If you've been in business for any length of time, you'll find that there are more things to do then can be done in any given day, so you absolutely must prioritize to become a successful real estate investor.

The 80/20 rule, also called Pareto's Principle, tells us that a large percentage of our success is dependent on the significant few things. The general idea of the rule is that 80% of your results will come

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Here are 4 amazingly simple ways to get others to find great real estate deals for you.

First, and this is an obvious one, hire a real estate agent or broker to scour their multiple listing service (MLS) and only bring you the deals that meet your very specific criteria. The overwhelming majority of real estate agents and brokers are paid only when you buy or sell a property using their service. They can look through the inventory they have access to and share with you the ones that meet you very specific needs. Then, when you find one that works for you, you buy it with that real estate agent or broker. You get a great deal and they earn a commission.

Second, find

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Many real estate investors lose out on an untold number of real estate deals by pre-screening too much on the telephone. Far more real estate investors pre-screen too much even before the first phone call, but that's a topic for another day. Let's discuss why you should NOT pre-screen for motivation on the phone if you want to buy more deals, with better terms and at better prices.

Are you the type of guy or gal that asks/asked if they're going to get an

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If you are using a blank sheet of paper or, even worse, scraps of paper to jot down information about potential properties when you are talking to potential motivated sellers on the phone for your initial call, shame on you!

You should be taking down all the information about the property and sellers in an organized fashion. If you do not have a Property Information Sheet to use to gather this information for your own real estate investing business, then get one or, as a last resort, make your own and use it for every call.

Most of the information you'll gather is

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So you've put out some marketing and had some potentially motivated sellers call you. Whether you are taking the call live or returning the call from a voice mail message, here is a big picture overview of the process for talking to motivated sellers for the first time.

First off, do not... I repeat... DO NOT... research the deal before you talk to the seller. Get back on the phone with the seller as quickly as possible and without doing ANY work on the file before you call. There will be plenty of other areas to procrastinate where it is to your advantage to do so... this should NOT be one of them.

If you can, take the call live from motivated sellers. If not, return phone calls as soon as you can.

For this initial call, you will want to

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There are many ways to increase your response rate when marketing for your real estate investing business, but today I am going to talk specifically about a general one that can be applied to ALL of your marketing. This one simple method can be used to give you a small boost in response regardless of what type of media or message you are using, or what market you are targeting (the 3 Ms of Marketing). What is it?

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In your search for great deals, you are probably utilizing all of the resources that you know of to find the next deal worthy of your investment time and money. This probably includes scouring craigslist ads, calling on FSBOs, and following up on your own marketing if you have any out. You may also be using a real estate agent as a source for deals. As the number of bank owned properties on the market increases, real estate agents are especially useful as sources to find and negotiate these types of deals.

However, you may need to train your real estate agent to cater to your particular needs as an investor. While there are some great investor friendly real estate agents out there, there are also many agents with little experience dealing with investing or dealing with investors. These agents can still hook you up to good deals, but

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If it's time to fill a vacancy for one of your rentals, you will want to get the maximum marketing exposure possible. Chances are, that if you are reading this article online, you already understand the value of the internet. Three lines of description in your local print newspaper is no longer enough to get the phone ringing with enough interested renters in most markets.

With the widespread availability of the internet and the ease of accessing information on it, most of your potential tenants expect much more than a brief description of the raw data of their future dwelling – i.e. beds, baths, square footage and rent. Instead of spending all day on the weekend driving around looking at potential rental units, most of your tenant pool will prefer to browse through full color photographs of available rentals from the comfort of their favorite computer station. Many internet sites even offer virtual tours of available units, so to be competitive in our current marketplace, you need to make sure that you have the marketing out to reach all of these internet-surfing apartment hunters.

In addition to posting ads with full color photographs on popular sites like Craigslist,

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