Please note that live participation in weekly group coaching is reserved for Certified Probate Experts (Probate Mastery course alumni).
Summary: Should you use a script when calling probate leads? What script should a virtual assistant use when attempting first contact? How can you adjust your introduction depending on the demeanor of the personal representative? Experts share cold calling tips that have made them successful. Beyond cold calling, what’s the best way to get started using video and testimonial content in your overall prospecting plan? The group discusses ways to repurpose content for inbound marketing, brand awareness, and lead nurture. The group also masterminds how to balance listing and acquisition opportunities with transparent and properly-structured business practices.
Audio stream: Taking Your Probate Script To The Next Level: Expert Tips For Evolving Your Real Estate Prospecting Plan | ep. #7
Time Stamps (YouTube Links):
00:00 Introductions
1:03 Should You Use A Real Estate Script?
4:07 Optimizing Cold Calling: Contact Rates, Script Adjustments, and Team Management.
12:03 Inbound Marketing: How to “Be Found” By Clients Who Want Your Real Estate Services
14:37 Optimizing Your Video Content for Inbound Marketing
17:26 Re-Purposing Your Video Content in an Email Marketing Drip for Lead Nurture
19:35 How Email Scripts Have Worked For Rosie
21:36 How Much Does A Real Estate Virtual Assistant Cost?
24:19 Erik Shares Insights From His VoiceLogic Probate Prospecting Campaign
27:10 How to Repurpose Written Testimonials for Video Marketing
30:29 Is Email Marketing Enough?
31:33 How Do You Switch Between Your Realtor and Your Investor Hat?
33:14 Off-Market Deals From Probate Listings: Highly Motivated Sellers
36:26 How Brokerage/Investment Transparency Wins, Every Time.
41:12 How To Balance Listings vs. Acquisitions
43:20 Asset Protection for Investment Properties: LLCs and Land Trusts
Relevant Links:
- Estate Professionals Mastermind Group (Facebook)
- Chad Corbett’s YouTube Channel
- Ringless Voicemail, Voice Courier, and Appointment-Setting Services with VoiceLogic’s probate-trained team: https://voicelogic.com/probatemastery/
- David Pannell exemplifies how simple it is to capture a video testimonial
- Get Probate Leads
SEGMENT TRANSCRIPTS:
Intro
All right. Welcome everybody to the weekly probate mastery group coaching call. This isn’t my zoom backdrop. I actually had to drive I’m in Marlins, in West Virginia near my home. I haven’t heard this. I live in, I grew up in the only radio quiet left in the world. The green bank observatory is the radio astronomy observatory is here.
So we have this is the one cell tower and the entire County, and it’s about a quarter mile range. So I came down and I was like, I’ll just make the call from the river. So you guys we’re on the river today for everybody on Facebook. This is the first time that we’ve actually broadcast this into the group.
Probate mastery alumni. Just be aware if you’re interacting on Facebook, those messages don’t come through to us. Katt is moderating. So Katt’s keeping an eye on it. And she’ll do our best to relay your questions over. If you want to interact and you want to speak, obviously you need to click the zoom link
Anyone who wants to jump in, please do it anytime. That’s the fun of these calls. They are a group discussion and it’s a lot more fun than just hear me talk to myself.
Should You Use A Real Estate Script?
[00:01:02] There’s a bit of a theme today, so we’re still settling into what these calls, what, how to get the most value out of these calls and Katt. And I’ve had a fun debate going for, Oh, I don’t know, five years about scripts. And that’s what we want to talk about. You guys have heard me Say that, I love the quote.
Zig Ziglar has a quote, timid salespeople have skinny kids and I believe scripts build timid salespeople. And I believe that a conversation framework and knowing what information you need and having some questions on deck to ask to get that information is the best methodology. The interesting thing is when I look at the probate mastery, exit surveys of the 49 people who have taken the new course, every single one of you guys said, we see value in learning that way and we’ll choose that.
However, it is a, it’s a valid debate. People who are not in this space and have not had the course do think they need a script. So I want to, I that’s a topic that I would like to throw out there and then hear the opinions. David Pannell thanks for being here, man. I know you have worked with you when you first got started in this.
You had an office of ISA. And, tried scripting there. And I want to hear if there’s if I do need to be writing scripts or a different type of conversation framework, I want to hear from you guys, what you feel like you need. If it’s a role-play, if it’s a video, if it’s written, if it’s a book form or a PDF, whatever, and something, a theme that I wanted to cover today, just so I can make sure that your needs are met and what scripts actually mean to you.
Rather than just agreeing with me in a survey, let’s have a discussion about it. Like you think they serve you and how I like, is it bullet points or is it a specific script and anyone else who has written their own scripts and had success with it, or trained essays with your script, please join that discussion.
So I’ll shut up now. Anyone who wants to yeah, man, it’s I think mastery is the ultimate mastery of real estate. It’s not, you can’t just jump into this. If you’re a new agent, you really can’t, you probably can. And fumble your way around until you get someone to say yes to you. And that’s the goal.
But I think probate really comes down to the mastery of the communication, their perspective what are they going through? What is their solution? What is their problem? Because no conversation over the last, I’ve done 70 deals so far in probate, probably 72 now. And it’s just, it’s, they’re not the same.
It’s a complete different story, different areas, different title problems. And it’s just, and usually your assumptions are wrong. Would you agree, David, like a lot of people try to do a hundred percent. People try to deduce the story and what their names are about looking at a spreadsheet. And it’s just not the best way to do that is through a, an organic conversation.
But David I’m curious Katt and I we actually brought you up this morning. I’m curious when you had four ISA, right? Like your outbound call team. And we went through 16 people, 16. I know at one point you transcribed all of the role-play calls that we did at all the leads and tried to try the build script book.
Optimizing Cold Calling: Contact Rates, Script Adjustments, and Team Management
[00:04:07] So let’s talk about that. Like where did you have success? Why do you, why didn’t it work or where did it work? I found the softer approach got us in the door more. And I don’t know if I said last time, but I have a painter here now at my house and he’s he put fence? I paint fences on his truck cause he’s out in the country and nasal Texas.
So people will call him. Cause obviously everyone has a fence to paint. He says, once he got in the door of painting their fence, he got in the door to paint their house and they’d call them for years to paint things. So I think it’s the same difference. The one that we for the new people call them probate.
Instead of jumping into the conversation, all I can help you buy or sell your house. I think the thing that worked for us is having that resume book and saying, Hey, may I send you something to prove that I am legit? And that’s what a letter does too. But typically you’re sending four to five letters to prove your point.
If you just get on the phone and ask for that permission to send them something. They’re going to say no, or they’re going to say, maybe they’re going to say, I don’t have time to sell the house right now. What do you think? And I’m gonna, I’m gonna put you on the spot and ask you, what is the primary thing, the primary tool or the primary source of information that helped you build your effective language and working with these people?
Was it role-plays, was it just experience falling on your face? Was it probate? Master all the above. I have 22 books that are bought from Amazon. I’ve written read through them. I haven’t read them all. I don’t think you need, I must say it. I’m going to say it to you. You have, you don’t need any probate experience to do what I’m doing.
I thought I bought 22 books. I went to Chad’s course. I have a general sense of it, but I have an assistant that I have a TC. That knows how to get through a transaction. And I go, and I have a title company that knows how to get the documents, correct. Or the title fixed. If there’s an issue, all I’m doing is going to the appointment and seeing what they need.
When I get the appointment, do they want to sell a house or they want to list it? What is the easiest solution? What they’re trying to solve. And then I’m figuring out how many years they are. Did they have the letters of testing Metairie? Did they have what I need to move forward? Rosie. I see you drinking your Starbucks.
Thank you out. That’s important. So Rosie has been training fresh VA’s out of the Philippines. And I know you guys have had your little it’s, maybe it’s a bit of a covert project, but you found some success and I know you guys have worked on script. Tell us about your, how easy it was or how hard it was, what your results are compared to what you wish they would have been or hope that had been, tell us about your experience in training.
Somebody who has no experience here to get on the phones and do this for you. Okay. So I’ll go first. Thank you. Hi, David. I’ve heard, Hey, I’ve heard great things about you. I love what you’re doing. I appreciate it. That, that’s all your post too, so I try to stay relevant. Okay. Thank you, Chad.
Okay. So with these it was very We can overthink it, but it was not that hard to be honest. Because quite frankly, I knew I was not the first person doing it. Other people have done it before me. So if it was not to be done somewhere, I was getting in the way off it. So that was the mindset I went after it.
And when we trained VA’s Chad, as you may know, we’re working on a project on the backend. We are working together with some few partners. I’ll speak from my side. First of all, interviewing, I do have a lot of access to VA’s because five of my admin staff is VA’s and they have been working with me for over three years now.
And through my relationships with them, these people are very well connected, so they allow me to really tap into the right talent. So we interviewed people and luckily we found a few candidates who are used to calling for other investors before. So they were used to the idea of setting an appointment for someone to come by the property.
My experience has been, would be, is that. How do I say it in the easiest way possible? We come from a prospecting start off the real estate business. So to hit a DNC call, to get somebody mad at us, somebody leaving a bad review, doesn’t shake our world. We understand that could happen. We just figured out how to bounce back.
And luckily my husband and I worked together. He’s very gentle with his words and he knows how to handle it. So the real success came in when we worked with VAs and I gave them. Triple line dialer to dial the leads out. A lot of people are like, I don’t want to call the probate leads with triple line dollar, but we measure numbers.
When VA is dialing and you have a dining experience, you’re giving them a list to call. There has to be X amount of pickup rate and X amount of conversations that pop out from the Colleen. And if it’s not happening, then we need to listen to the recordings to understand if it is a script issue or a system issue.
So in our latest conversations, when Roger jumped into with our VAs we have made the script shorter. We are ready to get to the point, like when we are on the phone, we, we don’t want to The one thing, Chad, you said when, Oh is that right now too many people that are muddying the water too many people are calling these people.
So they don’t know who we are. So Roger just came up with a very simple script. Hey this is Rosie here from the hair group, but we are local probate specialist. We specialize in helping people make the best decision around real estate. So we were wondering are you planning on keeping the real estate that you have, or do you want to sell it based on the tonality?
If somebody goes like what you want? So we train our viewers to come up with a straightforward answer like that. And other people, we use the approach of what has been the hardest thing for you in the process. And I am exactly. So you mentioned some metrics and the two metric you mentioned were contact rates and conversion rates.
So using that script, like that’s the best one you found? What are your contact rates and what are your conversion rates? We’re getting up 15 to 20% pickup rate. That’s a really good pickup rate. I’m used to 7% pickup rate, like when we dial other types of leads. So 15 to 20% is a really good conversation rate we’re getting.
And and please mind everybody minded. We’re only having our VA doll for us eight hours a week. That’s nothing that’s literally two hours a day. Okay. And I am getting a minimum two to three phone appointments a week. Okay. Off of how many contacts, how many contexts? When I pick up the phone almost 95% pickup rate, like when she said that.
Yeah. So that, that 20% represents how many leads, like how many sent a 20% pickup rate in a week leads to three phone appointments? Is that starting with a hundred leads or with 300? I would 150 to a hundred, 250 leads to start. So whatever list you does, what would we do? 150. She speaks to 40 and you get three or four, three appointments out of 40 conversations.
That’s phenomenal. That’s phenomenal. Actually. I love the pickup rate on probate. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And actually I’m in the midst of four and I was on with was a public flip you’re buying. So David, I want you to tell me how you do your business. So stress-free you look so relaxed. I want to get there.
So teach me, how do you make that phone call? I want to buy your house quicker. So long story short, that’s what the VA is. Look, here’s the thing. I’m not expecting much out of my VA. All I want someone is to constantly put my name out there and keep me relevant. Race is my responsibility as a business to create marketing materials, to make my VA look good and make sure when I speak with the appointment, I’m giving them enough options to act, sell, buy, sell, to whatever it is.
And I’m a learning student from here. Thank you for that. Like your thanks for sharing a phenomenal result. Steve Carney. I’m muting you, sir. But one thing I want to ask you, you’ve been an ambassador, not only a follower, but an ambassador and really offered a lot of contribution into this community.
What do you feel like we could do for you? Like in this specific part of the conversation? What can we do to help you or your, to be stronger prospectors? Oh, my God, that wasn’t even expecting that. That’s so you to see that. I would love I would love for for y’all’s input in figuring out what is the most relevant message that the leads need to hear in today’s market, because we are not in the same market as we were a year ago.
Inbound Marketing: How to “Be Found” By Clients Who Want Your Real Estate Services
[00:12:03]Quite frankly, we are, we have all kinds of people here. She had, let’s be honest right now when the moratorium has been extended. These probate leads are getting called by investors. I’m an investor too. I became one. And because that’s where the market is at, there’s no hate of a realtor investor.
We are fishing in the same pond, right? So I would love to know what kind of marketing message can be created to distinguish ourselves. And the message sounds relevant with what’s happening right now. So people don’t have an option to stop behind complexity. Because another thing I’m realizing is that these people like the property deal we are doing right now, it’s in foreclosure.
We had to literally wake up angry son who was mad at his parents to get the deal right. We gave him what he wanted. But I would love to know how to cut through the noise to make sure we look like a option for someone that look, you’re not only one way with us. We’re not here to just buy your property pennies for dollars.
And you’re not here to give it away where you have a spectrum of choices what’s best for you. So you’ve got to be able to be found. I really think so. It’s fun to make the calls, but be found just so you can focus on learning some of the YouTube video stuff where you make an, a one to two minute video of a probate topic, making short and sweet so they can watch it on their feet or a real quick tip or something.
They’ll make them two to three a week. I’m telling you to do this. I need to do it myself.
Like that article Chad’s Oh, you’re a great writer. I have to tell you, Chad, I didn’t write that.
At least I want anyways. Now I have a writer that writes me. I have a writer that writes me topics for myself. So I just had them write me the article. And so it costs me 200 bucks plus, donate the 200. So when it’s a great, that’s how you’re found though. When Chad posts, something like that.
Hey, so now that article is going to be on his website and I actually got a call from a agent in Virginia, not based on that article, but just because of our past interviews with Chad, and maybe I’ll do a video with Chad that is posted on your YouTube, that position. So the position, the word is positioning not found.
So you got to position yourself to be to be found. And, Chad didn’t have to do those two videos with me, but I get so much contact from that. And I got a referral. I got a referral on Thursday for a listing but I ended up buying the house. I put it under contract for purchase and it’s a wonderful deal.
I love hearing that. That’s why I’m so relaxed. Cause I got so many deals coming in now
I know the feeling. You’re right. You’re right about that. Yeah. Controlled chaos. Perfect. So create you know what, that’s something that’s work in progress for me, for sure.
Optimizing Your Video Content for Inbound Marketing
[00:14:37] Chad did I’m big on video making, there’s no hesitation of being on camera or creating content. That’s not the problem.
But I can use the feedback on short and sweet because some of my interviews have been longer because I did with probate attorneys. But when you say short and sweet topics, I had this book and I read executors handbook. What is short and sweet to you? What topics are eye catching?
What do you think? Like when you interview an attorney, you ask, you’re asking several questions over that. Say that hour. But then take that video and get someone to edit it in the Philippines or somewhere and break that up to five minute videos.
And then over the next six months, you’re posting those randomly on a schedule. So if you interviewed five attorneys, if you have five attorneys rank up those videos of the 30 videos that you’re posting on a regular basis. Okay. So you just feel them. Okay. Got it. So just schedule them on your Facebook or your YouTube as well.
And then, okay. Campaign is no. You’re breaking go into a zoom interview with Chad or somebody else. And then just break it up yourself. Tell the editor to do an open and close. And form your zoom call with an attorney that way come up with three questions, but then when they start rambling on, because they have a big ego, you have a good video out of it.
Yeah, that’s right. Okay, perfect. I know you haven’t forgotten the challenge and the commitment you made that might’ve been a year ago now, long form testimonial videos. Let’s see a lot of folks have their camera on half don’t, but show of hands, how many people are actually getting video testimonials from your successful transactions?
Every closing you get, have someone say something. Man, I’m going to tell you it is it’s digital gold. It’s better than Bitcoin. You heard it here. No, those go so far guys like being able to, it’s social proof like so that some of your best video content is the stuff, the result of your hive service.
So the attorneys that, that, really appreciate the relationship with you, the financial advisors, who you’ve sent people to the clients that you’ve served tell those stories, and it’s, that’s what’s really differentiating. And in any business is really just authenticity. And the quicker somebody can authenticate you as a credible professional, the faster they’re going to respond to your marketing or pick up the phone and make that give you that inbound call and Rosie you have a copy of the but the 10 week multimedia campaign that I laid out for grant, right?
Yes I do. Yes. Okay. So that’s something too don’t know. Everything takes longer than you expect. It might, and we get busy, but don’t forget that you have that. That’s something that we’re still trying to prove out. Like I want to get through the whole series, but the idea for everyone else, Rosie’s in a small group that I like I don’t want to call her a Guinea pig, but she’s in a beta group where we test some things.
Mainly because she takes action. The second you give her something and that’s kinda how she earned her way into that.
Re-Purposing Your Content in an Email Marketing Drip for Lead Nurture
[00:17:26] But the idea there is to take one piece of content. Like I laid out 10 really good topics. And then it starts with a YouTube, but it starts with a video. That video is uploaded to YouTube and embedded into a WordPress post and then uploaded natively into Facebook its face and the Facebook as well.
From there you trigger a postcard campaign with the thumbnail, the some nail, the video, you trigger a Facebook, a digital ad campaign, a paid ad campaign, and you hit them in the email inbox. So your one message. Coming in three different mediums and we’ve actually stretched it from a 10 week on 20 weeks.
So every two weeks they get a new message, a new topic, and it starts with knowing, like being empathetic about their mindset, where they are in week one versus where they probably are in week five. And we are in week 10 and week 20. And it’s one of those things that we’re working on the whole thing. And I’m more of a, then off.
And it’s just, like I said, things take longer than you expect, but Rosie don’t get that. We still have a lot of work to do there. And that’s some of your best content ideas are setting them, not out loud. That’s exactly right. And you’re absolutely right. As we’re growing the resources It’s just, it’s not a desire to not act upon.
It’s just how the timing and the priorities working, but you’re absolutely right. I have it on top of my mind to execute that. I will definitely take into consideration on splitting the zoom interviews. We have done into small pieces and scheduling them to be released to keep it short and sweet.
And I will make the videos and I will share it with everyone. And I would love everyone’s feedback on how it’s going. And do you do you use a CRM? Yeah. So then put those into an action plan every 21 days. Once you have a conversation with somebody, if they’re not ready to meet you yet, but those little snippets in a action plan that’s what we do is we put our video testimonials.
So I have a ton of them now every three weeks or so often they get a video or a video link or a video or just a voice. Rather testimonial. So by the time their probate process is over with, they know my name without me calling them. Wow. Okay. Good, awesome. I’ll look into that.
How Email Scripts Have Worked For Rosie
[00:19:35]David actually by the way, one more thing I was going to share with everyone if nobody has today no, in a week we would be closing on our listing that I actually converted just by the email campaign and what I have done was, yeah.
So I use follow boss to the extent, but I need to get to the point of the consistent, short and sweet small flips, because they’re not enough of them. I only have five, I need more. So the email letters or the postcard letters that you guys have in the, all the leads, mastermind everyone, if you have nothing else to do, I literally had my admin staff copy, paste that into follow up campaign for a boss and we just released it.
And I usually surprised I have some nurtures that haven’t converted yet. And we are under contract with the listing on the market. Because of that. And what started happening to me happening, David has, maybe you can give me some ideas on it while I was speaking traction from the, all the leads lead stuff.
I actually picked a production from my investor group and the database as well, because the videos we made, we blasted it everywhere. So I’m taking a listing on the market tomorrow. It’s a probate listing. They did all the work. And the only hard, my word that I understand probates. And they’re giving you the listing for that reason from Waco, the attorneys in Waco, that’s a good one, right?
And then investors will bring you all the probate deals. I am a big group of a dash two. A very good group, a good group of investors in Texas. That’s where I’m learning all this subjects and stuff and they’re sending me their probate stuff. So I’m loving how to make noise, but I love what you said, position to refound.
I must spend more time thinking. Hello? Yeah. So I know Chad, I don’t know if you want to mention other coaches but stop me if you want. But Kevin Ward teaches five steps to relationship it’s connecting, positioning, inspire. So I’ll get the other ones she had. I can’t remember. It’s yeah. Con connecting is the one is crossing the bridge, positioning yourself, inspiring the higher.
And then I’ll think of the other thing. Okay. I am, I’m a big fan of getting more to, I stayed out of his scripts initially. I suppose so, yeah. Thank you. I’ll look into that.
How Much Does a Real Estate Virtual Assistant Cost?
[00:21:36] Robert, I was coming to you next. Okay.
How much is an ISA like Rosie costs per month? If you wanted to do, you’re getting about a hundred leads a month and have her take care of her initially and schedule the appointments.
It depends on how involved you want to be and what quite honestly, what result you want. If you want a seasoned caller with lots of experience you can get those out of the Philippines for usually seven to $9. If you want to start somebody and train them and pour more into them, you can get those folks really in an hour.
Oh, rolling. So Rosie, how much would we be looking at to get one of your. So do you want a dollar amount per month and got cleared the hours? Robert, you’re looking at our bill off around a thousand to $1,200 a month, right? That’s a full-time VA and you’re not getting the top talent. You’re getting a $7 an hour talent.
Does a pretty good job. I agree with Chad. I highly recommend that. Here’s one thing I have to share with everyone. Please know, these bees are more than willing to do anything to do the job, but we it’s required us to show up. They don’t understand our country. They don’t understand our culture.
They don’t understand the vocabulary sometimes. So while you’re interviewing, if you can find someone who has called for us before it really helps that’s tip number one, tip number two. Initially it might not be a bad idea for you guys to actually always have a proper CRM. I use mojo for my VA to dial and we paid for their dollars and stuff.
I record the calls. I wish I knew about probate when I had no business in my career. I would have done this business so much differently now that I am in the middle of everything, the struggle I have is that I would love to hear more and more calls. So when your bees are calling, listen to the recording and analyze what are they saying?
And go back and all the feedback and trainings we have from all the mastermind tweak the script. If she’s not getting, or he’s not getting the result, we need to tweak the script or tweak the list when they dial how to dial in how often to dial. But the main power is in follow-up. I think I answered more than the question, like your biggest challenge.
There is the cultural difference and the person on the phone, like a lot of times working with offshore VAs, they apologize all over themselves and they don’t come, they don’t come onto to the call with authority. They come with and, we talk about serving a lot. Like we come with a servant’s mindset, but we come at it strong with conviction.
And there are a lot of times, it’s all, I’m sorry to bother you. Do you have a few minutes? Okay. Oh, I’m sorry. I misunderstood that. And there’s too many stories and they’re not assertive enough. So you’ve got to, it requires leadership to get a good result out of an offshore VA. You need to be good on the phones and good at leading them through that.
Erik Shares Insights From His VoiceLogic Probate Prospecting Campaign
[00:24:19] And it takes some cultivation. Like it’s rare that you just, just grab a BA and start being with success right off the bat in that price range. Now, the other thing that I want to mention, if you haven’t heard us talk about it, we have a, just a kind of a partnership. We don’t have a, it’s not an affiliate relationship, but we support voice logic and they have a call center that’s in Mississauga, Ontario.
So it’s very neutral. If any accents, they don’t even drop the, a here and there. But they can do they, they offer call center services. So Kat, if you can drop that link, you can go to Boyce logic.com forward slash. I think probate mastery but got capital drops a link in the chat so you can check out their services, their voicemail courier.
I don’t really do ringless voicemail anymore cause it’s just going to be pinched, but they offer outbound services. And I’ll be honest. I got talked to Steve Lindo, the owner of that company yesterday in some markets, we convert seven, 8% and in others we’re still getting skunked. And I think Eric, did you, Eric, didn’t you get an appointment off of a windows call center?
Wasn’t that you
you’re muted Eric, if you think you’re here.
Yes, I did get four appointments from from Steve doing our first round of calls. And how many leads, how many were on that original list? There was the first one that I sent him was about 700 and they haven’t even worked through them all yet. So that was just their first round of calls.
So almost 2%, right? Yes. No, not quite anyways, but four out of 700. Would you have made those 700 calls? Never. That’s four that you didn’t have and what was the cost on it? I just purchased a around 30 hours, which I think was like a thousand. Okay. That’s good. And have you been on all four appointments?
I have not yet. No. Nope. Okay. I’ve had, I’ve done phone conversations with them. I went on two appointments so far going on one on Friday, one on Saturday. Just a gut feel. How many deals are you going to get out of those four conversations? We will, I think I will eventually convert all of them over to listing referrals.
And then I do believe that I will buy the property I’m meeting with on Saturday. It’s pretty beat down. I’ve driven by it. It’s really bad. Good deal. And I’ll let you, I’ll let you go. I’ll let you guys know the results of that next week. You can buy all four of them.
And more importantly than that, just the amount of inbound. It’s really just helped me not to hijack the conversation, but it’s really helped me find my voice. And many of the people have already sold their properties, but. In spending that time on the phone with them there, now that they’ve gotten past the initial, Oh, we’ve got a covered our attorneys, the attorneys taking care of it, they’re realizing that their attorneys aren’t handling anything.
So now what I’m using a lot of those conversations that don’t have any real estate is just to educate them further in the process, refer them anything they might need. And then just see if they’re giving me like a Google business listing review or a review on my Facebook page, something like that.
So we’re still trying to turn it into a positive conversation.
How to Repurpose Written Testimonials for Video Marketing
[00:27:10] I looked over at some questions. So Chris Robinson asked who has a good YouTube channel that we could model. I would say what you need to find Rosie’s channel Rosie has done a fantastic job with video, and I know she’s hard on herself and so she doesn’t do enough, but she’s on more than most.
And then grant Cox, who Grant’s not here today, but grant is Nova life transitions. So in Northern Virginia, So novel life transitions think is the name of his YouTube channel grant has done a fantastic job at taking, just like rosy. There’s a reason he’s in that little beta group too, because you give him an idea and it’s in play about before the sunset, that day he started on it.
So if you guys want to watch what they’re doing, that’ll give you some inspiration. You’ll get a sneak peek into what might prove out and either be available to you as a step by step training or course, or we may just do it for you. I think that probably a done for you, like where we actually implement that campaign for you might make the most sense just because of the complexity of the, the multimedia and the timing of it.
So we may actually prove it out and then offer it to you. But you’ll see. Good good examples and some folks that are that like, good cameras. Good good performances, like speaking without scripts and grant and Rosie are both going really well with that fed this. Isn’t a zoom backdrop brother.
This is West Virginia. I you missed the beginning of the call, so there’s one cell phone tower in the entire County and it’s right over there. So I was on the farm and I CA I couldn’t even use fricking Slack this morning. I’m like, hell with it. I’m going to town. That’s cool. Hey just real quick, I left five things.
I pulled them up is connecting with the people. So you got to find a way to connect them and then positioning. You’re always positioning yourself with those videos or anything you’re doing on the internet. And then you want to inspire the higher. When you talk to them, you want to be inspiring and your voice, and then deliver the results that you say.
And then you leverage that success by testimony, videos, or Google reviews. So that’s the five things you want to do, Rosie. Yeah. Thanks David and Justin said for those of us, I have written testimonials only disingenuous to have a voice actor, turn those the audios or videos. Absolutely not like you.
Ideally we want to capture all of it all testimonials and video because we can always transcribe those. We can always strip the audio out. So we get, we get the best of the best media that we can with a video testimonial. But if you already have written testimonials, Feel free to pull that into a video and do voiceover, or just do video and text and make a video testimonial out of it and grab a picture of them or sometimes, call them back and be like, Hey, I really wish when I saw you at the closing table, we would have done this.
Can I drop by and just grab a couple minutes of your time and try to get back out there and get the video. But if you can’t, absolutely, don’t be afraid to do voiceover. Don’t be afraid to make videos, just some soft music in the background and the text slowly coming in. Where you can read it whenever you can do with those testimonies, get them in as many places as you can.
You guys want to see an example, a good one. David, and I record all inbound phone calls. So I was lucky to get a phone call from one lady that left me along. We talked, but here’s an example of just throwing your iPhone up and getting recording. No special gear at all. Lincoln share and just drop it in chat that way everybody can watch it. Okay. I’ll do that. All right, let me get it back.
Is Email Marketing Enough?
[00:30:29] So I’m gonna jump back to our chat and see we got Justin someone said David and Rosie using email and messaging to send videos. Not all the leads have email or phone number when you send letters or postcards just on email. You gotta figure if you’re a fantastic email marketer, you’re going to have 20% open rates. If you’re running in the top of the pack, you might get, you might reach 50% open rate.
So you still need to make those calls, emails, a supplement, not a primary prospect and the emails that we, we do our best, all the leads that does the best to get the best quality email. But it’s 65% of them have email. And, I don’t know if you guys are like me, but I have 19. So the chance that it’s their primary inbox that they check every five minutes.
It’s not a guarantee. So don’t put too much weight into the email marketing, even though we hear these success stories. Don’t w the point I wanna make is it’s not your primary marketing supplemented. Yeah, Rosie I, this was a special place. There’s a reason I can’t, I could be anywhere in the world to come back.
How Do You Switch Between Your Realtor and Your Investor Hat?
[00:31:33] Alright. David, I don’t know. I don’t know how to pull you back up. Oh, there we go. I’m sorry, guys. Chad, real quick. I missed the beginning portion of it. Did David say he has ISS to David or it’s just marketing for you? No, he’s he evolved past that when we first met, he had a whole team of now he just sits in his underwear in the house, but he never gonna finish remodeling every once in a while.
He makes a phone call.
If I asked you a few questions, maybe I think we all can probably have similar questions in our Greenpeace’s chat. Is it okay if I ask some questions? Okay. Number one, when you originally started probate when did you make a decision or did you always knew that you were going the investor route or the real route?
Which one would it became more heavy? Or where were you inclination and how did you know that is this for me? You just recognize the opportunity that you have your probate deals or you’re, you have an opportunity that they just want to get rid of something. They really don’t want to hire a listing agent.
And I know it’s a different way of thinking, cause we’re supposed to we have we have a duty to serve people as realtors, but they, if they don’t want to hire a realtor, what do you do? Do you walk away? I got to the point where I was offering them $10,000 to help them fix her house up. So they got more money, but it only took one person telling me that they were mad because I spent too much money on a house that needed it.
But at closing, they’re like, man, you spent $12,000 and I made an extra 40. They didn’t say that part. So after that, I was just like I’m just gonna buy these houses, screw them. If there’s an opportunity for me to write a contract, I’m going to buy it. Wow. Okay. So when you decided first of all, thank you so much for sharing it.
It gives people like me permission easily to make a switch quicker.
Off-Market Deals From Probate Leads: Highly Motivated Sellers
[00:33:14] Rosie, is it cool if I jump in to follow up and want to get on that question? Hey, Dave. Do you keep track of the number of people that are more open to off-market sale as opposed to listing it for them? Cause I’m in the same position as you I’m licensed, but I also, I prefer to acquire them off market.
And I’m guessing it will be highly dependent on the type of area that you’re in, but just start a curiosity. Are you seeing people more open to do an off-market deals or is it too general of a question they want an easy way out? And if you give them a five to 10 day close with the cash offer, it’s really hard for them to turn that down.
Not in my experience and doing this and my market coach and a lot of others, you’re probably like it’s 80 20. So you’re in parade. I was principal. So 20% of your opportunities will have a level of motivation or reason that they have a high level of motivation that they just want done. And what you’ll learn is the more errors there are, the more likely you are to buy that at a discount because they have less personally in the distribution, it’s a smaller number.
So if you have one err, on a million dollar property, it’s unlikely, you’re going to hope that you’re going to get that one at 60 cents on the dollar. When you have nine or 10 airs on a hundred thousand dollar house, they’re like, whatever, it’s a $10,000 decision. Just get this damn thing done. So you’ll yeah, you’ll learn like errors increases the likelihood of a wholesale.
Property condition increases the likelihood of the wholesale proximity. Like the beneficiaries proximity to the asset increases the likelihood, the further away they are, the more likely they are to sell at a discount price, because it’s just a challenge, right? Like they have to put life on hold and go there.
And there’s you’ll start to learn, but in my experience and done this for almost a decade now it’s parades principle, you’ve got 20% are we’ll dump it and move on and they’ll give you a glowing customer fonio and say that you actually serve them as a fiduciary, even though your fellow realtors might say, you’re a damn crook and you stole the house from the family.
We don’t care about that. We know that we offered them options and they chose the option. That was right for them. I’ve, I don’t, I’ve bought these as little as one. I think probably the deepest discount I ever bought was $110,000 as is, and I paid 13. Because it had so much garbage and human waste in it.
I just, I knew that the floors and the Joyce had to be rotted out and track actually saved the property, but he was thrilled to do a video testimony because he came over to one of the flips. I was Dawn complimented my work and he’s man, I don’t even care about the price. I really just want you to take that house.
And we wrote over there and within minutes we had a deal and he like, so you’ll find those like where they’re disgusted about the property condition or, so anyway that’s my read on it. Like you can expect for every a hundred leads, 20 of them are going to dump the for every a hundred leads with real estate.
20 of them will dump that real estate at a pretty steep discount. The other 80 will drag along from three days to three years to actually sell it as is value or retail value. So for insightful, thank you.
How Brokerage/Investment Transparency Wins, Every Time
[00:36:26]Hey, Chad as a realer, do you have to run it through your brokerage? No. And this is something that I think Elle was asking about last week for me.
And this is another one of the things I really want to get around to, to shut teaching. Just to show you guys how to properly protect the assets, your assets, but my advice is as a, if you have a licensed broker, your or salesperson, that can stay a sole proprietorship because you have Eno insurance, but if you’re going to provide options that include non brokerage non-agency relationships, you should have a separate LLC.
And. Personally, I choose a single member, LLC taxed as an S Corp. So I get the legal protections of an LLC and the IRS benefits of having an escort designation, which only benefits you like above 140 in revenue. But I would recommend that you. Set up an LLC make that your investment vehicle, separate bank accounts, separate credit cards, and then have an umbrella policy for insurance in case someone ever does point a finger at you.
I wouldn’t buy a business liability insurance. I would buy a per I buy a personal umbrella because if you buy a business liability insurance for an investment, LLC, they want $15,000 a year. And so you’re better off just add an extra layer with a personal umbrella, wrapping them with your homeowner and your car insurance.
And that way, if anyone ever gets through your corporate bail, then you’ve got at least another layer. But that’s how I would structure it. If I were, commingling of funds, don’t ever use your investment company, credit things for your realtor company, because if you ever were to find yourself in a position where you’re being accused of wrongdoing and you’re innocent, but you want to be able to clearly say, here’s the books for this company.
Here’s the books for this company. Everything’s clearly delineated. That’s my advice on the structure. I started that way from the beginning and said served me well. And John Fraker may have some advice. He’s an in California, John, if you disagree with any you’d please,
I would, what broker are you with? That’s going to be your chief question. So like I’m with Keller Williams and if it’s in California, then they’re going to want to know about it, or at least clear it out. That’s just their deal. If you’re elsewhere, what are the cons? What are the consequences?
If you have a privately owned investment company that’s not, and it is separated. Is it just the broker wouldn’t be happy? Or is there something in your agreement with KW where they actually end up they’ll kick you out of the brokerage again, that would be between you and your broker and the contract that you guys have.
Like my broker gave me hassle for doing law stuff and meeting, meeting my estate planning and the building, like I had to go, even though it was, convenient, not to have to bounce back and forth between two different offices, they got really uptight about that. I’m like, okay. But, you’re just wasting my time on the freeway, going back and forth as opposed to just meeting them all in one place.
But yeah. So again, it’s going to be unique to the broker. If you’re a realtor and you’re under somebody else’s brokerage, they basically control more or less everything that you do, even if it’s an outside business, do you have to have clearance on that and you’d want to at least get clearance on that.
If you’re doing something out of the state that you’re licensed in, I would, I would still, if you put it this way, how important is your brokerage relationship with you? To you. In other words, you may say, I’m not making enough money with you guys to justify giving up this other revenue stream.
But if you’re getting 95% of your paycheck through your brokerage and they have a problem with it, that’s obviously a bigger deal. So it comes down to your individual situation and where you’re at with your brokerage and what they’d want to say about it. Some just don’t care clear, like just before we move on Rosie.
So when you say you, you clear it by your broker, are you talking about each and every deal or you clear your overall business strategy and say, I’m going to be doing these types of deals. Is it a blanket agreement or at a minimum? We want at least that with your brokerage, if you’re doing in the same state, that you’re a licensed agent, and then you’re, any transaction that you clear as a wholesaler or investor, or for yourself where you’re an agent in that state, you want to have the person selling you the property sign about 50 CYS.
You’re saying that you’re not acting as their fiduciary. That’s the whole point a realtor is a fiduciary. And guess what? When I took my real estate license in 2015, the test, I almost fell out of my chair. When I’d read the realtors work at E-Series is the only part of the home study course or whatever that I actually remembered, because it was like that doesn’t even apply to most the vast majority of financial advisors.
Aren’t fiduciaries that will work against you really quickly. If you don’t get them to sign up and be like this, guy’s not acting as a fiduciary. There’s no brokerage relationship. Basically. I’m not acting in your best interest. I’m here to make a profit. If I’m buying this at 30 and I turn around and sell it tomorrow at 70, are they going to care about it?
You, how much, how difficult can they make your life?
How To Balance Listings vs. Acquisitions
[00:41:12]And that’s the beautiful, that’s the best point of all. This is when you’re honest with people on appointments, right? They, you have 99% chance of getting something signed with that. Perfect. Right there. Right then. So just to give you guys an example, I got an appointment from a realtor in Virginia.
Thanks, Virginia. This week. They he gave me referrals that, Hey, my mom, my aunt, my grandfather died, blah, blah, blah. It’s a 200, it’s a 300,000 on their house. Easy $300,000 house. They got an appraisal for two 10 because of the condition I went there and told him, Hey, I can sell this all day long for two 60, two 75, fixed up.
And I broke down exactly what I’m going to do to the house to fix it up. And we got down to $160,000 number, or I got them down to got down to one 70 and I’d sold them. It’s 45 days. If we list it, they’re probably going to knock you down anymore because the condition is bad. Would you accept one 57?
They said, let me think about it. Let me go talk to one of the heirs. It took 24 hours. They came back with one 60 on a $300,000 house. I’m buying it for a little over 50%
and broke the numbers down to them. And I was honest with them. And what did you get as a realtor? This is what you get. If I buy the house, that’s right. I have something to add in here. So when we are, I actually closed on a property last week. It’s a very small deal, but I love this cute little deals.
It was a $60,000 home that a homeowner has not seen in two years. She has been awake and in Kentucky and doesn’t know anything doesn’t want to turn on utilities, she’s frantic, and she doesn’t want to make payment for me if the house was fixed up. And the one and a half bath is converted into two full bath, the value goes way all the way to one 55.
I actually personally did a full CME with her, showed her all the comps. And at the end, I just asked her if I make you the offer that you are willing to sell to the contractor, would you be willing to do it? She said, yes. On our contract, we wrote down that the buyer’s a licensed realtor in Texas. And the special provisions we wrote down that a buyer seller is not representative represented by any legal representation for listing or buyer.
Asset Protection for Investment Properties: LLCs and Land Trusts
[00:43:20] And we wrote down in there and please know if we are transparent people signing off on it, seller agrees to sell the property below market value in as is condition. Considering the repairs. When we had that transparent, I don’t know why somebody would come up to us. And I agree. I do have my separate LLC that I buy properties under, and my brokerage has no problem with it.
And I am with Keller Williams as well. And so if you do business with full transparency, even normal listings can great, become very biased because not everyone is looking for the highest dollar. Sometimes people’s convenience is money to them. Then extra few thousand dollars on the market. And I have come to learn after eight years in real estate.
That’s the police feel confident to do your due diligence and make an offer? That’s right. Yeah, I had I was actually gonna want it to just make sure I understood something correctly, but I think Rosie just touched on it so that I understand correctly, that you were saying that if I already have an LLC, that I’m being paid through for my real estate business as an agent, is it, did I understand correctly that it’s best if I open a second separate LLC?
Absolutely. You don’t want to come. You don’t co-mingle activity. Like what, when you do entity structuring and asset protection, start in the courtroom and work backwards, like imagine you’re in that situation where you have been sued. For something you didn’t do wrong and you have to, you have that’s your burden of proof.
So think about like how clear of a ruling it would be if you said, okay, here’s the checkbook here? Here’s the P and L the balance sheet, the op the articles, all the LLC docs for this. And here’s the same thing for my brokerage entity. And it’s a closed case, right?
Like you can easily defend yourself. I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong, but if you’re commingling, that makes that argument a little, it’s a little more of a gray area, right there. There’s a a lot more to argue about. So just make it clear, black and white. It’s a few extra, maybe a few extra hundred dollars a year to have to maintain that other LFC, but it’s worth it as insurance.
So that’s for wholesaling and assigning, you would use that. Anything. So you have to decide that, maybe that is a holding company as well as wholesaling. So you generate cash through wholesaling, but when you hold an asset that becomes a holding company. And my advice is roll up, roll the assets in the land, trust property of the LLC.
So you have a layer of anonymity, even more protection if somebody comes looking for your assets. Okay. And then as far as assigning something, how long would you say give or take? And I know it’s different for everything, but just a rough estimate that it would take to, I don’t even want to use the word, convert some, a client into a wholesales for long story short.
I had the conversation with with someone who may want to wholesale. And, but I came as a realtor and then presented them options either regular route as real estate, or, investor can buy can buy the asset from you quickly and all that stuff. And from there, it turned into what one of the three heirs was extremely aggressive.
And then they said, all right, we’re going to talk about it. I keep following up with them. And I asked the PR, if you ha, if you had it your way, what would you do? And she said I would sell it right away cash for the offer that that your investor made. But it looks like they have to make a decision.
So I gave them all options, literally all options, either standard brokerage sale going through an investor or keeping the asset and leasing it if they need to. I’m just trying to figure out, is it normal? That it’s been about three weeks. I’m still in front of them, but I feel like that’s kinda long.
You’re just waiting for somebody to take your spot. Yeah. Yeah. Kills all deals. How much are their property taxes? One point right around one and a quarter present. So for figuring out the dollar amount. Yeah, the dollar amount of the holding costs, the insurance, the property taxes, utilities, the lawn care, whatever that is.
And even if you have to estimate it, look at homes in the neighborhood and call them back and reconnect and say, listen, I don’t know if you guys are aware of this most families aren’t because you have so much to think about finances, not the thing that’s front of mind, but you’re losing $140 a week on this property or whatever that is $67 a day and create a little urgency with the finance side of this.
And it’s you told me you want to cash every day. We’re taking $67 off of that. You are, I’m not. That’s an expense of the estate. And so the beneficiaries and your family are getting $67 a day, less. My price hasn’t changed. Here’s a purchase agreement and here’s a blue pen. Let’s do this, but you’re waiting for someone to take that deal.
They’ve already told you what they want now, what thing you need to give them what they need. And that’s leadership make them comfortable, make, let them know that you’re honest, you have integrity, and you’re going to lead them through this and get it done, but quit the damn procrastinating because they are losing money on a daily basis.
If you want to split the deal, I’ll call him for you.
Just kidding. If we go thirds, I’ll come behind them and cleaning up his mess. Yeah. Because I’m sloppy, but I get things done
calling you by the way, Dave, I don’t know if you get up. The guy put you in touch with, by email, I’ve reached out to him and nothing there yet, but I’m seeing him in a couple of days, so I’ll make sure he reaches out go, man. Cool. Thanks Ben.
Next up we have Meera I so I just wanted to piggyback on what Rosie had said regarding the letter, getting something in writing that says if you started a conversation as a realtor with a prospective seller, but then decided to purchase the property yourself.
I’m in New Jersey and everything is like, everything is legal here in terms of you, you just have to think legal for everything. My intention wasn’t to purchase this property from the client, it was to help her out. Uh, Parents, one parent died from COVID. The other one had dementia living in a assisted living community.
And she was, she had the power of attorney and she just needed help. So I reached out to her and I hadn’t seen the property until a couple months later when the intention was always to put it up for sale, I thought it was in decent condition, but when I went and saw it, it was just trash. So I said to her, look, if you go to an investor, you’re not going to get much.
I’m going to give you a little bit more than an investor. And I offered her a dollar figure and she jumped on it. So obviously I offered too much. But the thing is I was helping out and it was my first time trying to do a flip. The point is that I talked to my attorney, I talked to my broker, my attorney said, talk to your broker.
It’s really, your brokers rules as to whether you can purchase this property. And what do you need to disclose? Because in reality, I was acting as her realtor first. So we, we just wrote up another letter and all the attorneys were fine with it. Just to protect me, but I also always every property I purchased, I create a new LLC.
So I don’t have one LLC and all these sub LLCs. I just create a new one specific to that property. Now, do you recommend that or do you recommend. That can get costly and complex. I would recommend the similar structure as a series LLC. So you can have your parents and then have a series of smaller LLC.
And a lot of people will let Lobell it up to three to five properties in each of the series. So you’re basically compartmentalizing the risk. So if you were to be sued from one of your series, one of your series holding companies that damage could be is likely to be contained within that sell so to speak.
Having one for every single property, you can never be. Like if you plan on building wealth and having tenants, then you can never be too careful, I guess it’s asset protection, right? If the cost is not eating you alive and if the maintenance isn’t, it, it’s certainly a safe way to do it, but it could be, you could be overly cautious with having, one or the other thing mirror I want to, I’ll go back to one of the things I do is I’ll have an LLC and then the actual title to the property is in a land trust.
So the land trust doesn’t give you the legal protection of an LLC, but it gives you an amenity. So if you’re, if a, if an attorney’s looking for, someone to Sue, they’re looking for somebody with assets, otherwise they’re wasting their time. So if a tenant tries to pick something with you and Sue you if the attorney goes looking for assets and he’s.
It’s one, two, three Walnut street, four or five, six Francis Avenue, land trust that there’s no tie back to your name, or your LLC name, so that, that can be a much more affordable way to get anonymity. And then you still have the strength of the LLC from a legal protection, legal standpoint.
So that’s how I’ve structured my stuff. As a holding company, as an LLC, taxed as an S Corp with a series of land trusts, one for each property, each asset. Okay. Yeah, mine, mine are all single member, but I’ll have to talk to the attorney about that. Yep. Tenants from a tax standpoint. Having single member, LLC, it’s all gonna flow through on your schedule C anyway, so it’s not, but if you ever do get partners, that’s when multiple LLC can get really costly, when you’re not single member. Or if it’s not if it’s two members and not a spouse, then you have to start filing tax returns for each of those. And they can really add up then. Okay. Sounds good. Thank you. All right. Guys, anybody else have anything they want to cover today? Any questions? Lots of participation today.
Thank you guys for that. It’s always more fun when everyone participates anybody have anything, any hands up, any questions, comments, statements. All right, we’ll wrap it up. This is Robert. I’ve got a question for David. I wanted to get a copy of that pamphlet you send out and you sent me a link, but it had no went nowhere, a PayPal thing.
Could you resend that to me please? David. So it was this again? Oh yeah, absolutely week or so ago. And one of the Gary tried to do the link that you had provided and it just didn’t work for me. Okay. No problem, man. Okay. Chad’s coaching, but yeah. All right, guys. I appreciate it. Yeah. We’ll talk.
Thanks everybody. Have a good week. If you need anything as always work support@magnumhopelessproject.com. We’ll get you on the phone with the right person. Thanks so much for everybody who participated and we’ll see you next week. Have a great day. Thanks.
3 Comments on “Taking Your Probate Script To The Next Level: Expert Tips For Evolving Your Real Estate Prospecting Plan | Group Coaching #7”
You have hit the mark.
Great article. I will be going through some of these issues as well..
Thank you for visiting. Cheers!