"One Sub2 Ringy Dingy, Two Sub2 Ringy Dingy"

"Is this the party to whom I am speaking...?"

Unfiltered calls are the pits!

Last month I abandoned all heretofore protocols of mine and posted an unfiltered craigslist ad.

Why? I had a friend who had a friend who needed out of her small house yesterday. Frankly, I don't like doing low-end deals, especially, if I can't get the deed, and it's going to be lease/option deal --- and especially when the house isn't that nice.

That's nearly 3 strikes. The third strike would be trying to cover an adjustable loan, on an underwater house. Forget that.

However, my friend's friend needed help so I thought, "Well, if I owned an upside down rental, and needed a way to protect my credit, and I didn't know any way, and I found a guy like me to help me, he would be my hero." So I succumbed. I'm so desperate to be a hero.

I didn't have a buyer's list ready for either a lease/option house, or one this cheap. So I had to scramble to get things together. So, I experimented with the generic craigslist "lease option" ad, based on some proven ad copy I developed from earlier times. However, I left most of the qualifying information out of the ad to get the largest response, in my attempt to remind myself why highly tailored ads are critical to maintain --- and used to avoid having to wade through a bunch of trash calls.

My experimental ad copy worked, but I left out another important ingredient. Meantime, I got exactly what I advertised for...a pile of unfiltered buyers with no money for down payments. Whoops!

The real point of this, is that certain shotgun ads work. However, when it does, we'll be on the phone forever with "Looky Lou's!" who aren't serious (or ready) to actually buy our houses if we don't first say what we must have... Otherwise, we just get the just curious, and the tire kickers, that waste our time.

So what was the missing ingredient here, besides not qualifying with the ad copy?

Why, it was not using voice mail to capture and qualify leads. If we're not using a 3rd party lead capture, then what? It means that we're gonna have to do the screening in person.

In years past I was the "Marvin Milquetoast" of phone interviewers. I all, too often, operated from my heels. I rarely felt in control, or confident about how to cut to the chase. That was then. Not no mo.

Now, I've got one question that I ask every buyer before we get down to business...to see IF we can get down to business, so that I'm not wasting my time personally helping the curious weigh their options at my expense. And what is that "one question?"

You can find it in my creative real estate investing course I call, "Screw The Bank!"

It's my "no credit - no down payment - no hassle" real estate investing system that allows me to find the most anxious buyers and sellers in this market who will let me pocket $30k in 90 days."