Foreclosure Forecast Newsletter

I’m often asked by my new clients “Alexis who do you think will succeed?” “What do you look for when picking your next superstar?” “How would you describe your most-likely-to-succeed client qualities?”

 

These are all great questions. And if you are starting out, these are important ones to get the answers to early on, before you jump head first into the wonderful world of foreclosure investing.

 

When I first started training new clients in 1995, I was coming out of commercial real estate brokerage. I had a lot of experience in working with bankers, asset managers, corporate and commercial real estate professionals. The successful people I knew all had the same grey-speckled hair, Hartman briefcases, and Brooks Brother’s suits. They lived by the school of IBM and XEROX sales training. (More here.)

 

What I realized very quickly, is that the corporate world is very different from the real world of people in foreclosure. My prior business training models simply would not work when dealing with an owner in distress. These owners were making decisions based on emotion, not logic (as I had been trained to deal with). And the only information I found available to help me learn this new skill of “emotional selling” set was going to come from the “Self Help” section of the bookstore (not “Real Estate”).

 

I then dug in reading many books. Starting with “Think and Grow Rich”, “The Greatest Salesman in the World”, “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, “The Power of Positive Thinking”, “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” and then everything I found from Jim Rohn and Brian Tracy. (See my full Recommended Reading list here.) I went from a person who never had time for a book, to an insatiable reader.

 

What I found amazing is that from all these great teachers the same lessons of the laws of attraction and positive thinking kept coming to me over and over again. These same lessons are now part of the big DVD and Best Selling book phenomenon “The Secret” that is sweeping the nation.

 

(If you have not read the above books or watched “The Secret” yet, do yourself and your family a very big favor and get to it NOW!)

 

So back to your questions and my answers:

 

“Alexis who do you think will succeed?”

 

To begin, it’s not who you think. Being an agent, loan broker, banker, realtor, broker, appraiser or someone in the real estate business now does NOT have a leg up on success. In fact, I would say that those “in” the business now, have a hard time changing their perceptions and mindset to be open to my compassionate, yet bold approach to dealing with owners in default.

 

Most realtors want to print up mailers, business cards and slick brochures to get the owners to call them, rather than make the necessary cold calls. As I’ve said before, this simply doesn’t work. You must make cold calls and a lot of them! (Read “Why Mailers Don’t Work” here.)

 

“What do you look for when picking your next superstar?”

 

After 15 years of watching my students succeed and fail, I used to pick out clients who were gregarious and fun loving. I thought you had to be a “talker” to be good in sales. Boy was I wrong. All those “talkers” didn’t spend much time listening to their teachers! In fact, it’s the quiet ones – who listened well, did things exactly as I’ve taught them, stayed focused, and worked hard – that really rose to the top.

 

Make sure you read “Are You the Next Superstar Student?“ by Tim Rhode. He hit the nail on the head with this article.

 

“How would you describe your most-likely-to-succeed client qualities?”

 

This is an easy one – read these definitions:

 

Courage: The state or quality of mind or spirit that enables one to face danger, fear, or vicissitudes with self-possession, confidence, and resolution. Bravery.

 

Tenacity: The act of holding fast. Tough. Holding fast.

 

So in a nutshell – you must have courage and be tenacious!

 

You need the courage to reach out to new people in a genuine and compassionate way AND at the same time be honest, bold and clear with them. You must take charge of the conversation through asking thought-provoking questions that show you cared (and got to the owners truth). You must build relationships with total strangers.

 

Once you gain your first owners trust and confidence, you will be hooked. There is nothing more satisfying than knowing because of you this owner is in a better place than they would have been – had you NOT had the courage to call on them! So just DO IT!

 

And you must be tenacious and never give up! Never quit! How many calls are you willing to make in a day? How many times are you willing to call an owner who is hiding from you? How much rejection can you take before you quit? Do you have a number for this? I don’t. I simply make the next call.

 

Have you ever really wanted something? How hard did you work to get it? Let me share a recent story with you…

 

We just moved into our new corporate offices in Old Fair Oaks Village, Sacramento, CA. We were in two small 1940’s houses that were converted to commercial use. They were side by side, we loved them, but we outgrew them. Our kids go to school about 2 miles away. We are building our new home about 1 mile away.

I wanted to keep my commute down to 5 minutes (can you believe that?) and stay in the Village. But there were only a handful of properties that fit our size, location and quaintness needs. One of those properties came up for sale and immediately got 3 offers (ours being one of them). The seller did not counter offer any of us. He simply withdrew his listing, getting mad at his agent for listing the property too low.

As crazy as that sounds, the seller did nothing. I called the listing agent daily to find out what the seller was going to do. She was frustrated as I was, but did not have a clue. I then called the seller directly. I asked what his plans were, and he consistently said “I don’t know, just that price was too low.”

After many phone calls to him every other day over a period of MONTHS the seller finally gave in and agreed to sell me his property. He never got back to the 2 other offers. He simply went into escrow with me.

You must be asking WHY? The simple answer – because I didn’t give up! And when it came down to selling, there was no one on his mind more than me! I basically wore him down in a very friendly and tenacious way.

We moved into our gorgeous state of the art offices on Mothers Day. I couldn’t be happier. I called my new neighbor (of course) to introduce myself and learn more about him, and all he could ask me was how I got that building and he didn’t. My neighbor was one of the other 2 offers that never got countered.

The answer – because he didn’t try hard enough!

 

You know anything of real value in life is never easy. You must decide that you are not afraid of the unknown, you will work harder than anyone else, and quitting is not an option!

 

Make sure you read “What’s Your Motivation?“ by Daryl White. It’s fabulous.

 

So do not believe those late night TV infomercials or your emails promising you “easy money in foreclosures”. This will NOT be easy. But it can be learned if you are willing to try! (More here on how I teach my clients.)

 

With the right mind set, courage and tenacity you too can have incredible success through foreclosure investing and have anything that you want – just like my many superstar graduates.

 

Wondering how others are doing with my help? Just check out my many student thank you emails HERE.

 

I look forward to reading your thank you email next!

 

Happy investing,

Alexis