Word of Mouth
Advertising is a big deal in any business. Your customers need to know what you do and how to get in touch with you. In real estate investing, advertising presents a unique challenge in that you nearly never have repeat customers. That’s because most people don’t have multiple houses to sell.
In order to drive your investing business forward, you need to be advertising constantly to bring in new leads. Effective advertising can take the form of T-shirts, mailings, vehicle lettering, local newspaper ads, or something as simple as a Facebook post.
We all know that word of mouth is the best advertising, but how do you get that kind of advertising without repeat customers?
Truthfully, it’ll take a while. You have to build a good history of treating people fairly. There’s no fast track to word-of-mouth referrals, but once you get there, your business will explode.
We just had a deal happen as a result of two people giving us good word-of-mouth references, and boy was I grateful. Let me tell you how these people became our advocates and why I believe the deal wouldn’t have happened without them.
As I walked into the flooring department at a local home improvement store, I stopped for a casual conversation with one of the sales associates. We have good relationship with each other. You see, we purchased a property from the associate’s mother this past year.
While I was in the store, the associate told me about some customers that needed to sell a house; I even got introduced to the customers.
They sheepishly said, “We have a house we’d really like to sell, but it needs work”.
I replied, “I’d love to buy your house and I don’t mind that it needs work.”
As we walked out of the store to go look at the house, the sales associate said, “Ya’ll listen to Joey. He’ll take good care of you.”
At the house, I let the couple do most of the talking. I’d pipe up and ask the normal questions like, “Why are you selling such a nice house as this? What do you need to get out of the property? How’d you come up with that number? What do you plan to do with the money?”
I found out they’d inherited the property free and clear. They were in their 80s, and they felt they were too old to be messing with it.
As we sat down on the front porch for me to write them an offer, my floor man Anthony Smallwood of Southern Style Floors pulled up. He saw my truck out front and stopped by to say hey.
As it turns out, Anthony and the sellers knew a bunch of the same people. They visited and laughed the whole time I was writing the offer.
Anthony said his goodbyes and headed for his truck. Before he got there, he turned and said to the sellers, “Ya’ll, Joey’s a real good guy. Listen to what he’s got to say. He’ll do you right.”
We closed that house the following week.
Proverbs 27:2 says, “Let another man praise you, and not your own mouth – A stranger, and not your own lips.”
Anthony and the sales associate were by no means strangers, but because of their praise, I was able to structure an owner finance deal with these sellers only two hours after meeting them for the first time.
You can’t buy advertising like that- you have to treat people right.
We try to go the extra mile. If someone tells us about a house, and we buy it, we show up unannounced and hand them a cash referral reward. We call it a birddog bonus. It’s our way of saying thank you. Neither one of the people above knew we did that- but they do now.
And when that word spreads, the number of solid leads you get will skyrocket.
Joe and Ashley English invest in real estate in Northwest Georgia. For more information or to ask a question, go to www.cashflowwithjoe.com