Melvin Feller MA Looks at the Key to Success with Real Estate
Melvin Feller MA Looks at the Key to Success with Real Estate
Melvin Feller is known as “The Entrepreneur’s Mentor” because Melvin walks his talk. Melvin Feller has been there and done that and more importantly, Melvin Feller knows how to transfer the skillset for success. This is main reason that he has been the sought after coach to hundreds of small business owners, entrepreneurs, Realtors, Real estate investors and service professional internationally. Melvin Feller’s main talent is to show you how the step by step process to build and enjoy a successful 6-figure plus business while having a balanced life. Melvin Feller is currently pursuing another graduate degree as an MBA.
How did you get into real estate investing? Did you read a book on it? Was it a seminar? A meeting of some sort with speakers selling courses? Did you get really, really jazzed and pumped up by these simple (“not easy”) concepts that were delivered to you in parable form from the stage by a charismatic speaker? Did you find yourself levitating to the back of the room, powerless but to slap down your plastic to buy the kits that were being sold there?
I discovered this thing called creative real estate. Control without ownership, solving people problems, use your brain to buy property — not your cash. I had an acute appreciation for it, given my (expensive and painful) landlording odyssey, but it seemed even with all this wonderful knowledge, I was still in very much the same position I had been in when I first got started. The same position I stayed in, until I wised up, and the same position most real estate investors struggle with year after year because they do not know any better.
That is “I know all this stuff inside and out. I know 100 different creative ways to buy a property. However, I have to suffer through things like lackluster advertising results, cold calling, talking to hundreds of testy uninterested people, and dead ends, before I even get the chance to talk to someone who is half way motivated to sell. This is a crossroads. The proverbial “brick wall” for most of us.
Moreover, this brings up an important point. Possibly the most important point to really “get” here. Knowing how to find motivated sellers is far more important than knowing 100 different ways to buy a house. You see, your business (and therefore your life) is going to be frustrating, stressful and unfulfilling unless you find a way to create a non-stop flow of motivated sellers calling you, every day. Now, that is obvious isn’t it? Well it cannot be that obvious because not many people actually do it. You see, what I am trying to point out here that there is a mental shift that needs to occur in your mind, a paradigm shift if you will, before you are going to make any serious money as a Real Estate Entrepreneur.
Moreover, what is This Paradigm Shift?
Instead of being a real estate entrepreneur, you must become a marketer of your real estate entrepreneurial business. That is what it comes down to. If you are in business, you need to make this shift in your thinking. Because no business is going to prosper, or be successful without many customers.
Making this shift in thinking, in orientation, about who you are, focuses you on the singularly most important and financially rewarding aspect of business: marketing. The money is in marketing the business, not in doing the business. It may take a while before you really absorb this. You may have to think about it for a while before it really sinks in. Read it again. Take a minute. Once you change your thinking to accept that you are a marketer first and a Real Estate Entrepreneur second, you will finally be able to start making the kind of money you really want to make.
Accepting your role as a marketer is the thing that will move you out of the rut of occasional mediocre deals and up into a level of sustained success that would not otherwise be possible for you. In addition, this is true of anyone in any other business or industry. The person or company who is most on top of their marketing, makes all the money, and dominates their market.
Look at Domino’s
A marketing machine! Average pizza. However, aggressive marketers, and they virtually own their market. Look at Bill Gates (yes, I know, everyone cites BG). If you saw Accidental Empires though, a PBS documentary by Robert Cringley, you would know that Gates was just one of hundreds of fanatical “techies” who were trying to make this computer thing work somehow. With his astute positioning and relentless marketing, he rode Microsoft up over IBM.
Of course, this does not mean you just market better and let your buying, negotiating and selling skills go to pot. You have to be the very best property buyer you can be and run your office well too. After all, your sellers and buyers deserve the very best treatment from you. However, more importantly, doing what you do so well that people cannot resist telling others about you, is the purest type of marketing in and of itself. Remember, it does not matter how good you are if you have no Motivated Sellers to talk to. Buying houses from Motivated Sellers with little or no money out of your pocket is the name of the game, and marketing is the thing that brings in the Motivated Sellers.
OK, so, marketing. Fabulous! However, what does it mean? So far, it is just a word I have said 10 or twenty times, right. Well, there are two types of marketing people typically use.
The traditional approach which, for want of any better way to go, usually involves just going out after randomly selected sellers. They have not been screened or qualified in any way. We just know they have a house to sell. We run up big phone and classified ad bills to get to talk to them. In communicating with them we usually talk to them about our financing, and how great it is, and if they will just sell to us their “problems” will go away. We do it manually; call by call, door by door. We talk about us, rather than inquire about them. We chase, they run. When we stop, the marketing stops. The cost per deal is very high, both financially and emotionally.
The second approach is the targeted, low-cost, systemized, response-oriented approach that, through a variety of media (such as direct mail, lead generating classified ads, flyers, signs, radio, cable TV) states or implies a benefit for the seller, calls for a response from them, and positions you as “the solution” for the sellers who want that. The sellers step forward and select you. The marketing is automated, and it is an operating system that works whether you are there or not.
I do not want to shock you, but we are not going with the first choice here. Pick up just about any book or course about real estate investing or creative real estate and you will find the choice #1 approach to finding motivated sellers, if any. What you won’t find anywhere in those books or courses is the choice #2 approach, which is direct response marketing. Direct response marketing targets a specific group of most-desired prospects that you have defined as those most likely to respond to your offer (e.g. out-of-state homeowners, or expired listings), then it advertises for or delivers a message to only those people via a media (e.g. personal-looking hand-addressed #10 envelope mailed first class) that will reach them and get their attention. Once in front of the target, direct response delivers the following:
1) benefit-telegraphic headline
2) true marketing message
3) offer, or offers
4) reason to respond immediately
5) precise response instructions and mechanisms
With these five elements in place, you set yourself up to be called only by motivated, partially pre-sold sellers, continually, day after day! So now, you can be freed to do the most productive thing possible for you as an investor does: make offers to motivated sellers!
I hope that you can see the picture here. Direct response marketing cuts your advertising expense in half. It shifts, sorts and screens your prospects so that only the most qualified and most motivated respond and get to talk to you. In short, it allows you to make more while working less, with more predictability, consistency and control than anything else you could do to find deals. Is that something you want? Think about it. Is there anyone you know of who is buying and selling a boatload of houses every month?
They are still doing a ton of business. Now, why is that? They do not offer sellers anything more outstanding than you do, do they? They certainly do not offer sellers anything more creative than you are capable of offering. They do not have any better phone manner than you do. Not at all. The only thing that very successful Real Estate Entrepreneurs do better than anyone else is create a reliable, consistent flow of motivated sellers calling in each day! That is it! That is the difference. So did you get the message here? I hope so. If you want to change your experience in real estate investing from one of anxiety, frustration and disappointment to working less and making more, you will make the change.
Melvin Feller MA Texas and Oklahoma. Melvin Feller founded Melvin Feller Business Group and Melvin Feller Ministries in the 1970s to help individuals and organizations achieve their specific Victory. Victory as defined by the individual or organization are achieving strategic objectives, exceeding goals, getting results or desired outcomes and a positive outreach with grace and as a ministries. He has extensive experience assisting businesses achieve top and bottom line results. He has broad practical experience creating WINNERS in many organizations and industries. He has hands-on experience in executive leadership, operations, logistics, sales, program management, organizational development, training, and customer service. He has coached teams to achieve results in strategic planning, business development, organizational design, sales, and customer response and business process improvement. He has prepared and presented many workshops nationally and internationally.
