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Private Lending: The Importance of Including Testimonials in Your Credibility Kit

By Michel Lautensack

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 08Jun2009 Word count: 736 Viewed: 90 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

Another element that is extremely, extremely important to include in your credibility kit is testimonials. Testimonials are very, very important and you need to start to think about it. If you're not getting testimonials now you need to do it, and you need to start to think about it and you need to plan it. You need to plan it in almost every aspect of your business.

Collect Testimonials

You need to get testimonials from buyers. You need to get testimonials from sellers, from bankers, from accountants, from title people. Obviously if you could get it from an existing private lender that would be perfect, but let's assume that most of the people on the call listening to this do not currently have private lenders.

Anybody you can get to speak about your skills and your experience and why you're an expert in the field of real estate investing is clearly something you need to include in this kit.

I would get into the habit of constantly asking for testimonials. I know people sometimes are shy and don't want to do this, but get over this. It doesn't even matter if you're not involved in real estate investing. In any business, please, think about testimonials.

Different Forms of Testimonials

Handwritten Letters: Testimonials come in many different forms. People can write you a letter, a handwritten letter. That's obviously one of the very traditional ways of doing it. I think that's a great way, particularly if you can include the original letter or a copy of the original letter in there. Do not change it. Put it right in there. If there is a particular area of that letter that is important you can highlight it in yellow or something, that's fine.

Audios: I am thinking about trying to move to audio testimonials where I would get people to call in and provide a one or two or three minute audio testimonial. They're extremely important for websites and things of that nature, so if you're very web-based, clearly that will be a way that you can start to pick up testimonials.

The important thing is you'll get an occasional testimonial if don't ask for it, but it's going to be fairly rare. If you want testimonials, you have to ask for them. It's that simple. You have to get comfortable with doing it. So get familiar with it. It doesn't have to be anything fancy.

Request a Testimonial Early in the Transaction

I'm a very low-key person for the most part. Many of you know I run a full-service property management company. Whenever I put a tenant into a building, when we do our walkthrough with the tenant I will sit down with them and say, "Hey, by the way could you say something nice about me? Here's a piece of paper." I put the pencil and paper in front of them and say, "Here."

I quite often will take a photo of them on their very first day. Believe me, we do this on purpose the first day because if you know, like any product, by the third or fourth day it doesn't seem quite as nice as it was the first day.

We understand in the rental business that the first day is nice and everything's clean and wonderful, but by the third or fourth day maybe something doesn't work, maybe it didn't work quite as good as you thought, maybe the hot water is not as good or whatever. The quality of the testimonial will not be nearly as good as it is the first day.

So think about that, whenever you buy somebody's house, obviously at the closing you would get a testimonial. If you sell somebody, again, at the closing table is the time to do it.

Bankers, all these people, if you go to your local branch quite often ask the local branch manager if you can get a testimonial. Just to get into the habit of asking for it on a regular basis. Make sure you get the testimonials. Collect them over time. I know in the beginning you may not have many. Develop this as part of your credibility kit so over time you'll be constantly adding more and more and more.

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