Are You A Secret Agent Investor?

Editor’s Note: Dennis Fassett is a former corporate finance executive turned real estate investing “Cash Flow Mercenary.” Dennis specializes in single-family and multi-family cash flow properties and thoroughly enjoys assisting his fellow investors with their own strategies, including how to buy your first apartment building.

As an ongoing contributor to Mogul’s “Market News Updates,” Mr. Fassett provides us with his own unique, lively, and thought-provoking commentary on the timely industry news and events of today that are impacting our industry. And be sure to check out his other super-helpful Market News Updates. For now, enjoy...

From Dennis Fassett, Cash Flow Mercenary...

Since I have a day job, I can’t get out during the day. So I don’t spend much time going out to see properties unless I buy something as a rental. I do that on weekends.

Instead, I partner with a couple of full timers in my market, and after I take the calls, get the info on the property and assess motivation, I book the appointment and send the details to one of my partners via email.

They then visit the property, make the offer, get the contract signed and quarterback the closing.

And then we split the wholesale fee.

They’re happy because it gives them more deal flow without having to do any marketing, which most of them hate anyway and aren’t very good at, and I’m happy because I consistently get checks.

To say the least it works very well.

Since I’m basically doing virtual wholesaling in my own market, I decided that to increase my own deal flow I could do the same thing in other markets. I figure if my marketing works here, it should work elsewhere.

Pick a Perfect Partner

The only variable is finding similar rock-solid partners with experience in the new market I decided on.

parnter Once I picked a market and I started to look for a partner there, however, I never realized how difficult it would be to find someone.

The interesting thing is why.

In the market I’m looking at, there are a little over 4 pages of “We Buy Houses” webpages in the Google search results.

Since pretty much every site has the same lead-capture blather on the homepage, I did what a lot of prospects do…

I went straight to the “About” page. Because I like to know who I’m working with. I was shocked by what I saw.

Or more importantly, what I didn’t see.

Out of the 4 pages or so of search results:

Only 4 of the “About” pages had an actual picture of the wholesaler.
Only 1 of the “About” pages had any pictures of family. (One guy had a picture of him and his wife. Like I do.)
Only 7 of the “About” pages had any sort of personal message or personal information, or even sounded like it was written from a personal perspective.
Most of the sites had generic real estate speak about what they do.
And 8 of the sites didn’t have an “About” page at all.

That’s a piss-poor showing. So, I decided to check my market...

Are You Real?

Pretty much the same results…

Except that a couple of the “About” pages were even worse. They still had the generic “Lorem Ipsum” type text that you’re supposed to modify… on a live page that prospects can navigate to. Did I say shocking?

I learned way back that social media was supposed to be social. That it was about interacting on a personal level and making connections based on shared interests. And that people decide in a few seconds if they’re going to spend any time at all on a site.

I’ve taken that to heart and, for example, I have an actual picture of me in my Facebook profile. Shocking, again, I know.

And I’ve carried that through to my business websites. I have pictures of me, my wife, my kids and actual deals I’ve worked on with me in the picture. The whole thing.

All because I’m trying to be a real person and be, as I call it, connectable. Someone who a prospect wouldn’t mind doing business with.

As the saying goes, a picture is worth 1,000 words. And I can’t tell you how many people have commented on the pictures of my family after they have submitted their property information on one of my sites and I’ve called them back.

Think about that...

And think about what we’re doing. We put up a site. We optimize the hell out of it for SEO. We pay people to write blog posts. We spend a ton of money per click on Google AdWords, and so on and so on and so on.

We spend a ton of time, effort, and energy in getting people to visit.

And then once they do, we ask them to fill out 27 data fields about their home, with only the content on our site to build trust.

If a prospect is looking for someone to work with, who do you think they would choose?

Someone with a generic, impersonal, out-of-the-box website, or someone with pictures?

Actually, who would YOU choose?

I think it’s pretty obvious.

I get it. You don’t have a good picture or you don’t want to put your own picture on your site. I don’t either. The last thing I want to see on my sites is my ugly mug.

But it works. So do it.