Probate Marketing Mastermind: How to prospect personal representatives and attorneys | Estate Professionals Mastermind Episode 69

You don’t want to miss this probate marketing mastermind! Successful probate real estate agents and investors break down how to prospect personal representatives and attorneys. Together, Bill Gross, Randy Milmeister, David Pannell, Bruce Johnston, Sheri Lund, and 50+ Probate Mastery mastermind members break down the value of postcard marketing for probate real estate leads, the best way to combine direct mail and cold calling, and how to make more money in real estate simply by talking to people.

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Episode Segments for Probate Marketing Mastermind: How to prospect personal representatives and attorneys

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RESOURCES:

• FREE TRAINING: Probate Fast Track
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RECENT CONTENT:

• Episode 67 Live Real Estate Coaching: Probate data and property lookups for real estate [PROBATE PODCAST]
• Ask The Expert with Multifamily Investor Rod Khleif: REAL ESTATE MINDSET: Finding drive and getting focused

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Bill Gross’ interview video on the different types of attorney referral partners: https://youtu.be/_NcVXJE7Xd8 
• FEMA COVID funeral assistance: https://www.fema.gov/disaster/coronavirus/economic/funeral-assistance

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: Probate Marketing Mastermind: How to prospect personal representatives and attorneys

Probate Marketing Mastermind: How to prospect personal representatives and attorneys

Succession laws and survivorship (Inherited Property) [00:00:00] 

Hey, good morning or afternoon, depending on where you are. This is bill gross, and this is our probate mastery weekly call for probate mastery alumni, and people looking to get started. We do this probate mastermind podcast Tuesday at noon Pacific time where I’m located at 3:00 PM Eastern time and everything else, you get adjusted on your own.

So we get together in the primary focus generally is asking questions and those people who are in the probate mastermind program on how to launch their probate business, it’s meant to supplement the probate training with some real-world support coaching along the way to help turn theoretical into practical.

We’re another way to think about it. It’s how to transfer your energy and your information and your work into money. Remember though that the money we receive is a reflection of the value we create for other people. So if we’re not getting enough money, we need to look and say, what are we not doing?

And creating enough value for our prospects, for our customers. And so we’re here to talk about that every week. I’m bill gross. I’m one of Chad’s you know, students, what does maybe star students? I started with Chad’s coaching three and a half years ago and launched from scratch a partial production because I’d been a real estate and I had been in management and gave up my real estate production, went back into it a few years ago from scratch and use probate leads as my sole lead-generation channel.

And as a result, I built a fantastic real estate business. Which has paid me a lot in my last couple of years, and created some residual income and some equity, and I’m glad to share kind of my process and sequence with other people to help us all be more successful. Some of you I’ve seen all along that path, Joanne and Winston, I think we’ve been along the way together for the last two, three years.

Some of you are new here and either way, we’re glad to have you. And what I’ll tell you is that in life, the more you participate, the more you get, the more you participate, and the more money you make. So turn on the cameras, let’s see your smiling faces ask questions, and rest assured if you have a question probably five or 10 other people do as well, so don’t be shy and we’re here to talk together to help everybody be more successful in real estate.

So that’s let me open the floor. Who’s got something they want to a question, challenge, problem, or something like to share with us. I ran into something very interesting bill yesterday. I sent a card out to a widow of a military associate who I used to work with at the base.

The husband passed away from COVID about three and a half months ago. And they live in San Bernardino county. The house was in his name, only the mortgage was in his name only. And they had been married for almost 40 years. And so he had never switched it over to a living trust.

He inherited the property from his mom because I went on RPR and I could see the name of the mom and it was in a living trust, but it was transferred to him who is the decedent, the son. So the wife called me yesterday and we were on the phone for 45 minutes. And I realized that that, you know, she, she says, I’m not ready to let him go.

So I sat there for 45 minutes just listening, because I find out that a lot of times when prospecting probate leads that’s all that you can do. I did refer her to probate attorney Paul Horn. I think she’s in denial. She is working with a family attorney. But what I told her, I said, probate is a, is a very specialized field. And if he didn’t set up anything, he didn’t even have a will.

And so the house is in shambles. It needs to be remodeled and probably needs a new roof and everything. And I was trying to figure out how to tell her that, okay, not all attorneys understand probate and what you’re going through. And so she said, well, he’s going to try to get the house in my name. I said, “really?”

So I don’t know how else I can, you know, proceed, I guess I will be talking to her, you know, throughout the period. But, but this is, this is a very touchy subject. I mean, it really is. Yeah. Yeah. Well, number one, the more you listen, The best kindness you can do for somebody who lost somebody is just to listen and wherever they’re at.

And you know, unfortunately, I’ve lost my parents and my wife’s parents. We’ve been through that, you know, and then friends as well, but close family. And I can just say it kind of classes on mourning and how to deal with that. And the number one thing you can do is listen, and then be where they’re at.

So when they’re ready to talk business, then talk business; when they’re not ready, talk business, don’t talk business. As far as you know, I would never want to let somebody deal with their family attorney for probate. 95% of cases down in LA county. I know you’re in San Bernardino, but just as an example, I run the data elsewhere, but we’re having the data.

95% of the cases, you know, like county are filed by attorneys. Who’ve done one or fewer probate cases in the last 12 months. So they’re really learning because the rules change all the time. They’re learning on that case, which makes those sits. The truth is if there are no other marriages – it sounds like not. So husband had the property for many years, gets married, never transferred the property, has no other kids has no other ex-wives around.

She is going to end up getting it unless there’s some will or some trust that pops up. It doesn’t sound like that’s happening. It’s very simple probate, but the paper has to be done properly to get it done efficiently. And so what I tried to, I appreciate you referred it to Paul and I think Paul’s a great attorney.

Yeah. Paul’s – a retail price Attorney’s going to cost a fair amount of money. And I like Paul a lot. I would say that you know, I want to help other people’s businesses fix-up. They helped me. But beyond that, I would say that I want to be the solution, not refer to some, use a solution. And so w so once I decided who the right answer is, I say, cause only help you with that.

So let me make that connection and move to the next level. So that’s why often do easy hyphen probate as a source or with an attorney I would get involved and do a three-way call and introduce them. In the old days, I’d take them in my car, and drive to the office. Can’t we do that now with the COVID and don’t need to today.

So, I think we’re on the right track. I just, that’s kind of how I handle it sounds like somewhere how you did it, but you know, something, the plot, the black kind of Dickens because her husband. What was taking care of his brother who was I guess mentally challenged. And so she told me that he has the mentality of an 11 and 12-year-old.

So he was the guardian. He had guardianship full guardianship of, of his brother and was caring for him. So, so it’s, it’s I was sitting there and I was listening. It almost sounded like a soap opera because the family members weren’t helping her with anything and she was completely distraught.

So I’ll just continue to call and just talk with her and just listen. That’s the only thing I can do right now is just listen, because she’s, she’s so distraught. So, I told her it’s just so important to get a little bit. Have a living trust. Yeah, but that’s, but that’s, but that’s close the barn doors.

Now, if the cows got out, we have to focus on what’s in front of them. I’ll share the tool. I have anybody here besides me but play competitive chess. This is called a chess clock. Yes. I mean, I don’t play competitive chess, but I’ve seen the clock. So the way it works is each member gets the same amount of time.

And so when I’m playing in, it’s my move. The clock is running on me. When I’m done with my move, I hit the button and it goes on to the other person’s clock. And there are words down. So the game can be anywhere from two minutes to 30 minutes, depending on how you make the game. But the point is you either win by, by checkmating the opponent or if the time runs out.

But the way I like this, as I like to think about this as a metaphor for sales, is we want them talking more than us. And so you want to think about it. And every conversation because, because at the end of the day, the more they talk the smarter, they think you are particularly when talking about emotional things.

So you want to do your best to get them talking and be where they are and help them understand. And we never want to tell people we want to help them discover, would it help them understand? So Southern care on the right track is going to take more time than you plan. One thing about business has always takes longer than we expect.

That’s just the business we’re in. Well, it’s very interesting because she, because she, she knew where I was, but I sent her, I sent her a note card and I had my real estate license. I mean, my real estate business cards are in there, she says to, you know, to be honest, I opened up the envelope and I was very upset because I saw two real estate cars.

Cause everybody’s been calling me. Do you want to sell the house? Do you want to sell the house? She said I can’t sell the house right now. So, was just very frustrated. So. Okay, well, as always, thanks for sharing or glad to chat with you. 

FEMA Relief: $9,000 COVID Funeral Reimbursement (Probate Services) [00:08:59] 

Bruce, Shawn says your hand up. How can we help you today? Yeah. So one thing that Joanne, you might want to tell the person that you’re dealing with you’ve mentioned is that the decedent died from COVID.

So have them go to the FEMA site and type in COVID 19 funeral costs and see if she can get some reimbursement for the costs in regards to that. So that’s something that a lot of people don’t know about. So it’s something I recently, told somebody about that. So, I think it’s something that we should always keep as a little bit of our ours and also to speak to help people up because sometimes they just don’t know about these things and if we can bring that to them, it shows more value that we’re bringing to the table.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I pass that on to her because it was two other military people that were working with her. I was texting them and, and, and I did bring that up and they didn’t even know anything about that. Whatever information I had, I shared it with them because this was very tragic.

How much do they get? What’s a typical benefit for thousand dollars. Woo. Yeah. That’s not bad. Yeah. My girlfriend just got that. I heard about it and reached out to her. She reached out to FEMA nine grand is what you see. Boom. See my textbook is going somewhere. Okay. Good other countries. Bruce, thanks so much.

Yeah. 

5 attorneys to network with for referral relationships (Real Estate Referrals) [00:10:20] 

The other thing I wanted to ask you is that I actually raised my hand last week, but unfortunately we lost internet in the entire building here. So, I, I got cut off. You were talking about, I think there were five categories you were talking about with the attorneys. That would be a general real estate transaction as a closer probate admin probate litigator estate planning.

Was there one more on top of that? Okay. Hold on one second. I did a video on that subject and we spec it. I’ve got my notes here. If you want me to look at those, I have the general and the general attorney, a real estate attorney, and the probate administrator attorneys. Litigation and estate planning.

I think I just, I think I just didn’t write down real estate attorney separately. So maybe, and maybe the reason why you might not have is you and I being in California. We, I’m sorry. I know you’re not in California relocated and we use escrow. So that’s, that’s why you might not put that one down, but in many states, they referred to them as probate as real estate attorneys and the great sources of business.

I did a video on the subject. I’m going to put in the chat box, the five, the list of five, and then they’ll be the YouTube they did on the subject. I get asked this a lot. And, and, and what happens commonly the, you know, hopefully, all of you are in the public mastery, Facebook group, which is active.

And I think it is productive to get questions answered offline and in after-hours and such, but people pop in and say, Hey, who knows the attorney in Oshkosh, Wisconsin? Well, you know, you can know attorneys and you also know trees who do probate but just like the one that Joan was talking about that might not be the right answer for the family.

And so what I talked about in the video was that there are different types. And even within the probate world, really the best specialized in one of those five, they don’t the best to trays in my experience don’t even do to the best probate administration attorney does not do probate litigation because they’re different.

And they’ll refer or maybe in their law firms. They have another attorney I interviewed in orange county, shoddy Shaffer, who does probate litigation. And then her colleague, Valerie does a probate administration. They don’t ever cross over. They referred to each other. I have another attorney glucosamine, Mina.

Serkan great probate litigator does not do privy administration, but her husband does. And so you must find out what that attorney does. If you want to work with attorneys in some smaller markets, there are only a couple of attorneys and they tend to generalize more. But certainly, in larger markets like Los Angeles County, San Francisco, and New York, you’re better off meeting a specialist in the field that you’re dealing with rather than a generalist, who’s going to do everything poorly. There was a question I hope I answered your question. I think there’s a video I put in the chat box as well. They shot in that subject as well as I listed the five attorneys. And then Joyce asked for the link on the COVID.

I put the link there in the chat box as well to hopefully will help. Right. How do you use my head? So under reactions, you can raise your hand, but Randy, you get special privilege Randy, although it’s a thank you. I thank you for, thank you so much. Randy, Randy mill, my Meister is a probate specialist as well from Las Vegas and is part of a prospecting mastermind group of ages, particularly from the Mike Ferry Organization

Let’s see here.

I am. Great. Thank you, Bill, for letting us come back on our we probably have three, four, or five of our Mike Ferry probate marketing mastermind group on the call with you. We’re all just excited to hear what you share and had a couple of questions before, just for full disclosure. So this is kind of like a crossover.

If you ever did a radio program where like there’s a nine o’clock show, the 10 o’clock and the crossover. Randy, and I believe that for a little while, and I come from the Miek Ferry organization, which is a system of, of prospecting and kind of general real estate I’ve, I’ve moved into focusing and probate, but the fundamentals are the same.

It’s a raised private program. I have a group within the Mike ferry that focused on probate. And one of the key skills and key activities is the lead generation part in cold calling for some of you. So I invite him to come in here with a group to kind of share in the mastermind. And so Randy, go ahead.

Some questions are, how can we, we. Yeah, but also, you know, the reason I put this probate mastermind together last fall or winter was that I just felt I was missing something. I, you know, with our background, we know how to phone prospects, we’re prospecting, PRS, prospecting attorneys. We have the mailing component now, which Chad and ATL teach and something else Chad has taught, or the All The Leads guys, Bruce Hill.

And that group I also say: Hey, if you, if you don’t want to do this kind of prospecting, maybe just becoming a resource to the community, creating a YouTube channel bring on different guests of and providing an education for people in life transition. So what I’ve been working on is to do all of that.

I feel they’re all important. I guess my first question for you is,what of the people you have come across in probate, real estate agents? How many are doing all three or more? Working to reach the families, reach the PRS, breached the attorneys. When I, and when I say all three, I mean, phone prospecting, mailing, and online marketing, whether it’s YouTube, Google, Facebook all that kind of stuff.

To my knowledge. And I’ve interviewed and talked to hundreds none, two, one or two or three. I think that the biggest mistake agents make with using All The Leads, which I think a lot of, I use their brochure and use a website.

However, I think when you sell a product it’s hard and I, the same criticism I can make with Mike ferry, I think it’s hard to tell your prospect how hard it is to get busy. I think if most real estate companies told prospective new agents how hard we have to work to make money, most agents wouldn’t start.

And so that’s the criticism, I think, in general, in our industry. And I think that some of that, most of the probate companies make it sound easier than it is. I don’t believe you can. In most markets. You can’t send direct mail letters to probate leads or any real estate leads and expect business. I don’t believe you can. I do know that you can call, call the phone, but like the Mike Ferry, Cold Calling may be a grind as with three hours every day, five days a week.

And if you’re okay with that, then that’s what it’s going to look like. Most agents that brought up before are committed to making that kind of time commitment to do that. I did when I started my business and you do, and you need to be commended for that, but very few combine mailing and phone calls.

And the few that I know that do kill it because that’s really what’s required. I would, my general feeling is I would never mail anything that I haven’t already called and wouldn’t call again because you’re just throwing your money away at that point. But to answer your question, very few, do that. And I think if no question in my mind if you took the Mike ferry approach of calling them.

And I would say we are calling probate leads at least every 90 days. Cause now they’re those that haven’t sold or haven’t closed recalling every day is likely to expireds recycling the data. If you did that combined with mailing, no question to be successful over time. There’s no question about it.

Just most agents won’t stick with that. Correct. I appreciate that feedback. Another question I have is, you know, I know how to now through all this kind of training set up referral, repeat referral relationships with attorneys, meaning their business, people like us. I’m looking for a listing.

They’re looking for estate planning, probate leads, which I believe I’ve referred about 13 pieces of business to attorneys since the beginning of the year. Which is more than I thought, but I want to keep building on that one second before we go further. Cause I, I think I already headed bash when I asked this question of everybody first, everybody on the call who would enter the chat box.

He just said I sent 13 pieces of business to probate attorneys. So based on that, how many pieces of business do you think he got back? You think he got back less than 13, 13, or more than 13, but put the chat box if you have a number. Let’s just see what the common thoughts are.

I know you’re going to read, I went, I made this dramatizes it. Okay. One more than 13. Okay. Okay. Go ahead. Ready to continue? Yeah. Well I’ll, I’ll come back and answer that question, but the question was leading to it’s a little bit separate. There’s a separation between probate and trust; There are trust administration companies, they’re professional administrators. So I know what to refer to attorneys. I know what there is. I don’t know what to refer, to create this kind of relationship with these administrators. Because I’ve tried to understand what exactly their business is.

Can you just kind of shed a little more light on that or expand on you? 

When I say trust administrators. So as opposed to a probate trust administration, you’re talking about a trust administrator. So in a probate trust administrator, there’s a business in, and I think that kind of in litigating related that there’s a charity to do trusts and then they’ll administer the trust.

But what you’re talking about is somebody who is not as personal on the planning is more on the asset. So Wells Fargo has a trust department of banks. It’s more heightened. I was gonna say more high net worth people. Also guardianship. I am more like high net worth, I guess. I haven’t figured that out yet.

More commonly what happens is the attorney will write a plan and there’ll be different trustees and a successor trustee. And if, if none of them are available, then it goes to one of these professional companies. So they’ll say, you know, the trustee wills our special trustee after me.

If I pass it will now be Bob, if not Bob, then get Joe at bank of America’s trust department. And so they end up in charge of the assets, they tend to be very large, but also the trust that they’re involved with their scope of work is more narrow than a general one because the attorneys kind of control that.

They’re just making arbitrary decisions on what to do that said very valuable relationships. I, the number one, probated real estate agent in Los Angeles county, I believe now I can’t say I know her this long, but I heard her tell her story and I kind of put some pieces together. What’s a paralegal and for big firm that handled relationships with one of the big.

Trust administrators in Los Angeles. And she wanted to become a real estate agent and develop that business to that relationship. So that business is golden. If you can get it it’s all about personal relationships. You’re not going to cold call and get it. You’re not going to mail and get it. You might get an entree and then you’re going to be having to build a relationship from there that can take a lot of time golfing or fundraising.

And I think it a very commonplace. You’re going to find them as that different charity events. Cause those people tend to market their business for high net worth attorneys and families’ charity events. So I have no experience. I know of a couple, I’ve tried to work on a couple hard to get in like any business where there’s a lot of money at it is to be very, very competitive.

So I appreciate that. I’m meeting one on Thursday through an introduction from another friend. But I just, like I said, I want to go in and saying, Hey, this is what I can do for you other than my skill and real estate and managing property in that process, I would definitely say that I would go in and ask a lot of questions, right?

Mike ferry would say selling, isn’t telling, selling is asking questions, opening up what you can do for them. But I also would try to in particular, again, being on my free training to myself, get off the transaction and get out of the relationship. And I think if I would not ask by any business, try to get lunch with them or whatever else you do, you know, whether you go to the shooting range or you hit golf balls or whatever you might find as an approach.

Relationship-building activity, make them your friend first. I think if you can get that relationship and the business will follow Martha saw your hand up and I think I heard you call it. Yes. I am a former probate paralegal and a former trust officer. And I did estate and trust administration for National City in Ohio.

So National City’s a very large bank and we had our own real estate department. I can’t remember if the department hired outside agents, they may have. But I know we had someone that managed the real estate and they may have taken care of it too. So I would go to the smaller banks and trust companies that do estate and trust administration.

And you’re looking for somebody that really. Deceit and that has no relatives around. So we’re going to see more and more trusts coming on. Attorneys also at trusted administrators, usually Bill’s right. They have the paralegals do all the work. And in that case, paralegals would probably be the first contact to find out who sells their real estate.

No, thank you, Martha. So I had so I’ll, I’ll wrap up with answering the question of how many pieces of business were returned to me. I had, I can count, I don’t have it right in front of me, but I can tell you one attorney, a new code that I cold-called last November, December. I started, I referred a couple of people to him, a couple of my databases to him earlier in the year for trust.

He referred. To probate listings, to me, one’s closing tomorrow. And then his mom needed to sell the house, which I have listed also. So I got three from one attorney who I sent two people for trust. It’s probably, it is a bit from the beginning of the year. How many have been referred back out probably six or seven?

That’s fantastic. Look, you’re way better than the average agent I needed for a while. And so they figured out your way, somehow you distinguish yourself right away and got that. But as you can see in the chat box, that’s not a common experience. I also think we imagine we give them one and get two or three.

It doesn’t work that way. If we get one for each one, Now, Randy is only telling us his number year today. Theoretically, these are relationships that could yield in business this year. Next year, the year after the number could grow, will it get to 13? My guess is if you stopped referring, he still would, he would end up at 13 or more, but th but the key thing is these are relationships with, to build you plant the seed.

We as agents feel well, we planted the seed so why isn’t it growing? You gotta feed it. You gotta whatever water it. I’ve never farmed in my life, but you got to build a relationship over time. And that’s the nature of relationships very long time. Yeah, they do. But they’re all smart relationships.

My experience with trainees is the law go to lunch, like one thing now, like the county’s a little different and Randy, where you were in Vegas, I don’t know the COVID w you know, world, and now in LA, you really can’t invite somebody to lunch. You just not, they can ask you, but you really shouldn’t ask them as my sense of where we are, but absent that in my experience in most.

Any attorney you guys for, we’ll say yes, that’s their nature. You’ve got to lunch as a business lunch. You don’t ask for business. You’re there to develop a relationship. Alright, thank you, Bill. That’s all the questions I have. I’m sure a couple of my friends will last some later. Appreciate what you’re doing here.

Generally in every area, there’s an estate and trusts planning group, and sometimes they let non-attorneys in. So I’ve talked to one agent that didn’t get anything, but I think that’s more a factor of the agent, but the problem with those I’ve been to some of those. And the problem with that was about my experiences.

There are way more non-attorneys in the cherries. And I feel like. Like in the sh in the shark tank where they throw the feet and the feeding in, and it’s like a frenzy of people. And then I look like those people and I don’t want to look like them. I think we want to distinguish ourselves from them.

And then you’re my, again, my expense was I’m talking to an attorney and someone else would just interrupt as a realtor. And hi, I’m from this company, here’s my business card. And it just you’d be a little careful with some of those networking opportunities. You don’t want to make yourself look too desperate.

Right? That’s important that we, all, everybody wants to do business with somebody who doesn’t need them. It’s a classic dating thing, right. Everyone wants to date the girl that doesn’t want to date them. That’s just how life is. So you wanna make sure that you look that way as well. You got a, like a resume of all the things you can do for.

Yeah, for sure. I have a brochure. All the leads have a grape trifle I use I keep in my pocket for those events. The other thing I would say, Randy, is the greatest movie ever for attorneys. Every attorney loves it. My experience is My Cousin, Vinny. Every Trinny loves that movie. It’s good on some of the technical stuff.

It’s funny. But one thing she noticed is the attorney calls your opposing counsel and they got in their case hunting. That’s the social thing. That’s common in this particular area, but the point is that’s their nature. They’ll, they’ll have a social media and you’ll say, how, how can you have a lunch or a meeting with the other attorney?

Don’t you hate them? Are you in competition with them? That’s just how they are. They’re there. Social is only don’t talk about business. The probate bar is very collegial as opposed to litigators. So they D they know they have to work together. They’re dealing with families and tough situations, and it’s not a dog-eat dog, usually.

Although there are some Martha, where do you do business? Where do you do business? In Pinellas County, Florida, there was St. Pete. Very nice. Fantastic. And, your real estate agent? Yes. How long have you been a real estate? About 16 years down here. And about four up in Ohio. In the eighties? Any you probably focused or where’s your business?

Well, no, I’ve talked to a few attorneys, but I haven’t been pursuing it. Oh yeah. I think you should. It sounds like you have a world of knowledge to build on. Yes, I do. Okay. Anybody who else has I could talk to Martha all day long because I find that topic fascinating. Maybe, you and I can talk offline and I can interview something.

We talked about what you do and then hopefully get on track with your puppy business. Okay. Who else has a question? Challenge. Prime, raise your hand, but in the chat box you know, there’s the reactions button you hit with your hand up. I’d do that. I’d say wave your arms. If you’re on the video, it could be designed, but I’m not sure I would see necessarily any other questions, challenges, or problems.

Get a wealth of knowledge here who here loves 

Cold call reluctance: Different ways to do phone prospecting (Cold Calling) [00:28:57] 

cold calling real quick. A couple of you. Okay. Dean Souza. There’s a name I may you to make free thing probably 25 years. I mean, I can remember me, but I remember you for sure. Now I do remember when you worked for Neil or with them. And been with Mike Ferry, started with them right before I got my license.

35 plus years. Wow. 35 square. Does that? That’s 37. Yeah. It’s by the time I actually start with about 87 and I think I was the first person that paid Tom and Matt ferry to speak. My office is in the mortgage business and my business model was I would buy Mike ferry thousand dollar clubs and then give the coaching products to my real estate agents.

That’s how I got my mortgage business. Wow. Better off. Well, I see a dude then one time, Dave Pinel on the call. Welcome Dave Pannell. This closing two deals as we talk, probably thing is I think that a lot of agents to. Calling I, and I think you have two choices. You can either call, call, call outbound, or you can warm call outbound where you can talk to people, and call you inbound.

But at the end of the day, you’re going to end up talking to a lot of people. Anyway, you slice it. If you want to do a lot of business. Now, if you would do a little bit of business, I don’t know. I don’t specialize in helping with that, but anybody I know in my career since 1986, his business, he makes me a lot of money, talks to a lot of people one way or the other.

Yeah, what’s up. I mean, you could just turn the spickett off. If you don’t want to do any new business, you just don’t call anybody. And if you do, it’s not, it’s it doesn’t come down to how fancy your script can be or how good conversations you can have or convincing someone to sell you a house or buy a house or to list with.

Oh, man, they’re going to do something. You’re going to talk to a hundred people and talk to maybe two people that want to do something. And maybe those two people go into your database, your CRM for over a year. I could I’ll show, I could show you an example. I just closed my, the biggest deal of my career.

The lady never responded to a letter, never responded to an email. She just opened up in five years. It was a probate property we bought bought back in 2018. And when we closed it in April and it was two houses in there. So you could just imagine,

and you just never know. I had sent her a random text to my whole database of people that are active status and probate and she responded I’m ready. You’re the only one that stayed in touch with me and sent me the right information. Then it took about two weeks for the. And it took about 45 days of closing, a really clean deal.

I think the general rule is, and, and, you know, if you don’t agree with this, let me know if you agree to this, let me know because of the chat box, it’s not about whether it’s when right. That business just takes longer than you would expect it to. Does that mean it’s not going to happen? That doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.

It means it hasn’t worked yet and you might have to continue it. And I think whether you’re calling or social media, whatever you’re doing, you’re building a pipeline of people who are interested and they just take longer than we would think they would take. We tend to make decisions faster because we’re salespeople.

Joyce has had a post. I just closed one, not a probate transaction, but he was the son of a couple that I showed around and I’ve even forgotten how many years ago it was. They never bought anything from me. They wound up buying a trailer. And I, we just closed on a house for the sun. And he’s going to try to get his parents and his sister out of trailers into the house.

That’s what I tell agents all the time. You have to have a database of everybody you’ve ever met for the rest of your career. You reach out to them, effectively, call them every 90 days, email them something of value, and connect with them as best you can on social media forever. It’s an asset that just keeps growing and they call you back.

Seven years later, I’ve had, I’ve had clients call me back seven. Now I was an agent left being an agent being management for about five years, but I kept my email database going every week. And I stepped back into real estate. I had clients who came back to me eight years later by email. He didn’t know I had been out of business.

He’s coming here, getting emails, and decided to sell the property. I listed it and sold it for him. 

The pros and cons of postcards for real estate marketing (Real Estate Postcards) [00:33:11] 

Joyce asked how about postcards and emails for prospecting? And I would say that. Postcards are great. The challenge there is it’s expensive and it takes multiple points of contact. Most people track the data will tell you if we have some other phone calls, does postcards will tell you it’s six or seven contacts is, is like a minimum campaign.

So if it’s 50 cents for the card, if he says for mailing that’s five to six bucks per independent on your return, there’s there’s a Dave Pinel. I saw them up there. Dick Shanghai’s his postcard. So you do postcards. What’s your, what’s your rate of return on your postcards.

What’s your ROI.

Oh, Hey, I’m sorry. This is what you should mail. It’s an invitation letter size. It’s handwritten. You put two stamps on it. Cause it’s going to Arkansas.

I mean, is Arkansas post more expensive? I don’t know. I don’t want it coming back to me, but I don’t want to measure it either. These are the two people I talked to you today. Okay. So that’s individual mail, but I think, I think Joyce’s question is from a probate prospecting point of view, when you buy leads from all the leads or buy probate leads from MTI probate data or one of the probate data companies, they’ll tell you should send letters to your probate lists.

And I, and I always find it interesting. The people telling you about for the most part, aren’t doing that themselves. But when you think about it, you know, if you’re going to have to send out a campaign of six cards at six bucks per times, however many probate leads you’re talking about. If you get 200 a month, that’s 1200 probate letters, but you’re going to the first 5,200 next month, 400 expenses.

So you’re talking about thousands of dollars. You really have to add up. I know when Todd, I’m sorry. When Chad. Probably mastery. He had a calculator to figure all those things out and to figure where your ROI would have to be to make sense. In general, when I look at the return on investment, I only count 25% of the commission dollars, not a hundred percent because I still have to do the work.

I still have to list the house and stuff to cover my costs. I also need to make a profit, but that said, when, whether you use letters or postcards, you need to track letters are more expensive than postcards. So I don’t know anybody in any Metro area that just does mailing and successfully makes a probate business.

I know some people have done it in niche markets, whether it be a little this competition. And I can’t speak to that because I live in Los Angeles and I only have marketing major Metro areas, but in smaller areas, maybe you can do that. But here in Los Angeles, in orange county and most Metro markets, you can mail, but you also have to phone call behind it and follow up with them for me.

Hey, bill. There’s a, there’s a guy named Alex. You should interview on your podcast. Yeah. I’ll get his last name. He’s in LA. He sends a lot of postcards. That’s the only way he prospects. Okay. Are they sending you to send them thousands up? No, he’s saying just in Los Angeles. Yeah. I mean, it’s farming.

It’s farming the probate and farming. So you are three complexes. Well, that’s different postcards working in real estate. But again, I would say if you’re gonna work it for geographic farm to be as successful, you probably also are, or decrease your odds, also phone call and also door knocking it condos great for postcards because you get one listing in the condo and then you have open houses and the chances to walk the area and see people in a way that other people don’t.

For sure postcards are great for real estate wind targeted. I send a lot of postcards to my clients, and attorneys that I meet. I’m going to have all different series of postcard campaigns for keeping relationships that are different than postcards for prospecting but to mail out cold probate postcards or letters.

I don’t remember who’s doing that successfully. I’ve heard here and their stories of it, but I don’t think it’s a winning game overall. Jessica, I see your hand up. Let me see if I can figure out how to.

I got it. Hey, so I think the Alex Guy David is talking about follows exp David what’s his name? DiGrazia and he does like a 10 to 12-point touch campaign with a, I think there are four letters and like six or seven different postcards that he mails out. And Alex does in that group, if it’s who I’m thinking about, he’s in LA.

And he does quite a bit, but he does, a very diverse amount of work. His stuff is not just in probate. But he does do just mailings and it is extremely expensive and competitive in LA I think that’s his name. I think that’s who Dave’s talking about, talking about. So this is Alex Sandoval, the exp who’s a probate specialist.

He is in Menlo Park, which is Northern California, or the Sacramento area I’ve never heard of or met him. I mean, he might be great. I’d love to talk and chat with him, but again, he’s probably doing more than just probate with mailers like that. 

Probate Marketing schedule: Letter and Direct Mail sequence (Probate Marketing) [00:37:56] 

It’s just I do think that once you’ve talked to them, it makes sense to mail them forever.

Once you have, once you get them email them forever, of course, but just keep sending mail to people who don’t have to respond. I don’t know that being what they know by people do mail is very scientific. They have the numbers down and the responses down, they know what those numbers are. Yeah. Bill, I can tell you, that Alexander vol is a Mike ferry phone prospecting agent who also does the mailing.

I mean, So I’ve always used a phone call in addition to, yeah. I don’t know anybody. Who’s just postcarding cold and getting responses even after five and six cards. I’m sure it happens, but I just can’t imagine that being a successful business, in the long run, I mean the faster everybody wraps her brain around that you run this business, all the capital that’s when your business is going to explode anyway.

So you’ve got rolling. If you’re going to go do all three, social media is going to be the most expensive prospecting, least expensive in the mail. We spend, we spend about 79 cents a letter and we’re doing probably $3,000 worth of letters a month. And that’s foreclosures. That’s burned houses, that’s probate, that’s everything.

So we’re not just hitting one day. I do think that you know, number one, that you said a hundred percent, the sooner you figure out this is a business and not a job, too many real estate agents and investors, it’s like a job for them. They’re on a hundred percent commission plan and they never, and they wonder why they don’t build any momentum or equity in the business.

So you’ve got to understand this is a business and you invest time to build equity as well as income. And I think it’s the second thing you said, which is also correct. This is when you can start leveraging capital, not just your time. And so you have to choose where to do that. I send a lot of mail, but I said all the male people I’ve already met doc too, but it’s a lot to attorneys and past clients and people I meet because it’s, it’s my competition can’t spend the money that I can spend.

So I want to leverage that advantage. Rather than have to work more hours. I don’t want to work more hours. We’re plenty. And I like what I do, but I don’t want to work more hours. I wouldn’t like to work less if anything, and you get, you can hire, sorry, Terri, but you can literally hire, but you do that for you though.

The only thing that I, failed that is you can’t replace, you can’t replace the closer in you. If you’re not a closer on appointments or closer for appointments, you need to learn some NLP strategies. You need to learn how to have some conversations. But you could hire someone. We have someone for seven 50 a week that does all our letters.

She does 50 a day for us. So right now, right. Ran. Did you answer that question for us? Where are we? Good.

Terry’s ethics question. Other people on the call that send direct mail and call yet. So that’s exactly what I do. So now we have, I have a system when I get a list it is sent to my VA to scrub or real estate. When I get it back, I start calling my assistant in the office and send out the first letter 30, 40 days later.

We’ll send out a postcard, 30, 40 days later, we sent out the second letter, which is a different letter in there from ATL probate. I, I haven’t been able to call as much the last couple of months, but I’ll usually when I’m on schedule and track, I’ll call through the list depending on how big it is. It’s been bigger this last few months three or four times.

So by the time I get through that list, and then we’re sending the second or third mailing, then I’ve already scrubbed it out. Either they’re a hundred percent not selling. Somebody is going to stay in the house. They’ve already hired a real estate agent. But whatever, whatever reason, I scrubbed them out.

So the list by the time we mail the second and third time is smaller. But my goal is to call as many. And you mentioned earlier that I need to call because I don’t want to keep sending mail to people who are there’s, there’s no business there. So I need to call not only the great business but say save money in the end.

Dean asks if you’re willing to share how many pieces you mail per month, Randy. So we just got a list. I mean, we just had it scrubs. We just got a list on Friday. I think it scrubs, it was like 200 something. Shit. I forgot the number, but just this late, it’s 180. So we’ll send that first list, that new letter.

And then we send the second mailing from the month before and we send the third mailing from the month before also, which I don’t do every month. I also send a historical letter about it a year to 14 months out. So for example, we’re going to send out, I believe I just talked to my assistant.

We’re going to send it out, I believe March, or we’re going to send it out on April 21. We just got a little bit behind because we’re just busy also this week. So we’ll send out the first letter for this month. The new list set up for the second mailing, which is a postcard, was another. Mailing. And then a historical letter said to track it all.

That’s an area I need to get, I track on my phone prospecting. I need to do better at the mailing because I do want to find out exactly what the ROI is. I can tell you the first year is 2020. When I sent out mailings, it was inconsistent and not good because it’s trying to figure out the system.

I took three listings that year. For some whatever reason, maybe it’s just, cause I didn’t have a system that was inconsistent 20, 21. I didn’t take any listings this year for mailing. I believe I’ve taken two or three, but the mailing is it’s it, there’s another component to getting a direct piece of business from the mailing.

And I’ll give you an example. So I have a listing right now it’s active. She called me Debbie and said, Hey, we got your mail. We’d like to set up a zoom tomorrow because my son’s in California. We just, can we get on the phone together? We got to like your letter, we got a bunch of letters and we just want to talk to you.

I was on the dot on the zoom with her son, Michael, without me. I mean, I don’t know if I said, I just said hi. He said, Hey, you know, just so you know, we, we know you’re our guy because we like your letter. We already went online and, you know, did our research. We’re just, you know, we, we want you to help us out the property.

So the letter was almost just an introduction, but also compelled them to do more research. And I’ve started the last six, seven months to build, an online asset, not only a probate website but a probate YouTube channel. So by the time they get to me, and this is someone I wasn’t able to reach on the phone, they got. It was already a lay-down listing.

So that’s part of my how do you say the intention of, of building more like that? Moving into. Quarter or two, so that I have that asset so that I’m still gonna, you know, naturally I’m gonna do the, we’ll call it the grind, the daily grind of prospecting. But I also want to have the asset of, well, if I, if I there’s look, I don’t want to, it’s not necessarily fun every day to come in and do this work to work hard.

It’s hard work. So I would like to be able to go on vacation for a month and those that business continues to come in. I’m probably six to 12 months away from that. Yeah. And I think this is where one plus one is three, right? When you your postcard, you get to return your phone call to get a return. And for those of you, Mike fray, guys who are just phone call, you’re going to get business.

But if you postcard in the mail, the same people delete the mills based on your phone calls, stop calling based on your mailers. The one plus one equals three, not two. And if you add to that, maybe non-line asset website, YouTube channel. When people do call you and all the waiting, or before you call back, they search you out for who you are.

They have one plus one plus one equals five or six because that’s going to make your mailing more productive and make your phone call more productive. And so that’s where the goal is. I find is looking for the synergies of marketing. The other one is also marketing the attorney. Then if they ask the attorney, I was thinking about using this guy, bill gross.

I see bill gross all the time. You can use attorneys, you know, so that’s where the synergy of the marketing starts to pay off for you. I think in the long run. Are you able to Randy to share what is your historical mailing and what’s in it? What’s it’s real simple. It’s just, and these are all letters from ATL.

The historical, oh, quick ATL is all the leads.com such as the service that sells data and market materials and the probate space. Chad used to be the coach for them before he does coaching separately now for probably mastered. So I may have, I didn’t, I didn’t necessarily modify the content, but I made sure that I included it now when we’re talking about the online assets, Hey, for more info, go to my website, go to my probate, YouTube channel.

So that if, if they still need help and I haven’t, and maybe I got him on the phone nine or 12 months ago. And I’ll tell you, I sold a listing shoot. I think it is closed. Well, this is back in December historical. You know, I had taught, I can’t remember now, but I had talked to her at some point, but then nine months later she got my letter and called me from a historical mailing.

So, yeah, just all these pieces coming together to cause the goal is to make, you know, to do a lot of business, make a lot of money and help a lot of people. I mean, it, it, you know, doing one of these, you can get by, I guess, but that’s, I, just have, I guess, some different goals and not, not that anyone is right or wrong, good or bad.

It’s just, that there are things I need to, I need to do in this world. But yeah, just to answer the question, the historical mailing I met the goal is to about 12 months later, it’s a mail out, but sometimes you know, the dates just don’t match up. Like we’re going to mail April 21. So that’s 14 plus ago.

It’s not an exact system. Maybe it’ll be exact at some point in the future, but we’re working that out. Great. I think a lot of stuff, it’s just, you know, you’re working on the flight to you. Also, people ask me a lot of details about things I do, and I’m constantly changing and trying to improve them.

When are probate leads the most motivated sellers? (Probate Prospecting) [00:47:18] 

So, Terry Shaw, I see your hand up and you have a question. How can I help you? Thank you. Can you hear me? Yep. I have just recently through the help of some of my associates in my mastermind group, come into a listing of the executors of January, February, March, April, and bay in Harris County, Texas, over a thousand with names and phone numbers, et cetera.

Landlines cell phones. My associate in the group that I started years ago in California in San Francisco is also working in the market here with me. My question is, and I’ll tell you what I think is the best approach, but I’d like to split. The older, the list like this case January list would be in my opinion, the best list to start with because of the timeframe with when the probate process begins and getting closer to the time when they sell the property.

Would you have any advice or differences of opinion about that? You know, I think I would say the difference between your results on a January list and an April list will be insignificant compared to you doing more rather than less. I mean, if you laid out statistically, cause I don’t know your county, nobody knows your county at this level, statistically, there are advantages to being first there are advantages to being last as managers, as being in the middle.

But the biggest advantage is just to contact them. So I would put my energy and try to figure out how could I reach all of them. Certainly, I would focus on those with executives out. Those are usually richer. It also means around the property, they’re more likely to sell. But other than that difference, I would say put together a plan to contact all of them as quickly as you can through a combination of methods, phone calls, mailers, and social media.

Okay. I just want to piggyback on and bill you’re right, because if you’re waiting to call the January or reached out to the January list, now I’ve already reached out and touched them. If they answer the phone eight, nine, ten times. So they’ve done three mailings. I’ve called them probably half a dozen times.

If I had them on the phone, I’d already met with them, if not in person on zoom. And so when, when you come in, even though I understand the logic of, well, they’re not ready to do anything until now, I’ve already. If there’s something there, I built a relationship already taking the, taking the listing. Well, if I would say both because just like expire this, cause I used to call expired leads and you want to be first on the expireds, but also first is the most competitive piece you get lost in the noise.

A lot, most agents Randy’s an exception, most of the only male right away. And so the ape, the genuine stopped getting any attention there are advantages to them as well. So I would just say it doesn’t matter. You need a system to market, to all of them. Until they sell the house. We’re told they close out the probate.

So I would focus on that. What I need you to contact all of them if all things are equal, it’s four times more business. When I focus on a system that if we’re talking about business, thank you. I’m using a method of a phone call directly to them, a reverse, a ringless voicemail, as well as text messaging.

And I’m still trying to get the metrics on that. It’s not working great right now. No, I would not do that. Number one. How are you an investor-only are you a real estate agent? And I could use a real estate agent. It’s almost possible to use those technologies legally. They’re almost there, my numbers are knives of the people on the do not call list, to begin with, number one, number two, nobody appreciates that service.

The goal of the phone call is not to leave a message. The call, the phone call is to talk to them. And so certainly if I’m calling somebody, even when we make phone calls as a Mike ferry trained agent, you’re the best training. Cold calling is my various training and they have the prospecting school. I used to go to that.

It’s fantastic. In the training. One thing you learn is you only, hang up after the third ring, before the fourth ring, right? Why? Because you might talk to them. You don’t want to leave a message. The message doesn’t have any value. I’d have more people call me back on a missed call than I ever had.

Call me back because a message I left to, again, I think there, you’re trying to avoid contact. If you’re not going to do it, find somebody else, maybe find a realtor in your area. We talked about this before the realtor partner who maybe is trained to make phone calls, let them make the phone calls for you and you pay for the mailing perhaps.

But the value is not. The ringless drops. That stuff to me is all gimmickry and the people promoted in my experience. Aren’t selling houses. And I can tell you as a real estate broker, there’s no way you can do it legally. I mean, and I’m not sure. And I’m not one to, I mean, I, I, I push the law to when I’m allowed to do.

I don’t think you can do that legally. I just don’t believe it. Practically speaking,

you also got to remember that these people are 60 plus years old. So you got to think about their perspective that if it’s probate, they don’t want to be they want to talk to somebody, they do business by trust, right? So if you’re going to try to have the short diet pill to get in front of these people, you’re just never gonna get there ever.

I mean, an attorney who refers me to the client. I’ll call the client and I’ll say a text as a follow-up I’ve been referred to them. That’s different but cold. Let me ask you this. Terry, how many times have you gone get texts from somebody that you did business with as a result of an instance?

Not often. I mean, me personally, never. How many times have you done business with somebody who left you a voicemail? You never talked to me before. No. Right. I hear you. Yeah. I don’t, I don’t think I’m just trying to get as many touches in there as possible. And then perhaps you read them. I’m not being the most effective, but I am better on the phone.

And I like doing that. So maybe I’ll focus solely on that. You might want to have your hire tomorrow to help you or find a real estate agent one in, if you’re in the Houston area, find a Mike ferry, or train prospector, where you’re going to give them the data. You can do the mailing, they can search for listings, but you get the date.

You get the lists may be called down to the good numbers and then you can call those people yourself as an investor. Yep. In terms of the appropriate gauge for, calling probate. In my opinion, I don’t know how like you’re 18 Terry. I’m just kidding. Thank you. You got the voice inflection. You got the age you got.

And I see a lot of people hiring people from overseas that have no local experience, have no conversation experience. And they’re hoping to get the same ratio of return. If you would just pick up the phone and you’re going to have two conversations every day, if you call 75 people, you’re going to add 10 people to your CRM over a third day period of 21 days, you’re going to have 42 people out of those 42 people, 25% will convert.

And if you’re wholesale and your average deal is going to be $30,000, if you’re listing whatever the listing fee is you know, it’s just late. Yeah, I’ve grabbed it. Okay. I’ve kinda lost track of time. I’m sorry. Let me wrap this up real fast. Thank you so much, Randy. Thanks for jumping in and bringing your crew on David.

Thank you for your help, Terry, and all the other people. Great questions today, Bruce Dean. Thank you for participating. We appreciate it again, this is probably mastery. We do private mastery.com. We do this call every Tuesday at noon, Pacific 3:00 PM Eastern time, and everything else before or after that goes on the website here.

The podcasts are recorded in place there as well as searchable as well as other coaching products. Chad Corbett is the proprietor and the main coach. I’m Joe Gross. I’m just a substitute teacher this week. I just wanna tell you guys I appreciate you. Being on today, participating I’m a practitioner, before this phone call was talking to attorneys and families, and I’ll be doing that as well.

This afternoon, I do this every call this call every week to learn, to be better myself, and invite you to join us. So thank you for your body to have a great week and we’ll talk to you next week. 

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