Driving For Dollars

You will hear this same mantra repeated over and over again. The quality of your list is in direct proportion to the success of your campaign. Whether that be a direct mail, ringless voicemail, or cold calling campaign, the same belief holds true.

And one of the best lists you can build is one that is self-generated by driving for dollars.

What is driving for dollars?

Driving for dollars is the act of hopping in your car and driving a neighborhood/market in search of houses that look vacant, or are in some form of distress.

Many people have their own "system" for doing this, and here at REI BlackBook, we have a system that works really well!

When you find a property that appears to be vacant, instead of just jotting it down on a notepad, you can use an REI BlackBook internal landing page, and enter the property there.

Once you do this, the property will be automatically added to your property pipeline. Do this for every property that you find on your drive, and you will have built a list of properties that you can export when you get home.

What you'll need:

• Driving for Dollars Intake Form: 
  • Build an internal landing page with a web form where you can submit property data, pictures, and more.
• Property List:
  • Export the list of properties that you submitted on your drive so you can generate a direct mail and/or a cold calling list.
• Mailer (See Direct Mail)
• Skip Tracing Service:
  • Use a skip tracing service to generate names and phone numbers from the property address and either call them directly or drop a ringless voicemail broadcast to the entire list.

Use this lead generation method if you...

• ... are a technophobe - Don't like messing with this newfangled thing they call the Internetz?
• ... have patience - This method will take some time to start producing a volume of leads.
• ... are operating on a tight budget - You can get motivated seller leads fairly cheaply with this method.

The Driving for Dollars Process:

Step 1: Create Your Driving for Dollars Property Intake Form

While many investors drive for dollars, most don't have a system for maximizing their ROT.

ROT stands for Return On Time.

You may have heard that it takes money to make money. While that is true, you may not have extra cash on hand to spend a few thousand dollars a month on direct mail, or online ads.

If that's the case, then you have to spend your TIME to generate leads, instead of spending your money.

And you better get a return on that time that you're spending. If not, you will eventually burn out, and never get the results you're looking for.

To do this, you need a system for collecting property data and inputting that data into REI BlackBook as you drive for dollars.

When you submit a property to your Driving for Dollars Intake Form (see video below) it will automatically be added to your property pipeline. You can also automatically trigger a Workflow that will create tasks for you, or better yet, your team, to research the property and take the required next steps.

Watch this video to learn how to create your Driving for Dollars Property Intake Form:

Add your Property Intake Form to your: iPhone

Add Your Property Intake Form to your: Android Phone

Step 2: Choose Your Driving For Dollars Route

It is important to know where you want to invest before you start driving. Just like you would do before buying a list from a list broker, you need to do some basic market research to make sure you're driving desirable zip codes.

Before getting started, take some time to consider what type of properties you're looking to acquire, as well as your main exit strategy.

While it's always a good idea to have multiple exit strategies for any given property, you probably have your sights set on a specific strategy.

If you're looking to wholesale, then you want to find the hot spots in your market where a lot of cash transactions are taking place.

If you want to build a rental portfolio, then it would be a good idea to locate the neighborhoods in your market that produce the best cash flow.

Now that you've got your systems in place, and you know where you'll be driving, it's time to hit the road!

Step 3: Locate and Submit Distressed Properties

As you're driving through your targetted area, look for properties that appear to be vacant, or need a little TLC.

When you find a property, park your car, and pull out your phone, and click the D4D Icon that you have saved to the homescreen of your phone.

This will pull up your Property Intake From on your mobile device.

From there, simply type in the property address, add your notes, and upload any pictures that you've taken of the property.

Watch the video below to see this process in action:

Step 4: Contact Property Owners

Before you can reach out to the property owners, you first need to know who they are, and how to reach them.

Once you get home, you will want to jump into your REI BlackBook account and take a look at all the properties that you just submitted while out driving.

From here you have a couple of options

1. You can research each property individually on your county assessors website to see who owns it, when it was last sold, and get some basic information like the name and mailing address of the owner.
2. You can export the list, and skip trace these properties to get the name, mailing address, and phone number of the owner. If you plan on cold calling or sending ringless voicemail to these leads, then this is a necessary step.

Either way, you will need to find out who owns the property, and obtain some type of basic contact information whether that be a mailing address or phone number.

Once you have the sellers' contact information, it's time to start marketing to them.

If you have phone numbers, then you can start cold calling or send a series of ringless voicemails.

If you're not able to get phone numbers, you can send direct mail to each property owner. Since this is a very targetted list, your response rate is typically better than a mass mailer.

In closing...

Driving for dollars is one of the best ways to build a highly targeted list in your local market, without spending hundreds, or thousands of dollars with a list broker.

It's one of the best ways to get a high ROT (Return On Time), especially if you don't have a large marketing budget.

As long as you follow the simple steps in the article, and build your systems, you will have a process in place to supply your business with fresh leads every single month.

Click the button below to learn how to scale your driving for dollars efforts beyond yourself. You will hear from an REI BlackBook member who has generated over 1,400 new leads in just 5 months using this simple strategy.