Pre Probate Leads vs Probate Leads: How do you market to them and why cold calling isn't the best approach

In this 10 minute highlight from Probate Mastery group coaching, you’ll learn how to market to pre probate leads, where pre probate lists come from, and why cold calling pre probate leads yields fundamentally different results compared to cold calling probate leads. Probate Mastery founder  Chad Corbett breaks down the psychology, pragmatics, and best strategy for inbound and outbound marketing for pre probate leads.

You can also watch as a video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/4Z6pgZnoWi4

Segments:
0:00 How to speak to probate leads through video marketing: Tonality
2:31 How do you market pre probate leads vs probate leads?
6:39 What are pre probate leads and how does a pre probate list get pulled?
7:38 Cold-calling probate leads vs. pre probate leads

IN A HURRY? Jump to 0:15 to hear Chad Corbett’s script for probate video marketing for your probate website.

This is a snippet from probate real estate coaching with Certified Probate Experts.  Want to become a Certified Probate Expert? Visit ProbateMastery.com to learn more and enroll today - You'll be able to attend our very next weekly coaching session live when you do!

Learn more at www.probatemastery.com

Transcript

0:00

And the other thing last week, we talked about some videos in front of the courthouse and I really want to go, I'm going to the courthouse Friday. I want to do this video, but I need some tips on how not to sound happy in the video. So like, I know I'm trying to emotionally connect with people.'Hey, I'm here to help you. I'm here meeting with a probate clerk, getting a list of families that could potentially need my help.' And then what comes after that? Well, I prefer to do is get them off platform where they can see a longer form video, like a three minute video of me explaining just like if I got a referral, the way I would speak to that person and explain what it is you say, you know,'listen, I understand that this might sound too good to be true. And you may not trust it. Feel free to look around the site. We have reviews. If you would rather just talk to me right now, you can call the number below or click the button. Then you'll land right on my calendar and I'll call you at a time that works best for you. Um, If you have a couple minutes stick around and I'll kind of tell you why I, I drove out here today to make this video,' and then you go into talking about what your service is. Don't be afraid of, of being cheerful or happy You know, as humans, we're psychologically attracted to that right? Now, you can't be like over cheerful and be like, Hey, I understand you're the representative of an estate. It's a good day. Ain't it? Yeah, there's a line. Right. But if you're on an emotional level here, if you're vibrating at a healthy, positive level and they're down here and grieving, it doesn't always mean that you're wrong to be happy. What's more likely is they want to feel the way you do, and you'll convey some of that energy to them. I mean, there's a time to slow down and talking in a voice, but typically that's in person. When you're getting a read, you can hear the tone of their voice, or you can see their body language. So I would just operate under the assumption that this person has already to an extent processed the loss to the extent that they've also gone to that building, they've sat down with a probate clerk, it's become less emotional and more logical. Now that doesn't mean it's not emotional. It's still very emotional, but it's less emotional than they were when they walked out of the funeral home because I've had time to process. And because of their unique role, they're expected to be more logical about it and more black and white. These are, this is the list. These are the things I have to do. I need to carry this out. So don't be afraid to be confident and to be cheerful. Like I said, just operate on the assumption that they can do good by feeding from your positive energy. Don't feel like you have to bring your energy down to match their situation. Okay. And since you said it, that brings me to one last thing and then I'll go, I promise. So you said it's become less emotional because it's been some time since everything has happened. Is there any news for any progress on the new system that is pulling death certificates as opposed to probate or do you have any ideas as to how I can do that in the interim, the new system launches? So I'm no longer associated with all the leads I support them. You know, Jim and Tim are still good friends of mine, but I wanted to move in the direction of this uh, and not, not be chasing leads and the logistics and all that. So I believe that there's a very specific way to work pre probate or leads that are before the probate filing. I always felt comfortable with probate. And what I've found in pulling data is there's a median of 68 days. If you look at the entire file across the country, all the data, there is a median of 68 days from the date of death until the date of probate filing. Most families, there's obviously outliers on both directions. Some people wait 10 years and others go the day of the funeral, right? In the middle there, most people wait about two months from the death until they actually get to a point where they've processed it, they've at least become aware of the probate process and know what their responsibilities are. So they go petition to begin the process. So there are things we know about families in probate. In pre probate, if you're calling off of death records or scraped obituaries or wherever you might be getting that data, you don't know who the decision makers are. You don't know through a skip trace if you're even getting the right Jane Doe. You don't know if you're calling a minor. You could be calling a 12 year old with a cell phone that happened that, you know, you don't know this stuff. So. I do not believe in direct marketing, in outbound direct mail and cold calling pre-probate lists. I just don't. And I probably never will because I think you have a greater opportunity to harm your reputation than you do to grow your business. that's my candid opinion. Now. I believe there is a way to do it. I believe that there's, there's a softer methodology and it's the inbound methodology. So you created a community group like Dan and I were discussing. And like, we've talked about on these calls before: you create and host and maintain a safe environment where these folks can learn and can benefit and earn their trust. And you can skip trace them, put them into a Facebook custom audience and put ads in front of them without them knowing that you're directly targeting them, they will just think it's the magic cloud. That somehow knows that grandma died and they're the executor, or, you know, you don't even know if they're the executors, they're just an heir. They're suspected to be in the line of succession. So it's a way to broadcast market to someone who is likely to be the decision maker, but you're not foolishly assuming that you know who that is, or you're not embarrassingly calling minors and people who were very close to the decedent a week after they died. And for me, my reputation is everything, and I've never been willing to risk it over a damn paycheck. I think what you'll find with a lot of companies out there that are pushing these lists. If they don't teach the right methodology, they're going to mess up a lot of people's careers. They're, they're gonna destroy a reputation that takes a lifetime to build one and one phone call to lose it because right now someone can take a poison pen to the internet and they can haunt you the rest of your career. So that's my soap box rant, but be careful, be careful. Be careful if you're going to do it, I would recommend you do it as an inbound strategy, not as an outbound strategy. I intend to build a course on inbound pre probate marketing, where you can do it and you can do it safely and you can do it effectively. But I know there's a lot of folks out there that will disagree with me and they say, hand me the damn phone, it's a number's game, some of them are going to want to sell, go get it. But that's not me. The risk seems greater than the reward if you ask me Well I think those are good thoughts, I think it's good to hear a different perspective on it. I hadn't considered, I hadn't considered any of that. Nobody does disagree with me. I mean, this is a safe forum. You disagree, step up. If you have advice to give Stephanie please do. That's just, just me. I'm just a member. Chad question when you say no cold calling are you referring to just random cold call list or I understand where this originates, so when somebody passes away, the funeral home will notify the social security. Social security keeps the death database and for a long time that had a lid on it. It was only accessible to government entities and nonprofits. Loopholes have been found and people are including that data in data sets using it for skip trace and append processes. However, we all know how good what's your best skip trace percentage. Like maybe 60%. Like when you skip trace as far as accuracy. It's not science, it's more art. You're making calculated guesses who the right John DOE is. And if this is right phone number, some companies are better than others. But there's a good chance that at least 40% of your data is flawed. It's wrong because of the nature of how it's being aggregated. So 40% of the time you're going to be picking up the phone, confusing people, calling people who are under age that don't have the authority. You don't know if they're going to have the authority, you're guessing at it. If they haven't found the will and they want to, let's say they they've got malicious intent and they hated their sibling because she was so responsible, a little miss goody two-shoes, dad's going to give her everything. And you call that person and start treating them like a decision maker. And they say, I got, I got one on the line. So if they decided to make themselves the decision maker, even, even though they don't, and they won't have that authority, you're just muddying the water for the family. So that's what I mean, like there's so many unknowns and so much uncertainty. You have no damn business stirring around that right after a loss, playing a bunch of guessing games. You should earn the business and you should put something out there that makes them come back to you. Make it a complete inbound strategy. I won't name the company, but when, when predictive analytics became a thing back in like 11 or 12, when these companies were starting to show up, one of them was VC- funded by a very big tech company. And they were giving real estate professionals lists of people who are recently married, recently divorced, recently had their youngest child graduate high school. These real estate professionals, especially the realtors because they're held to a code of ethics and they have more to lose than an investor, they were calling these families and just making them fools out of themselves. Well, the families' immediate response was you violated my privacy and I'm coming after you. So they sued the cold caller. They sued the technology provider and by God they won. And that changed the business model of these predictive analytics companies. They had the data, but they wouldn't show it on the front end. And then they would send postcards for you and they would run Facebook campaigns for you. And that's why that happened. Like we, and that was even in a less contentious, less emotional space than, than what death is. That was high school graduation. That was a marriage or a divorce. So I've had those experiences and seeing that litigation that was in high eight figures over this exact thing, like a violation of privacy. So what happens when you call someone's 12 year old kid and they just lost their father in a motorcycle accident, and they're an emotional wreck; they're failing at school and they come running home. The mom said, mommy, mommy, this guy named Fed said it was something about Dad and I don't know what it is. How is mom going to feel when? When your phone rings, she's going to be like mama bear, and she's coming at you and you live in a litigious state. So that's what I mean. Like, I just feel like there's way more risk in outbound marketing to pre probate than there is reward we can still earn the business, but we earn the business. We don't go out and beg or demand for it. We create a safe environment where they can find value and eventually they find us and they see the value and they ask us to help them. And it's harder, it's longer term, but it's organic growth and real service to your community.