Private Lending Program for Real Estate Investors: How to Format Your Credibility Kit

Credibility kits can come in many, many different forms. You can do them fairly casually. Just put together a bunch of papers, and photocopy them. That's probably been the traditional way of doing it. It doesn't really look very well put together or well-thought out. Most of your competition is going to put together their private lending credibility kits in that manner. They're going to have 10 or 15 pages. It might be photocopied, who knows, but it's not going to be very well-thought out. It's not going to be very cohesive.

Push Your Credibility Kit Beyond the Competition

I would encourage you, and I certainly encourage most of my students, to push it beyond what the average competition is out there doing. To get your credibility kit into a much more professional piece - and again that may be one of the very first things you give to a private lender -- you want it to reflect upon you.

If you have done your credibility kit in a way that really shows you've thought it out, you've organized it, it really brings your skills and your experience and the power of your private lending program to light. It reflects upon you so it really allows you to stand out in the competition.

If you want to walk into a presentation with six or eight pieces of paper kind of all crumpled and dirty, that's fine. It doesn't reflect upon you very well. I would really encourage you to think about moving beyond that and to organize it into a way that is - it could be 30, 40, 50 pages in some cases depending on what your program is. It's organized. It's well thought out and in some cases could almost be part of a free report.

As you'll notice on my credibility kit, that's essentially what it is. It is a part of a sales process. It is part of an explanation of my private lending program and at the same time, it is part of my credibility kit. It really serves two purposes.

Two Methods of Compiling Your Credibility Kit

Copied and Hardbound: You can have your credibility kit copied and hardbound. That is fine as long as it's well done and print it out nice and neat, or you can actually have it converted to a PDF form. Really, you probably should do both. Have it in a form that is converted to a PDF.

PDF Format: If you folks understand how to make PDF, that's wonderful. It's actually very surprisingly simple. There is a lot of free converting PDF software out there. I think if you go into Google and type in "free PDF software," there are a number of versions out there.

Printing and PDF

If you've got a printer and you can print, you can print it out. I think it will take your files and it will convert it to a PDF automatically. You can take your kit to Kinko's or one of those types of places and for a few bucks; they will scan it for you into a PDF format and probably throw it all on disk for you.

Once you have it in the PDF format, you can then email it to people. You can make it part of a free program, your free gift to somebody. Maybe you have a little part of your program that explains what it's all about and some of the advantages of a private lending program and you include as part of that an attachment that is your credibility kit.

That is a very nice way and very inexpensive way of marketing to potential prospects who, at this point, you don't know that well. They're not prepared to spend a lot of money in mailing things and stuff like that. Maybe the first thing you do with that individual is send them out this credibility kit and maybe a free report. Its part of an email asking them to call you or to email you back for further information.

At that point, potentially, you would send them something in the mail or schedule a meeting with them, whichever you like, but at least that way you know at that point that you have a much more serious individual.