthly fee after that is less than you’ll pay for any of your other marketing campaigns. The best part is, you don’t have to do any work whatsoever, and the leads just show up in your inbox. That’s what I love about it so much…NO WORK and a LOW PRICE.

That ought to work for just about everyone, right?

Here’s the deal in a nutshell. If you’re a full time investor and rely on leads to make money, you should be doing all of these things each and every month. If you haven’t already Clicked on the link then you’re going to miss out on yet another great deal… you get to start the service with only $1.00, but only for a few days after I write this (that’s the deal I made for our subscribers with the lead company).

If you’re a newbie, just getting started, or part time investor, you should immediately sign up for this service since it’s the cheapest and fastest way to get leads coming in, period.

Make sure to mention that I sent you and you’ll save 50% off the monthly price. Just enter “CMYates” in the promo code field when you sign up here.