Many of you have been telling us that you are ready to start investing, but “you can’t find any deals! What are the steps and secrets to finding a good deal?” Some of you have even written to us asking if there are still any offers left… OF COURSE there are! We find them all the time. But you won’t find them looking at newspaper for-sale ads, yard sale signs, or concentrating solely on short sales, foreclosures, REOs, and agent-listed properties.

You need to get the motivated sellers out from under the rocks where they hide and have THEM call you! Imagine how easy and stress-free it is to earn a great income when real, motivated salespeople call you and you can pick the best deals from their calls. It really is like shooting ducks in a barrel.

Alright, enough is enough! Now you’re wondering: how can you get those same motivated salespeople out from under a rock and call you too? The secret is in a multi-step campaign, and one of the important steps is to use direct mail, that is, postcards or letters that get motivated sellers to pick up their phone and call you.

We’ve got tons of examples and a much more detailed explanation of a complete low-budget investor marketing campaign in our $69 book/tape course Marketing: Secrets to Exploiting the Quantity and Quality of Your Offers and we actually design and Implement Your Own Full Marketing Campaign With You In Our 6 Month Training Program: Secrets To Your Own $80,000/Year Real Estate Investing Business, No Bulls

So, here are the 14 key secrets to writing killer postcards that create a giant wave of motivated salespeople.

1) Write all your text or copy with WIIFM in mind. WIIFM stands for What’s In It For Me. The “I” means the seller, the recipient of your postcard. Write purely in terms of the benefits to them, NOT what you’ll get out of it, or much about yourself. Focus on what will excite them, what will you do for them, what can you sincerely say to make them believe you can help them.

2) Holder with WIIFM. Develop a big, bold 10-20 word headline that gives them your best and boldest “WIIFM punch”, and place it at the top of both sides of the postcard. For example: “Can you really sell your house in days? Don’t sign up with an agent or put up a For Sale sign until you read this.” Another example: “Are you frustrated because you want your house to sell overnight? Now you have an easy solution for problems like: people in need of repairs, bad tenants, late payments, estate, eviction, bankruptcy, divorce or foreclosure mortgage”.

3) Make the recipient’s name/address as personal as possible. You don’t want it to look or look like junk mail, so when you send the postcard don’t use ‘Resident’ or ‘Owner’ or ‘Mr. Smith’ or ‘Mrs. Roberts’. Try using just first and last name: ‘Susan Johnson’. You may also consider handwriting (or using a handwriting font) the recipient information.

4) Use a photo of yourself, a head shot taken in a studio, so the salesperson considers you “real, friendly, likeable, and trustworthy.” The sooner the seller feels that he knows and trusts you, the sooner he will call you and sell you your house.

5) Include the address of the non-owner-occupied property (i.e., the rental home) on your title, if you are mailing an absentee owner or landlord elsewhere, to your home address. This lets the recipient know which of your homes they are interested in purchasing.

6) Your return address should also not be a “spam indicator”, so consider omitting your company name and instead just use your personal name and/or handwrite the return address as well.

7) You need testimonials from all of your happy sellers (include their full names and occupations), so you can include as many as possible on your postcard so that the seller can identify with them and come to feel like they know and trust you. -quickly.

8) If you are too new to have testimonials from your sellers, write short “Success Stories”. Just one or two paragraphs describing how you helped “Frank and Joanne save their house from foreclosure…”. Please make these truthful and cut writing to the WIIFM, but do not use last names as you do not have written permission.

9) Show the vendor that you regularly help your neighbors and/or have a history of helping vendors, including the number of vendors you helped in the past month or year, and/or their (nearby) addresses.

10) Sellers need to see your phone number printed on the postcard at least 3-6 times. So that every time they read it they have a new opportunity to lean in and make the decision to call you.

11) Sellers trust you more when you can offer a Genuine Warranty that is meaningful to the seller and that you will truly stand behind. For example: “we guarantee you’ll get a written offer within __48__ hours, or we’ll take you out to dinner or send you to the movies” (give them a gift certificate to a pizzeria or theater, if you don’t meet guaranteed).

12) Tell everyone, even on your postcard, that you pay referral fees if they know someone who would like to sell their home quickly and smoothly.

13) Provide the recipient with a “Not Quite Ready Response Mechanism”. If they’re not ready to call and talk to you yet, but are more than interested, tell them how they can visit your website or call your free 24/7 recorded message for more information. This is a great, non-threatening way to let people start to know and trust you.

14) Lastly, the “PS” at the bottom of your postcard has been researched as the MOST read part of any postcard or letter. So include a PS summarizing what you do and your phone number at the bottom.