Picking your probate marketing strategy | How to get probate data ep. 78

In this episode, Bill Gross coaches real estate agents and investors that specialize in probate.  Topics include tricky probate situations that require a litigation attorney referral; networking at probate court; probate lead companies compared & how to collect probate data on your own; tips for cold calling probate leads, increasing contact rates, and handling probate objections; and how to build a probate marketing strategy around your strengths and goals.

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Episode #78 [Live Real Estate Coaching]

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RECENT CONTENT:

1. Episode 75 Live Real Estate Coaching: Sub2 deals with probate and pre-foreclosure leads: Scripts & Deal Analysis (probatemastery.com)
2. Probate Cold Calling Tips: Best way to cold call probate leads: 3 lists, 3 offers, 3 scripts https://youtu.be/Wx1hkGHZurg

FOR THIS EPISODE:

1. Chad Corbett on the Al Nicoletti show
2. 7 things to do at probate court besides pull lead lists
3. 7 tips for consistent lead generation in real estate
4. Probate lead companies
   1. Comparison & More on gathering probate data free online or in person
   2. Probate Data Sources: Bill’s List
5. Creating Facebook Ad Campaigns for a Custom Audience – Your Probate Lead Lists Episode 12 (Start time: 57:12)

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: Picking your probate marketing strategy | How to get probate data

Episode 78

Picking your probate marketing strategy | How to get probate data ep. 78

1) How to introduce a probate litigation case to attorneys (Attorney Networking)

Hey, good afternoon. Welcome to the probate mastery alumni call. We get together every Tuesday at noon Pacific time where I’m at in Los Angeles, 3:00 PM in Eastern time if you’re in Florida or New York or appropriate, or everything in between either side. We get you every week at this time, we also record it and put it on the probate mastery.com website.

This call is designed for practitioners looking to build their business, whether you’re real estate agents or investors, or wholesalers. And it’s particularly for people who have taken or getting ready to take the probate mastery coaching program, and then begin the process and learn how to, and then come on here every week, asking questions from other people who are on the same path as you.

Maybe a little ahead of you, maybe a little behind you, but hopefully we’re all working together in the same process, sharing best practices, vendors, and things like that. I’m Bill Gross and I’m a practitioner, a real estate broker in Los Angeles.

I have been building a national team of probate experts. And I took the class with Chad three and a half years ago before he was with probate mastery, and then I help run this live stream. I’m literally if I show my, the screen, finishing out the EARN program, which is earned attorney referrals now program. So, I’m a student of his as well as hopefully an experienced success story. To some degree. I’ve built a great business in Los Angeles, California based on probate. And now I’m building a national team beneath me to expand and leverage that.

And it’s doing the things that Chad set me out to do. and I think there are several different ways, you know, um, Chad covers a lot in the program and I think one of the mistakes agents or students make on that program is to assume you have to do all of it or pick one that fits in what they think is the most common.

And there are a lot of different ways one can approach this business and I’ve taken a real focus on attorney referrals. Uh, it’s been my specialty, but I do some of all of it. And so, I’m glad to share along the way. So again, the purpose of this call is to primarily answer questions and share when people are involved in the business.

So, our first question, I know Melanie, you had a question you want to ask and so you’re going to get to be first. Go ahead. All right. Hey. All right. So, I have a client, a prospective client that I spoke with last night and it’s kind of one of those cases, like a lot of probate cases.

That’s very, very multifaceted, a lot of layers to it. A lot of family members involved a lot of hostility, et cetera. And I’m not sure which way to go with this one. I’m looking for a little bit of advice on which way to go first with this client. I don’t think we’re going to be able to do a whole lot for him, but just to kind of give you a quick rundown on this one, I have some notes here.

This has been in probate. It’s been, the father passed away about a year ago in June and my client and his son were named on the will. The second brother and sister were not, well, hold on. Let’s, let’s be precise first off, this. I know the answer, but the state you’re doing this in his state of Florida.

Okay. So very important. The laws are different in every state. Yes. Second, you say they’re named; they’re named as something they’re named as heirs? As executives of the will. What are they named?

So, he doesn’t know, but he does have a copy of the will. We’d probably have to meet him.

He states heirs, that he and his son, excuse me, were on the will. And this gentleman’s brother and other sister siblings are not on the will. Another brother was named the PR. He passed away in April. So now, PR would be the personal representative. Now, does that mean he filed a probate case and then died while it’s in the process?

Correct.

Okay. Correct. So now we’re a couple of months out. Okay. Brother, who was not named on the will, and not made executor is now raising a stink with the family, and his girlfriend is now living in the home of about 450. You hear this classically, right? So, he kind of wants to know what his, his, um, you know, rights are whatnot, but to further, um, complicate the case, this gentleman did some white-collar crime.

He is an Excon in Florida, and you cannot be named the PR the person.

So, we say this person, you mean the competing brother?

The one that called me was the one that I called. Yeah. Okay. So, one, this is your client, who’s the heir, but he’s not the PA he’s not named as executor in the will?

Correct because he has a white-collar criminal background and he was convicted.

Okay. And so therefore he can’t, or it can be difficult for him to be named as the administrator now that the executor has passed. Okay. Got it. Correct. Okay. So, the father, the deceased father did not want the other siblings to have any rights to anything. The girlfriend is living in the home.

What do we do?

So that’s kind of where I don’t know what to tell them to do at this point. It’s complicated, but I’ve had these before.

 What, what part of Florida is this? You’re in Tampa, correct?

Yeah. I’m in Tampa.

Do you work with particular probate litigation attorneys or any particular probate administration attorneys?

So, I’m just getting started. I do have a couple of lawyers, um, in my bag. Um, of course, Al Nicoletti’s one of them and I’ve got another gal. Just stop there. Let’s just stop there for a second.

That’s fine. You found the right guy.

Yeah. Um, he covers the whole state he’s as good as anybody. So, I’m, as we’re doing this, I, I stopped, I’m about four-fifths through one of Chad’s other programs, which is EARN, earn attorney referrals now.

I’m not saying it to be commercial, but just to be fair one of the things he’s talking about is looking for the opportunity to create value for the attorneys. So, if you want to work with an Al Nicoletti, you know, it’s one thing to introduce him to your client to help your client. It’s another thing to introduce him in a way that Al goes, wow, Melanie, your great agent.

I don’t know other agents in Tampa, I’ll refer my next deal to you. That’s what you want to earn at some point.

The way we earn that relationship is by creating value for the attorney. Of course, referring to cases is one part of it. But referring them efficiently, if you listen to the attorneys very particularly on this program.

They’re very busy. They are, at least their perception is: they’re all ridiculously busy.

Now I’m a real estate agent. I don’t think they work as we do. I think in their minds, and I don’t mean disrespect- their tolerance or standards are off work or less than ours. They’re going to work more commonly 40-hour work week and take off vacation times.

Uh, not two weeks, a year, five weeks, a year, eight weeks a year. Most realtors, don’t have the kind of time off either because we can’t afford it. Those who can afford it, don’t take the time off because I think I enjoy it. You know, I wouldn’t want to take that kind of time off. I’d be bored in five weeks, but the attorneys appreciate it when you can make it efficient for them.

So, one of the things, as you notice when I had the conversation with you being very precise on who’s who. and I find oftentimes that, you know, clients will call me with questions, and they just want the answer, but they don’t want to necessarily help me help them get the answer. It’s important to get a copy of the will so that when you speak, you speak authoritatively, because there’s a big world of difference between those two being heirs because it might be there’s an executor… it might mean there’s a successor of the executor in the will, you know, in case so and so’s not available. And so, all those are things that you can’t give legal advice, but you certainly can read and, and then either provide to the attorney or summary to the attorney.

Nowadays with cell phones, it’s easier for people to take pictures of them and send them to you.

Just, there’s no reason not to, if you can.

I think sometimes we’re scared to ask the customer to give us information. We feel like we’re making them do work, but I think the opposite, if they do the work with us, they’re not going to share it with somebody else. They’re going to see that we’re professional in our approach and appreciate the way that we work with ’em.

So, I would say it’s really important to, if you can either meet in person, take a copy with their permission of the will, or get them to shoot you a copy of it. So that number one, you begin your relationship with your client. And number two, when you work with an attorney you’re being as efficient and professional as an attorney would referring the business.

2) Probate bond: Who can and will do it? (Probate Administration)

All that said, now we’re getting into the law. That’s an Al Nicoletti question. When somebody passes in California, you know, there’s a case opened. And then if that person who has not yet been named as the executor passes, let’s say he filed, but they never got the actual approval from the court. you can file a competing petition because it just takes 30 days.

If they’re already approved, you would file to replace the deceased executor with a new administrator. And there’s a process to do that. You need an attorney to help with that.

I imagine this process is similar in Florida, but, again, that’s an Al Nicoletti question about what that process looks like. And so, another point you made was about the son who had a white-collar crime history, not being able to be the petitioner.

So, in California, for example, the judge can or may allow them, or it may not allow them depending on their discretion if other parties are objecting and such. And the part of the issue is can they get bonded? Because the judge doesn’t want to appoint somebody if they need to get a bond if he knows they can’t get bonded.

So sometimes what happens is the attorney will offer to be the um, administrator of, of the will for their client. The most prolific, I think, or second, one of the top two or three most active attorneys in LA county, that’s his standard course. He gets customers who are financially unable to be the executor.

And he will get them bonded by guaranteeing the bond or acting as the administrator. Some attorneys don’t like to do that, many don’t. Particularly those that don’t do that many because they don’t know what they’re doing, and they’re scared. And they’ll make the customer hire a professional fiduciary, which is very expensive.

But like I said, the one or two that do the most in LA county, he will either be the administrator, or he will get the bond himself. So those are the areas you might want to talk to Al about. But I would say before I call him because you want to get as much value from that time as you can, I would do everything I can to get the will ahead of time and, then make sure I had read ahead because the executive passed, is there any succession in the will? If there’s not, then you can tell him that.

You also give him a copy of the one he can read if he wants to.

Okay. Wonderful. Thank you. Great advice. Thank you so much. My pleasure. Thank you.

Okay, the next question I saw in the chat box from Christopher. Christopher, asks me who in LA is an attorney that will guarantee you the bond of a financially challenged heir? Not a financially challenged error. This would be, from a financially challenged perspective executor. There’s a difference, right.

An heir, anybody can advance the money. I, I have an inheritance advanced company just in case anybody is interested. If you have an heir who, whether they’re the only he, or they’re the executor and an heir, or they’re just one of the heirs. And, um, they don’t want to wait for the whole probate process to get money.

Sometimes they need the money for attorney’s fees or fixing up a house or avoiding for. In the most common cases will advance some 10, $20,000. It’s like a payday loan. It costs them about 50 to a hundred percent. But it comes out at the end of the probate. So, it can be like a year.

In some cases, 2, 3, 4 years. There’s no interest on it, so it can be expensive, but it’s a very efficient way to get some money right away for somebody who needs 10, $20,000 cash, to advance, advanced fees. So, yeah, Chris was asking me, I, I don’t know that I have permission to talk about his business online.

Chris, if you want to catch me offline, we can talk about that one, but I don’t think I can share who the attorney is that does that. The important fact, I think the takeaway for everybody on this call is any attorney can be the administrator of the other heir’s approval, and/ or, you can hire a third party. Or you can appoint any third party to be the administrator. If everybody approves. They have to be bonded and bondable.

So, it’s not that difficult. Attorneys are getting paid as legal fees. And so, and, and I think also the attorney has a vested interest in the estate, so he is watching it very closely. Anybody else. who’s not an interested party is going to get paid for their time and risk. But if it’s another heir, they might be wanting to be the administrator, maybe for nominal fees.

So, anybody can do it, but I think you look at, who’s interested, an interested party, and the one who’s going to be interested in an attorney who’s already getting full fees… a realtor can do it. I have a friend who’s a real estate agent, Tawny English, who’s a professional fiduciary. So, she’ll do cases where she’s the fiduciary as well and get paid that way.

Okay. Hope that helps Chris, but you know, call offline if I can help you with that.

3) Probate mailers: Driving for dollars direct mail (Probate Marketing)

So let me see Richard. I don’t know if you’re available. I’m going to jump in as well. I see a question. You did a mailer. What are the words to say when you get your message out there?

I, my question is, um, yeah, I, I’m not sure what to put out there. It’s got to be something short and sweet, but you need something to get your message out. And obviously, it’s going… I’m, I drive around different neighborhoods and some of the houses in nice neighborhoods are pretty rough. So, you know, something is going on there.

So that’s like, I want to send a, a mailer to houses like that. So, I’m going to pick my own houses to send them to, but I need to know, I guess, how, how to word it. What, what would you use or what have you done, or I don’t know if you do mailers or not a bill, but?

So, I don’t know. Just to clarify, you’re a real estate agent and you’re in Maryland, correct?

Correct. And I live in Towson.

And are you looking primarily as an investor to find properties? Are you looking primarily to find properties, to list as an agent?

It’s to list.

Got it. And so, you’re driving and finding distressed properties. Amongst those are going to be some probates. Is that kind of what you’re, what you’re finding, right?

Yes.

Yeah. So, in that case, I think, you know, the mailing is, um, Like a lot of things. I think there’s, it’s a very deep issue. There’s a lot to it. The people who do it well, the people who do it professionally, it’s not one thing. It’s a lot of little things at the edges.

You’ll see some people very successful who use yellow envelopes.

So, you see other people who use postcards only.

Other people will say when they use a jumbo postcard because it’s big and it’s on both sides.

And I think that, that what I have noticed in my career when people mail is it’s a constant process of refinement. And sometimes, the people sharp will send out, uh, two at a time and track the results of both, and constantly, look to improve the results of the next mail or the next mailer.

The other constant, I would say is that the mailing is a process, not an activity. You can’t do it once and expect results. Use, or get your name out there, your brand out there. And that takes more than one mailer for people. Now, my experience with mailing is if you mail somebody something six times, let’s say every other month for a year, they assume you’ve been mailing monthly for like three years. That’s what it feels like to them. So, the impact of branding is always more, um, it’s like geometric with each additional one, you get more value. I think the same’s true with email. I think the same is true with social media and, I use primarily now social media and YouTube as my main marketing tactic.

So, I don’t have any particular experience… I’d used to mail to petitioners pre-COVID. I stopped when COVID hit. I’ve not restarted it just because I’ve been busy enough without it to put my money and time into other things. So, I can’t add to it. I’ve done limited mailing, uh, and limited emails on very specific properties, but I can’t say I have anything to add to what you’re doing other than I would urge you to think about a strategy that includes multiple mailing, multiple touchpoints, and then testing every single time you need to track what results in you’re getting. Best I can offer.

Thanks though. Thanks for jumping and sharing.

4) How to pick a probate marketing strategy (Probate Marketing)

Uh, Lisa asks me, will you go into a little more detail about your marketing system? Do you update the probate leads, emails, or social media? Do you run targeted ads? I raise my hands, but I have a loud vacuum clearing in the background. Okay. Well, at least we’ll give you special privileges since you have a vacuum cleaner in the background. So, my marking system, you know, I think I’m glad to go into details. I don’t want to bore anybody because I think the thing that I tell people when… I do coach calls with my team members.

on Probate Mastery there’s a chance if you buy time with me, I’m glad to sit down with you and do what calls a business planning session for half an hour, costs 500 bucks, not cheap. but I can give you, you know, my time, but what I, what I always say is you have to start with your goals, your assets, your strengths, and play to that.

So, before I get into me, my marking system, I will tell you that my father was an attorney. I had been as a kid, as, as a child, I’d been to the one courthouse in the county that has almost all the probates at the largest probate courthouse in America. I’d been there as a little kid, probably laying on the floors and running around but you know, more comfortable there than most people as result.

I was pre-law in college on the debate team, more comfortable speaking publicly than most people. I like wearing suits and ties and going to court. I like wearing Brook’s brothers’ clothes, uh, once in a while I do it every day. But when I go to court, I enjoy that. I, I can speak in an l and so for me, when I looked at probate and I took Chad’s class and I was writing my business plan, he challenged us to go to court one day just to see the process. And I did, and I noticed some opportunities to network. And so pre COVID, my marketing plan was I went every day to court, and I think most real estate agents need to lead generate three hours a day.

You know, sometimes it’s phone calls/ cold calling or calling expired listings, sometimes it’s door knocking. But I think I would say any realtor who full-time builds a business spends three hours a day doing lead generation. And so, I decided to go to court. I was there at 7 45. You might say, well, that’s odd west.

So early court gets open to eight 30. I got there and stood right at the main intersection where most people would walk by dressed in a suit and tie with a briefcase, that looks like an attorney’s, and a cup of coffee. And I would network with people from 7 45 to 10 45. And I do go to the courtroom at eight 30 in LA county there were nine courtrooms I could choose from depending on where the action was. And I would do that for an hour or so. And then from 8 30 to nine 30-ish, there was a probate research room I might go to, and I would do some lookups while I was there, but I also would meet people in that room.

And so, my basic lead generation initially was three hours a day off, meeting people in the courthouse, and meeting families, investors, and attorneys. I made a goal of meeting 1.5 per day, and I worked out all my numbers. So, a good day was two. A not-so-good day was one bad day was zero. And, um, I put them in my database, my SOI database, I stayed in touch with people, built up enough of a database where today that’s all I market to.

I have emails and I send out emails every week. I have a YouTube channel on probate. I do social media, but I just call those attorneys, investors, and clients I already know. And that keeps me pretty busy. And then what I’ve done is I built my platform and I invite other agents in other markets to join my team as I build out a national platform for probate specialist agents for full time. So that’s my marketing system today. So, I don’t cold call out to estates. Now I do get a lot of referrals from other agents because of my expertise. And so, I have the database. I track, and create my data.

And yesterday, literally one of the top agents in a particular micro-market of LA called me to say, hey, I have a client, it’s probate I’m lost. And I kind of walked them through what I could do with ’em. And so, we’re splitting that listing. And so that’s another part of my business is my COI, the referrals from attorneys I know already, and then I get phone calls from, other agents. So that’s my marketing today. I, again, that’s not going to where to say work for everybody, but I would say to anybody, you need to think about your particular strengths when I started probate. And here’s another thing I’ll add. I was 60 years old. I had just come out of management and coaching.

I had worked, I had helped build one of the largest companies in my market. I, you know, I come from the generation where we went from sales and the idea was you go into management as you get promoted. That’s kind of how I grew up thinking. And it turns out to be a mistake in real estate, especially. And I also ended up working for a man who I thought was honest, who was dishonest and would not allow me to buy into being a partner.

I could never get any equity. So, I, I decided at sixth, I didn’t want to do that. For the rest of my life work with somebody that I didn’t appreciate the respect and started my career over again at 60 with not one lead, not one buyer, not one seller, not one listing. So, when I started this three-hour day process, I was like a brand-new agent, except I knew real estate, except I did have a sphere of influence is 60.

I knew a lot of people, and I knew what to do, but I had to go out and do it. So that plan worked for me. But I think you have to think about yourself and what your assets are and what your strengths are and make sure you play to them. That makes sense, Lisa. Yeah. Okay, good. And feel free if I didn’t cover it properly, to ask more questions.

5) Finding trust property leads and successor data (Real Estate Leads)

Okay. ClaireMonique asks if is there a way title companies can research and provide successors or trustees of a living trust. Boy, I get asked this question a lot. So, Claire’s asking a question about what she’s noticed is separate from probate properties. When somebody dies in probate, I want to say 80% of probates are filed because there’s real estate to transfer the title on.

So, it’s very common when there’s probate filed, the reason why it’s to sell a house. And even when families say they’re going to not sell the house, they end up selling the house. Like every seller, everybody, every seller who says they won’t sell the house, sells their house. Someday either they move every five to seven years or they die.

But that’s just that life. But I think what she’s saying is I see these other properties that are held in a title of trust, and I know some of these people are dying.

I might know, from a neighbor, that there’s trust property. They died, but if it’s inside of trust, how do I find who it is? Can the title company help me with that? That’s your question, right?

That is correct.

A couple… it’s hard to do. Uh, I will say if you don’t know anybody involved in the deal, it’s hard to do a couple of tricks I’ve used when you go back and look at the deed that they used, either before they put the trust when they got the property or put in the trust.

Sometimes there are clues, there’ll be clues as to who the person is, who the law firm is, and who the notary is. So sometimes there are clues there that you can find if you know, the property’s abandoned or has some issues like that. I’ve never successfully researched it and found it, got a listing as a result just because of the time involved in doing that, I might as well call somebody else. I know I’ve been around long enough now where I don’t call everybody I know every 90 days. I’m always behind. And so, when I pursue these kinds of things, it’s not easily delegated because sometimes you have to kind of read between the lines and figure this out. And it’s not common enough that we can do them all the time. I did see once, see a company that claimed to have properties like this. And they researched who the owners were in names and phone numbers. Maybe, they do. I don’t know.

I, I have not seen anybody use that and tell me they’ve been affected by it. So, if you find such a company, come back and let us know, but I I’m just not aware of it. Okay. and so, Chris says that some title reps can pull a search of county land records of recently recorded successor trustee information. Okay. I don’t know which title reps those are, but it seems like they do less and less these days, title reps, you know, in the old days they used to buy lunch.

That’s illegal. They’d give you kickbacks. That was always illegal. And they come to your office to drop off coffee cups and related services, pens, and notepads. Now they don’t do that. And now it doesn’t do so they give you data for the most part. But I would, if you have a rep that can help you might want to ask for the data.

6) Cold call coaching and contact rates for probate (Cold Calling)

Okay. Will do. Thanks. Thanks so much. Um, let’s see, Belinda, Belinda, if you want to unmute yourself, you can jump in, you’re welcome to: regarding making phone calls., I use another number. Trust a third-party number provider. I called one of my relatives using the number and the message that popped up on their phone said potential spam. Does anyone else have that issue or use another company that does not come up on this side? Concerned the people will not pick up the phone if they see this, even if I connect number, you know, I have the same problem, Belinda.

I have I’ve used Google Voice for years since I came out, I want to say five, 10 years now, love it, love it for my business, love its efficiency with text and phone numbers and all that. People do tell me, occasionally it shows up as potential spam. You know, I call enough people where some pickup, some don’t.

The other thing I’ve also noticed is that they pick up and it says that, and they realize it’s me, you know, you get past that moment. But if you’re going to use the number for cold calling during the day, you probably don’t want to use that number. Yeah. That’s the number I’m using to call my leads after I send a letter out.

to probate and then I’ll follow up with the phone call. So yeah, I mean, it’s kind of low return anyway, in terms of the numbers I’m getting, and then calling and which ones are working numbers. And then the ones that, you know, a few people were pick up here and there, but, I wasn’t aware of that on the other side until I made the mistake of calling one of my sons and he said, you know, this number pops up as spam, and I was like, I had no idea that popped up.

Yeah. Cause I get a bunch of those calls early in the morning. I don’t typically call early in the morning. I just don’t feel comfortable calling people at eight in the morning, you know? So, I I’ll do more like 10 o’clock or sometimes I do between five and six or six and seven stuff like that. So yeah. I, I didn’t realize it did that, but I know I, tend to not answer calls at say potential spam.

So, what I would say about phone calling and, and just a little bit of coaching if you’re up to that, Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Belinda, are you a real estate agent or investor? What do you do? Uh, I’m a real estate agent, but I also, I’m looking for properties to, um, buy and hold. Got it. It would be my first one.

And where do you do business in Laurel? Laurel, Maryland. And throughout prince George’s county in Maryland. Okay. So, the first thing I would say is most people own a house or up about five 30, 6:00 AM. So, you can call it eight o’clock in general renters, you can call it 10 30 and they’ll, they’ll still be in bed or watching TV or something.

In my experience, the vast majority of number one, and number two, hang up before the fourth ring. Yeah. People pick up the phone after three rings, they’re ready to talk right at four rings or not. And ring four or five times, they’re going to be pissed when they pick up the phone. You’re bothering them. So, yeah, I heard that a while back when you mentioned that, and actually, I also took the advice from one of the recordings I heard a while back when you say you don’t leave a message.

Cause I had been leaving this long message, never he asked to stop leaving the message, but you said the idea to have a conversation, not necessarily to give them a message. So, I stopped doing that, and uh, then three rings. Yeah, I cut it off. Yeah. I mean, and just to repeat for people who didn’t hear that before, thank you for the compliment and reminding me, if you could make money leaving messages, then Reese’s monkeys would make a lot of money leaving messages.

We make money talking to people. If you’re a real estate agent, your job is to talk to people as, as Tom free time me a long time ago. Um, how did we get paid, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? We talked to people or in their trust, got them to like us, and do business with us. Real quick on this call, if you would be so kind to put in the chat box, who here has ever bought anything, where somebody left you a message cold call on your phone, and then you return the call and bought whatever they were selling who’s ever done that.

Please put me and if you never have put the word, no. So, if you’ve in the past, got a phone call and you listen to the message. Go. Wow. Cold call by this travel agent or this warranty on my car company or this real estate agent. And you go, that’s great. I’ve always wanted to hear from them and called them back and you bought put me, and if you have never done that, I’m going to put it in the box for myself.

I’m going to put no, I’ll be the first one to answer, I guess is I’m going to there’s some is a bunch of ’em. Okay. Yeah, no, no. Uh, no, no, no, no. Okay, good. So, I’m on the right call here. So yeah. I would say that we want to talk to people, and I’ve made a lot more money in my career by, not leaving a message and people call me back saying I have a missed phone call from this number and I’m talking to, I have listed property as a result of that.

So, hope that helps a little bit, Belinda, thank you so much. Yeah. Okay.

So that’s just one of the hazards of this calling. You just don’t know, even if it does pop up either they’re going to answer, or they are not. So, it’s just, can’t get around there.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. They’re going to answer it somewhere and you know, maybe at some point you get a new service that doesn’t show up spam or something.

I don’t know but play the cards you have the best you can, and then you can always upgrade your systems over time. Okay. Okay, good.

Um, okay. Next question. Thank you, Belinda, in Maryland for the call question, I got that. okay.

7) Networking meetings for probate and elder law attorneys (Real Estate Networking)

So, Sandy asked, do I get networking meetings for probate or attorneys? Where would I find it?

Info Sandy. That’s a great question. So Sandy, where do you do business? Los Angeles. San Fernando Valley. Okay. So, Los Angeles and your territory? Yeah, my territory.

Well, no, you’re over the hill. I don’t go over the hill. That’s not true. I do the last network event I went to was in van isles to be specific. Okay. Uh, on Wednesdays at noon at the Sizzler on the van I’s Boulevard is a real estate investing, and networking. So, Sandy asked the question, do I go to networking meetings for probate or elder law attorneys where to find that info?

I don’t. So, here’s what I’ll say now. Um, Cindy, I don’t think we’ve met before. Have we? I don’t think so. I’ve been on several of these calls Bill, but we haven’t met in person, no.

Okay. So, my loss along the way. And are you a full-time agent or a part-time one?

Full-time.

Okay. So as a full-time agent, my marketing strategy or parameters will be that if I’m going to market somebody in any capacity, I want to dominate that channel.

I look at something like, for example, when I went to court, nobody went to court as regularly as me, or was as visible as me in LA county court when I went. If there were three or four others, I wouldn’t go. I dressed better. And now that makes it sound like a judgment, as far as quality of a better person, I judge more effectively, which I think is more like an attorney than any other, real estate agent mm-hmm

And I would present myself in a way that was much more like attorneys, anybody else I wanted to dominate that marketing channel. Today my major emphasis on my marketing is my YouTube channel. I use a lot of different ways, to use a video. And so at least in my market area, I don’t know of an agent doing as much on YouTube.

There might be doing other things TikTok or whatever. That’s not my concern. I’m driving people to, you know, where I’m at and they go, wow. So networking, meetings. I do go to that meeting first off. I don’t go out a lot just because I’m, I’m a little older now, my wife and I have our first grandson who lives four blocks away.

So, I put a good day’s work in, but I am not going out in the evenings, as much. But I do go once a month to a networking event in the Culver city area. That’s the LA area county real estate investor association, which is for real estate investors. Why go there, not to an attorney event? Because I’m the probate expert at that meeting.

Got it. at the real estate event, I mentioned in van isles it used to be bigger, used to have like 50 people because of COVID it’s down like five or six, good quality people. I went there once recently just to support it, but it’s not big enough for me to go. I can’t meet enough people per hour to justify my time.

And again, I try to look at that meeting one-half people per hour of quality leads. So, if I go to, uh, networking information per hour or per day, I thought you were at per day when you were at the courthouse for, for three hours of prospecting time. So, I sort oh, okay. Yeah. So, if I go to an event, Don only had, you know, five people.

I already knew four of them. There’s no mathematical way. Driving there’s a half hour. You’re there for an hour or two. You drive a half hour back. It doesn’t work. So, it’s looking like $30 for their networking event. Yeah, correct. Now there are, yeah, there are, um, I am a member. I’m an affiliate member of the LA bar LA county and the Beverly Hills bar.

And I know there’s one in San Fernando Valley. I’m not a member of it. I know there is one there though, um, as well. And I, again, I would say if I can dominate it now, the problem there is, there are people who for a long time have been the sponsors and dominate those two events. So, I’m not going to go to those events, because I don’t want to look like another realtor. And the ones who dominate, you know, they, one’s done a ton of probate and knows a lot about it and knows a lot of people, legitimately a probate expert. And then there’s one or two that are attorneys as well as realtors. So, for me to go, I’m just another realtor, right? Mm-hmm for me that you’re an affiliate member, but you’re not attending the meeting, you’re just in the network.

I’m an affiliate member because I get the content. Like they have meetings, I get to, you know, learn from and train. And, they have, uh, some chat room where I’ve learned a lot about probate as a result of that. So, for me, it’s more about the training opportunity than the content of being an affiliate versus networking. But I haven’t, when they had meetings in the courthouse used to have continuing ed meetings in the courthouse, I would go even though the other realtors were there because again, I was there more often than anybody else.

And so, I just think from a marketing standpoint, you have to stand out and if you’re just one of several, then you’re not going to be as efficient, a productive view of time. So, to answer your question, I know there’s an event in long beach that is a forum, I want to say fiduciaries, and, um, I can relate to that.

Um, but there’s a couple there that go all the time, but now I’m competitive. And so, I might go, if I looked at that and say, hey, you know, I could become a sponsor, get into membership, you know, be of service to the organization… I don’t want to can sound like I have to be the only realtor. But if there’s a pathway for, I can dominate it within three to six months, I would jump in.

But that’s a long beach. And, and so for me, I live in LA that’s a bit of a drive and a lot of my range right now. Yeah. So, answer your question. I don’t do that, but those are my strategies. When networking, I want to find something that I can be the number one person at, and that doesn’t mean they have to hand me the keys to the castle.

It might mean I have to earn my way by providing service, but I’m willing to do that. Does that answer your question? Yes, it does. It does. Great. Well, nice meeting you. Thank you so much, Bill. A pleasure to meet you. Likewise.

Okay. We got a bunch of questions here. I’m sorry to take a little along on some of these yeah.

The national association of estate planners and council is in long beach a great event. I also go just to back up Sandy or to Sandy’s question. I also go, if the content is something that I want to learn about. So, there was one of the best probate attorneys in long beach gave a talk about, the particular process called the Hegsted petition in California, where people write a trust, and the property is not deeded in the trust.

It’s like buying a safe deposit box and, your valuables are on top of the box, not in the box. How do you get the property in the box? There’s a process in California, not in many other states called the Hegsted petition. So, this particular attorney was talking there and he gave us copies of his forms. It was an amazing, amazingly educational opportunity.

So, I will also say I would go to any meeting though. These days, they all seem to be online or recorded. So, I’m a little lazy maybe, but I would go to never convinced to learn and be a be, and to be a better probate agent. Um, more likely than just to go and, be another realtor. Thank you.

Okay. So, Deborah says, tried to join a bar to network and was told that they don’t, em, admit realtors when law students, attorneys, and paralegal administrative people. Deborah, what bar association did you try to join? Stark county bar association in Canton, Ohio. And do they not, you’re saying that limit affiliate relationships as well to only that group of people?

Yeah. Because I’m not suggesting you join as an affiliate. Right?

Right. That’s what I thought I was doing. I, uh, and then the bookkeeper, she was asking me questions, you know, was I a realtor? Was I a law student? Was I being, you know, admin type person?

And I said, no, I’m a realtor, which is what I had marked. I wrote it myself. Yeah. And she said that wasn’t allowed. So, I’m going to ask somebody else. So, I just wanted to be an auxiliary, an affiliate, or whatever, an affiliate.

Right. And most of the look, they, they charge, they all charge money. I mean, it’s not a lot sometimes it’s it was 25 bucks, $25.

Right. So why would they not be kind of stupid? Um, I know stupid is a stupid does is right for the great force comes said, though, you might find maybe your county bar doesn’t, but there might be a state bar or regional bar. So, like in, California we have a choice. We have the LA bar with the Beverly Hills bar.

We have a Santa Monica bar with the valley bar. Then we have a state bar association as well. They might allow you as an affiliate there. They might. Okay. I’ll check things out further then. Thanks. Sure. Good luck.

8) Probate date sources/ Probate lead companies (Probate Leads)

And just as an aside, bill, I, I mentioned it in the comment box, in the chat box and I see someone else did mention it too.

I believe all the leads do provide you with personal representative information.

On probate, they do, right? Yeah. Almost all the probate data sources. Um, so we’re not this isn’t sponsored by anybody other than Probate Mastery, which is coaching. We don’t have any particular data affiliation, so I can be agnostic and tell you that multiple data companies will take the probate filings and sell them to you.

And that will include the attorney, maybe their phone number, and, or email of the petitioner if provided, the phone number and email. Sometimes one and not both. So, they’re all a little different and they’re all different by county. Sandy’s in LA. Like I am, we have probably more options than anybody as far as probable data.

In other counties, you have maybe one or two or three options. All the leads.com is a national provider, foreclosures daily is a national provider. On my website, my website’s the LA probate expert.com and towards the right, I have probate resources and I have a dropdown with data sources. So, what I’ve done there is I’ve made a list of all the data sources I’m aware of, uh, because some will work in certain counties only and no other counties. and then I would just ask you if you do go in there and, have an experience with it, just let me know. I like to pass on good information.

I get my data. Plus, I subscribe to probate money, which is Paul Horn’s data service. I like their interface. Plus, I subscribe to, probate data.com just because they’re cheaper. And I, and I do my data as well. So, um, it is a big part of my business. I could speak with that for an hour or two. But in, in some counties, you only have one choice, or you have no choices, different counties. I would say you probably have a choice in almost every county in America. Rarely, you don’t have any at all.

Again, I think that most of the filings will have who the petitioner is because again, at the petition, not when it’s approved. And so, whether the executive administrator they’ll have who that person is their name, and then they’ll cross reference or attempt to cross reference to provide phone numbers for that person. Some only offer the data that’s on the filing itself. So, someone on the petition puts the phone number on and they’ll pick that up.

 Uh, Pete saying that in Colorado, you can’t get the data until after the probate’s closed. You know, it’s interesting in, in, uh, LA, for example, people call expired listings as a regular course of business over the years, or canceled listings. Cancel means both parties cancel, expired means it just expired.

There’s also status withdrawn, which means that it’s under contract, but it’s not in the market. So that’s a case where a customer will say, well, I don’t want to market the property anymore. And they’ll just pull off the market. It’s still in a contract if it sells and the listing agent would get paid and technically, we’re not allowed to call on withdrawal listings and some agents are very successful and that’s all they do.

So, I’m sure, I don’t know, Peter, you told me if I’m wrong. I’m sure they’re real estate agents who solicit probate filings in Colorado, even though it’s not legal. I’m just sure. It happens. It’s just, uh, has to be, but anyhow.

Okay. So, I asked for, um, recommendations on who you guys use so far, we’ve got a local probate court online in Phil Vince. What, what county are you? Ben says he just gets his local online information and that’s an option though. You can go in manually and pull up. And I do recommend people depending on where your budget is, you can go in life and pull up case by case and you can read the file. It’s the same. All the, all the leads do. And all the probate daily do is they hire somebody most commonly to go in the court and open up case by case.

Now they’ve learned some tricks to do it faster and they pay them 15, 20 bucks an hour to do it, or more. And then they have to park downtown LA and there’s a lot of logistics to it, but all they’re doing. I’ve seen them personally, I’ve sat next to them back pre COVID days they pull up the case and they write down or they type in, I guess an iPad, the name and phone numbers and the emails and case numbers, and all that.

So, you can do that too. And I recommend for an agent start this process. If you, in my 2 cents, I’d say, go do that before you pay any money. So at least you learn what the documents look like. What forms are on there. Notice how many typos there are. Notice. How many are handwritten versus typed? Um, I think that’s a good thing to learn, uh, before I would pay for the day.

If I’m new, I would go in and imagine if I didn’t have the service, how would I get it, uh, to help you understand how you get the data that you do get.

 Um, and then Melanie gets all the leads and foreclosures daily.com.

I will say, I think that all the lead data is the most complete. Um, but it’s also more expensive. And so, you have to draw your assessment as to how that works. Some people get the same raw data through foreclosure daily or others that all leads do and do their skip tracing all the leads, takes the data and does some skip tracing, some skip tracing for you.

Of course, that’s an added step and that’s going to cost some money there, but if they’re doing it for you, then you’re saving, doing it yourself the money in the time, Chris uses all the leads and probate data. Great.

And again, I put the list of all the sources I know. You might call different providers, but here’s what I’ll tell you. If you do the work and re and call 10 data companies and find the one that services your county, you’re going to have an advantage over anybody else.

Number one, number two, you can go to wherever county to the extent they allow you in and access the records manually. But the person who does it for that county will be there. And so, you’ll find out a company that they’re with and you can buy the data from them either personally or through the service they represent.

For example, if you’re there and there, and you find the, all the leads.com you know, person, that person might sell you the data on the side directly.

Okay. Evan gross, with no relation. Pay someone to do it for you after you know how to do it. Yeah. I would agree with Evan. But you should first know it yourself and I, I agree with you. Your local probably did. It is mostly already skip traced on most records of first representatives.

The phone number is already a skip trace sounds accurate because the rep fills it out. Good for you. So, I say that foreclosure day is incomplete in some counties. Um, ATL, often has led with no real estate attached.

Yeah. And the leads are confused. Yeah. That does happen. Some people call what, what? I try to tell agents when they’ll say to me, well, you know, call and bunch don’t have real estate.

Yeah. That’s just how life is. I mean, the analogy I use, if I gave you a billion-dollar diamond mine you wouldn’t complain about all the dirt you had to remove, you would remove the dirt, pull the diamonds out and sell ’em. And so, I think real estate’s the same way. There’ll be a lot of leads that aren’t good. There’ll be a lot of leads that aren’t good. If you call them all, you’ll figure out which are which, and list the good ones.

And, but the other ones in your database.

Us probate leads are another source Katt recommends. Great. and then, and again, saying you can pay a local retiree or college student to go once a week and get the records you are saying for $50. So yeah, I, I think that’s a little look. I mean, that’s hit my experience with that’s hit or miss people life’s change and you get somebody in the rhythm and then they stop, but you fall behind.

So, the services always worked well for me, but in most counties, you can pay somebody in there Vince says for him, he thinks referrals from attorneys would be his preferred lead source. Great. So, then I would go that way though. I will say the data is helpful because when you find an attorney, you can see how many cases they do or don’t do.

And it is eye-opening sometimes when you see somebody and I had an attorney, I met in court and I tried to solicit her for referrals and, and vacation for two months, I was getting ready to call back and I realized she doesn’t do much business. It just isn’t worth my time to call. So, the data will also give you some market data, which I use a lot.

Belinda uses us yeah. So, they’re, they’re good. They’re on my list. Um, as well. So USProbateLeads.com. Katt says you go to LinkedIn and look for court researchers in your market, that’s another good source.

 I’ve kind of got the weeds here in the chat box. Sorry. I hope I didn’t. Um, miss anybody, anybody has any other questions?

I see, Belinda’s got her hand up. We’ll give her, give a spot there.

You had mentioned that, um, you do get subscriptions from two different vendors, but you don’t do direct mail. You don’t do phone calls. So, and you said you do primarily, you are marketing through YouTube, and I guess maybe videos. So, you do like Facebook, a special audience, or something.

How, how are you prospecting that? Or are you just dealing with getting referrals from like attorneys at this point?

Yeah, so the data I use, I’m not using the data to market to. I’ve already met a lot of attorneys. I have a database of about a hundred eight attorneys I’ve met in Los Angeles County.

I’ve met them, talked to them, call them, email them, whatever social media with them, and families and, petitioners, investors, and such. So, I use data more for research than I do for marketing to them. I feel like I already know enough now. That’s not to say that I couldn’t also mail. It just costs money.

It takes time. And that’s not saying I couldn’t target people on Facebook yet. It just takes money in time. And I may, at some point. My business is more about going deeper into relationships. I have at this stage in my career and getting referrals from other agents. I, I just find that more interesting for me personally, you know, I think you have to enjoy what you do. And I’ve always varied my career a little bit. And so, I’m going to a stage in my life where I’m more looking to work with attorneys, investors, and realtors who call me up and say, Hey, I’m a great realtor. I got probate.

I, I don’t want to learn all about it. Can we partner on the deal and split 50-50, I handled the attorney and all the legal paperwork, and they handle the property and that works well for them? So not for everybody, but it works for me, and it works for them. So, I think you have to find your value proposition and where you help and contribute and work there.

Mine’s not calling anymore. And I did that for a long time. Petitioners, I think it’s important to start there because when I get an attorney who refers me to a case, what I do, I’ve got to call the petitioner. Now I’ve called thousands of petitioners. So, when I call them today. I use the same script as when I did, when I called, called petitioners.

Hey, it’s bill gross. Your attorney Joe referred you to me. He may have mentioned that, or maybe you signed an email between us and I’m just going to see how it can be of assistance.

One of the things I’ve always learned is when I call somebody even referred, I want them to feel like they’re in control. I ask a question; how can I help you and be of assistance?

So, I’m not saying to call petitioners. I feel like I’ve evolved out of that to higher dollar-per-hour activity for me. And I’m not saying it’s wrong or right. Just that that’s what we’re saying. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So, uh, Vince you’re welcome, Vince it was a pleasure. And then last, well, we’ll just wrap up with this last question.

9) “We have it handled” objection when cold calling (Probate Objections)

This is a classic. So, when a PR tells you they have it handled on the first call, you continue to mail or call them. So, if I’m cold calling them. The answer is yes. You call and tell the case is no longer a case until the property’s listed with somebody else, and you’re no longer allowed to contact them.

But, and, and why would you do that? Because in general, when you ask people, uh, when you could call everybody, nobody needs you when you call, uh, I I’m trying to ask the question and now just answers for everybody. When you have started cold calling. When I was a real estate agent years ago. Nobody is sitting at home, waiting for the phone to ring.

I would call them and say, hey, this house down the street sold. When you pull up moving, I never had anybody say, ah, it’s amazing. You called me. I was just talking to my wife. We, we really, this minute finish the conversation. She said to me, well, who’s going to list the property. I said I don’t know a good realtor.

And the phone rang. It was you. That’s never happened. Now. I’ve had people say, we’ve thought about selling our house. We’ve talked about selling our house recently. I do call, we spoke last night, but nobody’s waiting for your phone to ring when you’re a stranger. So, the natural process is, you know, people do business with people they know like, and.

They don’t know you before you call, you got to get them to know you. They have to learn to like you on the phone, build some trust, and then what’s the next step and use the next step from a phone call is a meeting. And so, your goal is to talk to ’em on the phone and break down the barriers of the relationship.

It’s no different than dating from marriage. Now I’m going to do it myself here. I’ve been married 36 years. So, I haven’t dated for at least 36 years. But in general, you just don’t walk up to a woman or a man and say, hey, I’d like to spend the rest of my life with you. Let’s go. And, you know, have some children, you just don’t do that.

You build up relationships same in sales. And so, I would say that when somebody says they have a handle, well, great. That sounds F yeah. I talk to people all day long, struggling with stuff. So, tell me, I know there’s a property involved, and there is what you guys plan on doing with it. Love to help you if I can.

And the thing is, one question you have to ask yourself is, are you being a telemarketer or, or a neighbor. Everybody likes a friendly, helpful neighbor. Nobody likes a telemarketer if they don’t like you, it’s because you sell like a telemarketer or you’re being a telemarketer. If you’re a friend looking to help them, they’re going to, like, who’s not going to like help.

We all, we all are busy. We all have too much on our plate to handle. We all would appreciate somebody calling and genuinely offering to help us. So, if you believe you can help people and you have some resources to bring to the party, then, um, uh, you need to, um, uh, approach it that way. And if you’re getting feedback otherwise every time, they hang up on you and say no, not just a boom, that person heard you with a telemarketer, what did you do on that call that you can correct next time.

So that they’ll appreciate you as a friendly neighbor. That’s the question you have to ask yourself in your quote call. And if you work on the call, you get a little bit better and a little bit better. And after a while, yes, that’s a standard objection. I have everything handled that was true with, for sale owners.

They’re going to sell the house on their own. They never do. That was true with expireds. They’re going to keep off the market for a while. Most of ’em relist and sell. That’s true with probates. They all have it handled. So, your job is to, uh, uh, handle the objection. And I’ll just give a quick over here today, but, um, a standard process for handling an objection, an objection is anything they say other than a condition, a condition is there’s no property.

The condition is we sold the property two years ago. We can’t solve that. Anything else? An objection. You know, we, we, um, don’t plan some it, now we have everything handled. We have a realtor, my brother’s a realtor. Anything else is an objection, a reason why they’re choosing not to work with you now when they could, now that you know that it’s an objection, there are three steps for every objection.

This is basic objection handling. Number one, repeat what they say. The number one complaint with salespeople is they don’t listen to people. So, when somebody says to you, they have it handled. Oh great. You have it handled. You repeat what they say second you affirm what they say you have. Oh, great. Everything handled.

That sounds great. Lucky you I’m curious. And the third is your pivot into another question. So, it’s three steps and you have to make it sound real. You can’t make it sound like a reading script. One. You repeat to you affirm their objection, whatever they say. Oh, your brother’s an agent. Oh, that’s great. So, I’m curious, what’s your plan with the property?

And the third is your pivot to another question. So that’s the standard objection. Process. I boil down an hour-long training into two minutes because we’re low overtime. So, I apologize, but we got that question at the end and that’s one of my favorites. Okay. Hey, I’m on the probate mastery. Webpage, uh, or Facebook group.

So, feel free to ask questions there. Um, and then you guys all answer each other’s questions, which is great. I’m just a colleague, I’m just a practitioner like you guys. I do this because uh, I’m able to help fill in for Chad on this call from time to time. So, I’m glad to do that. I’m bill gross. Um, I’m the LA probate expert.com.

If you want to see my website, I also host my probate call. Thursdays 4:00 PM is probate weekly 4:00 PM. Pacific time, 7:00 PM. Eastern love to have you on that. That’s free as well. There usually I do interviews with some of the same people Chad uses. And so, I find on my own, um, and if I can help you sell property primarily in California or interested in joining a national probate team, I’d love to talk about that.

That all said this call today we do is probate mastery is part of Chad Corby’s probate mastery program and the earning program as well. We do this every Tuesday at noon, Pacific 3:00 PM Eastern, and then we get this recorded and we put it on the website. If you receive past episodes or search content, go to probate mastery.com or check out Chad’s, YouTube channel and all the past episodes, other as well, with all kinds of other content.

So, thank you everybody for being on the call today. Thanks for all those questions. I appreciate you and we’ll see you guys next week. Thanks so much.

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