Determine and Reach Your Target Market

This is an awesome business! You can find private lenders who will change your life and help you take your business to an incredible level of success.

As you prepare to find these lenders, it is practical to stop and consider just who they are and how to reach them. You want to attract people who have the means to step up and take action on your program.

When I decided to work with private lenders, I wanted to go beyond just my circle of friends, I wanted to reach others as well. My challenge was to determine common denominators and find a way to effectively reach those people.

I knew the kinds of individuals I wanted to reach were financially savvy and could appreciate the generous interest rate I offer.

I found out that I could get an extremely targeted list of names of potential lenders from a list broker. You can find the name of a list broker in the phone book or on the Internet. The one I used was Dunhill's. You can tailor the list almost any way you want. I thought a lot about this then requested the names, addresses, and phone numbers of people who met the following criteria:

a.) They were located in our county
b.) They owned their own home
c.) They bought items through the mail
d.) They owned bank Certificates of Deposit (or CD's)

Let's look at each one on this list for just a moment and I'll explain the logic behind my target choices.

A.) They were located in our county.

I wanted to focus on my local market because it was likely they already knew about me from my other marketing efforts:

They'd seen the ‘I Buy Houses' signs for years. I sponsored Little League teams and so they may have seen the t-shirts with ‘I Buy Houses' and my phone number on the shirts. They may have even read the newspaper articles the local paper had done about my company Integrity Home Buyers, Inc. and me.

When I specified this criteria, I believed the lender would be comfortable loaning to one of their neighbors.

Also, some of my current lenders seemed to delight in being able to actually drive by the house on which they held the mortgage while I was having my crew do the work. They seemed to feel safe knowing exactly where their money was. They liked being able to tell their friends, ‘My money is in that house right there.'

B.) They owned their own home.

People who own their own home, are probably already aware of what a great investment real estate can be.

C.) They bought items through the mail.

I reasoned that if they bought things through the mail, they would take time to read things sent to them through the mail. And, one of our primary marketing tools was a postcard.

D.) They owned bank Certificates of Deposit (or CDs).

These people obviously had available money. With the banks paying a pathetically low rate on CDs this made my program that much more attractive.

So I got my list of targeted names. I mailed postcards to those names and invited them to the luncheon.

They could also request information and we would send them our professional ‘audio business card'.

We didn't have a tremendous crowd – we didn't need one. It wasn't the number of guests so much as the number of guests in our targeted market who could take advantage of our program. We targeted our market correctly and have had awesome results.

Two luncheons and I had $1 million dollars to go buy houses with.

I wish you much success!