How Do You Get Consistent Leads? + ‘My new ISA got 2 appointments with this script!’

Yeah. My VA’s already knocked out two of them so far to doing justice. Nice. And have you gone on the appointments? No, not yet. I’m scheduled to do the follow-up calls tomorrow, but for both of the leads that she scored, I checked the probate dockets in both of those properties, not properties, but both of those estates one has a property.
I think someone’s living in it, but the other one is vacant. Okay.
So share with us what’s the script. I kind of changed it around a little bit. But basically, so what I do is I have her call. If you would, would you role play with, he said you did it with me last week.

Sure. Okay. So, I’ll be the VA and then you can just be the other person on the other end of the phone. So it goes like this ring ring ring, and then you pick up. Hi Chad? This is Chad who am I speaking with? Hey, Chad how’s it going? My name is Balcom. First and foremost, this isn’t a sales call. I’m not a debt collector.
My name is Balcom. I’m calling with Buckeye probate care. We’re a local free service. We help families that recently lost a family member. And unfortunately, you know, they’re going through probate every week. We speak with the clerk records. She lets us know which family she thinks could use the most help your family was identified as one of those fans.
Now, my boss, he’s out of the office at the moment. He’s helping out another family, but I wanted to see when would be the best time to have him give you a call so we can discuss our services and see how we could probably help you and your family the best, what would be the best time to call?
I like it, man.

So my favorite part of all of it was we have a local free service. That’s good language. Yeah. I like I said, I took what you took, what you gave me. I kind of reworded it a little bit, but like I’ve already listened in on her calls. I mean, she knows she’s got to adjust a little bit, but you know, it’s, it’s working.
That’s awesome. Do you know what your contact rates are? Right now, since she’s been using this, because I just finalize it her contact rate is she’s getting a lot of no answers because she’s calling them when people are at work. So I would say that it’s probably 15, no answer to three answer ratio, 15 to three.
So, so far she’s hitting for high yeah, well, that’s awesome, man. Thank you for sharing that. I like that. I mean, you hit all the main components, but you added some good language in there. One line. You said in your roleplay, you said we identify families that are in the most need of help and you were one of them.
And I love that because. I probably don’t have time to counter you, but I want to know why I need the most help and how you did that. Like now I’m just purely curious, I’m going to answer and engage with you. Yeah. Yeah. They uh, so I had a list of potential contingencies because I figured that, you know, if you run into a call or if, I mean if you run into someone who answers the phone and.
You know, they’re real, for lack of a better word, you know, they’re a real Dick. you know, She’s not trained to go through the Rolodex of, you know, everything that we offer, but, the way that I trained her and the way that I wrote it was just, don’t try too hard to pitch what we offer and the services we provide, that’s not your job.
Your job today is to see if they will be open to hearing what we offer. And if so, when the best time would be to have her boss me call back. And so far, it’s, you know, it’s worked, it’s worked pretty well. So 15 calls, three contacts, two appointments. Yep. I’d say it’s working. That’s awesome, man.
Thanks for sharing. No, thank you, man. I got it from you, bill gross. Where have you been? All my life. Good to see you here, sir.
Maybe you don’t have a microphone today.
Welcome back.
Fed you’re next buddy. You’re in the hot seat. Tell us about your CRM. Searching, just searching. I have started doing what you and David told me. I have been at least updating, at least for now on an Excel sheet about five to 10 contacts a day, just to kind of update that. It’s a lot easier doing it that way, opposed to just having, I mean, I’ve ha I have boxes on boxes of contacts and just looking at it gives me anxiety so that I found something this morning.

Can you say: Yes, sir, this was the CRM I laid out in 2014. I knew I had something. I was looking in word documents, but this mind map. So I haven’t decided how I’m going to share this with you guys yet, but this was the monster, one of the monsters that I created. But a mind map helped me visualize what I needed a CRM to do.
So for example, if you come out. And just look at the sales funnel part of it. I had contact type contact, status, contact info, and then under contact details. We had, you know, the rating, all the branches. So this is how a few people following up with me and said, Hey, is there something you can give me that shows me how to design and layout a CRM.
This is pretty specific to where my business was at the time. It was vertically integrated like between brokerage and investment. But I, I just found this, this morning actually on accident and I’m like, that’s what I was looking for last week. It’s pretty specific to my business at the time, but it is something I have that might help you as you lay out what your needs are in a CRM. Thank you. I appreciate it a lot. Oh, and I see Katt posted a link I was trying to do, perfect. Anyways so are you going to hit your September? Was it the 15th? Is your deadline? Yes, sir. Do you feel good about that? Yep. Okay. Perfect. One step at a time. All right. Who else has something Rich Ransom.
Good to see you. Does anybody need any help? Does anybody have any wins? Any struggles?
Oh, Chad it’s Dan, how are you doing? Hey, quick, quick question for you. So I got a call from an attorney out of probate, mailing. I did some property near me. It is an absolute disaster, needs a lot of work and then some. I did a quick search in the deeds for the property to look for the deed and a mortgage and things like that.

There were probably 25 pre-foreclosures, refinances liens. I mean, it’s. There it’s a disaster in terms of what they, you know, all the neglected what, what they haven’t paid on the property. And it looked like the last mortgage was about 275. So I guess my question is I know they’ve got some notices of default because they saw them taped to the door on some like that, what would you do with it?
Would you, would you try to touch base with the bank or would you just let it go into foreclosure or what would you do? How, how far underwater is it? Have you added up all the lanes? Well, I don’t have access to all the liens on the property. You know, from what I could tell there was originally a $170,000 mortgage.
Then there was one for 2 75, about 10 years later. And there were probably 20 entries of non-payment, things like that. And then a couple. Assignments and a couple of cleans on the property from the city. Then, you know, the property is all done. Maybe worth three 50, but it’s an absolute disaster.
It’s, it’s almost a terrace. Okay. I mean, typically, I mean, you can short sale and you’re going to have to, you know, whoever your, your short sell facilitator is going to have to Wade through all that bullshit because you’re going to have to negotiate. Each of those liens is going to have to sign a release and there’s not going to be enough money to go around.
Now your senior debt. Well, the senior position will be any back taxes. Are the taxes paid or no, I couldn’t, I didn’t see any liens on the mortgage or the on the deed at all from the town. But I assume that there probably is, I didn’t see anything that was registered in there. Yeah. If you just look in, if you look in GIS, it should tell you the last tax bill and last tax paid.
And if, if they haven’t paid, you know, for more than two years, It may be a waste of time because if you go do all the work and then the state, the county could just auction it off anyways. But if there aren’t, if there’s no senior debt, if there’s not IRS debt or tax liens against it, then you can go, you know, do the short sale.
The other thing you can do is turn it over to a debt collection, like, an attorney that negotiates debt. Things like, I mean, most people know they’re not going to get anything, so they’ll take pennies on the dollar. I would probably attempt the short sell first. I mean, if you’re set up to do short sales, just list it, get a quick offer from your investor that will stop any foreclosure proceedings.
And then just let your investor know this. One’s going to take a while and it’s going to, it will be convoluted because we’re going to have to negotiate with multiple lien holders. It can be done. If you, you just have to figure out, is it, is it worth your time? And I would say if you’re facilitating it, it’s not, if you hire a short sell facilitator, why not?
They’re going to do all the work and they have to get themselves paid. Yeah. You know, the property, like all done in that area. It’s a very small lot small property, all done. It’s probably worth, I don’t know, maybe close to 400, but it needs 200. You know, to, to clean it up it’s I was, you know, just kind of a quick and dirty on it.
I was like, you see, you know, it might not even be worth looking at anymore, putting any more time into it. You know, the other thing, and this is not very helpful to the family, but every once in a while, like you get a property that’s just such a damn mess. It’s not worth the work, even if you want to help people.
And the best play on those is to just watch the newspaper and show up at the courthouse if you want it because that’ll cleanse the title and you just pick it up. Yeah. Th the personal representative is 93. So she’s in rough shape too. She lives in my town, but it’s, I don’t know. I’m just looking at the, at the, at the leans on it and the mortgage.
It’s gotta be more than what it’s worth. Yep. That’s the only thing you can do with it, but it’s going, it takes those take some time. So you’ve got to look at, you know, what’s the time value of your money and is it worth putting the time in, if you can find a good attorney who can negotiate those debts down, you know, he may get it into territory where there’s equity on it.
And, and if you did that, you would want to make sure you had it under contract, you can negotiate them all down and go ahead and close on it. If you can get it to where you can fund the deal and close, and then not pay they’ll wipe off all the liens.
And it’s hard to tell without seeing a full list, whether it’s worth it or not. I’ve had success with hospitals. We’ve had success with the IRS. A lot of people will settle out. Pennies on what they’re owed. It just takes time to figure out who the right person has to get the person with the authority to make that decision and get the paperwork turned around.
It can be an administrative nightmare, but it can be done for sure. Okay, great. Thank you.
What else have we got? Hey, you do have a microphone bill. Well, I want to test one of my testimonials for your service and coaching is I’ve so well that I generally take off at noon and go for a swim for the swim team. So today I’m going for a walk and still swimming by myself on mute. But yeah, to answer your question, I have a couple of appointments today on zoom.

I have one tomorrow as well. Okay. And these are, these are both listings. Yeah. That’s all I do. I just refer out buyers. Yeah. I’m going to, what’s your transaction pace right now on probate Bill? And I think you were on track to do 50 this year. Was right? Not quite so, how would the eXp and make icon at the top, which took me 11 and 20 more.
So 31 is my goal, but at the end of November in uh, uh, my track for that, I’ve been 35 the last 12 months. Okay. So you’re about a pace of about three a month now, two and a half to three. I need to get the three of my two and a half. I’ve done pretty well. And done some traveling and family time and investment stuff.
You know, some of the other things that go along with the business. But yeah, about two and a half a month to three. So I’m going to give you guys the opportunity here. I’m really proud of you, bill. That’s awesome. And I know you got it. Yeah. It’s all because of you. I started with you two years ago, in March.
I had zero production. I was coming out of coaching, recruiting, and management. I didn’t have a lead. I’d have a listing, I didn’t have a buyer. I had friends and family. I see why, but listen, I took your probate mastery. I spent a month writing a plan and just worked on that plan. It’s all because of you.
That’s awesome.
Thank you for the credit. Really your hard work. But the guys, you have somebody who is fighting the cashflow roller coaster, who didn’t know where the next deal was coming from. And now he’s running at the pace of, in a, in a high, not a high price, immediate price market, three close, roughly coming from his probate pipeline and earning more. the fact that he gets to take more time off now he has consistency and Bill I’m sure you’re already thinking it.
Right. I mean, I went to Florida to do some research on that, and yeah. Yeah. That’s where it gets exciting when you have excess cash rolling off, and then you start making passive income investments, and then you’re, you know, the money that you made on probate is making money for you. Other ways.
That’s when this gets really fun and exciting.
Hey Bill Winston Covington down here, I’ve got a question I’ve been wanting to ask you. In prospecting, probate business. What are your top three sources of probate business? I know you pull different, you know, manners of prospecting, probate. What are the most successful techniques for you? So I think I try to focus on is, you know, different forms, but they have to be synergistic. They have to help each other. I want to leverage what I’m doing one over the other.

So I prospect attorneys not so intensely, but I reach out to them regularly. So at accord every day, I still reach out to them regularly by email mail phone. Occasionally I work with investors on buying property at LA county court that goes there. I meet up with attorneys there that help that process as well.
What else do I do? I do a lot of stuff, man. You know, I think I, I think I just really right now, To be honest about it. I just try to help as many people as I can. And that like focusing more on the process and the leads like I do you know, once I do a weekly call myself, I get 40, 50 people in that a week.
And I email out about what I’m doing. And I think that that’s been, my focus is just helping investors, helping other realtors. I get realtor referrals, And contact attorneys are still probably my most effective.
Oh, of course.
Yeah, Chad, you, one thing I’ve done up from what you did. I kind of took, I think a lot of your teaching that, that was the source of it. I really try to focus on two or three different generation methods rather than just cold-calling petitioners.
I said, well, how could I do that? You know, Attack the angles from another angle, attack the targets from another angle. I’ve always tried to work around things that work together. That makes sense. Cool. Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that.
Johnathan. Welcome back, man.

Did you get any stories? Tell us about your win – how many appointments do you have this week? Only had three this week. So I’m not, I’m not doing it like I want to, but, yeah. Lack of response to marketing or lack of effort on your part responsible marketing for the most part. And then I think I could probably, I’m going to have to do some things outside of the box to make things happen.
That just hadn’t. So it’s a little of both. Okay. When’s the last time you were in an attorney’s office? It’s been a while. It’s been a while. Maybe it’s time. It is time. It is time. When you’re marketing, when you’re coming up dry on marketing, a good way to the reason I bring that up is it it’s, you know, one attorney relationship can result in you know, in multiple, multiple deals. But it can also really pump you up, right. When it kind of validates that your service is valuable. So if, if the consumers aren’t responding to us, we can go out to our referral network and have that business-to-business conversation and remember, oh, what we’re doing right, actually really is.
To the consumer, but also to these other people that I’ve been involved in it like to my team. So like a discouragement exercise, when you feel like what you’re doing, isn’t working, that’s usually a good day to just put everything down and go, go provide value to the attorneys or, you know, go lay out a piece of content.
Like, you know, we’ve got folks that are doing interviews with social workers, interviews with grief counselors then there’s things like that, that, that. You know, you can do on those days instead of pounding your head against the desk, making another phone call. So have you, I haven’t, I don’t think I saw you on last week’s call.
We’ve had some really good conversations about that. With folks in markets where it makes sometimes makes more sense to do more inbound marketing. Creating content and communities. And, then it does the outbound marketing, like sending another letter or hammering out another 10 phone calls.
Sometimes we just need a break. Right? Anyway, just something to consider. Like it, it’s not, you know, we, and I’m as guilty as anyone, I tend to go straight to self-criticism when it’s completely ineffective. Like you’re better off. If, if what you’re doing, isn’t working just change gears for a week. Go, go work on the attorney side of the business.
Okay, thank you for that. And I’ll create more content as well. I know Steve is a part of that. You get, I think you’re on mute.
I had a referral for an attorney today that I went and saw his presentation last week at one of the title companies. And it was a great conversation cause it went from Oh,

hi, how you doing to, oh, Steve, I’m glad you called me. And it was really cool to get that feedback at a connection that I think we’re starting to develop now. But when you go prospect attorneys, would you recommend producing one of the brochures and having that to take in or just go in and shake hands and follow up with a letter.
How would you go about that? Maybe that’s a good question for Bill to follow up on. We’ve had success with just, you know, tri-fold brochures that summarize your service.
Go bill, say, use the tri-fold the, all the tri-fold I do. It’s a great piece. To be honest, I use it. I keep it in my pocket. When you meet with the attorney, I always give them one just to show them what I’m doing. It kind of explains the whole game plan, so they get it right away. Cool. Thank you. Yeah. Like if you go ahead and bought a little plexiglass stands and
pretty easy to get the attorney to put that on the front desk because nobody else has ever produced, you know, brought something like that in or asked. And it’s a really good reason to, you know, to take advantage of it. It’s a good, good reason to drop in every week or two. Oh, I just wanted to stop in and say, hi, brought you guys some donuts or brought you a veggie tray and a few of these things to fill that back up.
And it’s good it’s, you know, Familiarity is important in a referral relationship. Right? So if they see you every other Thursday, when you drop in and with a treat for them and refill the brochures, you’re the first and only person they’re going to think of when they need a real estate professional.
Right. So we’ve had real success with that. You know, I mentioned treats doughnuts and stuff because it works. I mean, something, something that simple, like one of those. One of the top she was an ISA, but she did 90% of the work. He basically would go on the appointment and get the contract signed. She did everything else, but she would go to a little bakery whatever looked good to her that day, she would pick up and take by the attorney’s offices.
And you know, it wasn’t a ton just, you know, seven or $8 worth of something. And she would drop by and they covered her up. Like she did incredibly well with that. And that was like Italian Christmas cookies, like around Christmas. And she would take different things like an Eastern Liliane and kind of the, you know, the just it’s.
Any kind of a treat like that? Anything you can do? I used to do it with all my title companies with lenders. I would just on a whim, just drop in little Caesars by like 12 hot and ready pizzas stop and be like, Hey guys, I just had lunch thought. I’d bring you some. But when I needed title in two days, like if I needed a clear title and I, well, here’s one of the ways I cashed in on that favor, I sold, I a friend call me and she’s like, listen, I’m in, I’m in a bind.
I’ve got another multi-family project. That’s about to foreclose. I need cash in the next 72 hours. And I’m like, you gotta be shitting me. So I liquidated an 11 unit apartment building 53 hours from start to finish. I mean a contract, title, and closing in 53 hours. And it was because I did those little things for my team, like right.
My external team, my vendors. So little stuff like that. Like you might spend 70 bucks on pizza this week, but it’ll make you 20 or $30,000 in a few months. So anyway, this with attorneys, it’s kind of the same thing. Just whatever you can do to make them feel like they’re appreciated and make yourself memorable.
Fed I think you had something to add to not, not to, it’s like confession time slash accepting the role of being the punching bag for the next few minutes. It’s okay. It’s cool. So ironically, Steve and Bill essentially touched on what I wanted to go over. So I will admit that I’ve been horrible at approaching attorneys.

I don’t even know where to start with the attorney probably because I’m creating too I’m overanalyzing and complicating it for myself. So for example, let’s hypothetically say this call ends in 30 minutes and I say, all right, you know what?
Today is when I start with the attorneys, I have leads. And what is step one? I call the gatekeeper. Hey, who are you? You know, I want to talk to them. Step one is figuring out why you’re valuable to a law firm. Can you. Absolutely. It’s here to help families navigate the challenging probate process.
And I’m here to act as an extension to the attorney. So anything that I could take off of your hands is something that my team and I would be glad to do to facilitate and speed up the process for you and your client. Okay. And then the other part of that, how can you help them get more cases?
Because they’re unemployed every morning, just like you, but they have non-solicitation restrictions that you don’t, how can you benefit them? I would be more than happy to formulate a marketing strategy where I can include your services too. How many months worth of leads? Do you have like two years? No, because I stopped at one point because I was just, I had too many expenses, so I would say, give or take, I have about seven.
Okay. And how many per month? Let’s call it an average of 85 because it fluctuates from 80 to 1 0 9. Okay. So you have roughly 560 leads in there that are pro se who chose not to have legal representation. Yeah. That’s enough for a campaign, man. If you go into an attorney’s office and say, you know, listen, one thing I’ve noticed in the last seven months, I haven’t done as much as I should have prospecting.
So I’m getting ready to do a camp. I want to reach out to every family who has engaged in the probate process without legal representation. And I want to send them a letter that talks about some of the reasons that’s a bad idea. The reason I’m here today is I need an attorney that I can trust. And I see that you guys are very successful and you’re doing a lot of business in the county.
So I wanted to give you the first opportunity. I’d like to design a probate checklist or a probate timeline that defines every little point legal and non-legal of the entire process from start to finish. And then everything legal is going to be colored and whatever color you choose, your farm color.
Everything else will be in black and at the footer. We’ll have your name, your firm name, your attorney name, your web address. And I’ll help you by including that in a letter campaign to all 560 of those, some of them will already have attorneys. Some of them will continue to fumble through it on their own, but I’m pretty confident.
Some of them need your help and you can use it. I’m reaching out. I’m already paying for the postage and paying for the mail. I’m just willing to offer you to, to, you know, to it’s important to me that I can create a relationship with your firm. I’m willing to take on that marketing expense and burden for you.
So have you got 30 minutes? Just sit down and help me. Co-design this piece. Okay. Well, the way I came up with that number, typically in California, usually around 20% of monthly filings or not have, you know, will be pro se, which so I just it’s assumptive, but you’ve probably got about 500 people in there that chose not to have an attorney.
And if they haven’t created a mess, they’re probably not far. Because California is complicated. It was hard for, yeah, for sure. And
is this something, is this a quote-unquote pitch that you would do on more than one attorney, or would you kind of try to see through that list? How many, how often it is that for example, you see Chad has 90% of these people, or does that make sense? Yeah, only you can decide. I mean, you know, there one attorney can, can feed you for life.
If you try to manage 50 of those relationships, you’re probably not going to be great at any of them. Right. Only, you know what number it is. I would say I would encourage you at first. Like, let’s get you through. Well, let’s start with three. So if you take those 500 splits, split the list and the three pieces, and go do that with three different attorneys.
And over time, you don’t have to worry about who was on what list or anything like that over time. Like you’ll, you’ll generate some business for them. Yeah. And you’ll get, you’ll get some in return, but I would say that anyone listening to this, you should have three really solid attorney relationships where, I mean, you have real referrals coming from the, and if you don’t have that, that’s a good goal, Mike let’s, let’s get that before the end of this calendar year.
Let’s see if we can get you where you have, you know, a relationship where if you pick up the phone, you wouldn’t feel guilty calling this attorney. I just talked to this family and X, Y, and Z is going on. What the hell is my next step? Because they can be a really good resource for you and helping families navigate things you’ve never encountered before.
But eventually, they’re going to call back and be like, listen, this guy went like this family needs to sell this house in a hurry. Can you get over there today? And there, they’re, you know, outstanding referrals. So I’d say let’s, let’s set your goal at three and your outbound effort. And just to kind of recap, I mean, we talk about this a lot and fed that one of the next best places going back through these calls.
So if you go to probatemastery.com, click on the podcast, you can search attorney and bring up these conversations. Cat does an incredibly good job of segmenting these out, where we can find what we need, that what we need, but go back through and listen to some of these ideas in longer form. Essentially, you can take them a referral for estate planning.
So like, if you have family members who don’t have trust, they should have, and you know that so turn them into a referral, open the door to those attorneys and say, listen, I’ve, I’m holding myself to a higher standard of service this year. And I realized half of my damn database, which you don’t have on, but we’re not going to tell him that half of my database doesn’t have an estate plan.
So my goal is to get as many people. Into a proper asset protection plan as possible this year. And that starts with me making sure I have the right law firm to partner with. Are you guys interested in, you know, offering an hour free consultation to the referrals that I send you that say yes, we are aware we’re ready to have that conversation?
They run their business on referrals. Of course, they’re going to say yes. So you go to a sphere of the influence campaign. You find all the people in your life professionally, personally, that says, oh, you know, I meant to do that, but I just haven’t gotten around to it and you turn them into a referral. So I say, you know, would you like, can I give you an hour?
Can I not pick up an hour of a probate attorney or an estate planning attorney’s time to make sure that you and your family, your estate is proper. Cared for you at least know the options. If you, if you continue procrastinating, that’s up to you, but I can give you an hour of my guys, Tom. Well, whether they do it or not, you’re going to have perceived value, right?
Like they’re going to know most, everybody knows an attorney is going to be somewhere between 150 and $800 an hour. Right. So there’s perceived value there. So. To be ashamed of, even if it’s like friends, family, church members, whatever it is, you’re providing real value to them. The attorney is looking for referrals because that’s how they have to make their next step.
So they shouldn’t have any problem if you send 50 people. Right? So that’s one way is generate referrals, proactively generate referrals, and open the conversation with a qualified referral that day, which takes a little bit longer. Option two is to do the collaborative marketing campaign. So sit down and design the checklist, mail it out and send them the referrals that come off of it.
And then there are other ways like Bill outside of the box, he goes to the courthouse and has a presence. So he’s that he’s got familiarity with the attorneys and his market. Other things you can do is become an affiliate member of the bar and. You can become an affiliate member of a fiduciary council where a fiduciary is a meet, on a monthly or quarterly basis.
So, but we talk about a lot of these ideas. Those are the most common ones, and you can go back through the podcast notes and pull that stuff up. And this look search for the word attorney or referral partner and the. You know, and get some of those ideas, but the idea is, and, and also in session two toward the end of session two, where we talk about building a referral network, we talk about these things, but between all those resources, what I would suggest is if you had didn’t do it, when you took the course, get a written plan, like write down, this is my referral strategy.
And anytime you feel like shit and you don’t want to make phone calls, You fall back to the referral strategy. Just like I recommended the Jonathan earlier when you’re having a, I’m going to beat on Fed day. Like, I’m a lazy asshole. I’m not, there’s no wonder I don’t have a deal on the pipeline. Like when you’re having one of those days to me it’s yeah.
You know, it’s, it’s, I love connecting with, with good attorneys. Like it’s, you know, it’s a good conversation. So when you’re having a bad day or when you’re having, when you don’t have anything to do you know how many appointments you’ve caught up on your prospecting, you always fall back to that vendor.
You know, your, your referral. No. So, whether that’s social workers, nursing, home employees, attorney, you know, all of these people that have contact with folks at that end of life phase you can do this same thing. Like how can your small business help their small business and get out there? Whether it’s on the phone face to face is best.
Like if you can meet face to face with these attorneys, it’s far more effective. Gatekeepers are tough. Like if you, you, you know, at the beginning of this, you said, well, it’s a step. What’s the first step I start calling. And then there’s a gatekeeper. Like it’s difficult over the phone. It’s not impossible.
We’ve, we’ve achieved as high as 7% conversion rates and on the phone, but it’s a lot tougher than going in person a lot less fun. Hey actually getting in front of people. So I’m just going to hover a little bit. On the topic, you were discussing getting in front, but I’ll slightly tweak it.
So in my regular real estate business, I do a lot of door-knocking. Okay. So what I’ve been doing lately, just to have an additional touch, okay. To stay in front of people, I’ve been going to local businesses as an, in an area that I, that I farmed there. 600 homes. Okay. So what I do is I provide them. Farm of 600 with a market report every month.
Okay. That’s one of the items, what I’ve been doing as well as I’ve been going to local businesses in the area and have been reaching out to them and asking them, Hey, look, you know, a local real estate specialist here in the, in the, in the community. And I’m trying to see you know, given COVID and how all business businesses slowed down a little bit.
I wanted to reach out and see how we can help local businesses. And essentially I’m trying to see if in a marketing piece, whatever that may be, that local business may want to, for example, ads, you know, maybe a QR code for that business that I can provide through our marketing team that says. You know, at Chad Corbett’s, I don’t know, restaurant or whatever.
If you apply this code during happy hour, you get half off on your second drink or whatever that may be. If it’s dry cleaning, you get one shirt, whatever that may be. Right. It’s just an excuse to stay in front of people. Okay. Wow. Also giving them something. So I’m not asking you for anything, I’m giving you something while my face stays in front of you, whether it’s physically or on paper.
However, if I’m doing, for example, the marketing for the attorneys where I pay postage and mail, and then I start Paying, you know, for all these businesses to be included, ESET eventually you run out of funds. What would you suggest a possible way to either get them to, you know, pay for a portion of that since you’re including them.
And if so, how would you split that cost? Would you go 50, 50? Would you go, that does, does that make sense? Essentially you’re, you’re providing them with marketing at a reduced cost because we’re putting in the legwork to get in front of them in front of the clients and we’re staying consistent. So just trying to figure out how to make it cost-effective while staying persistent and just staying in front of me, because I’m also doing a social media campaign so that when I’m in front of you.
Face-to-face then through a mailer and then through social media, that way it’s, you’re getting attacked from all angles. You’re constantly seeing that name. Hmm. So I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask for a 50, 50 split on this. I mean, like when we have folks who are investors who don’t have a license or vice versa, you know, it’s, if you get the investor deals, I get the realtor deals, we split it down the metal.
Right. So it’s if you’re. If you’re turning out quality marketing, then they shouldn’t be, you know, it’s like, Hey man, I’ll give you half the postcard. All you have to do is cover the cost. I’ve already got the list of everything’s done. And then just line them up for you. No one likes the pizza place this month, the dry cleaner, next month.
And, and then. Yeah, I don’t think you’ll have any trouble. I think if you walk into a small business owner and say, Hey, how would you like to do a direct mail piece to 600 houses surrounding here and, and, you know, not have to deal with any of the headaches. And I mean, what’s, what’s your postcard costs.
Are you around 40 cents right around. Yeah. So, I mean, we’re talking about nothing here. There’s not much cost associated. You’ll probably get a higher net gain if you negotiate. Like, Hey man if I can get a free slice once a week, I’ll make sure you guys are in my marketing. Like you’re better off to get free pizza and dry cleaning.
You’re gonna, you’re gonna end up making more money. But, and you might consider that like, seriously, like just, you know, what, if, if you. Your foot, the bill, don’t ask them for any money. Just be like, Hey man, like, I’ve been supporting you guys. I come in here at least once a week. You know, what, what kinda like if, if I throw you in my marketing, what kind of a locals discount do I get?
Do I get to come Ana? Anyone who’s been to Hawaii, but uh, you, you could do that. I mean, you could do, you know, like what, what do you do? You, you, I mean, you have, you, you have a lot of nice clothes. I mean, do you. For example a now I know you pay for dry cleaning, right? So you could almost barter that, where it, listen, I’m going to support your business.
If you can, if you can help me out, you guys are great dry cleaners and I’ve got needs. So you might not have to ask them for cash. You may be able to trade it out and services or food or drinks or. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask him to pay half of that. And it gives you like an, I would, I would take it a step further instead of saying, Hey, put a QR code on here.
It’s let’s put a blog post on my website. We’re going to tell the story you want to. And we’ll do a video interview and the QR code will land them on your website where you start to get traffic. Right? So now they become part of a retargeting audience. So you send the postcard, they scan the QR code.
They land on the page. Instead of having half a postcard to tell his story. Now he has an unlimited amount of space. He can write anything he wants to write, and you can control the video interview and you’ve got local. Hyper-local. Content to the neighborhood. So you’ve, you’ve got now people are searching like restaurants in that neighborhood.
It starts to come up. You can, you can do things like you can post images and, and put the video up on his Google, my business page, which will link back to your real estate website. And you can have downloadable coupons, you know, lots of different things, but I would say, yeah, Give him give the business half the postcard, let them know that this isn’t the place to tell your story, but we need a compelling reason for them to click on this address or click like snap, this QR code, where they can go learn more about your business, see your schedule, whatever.
But if you can try to get it on your website, because that becomes your local context. And over time and you should connect with grant Cox on this. He’s doing this now. He’s, he’s, he’s reaching out and he’s documenting things like businesses and even like lesser-known city parks and things that he enjoys about his neighborhood as he’s setting up his farm area.
And you and grant have connected before, right? So you might, you might trade some ideas with grant on the. But he’s he had a really good job with this type of, you know, grassroots, really inbound marketing. So I don’t think it’s a good idea. And I think, you know, just the, having the, having the opportunity to interview each business owner in your farm area and build that out, it was a library.
Imagine on the buyer side, when uh, when someone who’s looking to buy a home in that neighborhood, imagine when they find that way. And they get to meet the pizza, the guy that owns the pizza shop and they got it, does the dry cleaning, and the guy that has the deli. And like they have an opportunity on your YouTube channel or your blog to get to know all these, you know, know about what’s the story of this business, what what’s the owner most proud of, or, you know, whatever they talk about.
But it could be a great resource for your inbound marketing efforts. But it’s also a good way to subsidize your marketing costs by giving them that feature. They pay you and you made it, you may find that rather than saying just 50 50 with maybe like, listen, there are 600 in my farm area on average, a campaign costs me 50 bucks.
I’ll do a feature if you give me a $25 gift card or $25 in cash. Sure. Yeah, that makes sense. And what was I going to say?
Since you were talking about doing videos or something like that can you remind me of the camera that you suggested? Cause I believe a few months ago you did suggest.

Yeah. Are you talking GoPro? Cause I don’t know if you want to do with a phone. I’m thinking almost, you know, Rosie, when she does all of these things, she has some pretty serious equipment. I’m not saying it needs to be a videographer-type material, but at the same time, you know, sometimes an iPhone video uploads, a little blurry or with a lag or something like that.
Is there anything that you would recommend or do you think we should be miked up during this interview? What, what do you suggest? Sure. And equipment’s important. I find that if I have an iPhone 12 pro and it’s a fantastic video, like really good. What? I pair my phone with our, I, I have a microphone.
It’s SHURE MV 88. it’s about 150 bucks, I think for that mic. And it has, it has a little case that it comes in with the dead cat cover to kill when noise. But I find I have used that microphone in the middle of convention centers and testimonial videos, it does a fantastic job for the money.
So I find that like on a mobile setup like that, if you’re not a technical guy and you don’t have professional video equipment, that combo is damn near as good. I’ve got a $10,000 camera sitting on the desktop here. I use it right now, I’m shooting on a Logitech 4k.
And if I’m going to be outside, I use that combo of that microphone with my iPhone 12 pro I’ve. I shoot like an Olympus professional-level camera, but I use it mainly for stills. I find with video it’s just, Hey, grant just showed up. Grant. I just gave, fed the homework to call you. But anyway, I find that the iPhone is, is more than enough.
The autofocus is fast on it. The thing about micro four-thirds and DSLR cameras, if you’re going to use them as video cameras, you almost need a videographer running the camera to get the best result. Now, Rosie is using an, a, a Sony, a 6,600, I believe is what she’s on. You can pick those up on eBay for, I mean, how you can get the body for probably three or 400 bucks now.
It’s still, I mean, it’s several years old, but it’s still a really good camera. Yeah. I want to say that. If, if fed, if you do go looking for a DSLR. Do a little research. Some of these will connect with your phone via an app, and you can operate the camera directly from your phone. So if you’re able to set that up on a tripod, you’ve got a great, great setup.
I just hit record right there and you can see what the camera sees in your phone. Yeah, that was going to be my next question. It was going to be, if you are doing the interview, let’s say you don’t have someone to do it. There were two questions. Where is, are you using a tripod or are you using a stabilizer and just, you know how stabilizer you can move it and it’ll still constantly stay still?
I think it depends on the nature of the interview. You don’t always get a gimbal. Like gimbals are they’re complicated and expensive and kind of a pain in the butt. A tripod will be fine in most cases. And if you need to move, you can set the tripod up here, shoot, and then moved to another room and shoot.
And if you wanted to, but I, I don’t think a gamble is necessary for the simple video work. We’re talking about. Grant that catch you up. Feds talking about highlighting businesses on his farm. And doing a collaborative marketing campaign. And I told him the stuff you were doing in the, in, you know, with parks and Google, my business and things like that.
So you guys can share a lot of ideas. I think they should get some sunglasses, like grant I’ll look more serious. Yeah. I’m going to, I’ve been trying to find like, I’m going to try to grow some hair, like grants too. I’ve got a hard stop in four minutes, but I did want to say like if you find a need for professional camera gear and grant, and I both shoot on the Olympus platform, he asked I love it.
Like Sony Sony makes a really good camera. The series is awesome. But the glasses expand. And Olympus has probably the best combination of features and value that I’ve found. And I have beat that camera all over the world. Rain, snow mud. So if you want to like Olympus the OMD series I’m currently using on Olympus OMD, M one mark two.
And I know that’s a mouthful. But it’s again, you can pick those, you can pick those bodies up used on eBay, and get if you want, you know, if you want to move in that direction, they’re incredibly good cameras. It’s just if you’re moving around in the frame a lot, the autofocus isn’t as fast as a dedicated video camera or an iPhone.
So, I usually don’t recommend it because it does get technical fast. When you can just do an iPhone and it’s easy and because like what I’ve found and, and just my behavior, like why not try that w the more professional equipment I use, the more reasons I have to procrastinate or excuses, right.
It’s the simpler, my setup, the more content I seem to get done. Yeah, but if you do want to move into professional cameras and stuff grant has an Olympus set up. I’ve got one happy to save you a ton of time and let you know what lenses to get. And then on cameras, one more thing. There’s one of the cameras I’ve suggested in the past as for the 360 camera, which also has a 4k video is the Rico.
I remember you bring in that, that rings a bell. That was for that. Rico state of the earth data five. And that dollar for a dollar might be one of the best cameras you give by for real estate because it shoots 4k video shoots 360. It’s got really good, like in like the software that comes with it. So yeah, Jonathan’s got one right there.
So the Ricoh side of five, it’s about a thousand bucks, but you’re going to get in that way cheaper than you’ll get into it. You know, on a professional level, DSLR, micro four thirds, and it does a hell of a lot more. I love that. I appreciate that a lot. I took a good amount of notes. Sorry, everyone for taking so much time on this, by the way.
My apologies. No worries, man. All right guys, I do have to run. I’ve got a hard stop today. Thank you guys for being here and for your input. We appreciate it. Thank you so much always before we go, just take note of the question I have in there. And if you have a chance later on, just respond to it.
I’m sorry. I missed that. I sent you something as well, but no rush. Okay, cool. I’ll get back to you guys. Thanks.