Real Estate Cold Call Coaching: PLUS How do probate auctions work?

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Full episode notes, resources, transcript, and podcast streams: https://probatemastery.com/ep76-probate-real-estate-cold-call-coaching

Coaching and Q&A segments (YouTube links):
0:00 Cold calling schedule, contact rates, and DNC numbers (Probate Prospecting)
16:04 Probate property auctions (Probate Auctions)
22:33 How to delegate lead generation to a virtual assistant (Real Estate ISA)
24:06 Turning cold call leads into SOI contacts (Real Estate Motivation)
28:46 Meeting with probate attorneys as a new agent (Attorney Networking)
33:22 Real Estate Coaching: Improving your cold calls (Sales Coaching)
45:36 How is the property value handled in probate vs. estate transfer (Real Estate Tax)
48:05 When to stop cold calling a sales lead? (Cold Call tips)
49:44 Rapidfire Q&A and Live Chats

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Transcript

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Hey, I'm bill gross. I'm the LA probate expert, and this is our Tuesday probate mastery alumni call. We do every Tuesday at 12 noon Pacific time. I'm located in Los Angeles, 3:00 PM Eastern time, and then we record it and put on social media the best place to catch it is probate mastery.com. And the top there, you'll see a link for the podcast and some great resources. They the team there does a great job of clipping it and make it so you can look up things and find past episodes and such. It's also on YouTube. I, and I'm just kind of full disclosure. I'm just a fan of Chad Corbin, probate master. I do some coaching for them more just to kind of learn the systems is kind of fun to play, but I'm a real estate broker practitioner. I'm not a coach. Full-time I'm, full-time a broker I in Los Angeles, California in probate real estate. Chow is my coach three and a half years ago helped me relaunch my career as a. Real estate agent producing and built a fantastic business and went through a, an iteration when COVID changed things. But I, did what he said to do. Maybe he took a few parts in particular to heart and worked on it and built my probate business. And so I've been on this call. I come in this call cuz I need it as a practitioner, keep my head in the game to network with other agents across the country and to work on best practices and vendors and new ideas. And I, I always say more than ever. I think those of us really were doing the work need this. It's interesting because like everybody today, I think I'm taking, look the look at the market, trying to see, what I need to do to increase my business next year in a market with less sales overall, the market by volume is down about 30, 40% in terms of unit account, depending on where you are though, the sales prices have increased. And so I think what everybody experiences right now is an increased sense of competition or. Least an energy about that. And so, more and more, I think people are looking well, how can I add more business? And on one hand, I caution you. On the other hand, I would say you're in the right place. In that the caution is we, as realtors get offered, shiny pennies all the time, or as real estate investors, we get offered shiny pennies. Oh, just do this program. We'll send you a bunch of leads, a bunch, your interviews, a about your listings. Think at the end of the day, I've been in this business for 36 years. And I would say the shortcut is putting in a good work effort, daily five and a half days a week over a long period of time. That's the shortcut and anything else other than that probably doesn't work. But more than that, there are programs in niches that I think do would work. I was listening one yesterday. I like a lot. But what they're missing. I think one of the key components is a place for the participants to get together and congregate and push each other, encourage each other, support each other. I don't think there's any one coach who can do enough to help 50 a hundred people. It requires, you know, they say it takes a village. Well, no about that, but it takes a team. It takes a group of people to support each other in order to be successful in real estate, whether you're brand new, getting started or whether you're an experienced agent, like I was looking at a new channel or a new piece to of the business. And so the purpose of this call is weekly. A place that you can come as you're building your business to ask questions, did you get this right? How are you doing this to work on it rather than just set up for a class and take it and then struggle. It's gonna take time to implement and that's what we're here for. So if I can help any way, it's the purpose. My goal here today is really to answer questions now. Also before I, I open up to questions feel free to raise your hand or put a question in the chat box or yeah, raise your hand. Another but I also wanna offer anybody who is successful in real estate. Mihir, who's taken Chad's training and as a result of that has built a good business. And we'd like to share that with other agents on an interview format. I did that recently with a couple we're gonna video them and promote them on our website. And I think that I know for me personally, I always wanna help other people. I feel like I've been blessed so much by coaches and support and colleagues, and it's important to help the person behind me. So if you feel you're that person that has a message to share of success, as they say, an AA hope and strength, we'll love to have you share it with us. So reach out to me, I'm bill gross, and you can reach out either on this chat or. You can reach out to me personally, I'm bill@thelaprobateexpert.com. My social medias are bill gross E XP. But reach out to me. I'd love to interview you and then share you with the community to help encourage other people on the way. So that's said, if you have a question, feel free to raise your hand and I'll unmute. You I'd think I believe you have the opportunity to unmute yourself, but I'll go ahead. I meet you and we'll start off with John. John, how you doing? What's going on? I'm doing great. Thank you for taking our questions. One of the things I'm having a I'm, I am just getting started in probate and so I'm making my calls and I'm finding most people are on, do not call lists. So I just text them. And then I'm following up. I have their emails. I email them. I've been sending the letters. My first round of letters went out. and I'm just wondering, how do you market yourself, cuz this is my, my most exciting moment was just getting one response from one person who needed something that I helped him that was that gun trust. But that was it. That's my claim to fame so far. And it's just a lot of time being put in and it just doesn't seem to be yielding much at this point. So how do you market yourself in this probate niche? Well, let's break it down a little bit. And the goal here is to kind of get, you know, specific on the website we charge for my time, $5 for 30 minute call. I'm willing to coach you for free. I'm gonna ask you some personal questions if you don't wanna answer. Just say I don't wanna answer, you know, but obviously the the prescription of medicine is based on the diagnosis. Does that make sense? Yes. So let's start off a little bit. So, John, what market where you located that you do business Southwest Florida. Southwest Florida. So is it, are you in a city like Fort Myers or are you in a suburban area? Fort? Yeah, Fort Myers, Cape coral. Lee county is basically the county that I would work with. So there's Bonita Springs. Got it. So it's not a main city, but it's like a secondary city, but it's established suburban market urban market kind of. And you got the data from a company, all the leads, all the leads. And did you, and so what have you done so far? You said you mailed out to them mailed out to my first round of leads. I'm just getting 90 leads. I could get up to 2 25. I think it's 2 25 per month, but I'm just getting there 91, just because my costs and that's an, that's all I can handle at this point anyway, to try to call all of them or contact them. Okay. So you got 90 leads and you mail up postcards. How long ago? That's been about a week ago. I think it went out. Did you call before or wait till the postcards hit before you made the post? I've been doing both. Okay. I've just working my way through the list. So out of 90, how many you said so one thing I caught my attention was you said you, I called a soys M I think that's a problem. I'm not in attorney here, but just if they're doing a call unsolicited texts are probably the same problem. If not worse than phone calls, I think people get a little more freaked out about it. I'm old enough to remember in the old days, when you had a text planned and you had a certain number of texts and they, my teenage daughter, one time, I got a phone phone call for like 200 bucks for texts. That's not the case anymore, but some people have that idea that text costs more than phone calls. So I would say that I'd be more cautious texting than phone call, to be honest. Okay. I didn't, I didn't know that I had heard on one of our calls once. That one guy in the class, or, you know, the group had been texting. And so I thought, oh, okay. That'd probably get around the, do not call , but maybe I, I misinterpreted that. Yeah. And then okay, so that of the 90, how many have you actually talked to for you? Probably three. I mean you dialed all 93. I haven't got through all 90, so I probably made 40 calls, talked to three one called me cuz they had got my postcard and that was the gun trust question I was dealing with. And then the other one told me was Charles Barkley he didn't wanna have anything to do with me. And so, and I think that's, I think that's it, I've had a couple of texts that said, no thank you. As far as you know, when I offered my services. Okay. So one of the things we wanna do is always in marketing. We wanna account our activity as we can measure it, what we measure, we can improve and we can get results from if we don't measure, we can't go anywhere. So one of the things, when I coach the agents, I tell them we wanna measure your contacts. We don't wanna measure attempts. You have to put in the attempts, but we wanna measure your contacts. And then from there your leads and from there, your appointments so you've dialed through all 90 and only talked to three people. No, I've gotten through about 40 of the 90, so I'm still working on that. So, so one thing I can tell and how long did it take you to dial through the 40? Probably about, oh, I don't know, three to, well, maybe four or five hours. It's because I'm going through each lead and if I can't call 'em, then I text them. I email them. Okay. So, okay. So let me help with that first off. Each activity is separate. You wanna divide your day in general and certainly a prospecting time into activities. So you need a time for calling a time for computer work. Separate, like for me, my goal is I'm at my desk with my

first appointment at 8: 9:20

00 AM, generally Monday through Friday. So I, I've tried to book appointments to talk to somebody from eight till five and I take a break in the middle for an hour. And then some days I'll go to six depending on my schedule. But I don't, I try not to do administrative work unless I'm on hold or I'm waiting, or, you know, sometimes people, you know, call I'll call back in five minutes. So I'll go jump onto emails. But that work in my mind is done after five o'clock, between five and six. Okay. When I call I wanna be a caller. And so what I would recommend is take your list and just dial through 'em all. One at a time and leave, put whatever notations you need to in your CRM or your paper, so that you can come back and do whatever you need to do to them. Really 90 numbers, the kind of the and you'll when you spend time making phone calls, you're gonna find that let me back up a couple key points. When you phone call, you wanna talk to people who are ready and wanna talk to you, correct? Yes. Meaning if you let the phone ring eight times, that might mean that they were deeper in their bedroom closet and they ran to pick up the phone. And now you're gonna talk to'em about private real estate. They're probably not gonna be interested, right? Oh, well, thank you so much. I was just doing this and that, but thank you for interrupting me. You don't want that phone call? So what I tell people is and I coach him is hang up before the fourth ring. Okay. But do through the list three times before you give up on it. Okay. So I'd rather you call 90 numbers and only it ring three times, not four. And get threw them all quickly and then recall them and then recall them again. We don't leave voice messages. Now I know that's different than what you hear, because I think people who don't make phone calls for a living will tell you, leave voice messages. They'll give you all kinds of exotic rules. But what I'm gonna tell you is your goal is to talk to people. That's the goal. The goal is not to leave messages because most people don't buy a service from a voicemail lip message left by a stranger true or true. That's very true. Yeah. But I've had numerous people call me back because of a missed call. And now we're talking mm-hmm , I've gotten contracts to list and sell houses when I would call people and not leave a message. And they'd say, I have a missed call from this number. Oh yeah. I'm bill gross. I'm a real estate agent. I was probably calling you because your property showed up has expired. Your property showed up as a petition for real, for probate. So. Then you could track your contacts per hour. Okay. And so I'll tell you is I have 90 phone numbers, but oftentimes the agents I coach will say, well, most people don't answer a random list of phone numbers about one in 10 will answer maybe a curated list, all the leads. You know, I'll be honest. I haven't subscribed their data for, since COVID I used to, I use their other services, but I don't use their data for phone calling. They I've, I'll admit I don't work for them, so I don't have to be up to date, but I don't. I believe they present their data as being curated for the phone numbers. So I would expect about one in four numbers when he answer, when you call. So it means I have 91 in four is 36, right? I'm sorry. No one in four would be 25% would be 20, about 20 something, 22. When you call strangers, you should talk to, as you get better about it, eight per hour minimum. And when you really get on the game, maybe up to 10 or 15, if they're cold calls, probates are a little more warmer, like expired listing. So maybe eight's the maximum you can do. So if you're calling 90 and accord, us a 22 will answer that's about three or four hours of phone calling in total. You follow me on that? Yeah, I do. And the one issue I'm having is the list of leads I get probably nine out of every 10 personal representatives are on the do not call list. So, so that's a question that comes up all the time. And I think that one or two things either you have to ignore them on the phone and text and just mail them or other social media marketing, or you call them. And anybody has to make that decision based on their state laws and their company procedure. So are you a, was an agent or investor or both. I'm just a real estate agent and who you with XP Realty. So, so my, so you should talk to your state broker and find out what the policy is on the XP already did. And what did they say? He said, absolutely not. Don't do not call them. There you go. So that's not an option for you to find some other way to reach the people besides calling them. Yeah. Yeah. It just is what it is. Yeah. And that's what I'm finding is pretty much all of 'em alls I can do is if I can't, if I can't text them either, and then they have emails, which most emails are not very accurate or very good. So pretty much alls I can do is mail to them. I think that's what it is. And then there's a list of other like family members, but, and some of them are not on the do not call list. So I've been making calls to them. Great. So family members are probably heirs or beneficiaries of the state. Yeah. And so to me, they're the same, whether they're the petitioner or not the petitioner, my goal is have a relationship with the. Right. So, so again, all this boils down to, you've gotta call who you can, those calls are goal to you because out of 90, you might have a certain number you're allowed to call nine or 10 or whatever you wanna make sure you talk to all of 'em. Right. And I would just keep calling them forever until I reach somebody. I would not leave messages. I would not text them. I don't wanna burn them out because when you finally get a chance to talk to them, that's worth a lot of money. It's worth a lot of time to get to them. Does that make sense? Yes. Yes it is. Okay. Okay. Does that help a little bit, as far as your focus? It does. Yeah. Okay, good. Thanks. Well, look, thanks for being the call and come back again. Let me know how you progress next week. Okay? Okay. Thank you. Fantastic. Steve, you might wanna put your camera on. I can bring you in if you want. But how can I help? There you are. How can I help you? So, Hey, I just had a couple questions. So I know I was on here. I think it was two or three weeks ago about calling and I've been calling new, obviously probate's a new lead source for me compared to some others. And I've had a couple of things come up that just curious about notice a lot of disconnected numbers. I imagine that's probably because that number probably was associated with the deceased at some point. And so they've probably turned it off. That's what I'm guessing. And you know, I was about a month behind, so I had leads from us probate at the end of may and June that had been going through and I've been surprised at a couple people really were pretty quick to put it on the market and I'm like, oh gosh, if I had called. A month ago. I probably would've gotten it cuz I was like, oh yeah, we just picked some random agent it's like, okay. So that was kind of motivating to me. I thought I'd share that for the group. But here's the other, the real question. I had two people that said yes, it was sold through auction already. The house was sold through auction and I gotta tell you, I don't really know what that means. I haven't worked in this space. I've heard of auctions for foreclosures, but I'm not sure what an auction would be for probate. So Steve, where do you sell real estate? Salt lake city. Utah. Are you a agent investor or both? Both. So obviously I don't know what the answer is cause I haven't talked to people, but there's a couple different auction types in probate. So, the filing, I can tell you in Los Angeles some real, some attorneys. Like the idea of holding an auction. And so there's a company that specializes in doing what I would call a retail auction, and it's really no different than a regular listing. To me, it's a bunch of hype, but whatever it makes the seller feel like they're getting, if you have multiple errors and they're gonna argue about the value of the property, it's a way to perhaps diffuse the well, you know, should gone for more or less. So I call it a retail auction. Another type is in Los Angeles county. And I think many counties in the country, there are probates filed by the county, meaning nobody comes forward. There's a distressed property, maybe tax lie, maybe maybe you know, other abatement or just maybe the house is run down and there's nobody around. Or also sometimes there are people who are out the state or all the country who go to the county website and say, can you just handle probate for me? And in the Los Angeles county? The specific vendor who has all the listings referred by the county attorney. It's like a, it's like a government bidding process. Perhaps you county candy Wilson, which is an auction company. What they do is they have what I would call a pre a public auction held before court confirmation. So, you can go and they market it and you go auction and there's an auction there. And then that winner has to go to court and is subject to being over bid. So it could be either one of those. The county vendors seem to have a little more advantage as far as timing and the process of the paperwork. They move a little more quickly. I noticed in California in LA, for example they could have all their sales on the same day, Friday, and they, and which makes life more convenient for them when they have multiple sales. So, I don't know that helps out, but I don't know the particulars. What I, the thing I would always say is our goal in conversations is to develop a relationship. And if you have somebody who's told you with auction, I would, you know, research the property, ask them questions, find out what you can, because at information, if it stumps you and then you figure it out, now you become the expert in that field. Mm-hmm and I think too many of us as real estate agents, we get into an obstacle. We go, wow, that's an obstacle. That's gonna hold me up, but just know that you get over that obstacle. Even if it's out of work, it takes time. There's other people behind you are held up by it. But now you've gotten over the obstacle. So I don't know the particulars of your case, Steve, in salt lake city. I imagine it's one of those, but I would say go back and look at one, if you can. And if it's too late next time talk to the person final information. And then, you know, what I've learned over time is I'll research the ML Las I'll research, public records, and I'll find out what the particulars of that deal are in being able to solve the problem. Okay. Okay. Yeah. They said it already sold through auction. So let me look into it. And then I just had one more question, but when you say they said the, oh, the person, it was the PR and often they think something, but it's close to what they say, but they don't really know the right answer. And as you know, in this business, it's all about the particular. So they might say, well, sold auction, but it doesn't mean it's sold auction. It means it's been pre-sold auction, but still needs court confirmation, for example. So be careful when PR say things that you wanna verify. Trust me. Verify. Okay. Okay. That makes sense. And then I had one other thing that came up in a call. This lady said, well, there's nothing we can do with it right now. We're in a lawsuit about all the family members and she hung up. Right. Mm-hmm so, so yeah. So I'll tell you one thing I've done that works for me in a similar case. I, I learned this being in court that I sat in court when Dan saw a, a man whose nephew died, he and the nephew had no was never married and had no kids. And so he was supposed a petition. And then the decedents girlfriend claimed she was married and she file what's called a competing petition. So in court, they're Bo saying the judge, we wanted to be the one to administer the state. And they had a property who was vacant and there was cost as a mortgage and taxes and insurance. And so the court agreed to create what's called a temporary administrator. The two attorneys had to agree on who that would be. They decided to co administrate cuz they knew each other trust each other and they had to agree on a real estate agent to sell the property and guess who they picked. My favorite real estate broker me. Now it's a little touchy cuz you're representing both sides, both two parties who are at war with each other. But if it serves the interest of the estate to sell a property, now they can sell a property, put the money in the bank. They can argue of the money, which is all they might care about. Sometimes the waring parties one and one is living in the property is living there for free and wants to live there forever. That scenario is very difficult, but that same scenario, there might be five siblings. One wants to live for free. One supports the living for free, but three don't three, one 'em out. The three they get together can basically vote out if they have the same. If they have three fifth interest in the property. Again, this depends on state law, but in California I've had cases where they've been able to go the judge and forced to sell the property as a temporary administrator, while they argue over who the administrator. They can at least begin the process of selling the property, keep the money in the estate. The state opens a blocked account. The money gets put, and then they can argue of the money rather than the house, if that makes sense. So the fact that there's, they're fighting over it, you might wanna do some research and see who's the attorney. And if there's such a process in Utah offered to be the real estate agent for a temporary administrator, ask if they're providing a temporary administrator, if that was one of the plans and sometimes attorneys don't know that's a process, but, and again, I, the Utah law in California, that would be the process I would go. Okay. Okay. Okay. Look into it. Report back to us, let us know how that works out. Okay. Yeah, definitely. Okay. Thanks. Thanks so much. Okay. Let me knock out a couple of the chat box. I see some hands up and I'll get right to you. One question you have in the from the alumni group from Ian, he said he hired a VA to handle calling leads. How do I schedule his calling? Do he just give him the list and have him call it every day until he gets a new list? Once he gets a new list? Does he just add that to, unless he has, I get my own leads every two weeks, I just wanna know the best practices. So, what I would say to anybody think of getting a VA is it is in my experience, impossible to delegate lead generation, unless you're doing it yourself successfully. And you're only gonna wanna lead Del lead generate if you're able to convert leads yourself. So I wouldn't start with lead with a VA unless I'm successfully converting leads myself. And I just wanna give more leads to a VA. Dan, for me, there are companies that specialize in VAs who do phone calling that trim that uses ISA inside sales agent. That I might go to those, I think up my, up my up desk, my out desk, there's a couple of them. And I saw one I thought was really impressive and it's about $12 an hour. So they have their own CRMs, their own phone lines. They've trained VAs. If you're gonna do it on your own, you're really starting from scratch. You're taking on a whole business. And I think what you're asking is how do we design a business that I've never done before? And you know, I don't know where you are your business. I'd be glad to talk to you on the call, but I would say generally speaking, I wouldn't wanna recreate all that. I'd rather find somebody who's already created that and use their business for me. And then mighty Mike suggest mojo dollar. Yeah. You can upload all the leads to something like mojo or red X dialer, or there's all kinds of phone dollar systems that you can use as a shared CRM and put the leads in there and track 'em that way. Okay. Let's go back to the life calls here. Joanne, always a pleasure to see you. What's going on? How can I help? Well, believe it or not, I actually started to cold call the the probates. No, when, and I, I know isn't that something and I I downloaded about 64 of the numbers and I started just dialing for dollars. I was just dialing and it's interesting. I have to say those numbers are very good numbers. They're not junk numbers even the wrong the wrong numbers because you're gonna be talking to somebody on the other side and you just never know But as far as probates, I I spoke to someone who was living in a different state and he had once upon a time been living here in California he had four properties, not one but four boom, and one was vacant and three, he had siblings living in and they were at war. And I looked at the court date and then he said, well, no, that's not the right court date. It was extended until August because the judge has to make a DEC a, a decision to, to sell all of these four properties because that's the PR, that's what I want to do, sell the properties and pay off the siblings. So I ran into that one. And then I don't know. I, I talked to about, out of what I downloaded. I think I talked to about 11 different people, which was pretty good because I didn't even get through my entire list of 64. I ran into one lady in El Monte. She said she lost both of her parents to C and she had hired an attorney and she was getting the deed placed in her name. And then I ran into this other lady who had multiple properties. And then she says don't even bother my daughter is buying the property. And but it was like different situations. I even talked to somebody in New York city. So. You just have to, so when I'm staying, you just have to keep at it and just dial the numbers. Just keep dialing one after the next. So lemme see if I have this correct. Drea, you bought the data, you called people and you talked to people who had properties, some of which they had to sell some of which they didn't have to sell. Mm exactly. Wow. Amazing news flash, but you know, something, even the one who told me that her daughter was, was going to buy the property because she said it was one property. She, she left some very valuable information. She says, I own multiple properties. And then she said that she was an investor. So I said, great. So that's a good phone number for me to call back and say, Hey, what do you have that's available, you know, for lease or even to sell I, before that, I think that you have an opportunity to audition for the job that nobody else has. If you look for ways to help her. Through the probate process. Mm-hmm so we're too quick to say, oh, no property to sell probate. Now you're a step up saying, well, I can, I can solicit her for other business. And I would say to you, before you go there, help her in probate. One reason why is just because the daughter, she thinks the daughter wants to buy the property. The daughter may not wanna buy the property that I may not be able to buy the property when she may have wanted buy the property. When the mortgage payment was based on 3% interest rate and she may not wanna buy it. Now that it's based on a 6% mortgage, 6%, even the mother wants to give it to her, which is fine. There might be tax implications. There there's a whole lot of things that go along. She's gotta pay property taxes, got pay insurance, gotta keep up the house, find 10 for it. Everybody wants to, to buy the house until they know what's evolving, buying the house. Mm-hmm . So what I would say is I would, I would not assume that that's really gonna happen in the meantime who's attorney. Are she doing proper or she working with the attorney, help her through the process? You can't give legal advice, but you can help. Through the process. I would definitely focus on that and I assure you, if you help her through the probate, you'll get more business than you have imagined. Okay. All so I just have to keep dialing. That's all. Just keep dialing well and follow up. As long as you're in business, your goal is to create relationships. It' not looking for listings that we're looking for listings, right, or sales or, or purchases. It's really create relationships with people who can build, we can build business with. And in this case, here's a woman that you can build a relationship with. And how do you build relationships? We put in the relationship before we get out of it. And so maybe your daughter wants it. Maybe you drive the property. Is your daughter local is daughter also outta state. Maybe you drive the property and take pictures. Then that's a benefit to them. I don't know enough about the conversation, but I would look for ways to help pull the data, pull the public record documents to give to her, look at the probate case, give her information from them. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Fantastic. Thanks. Join. Always a nice seeing you. Becky is a double dip where I see you in the chat box. I see your hand up. So let's let's if I can get you on here for us hi, how you doing? Good. How are you? Fantastic. Good. This is my, yeah, this is my second time on being one of these calls. I hope this is an appropriate question to ask in here. But I wanted to, you know, like I said, I'm going through the program still, so I'm still kind of new to this and I've got some appointments scheduled this week to meet with an estate planning attorney and a probably attorney and I'm, you know, it's gonna be a quick meeting, but I don't know how to present value to them. Like I can tell 'em what I'm doing, but I would just like to sound a little bit more confident and put together when I meet with them. Okay. So, and, and Becky you're a real estate agent or an investor. I'm a real estate agent. And where do you sell real estate? I'm in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Okay. Wow. I've never been to Indiana, so I really can't give you any particulars but what I would say is in all relationships the goal is of, you know, my, my first coach was Zig Ziegler. He said, you have anything you want in life. If you help enough other people get what they want. So your goal is to find out what they want either before the phone, either before the meeting or at the meeting. Okay. So what might they want? And, and you, you can come prepared with that, or you can even just ask them questions. You know, I work, you know, I'm part of a national mastermind of probate focused real estate agents that we work with attorneys like you regularly. And I'm just here to offer my service and see how it can be of assistance. Now you don't wanna go right to the, to the chase you want to warm up. So tell me about where'd you grow up? How'd you get into being an attorney how'd you get into probate attorney work, how or state planning, whatevers they do. and then you wanna kind of look for the opportunity to see what their challenge is, what, what are they struggling with? It, it might just be that they want referrals from you, which is fine. And I think that, you know, I've taken the position. That's what they're gonna look for. So I do my best to interact with them. I, I call them, I interview them on videos and put it on my YouTube channel. And on my social media, maybe that's something you, you could do as well. You can invite them onto my YouTube channel. I'd be glad to interview an attorney in Indiana. I've interviewed attorneys, I think in 15 states and I've not met one in Indiana. So I think that you wanna look and see what do they want, what do they need go on the website. See, do they have a strong marketing presence or not? Do they have video or not? Do they have a blog or not look for opportunities where you can help them? Everybody wants help. Right, right. Yeah. So, as far as explaining, like what I'm doing, what's the best. You know, simple way to say here's what, you know, after I get to know them a little bit and find out, you know, how I could bring value to them, how can I keep it simple and best explain what, what I'm doing in my market? So your goal is always to just talk about what's important to your prospect in all sales, in all sales Becky, are you a buyer's agent listing agent or both? Both. So I'm a listing agent. Okay. There's different approaches. But when I go on a listing appointment, the only thing I talk about are those things that my seller told me are important to them. I don't spend an hour talking about my marketing program unless they tell me, Hey, bill, it's really important to me is your marketing program. And I would ask them, well, what do you mean by that? What are you looking for in a marketing program? How would you know a great one from an average one? And then I'll talk about that. Gotcha. Okay. And so I think the sales process, it's a little more than I can just answer and, and, but I would guide you to learn the, the art of selling. Mike ferry is one of my teachers on that process grant. Cardone's another one. But the goal would be to go to the appointment and ask questions. Mike ferry says, selling, isn't telling, selling is asking questions. The more they talk the smarter they think you are. Okay. I, I get what you're saying now. That makes sense. Thank you me. You ask that question. Yeah, his personal pass on it, but okay. Married or single? Married. Okay. Did you date at some point in time before you got married? A very short time. I married him. okay. So did you date, but do you date other men besides your husband? Or was he like your, the first guy you went out with? Nope, he was my, my first only . Okay. So, so this won't work for you, but you might notice that some of your girlfriends who date guys, the common complaint is all they do is what talk about themselves, right? Right. Okay. Yeah. So the dating tip and I, I coach marriage, my demand on how to date, it's get her to talk. The more she talks, the more she's gonna like you. And it. Counterintuitive, but that's how sales works. Got it. Okay. Does that help a little bit? Yes, it does. Thank you so much, bill. Come back. Let's know how it works. Okay. Will do. Okay, good. Let's see. Who is next? Jeff Campbell. I see your hand up there. Let's get you unmuted and get you in the call. How can we help you? Thank you. Appreciate it. So I'm an investor I've been using all the leads for about three years. I've done several probate deals, still struggle with my intro. You know, we, we got a script and it seems like it's a little long and I get a lot of . I mean, it seems like the intro's like a minute, you know, or two, and I didn't know how I could bring value to 'em where they see value without having such a lengthy intro. You know, I know it's important to tell 'em who I am, what I want and how I can be of service., you know, but just kind of trying to make my intro better, to get, to get more deals and seeing what you had in mind, or maybe how you do it. Sure. So what script are you using? I'm not sure it was from all the leads. I went to the program, the probate mastery probably four years ago. So when Chad was teaching it, correct? Yeah. So I think I'm, I've done a lot of coaching on, on cold calling. I'd say I really feel like is an expertise in mind. I'm not as good on probate as cold calling. And I think your sense of it is correct. It's gotta be a, you've gotta get them the way I think about it is you wanna get them talking as quickly as possible? Sure. Because anytime you're talking, they're ready to hang up. Once I'm talking, they can't hang up the phone. Right. So I think your sense of it is right. And, and no offense, you speak less fast than I do. So now, I mean, that's common where you're at. I, my sense is it is, but still I, mean's a long time to listen to anybody talk about anything. Oh, absolutely. It's way too long. And I know, and I'll realize that. So that's why I was here hoping to get some help and a recommendation. So I would, I would write an intro and cut down as many words and syllables as you can. You know, for example, I I'll give you one example. I used to work for an independent real estate company in long beach, California, nationwide, real estate, executive something. It was N R E E. I figure what the third one was nationwide, real estate executives, nationwide Realty. And I just cut down to nationwide because it saved me real estate executives. Right? Like, I mean, just trim it down. Imagine you're like building the, if you ever seen these movies about the building airplanes for speed or cars for speed, they're shaving down, the car or the plane to, to be resistant. You wanna shave down your, your introductory sentence to as little as possible to get them to talk as quick as possible. And the sooner they're talking, the faster you are, are more likely to win. I get it. And I would rewrite it and rewrite it and proxy rewrite it. Now, the other thing I would say is that the number one and I used. I worked for a company where they charged, you know, a thousand dollars a month for me to coach them. And people had to sign a contract for a year to, to, to coach with me now was part of a system that I learned and, and, and brought to students. But I also worked that system. And what I can tell you is the number one thing you can do to improve your phone calling technique, and it's brutal. And you're gonna hate me when you do it, it's record yourself. Sure. I don't have a problem with that. I'm I mean, some of these technologies like mojo and REDX have it built in subject state law, whatever that means to you. We all have phones now they can record, but when you listen yourself and, and if you hear yourself going on and on, you're gonna realize, but my guess is you also talk too much also during the conversation and the goal is to get them to talk. No, absolutely. I, I agree. I, I believe the 80 20 rule, you know, I. Try to be an active listener and let them do the talking. I do a lot of mirroring to let them open up and I sit and listen. I think I'm pretty good at that, but you can always be better, so all can do is be better. Every phone call you're gonna listen to, you have to ask what can I do better next time in order to improve? I mean, that's the game we're in, right? And I just tell anybody's in the phone call right now. You know, I, I, I have my own separate weekly podcast call. I do called probate weekly.

It's on Thursdays of 4: 37:41

00 PM.

Pacific time, 7: 37:43

00 PM. Eastern, you can register it's free probate, weekly com out sell any coaching selling did or anything. I just did that before this call was launched. Cause I needed it as well. And I do use it for lead generation. And if we're building my team, but what I wanna say is one week I had an cancellation attorney canceled last minute. And so I shared what I thought was the most important material I've ever shared as a probate coach which was the important it was phone calling phone. And it was interesting how I had more negative feedback on that call than any clever done and more positive feedback. I had people who actually full time in the business text me, email me comment on social media. Wow. Thanks for reviewing that. Thanks and need refresher that thanks for insight on calling how important it is. And I had a bunch of brand new people and never gonna be people. Tell why are you teaching me about phone calling skills? I just wanna learn about how to sell probate real estate. And it's like, if you don't get that this business is about communication and it's gonna take some hard work. The question is where do you, we're gonna channel that hard work and how are you gonna do it, then you're not gonna be in business long. And I can just tell you today, I would say with all confidence, you either better figure out what you've gotta do every day to get better and put a good solid effort in every day. I'm not saying work 12 hours or 14 hours a day, but a good solid effort every day and get better and improve, or you're just not gonna be in this business. It's just as simple as that. We're all gonna get shaken out. Can I ask you one last thing, so sure. What do you think the most? I. Thing about the intro is, you know, I know you said, Hey, shorten it way up, get them talking as soon as possible. Yeah. But you know, the way he, the way the script I learn is, Hey, this is Jeff. I'm calling, I'm a probate specialist here in Arkansas. I notice you're the personal representative estate I was calling, you know? And then I go into whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. the going into, part's the problem so far so good. Yeah. So after that, then it's basically like, you know, we go to the courthouse every month, pull of records and then reach out to the families and see what you need. We can't buy houses for, for cash. We buy 'em as is. We also can help you fix 'em up. If you want to go that way, or if were not a good fit, I can help you with a realtor. And then they ask, you know, the question is. What are you having? What's the biggest challenge for probate with you so far kind of open ended question to try to get 'em talking, but I still feel that I need to work on the intro a lot more and, and smooth it up and shorten it up the, the way and a problem with I think, and again, my personality is different than Chad's. I think that for me, I, when people talk about problems, they lower their energy, they get frustrated. It's like, what are you most frustrated with? And I think that, that it's harder to move people when they're down than when they're up. That's why in sales, we wanna be energetic and enthusiastic, and I'm just calling to see how it can be of assistance. And I think that when I find now that fits me, right, because I'm calling now. And why don't you calling me to help me? You kidding me? Like, if you were call me and help me, I got pile stuff to help with. I got a to-do list to help with. I got honey do stuff to help with. I got endless things you can help me with. You would ask me to talk about problems, to be honest, I don't wanna talk about my problems now. It's the middle of my work day. I'm busy, but you wanna call and help me. Wow. I never thought mean for free. I could, you could help me. have information to help. You have knowledge. You help, you have resources. You have roster of people that will save me trouble researching. So, so that's been always my, I don't wanna say difference with Chad, but again, it has to be appropriate and it has to be you have to own that persona. Sure. That's my persona. I'm energetic. I'm enthusiastic. When I call and I'm offering to help them. And I, I believe in my heart of hearts and this is authentic. There is nobody who can help.'em more on that phone call in that moment than I can, whether they need legal, help, financial help, physical help with the property. There is nobody's gonna help.'em more than I am. And if they don't want it, it's their, it is their bad. Absolutely. So you get a lot of people to say, Hey, I've got it handled. You know, and you know, they Don. Do you do third party stories, something like, Hey, my last one, I was able to help. I heard the exact same thing or what, how do you recover from there? SU Jeff you married? No, I'm not. Okay. Have you ever been married? I have one time ever had a relationship with a woman. Maybe your sister or mother ever notice that they're mad at you and you say to them, Hey honey, what's bothering you. And they say, oh no, I'm fine. You ever get that one? Oh yes. Does that mean I'm fine? Or does that mean I'm plotting your eternal destruction? Right. So people, you know, the goal is to get them to open up. And I think that's just an objection when somebody says, oh, we have it all handled that's by definition and objection. That's how I'm looking at the car lot. Could be. Yeah, yeah. Look, I mean, I literally go to buy and I don't haven't for a while, but the last I went to say Nordstrom's to buy a dress shirt. I know my size. I only wear. Button down Oxford shirts. I'm walking to the place where those are to pick up the shirts, walk out the door where they say, you know, can I help you? I could say, Hey, do you know where we have the whatever is 17 and a half by 37 white Oxford button down long sleeve shirts. And then you get 'em from, I say, no, I'm fine. I'm just looking. That's just getting'em off my back. So all objections, there's a standard approach to all objections. What I call the three steps. One is repeat what they say. The biggest complaint people have with salespeople is we don't listen. And so they say, I have a handled. Anything you say at that point there's oh my God, that just this Jeff Guy, what? An idiot. I just told him I have a handled because they didn't hear you. Don't let him know you heard it. So if you say you have a handled, great, second step two is a firm. Whatever they say, whatever they say is right for them, doesn't mean you have to agree with it. It means you have to acknowledge. That's how they think. And then you come back with an alternative objection, handler. So whatever it is you wanna talk about, and it doesn't really matter, you can change the subject. And if you handle that, definitely the way I describe it is I'm like a ninja. I want somebody to give me a cell. Like I want this call and you guys just asking me questions, really objecting. The subtext says, wow, this isn't working for me because this I'm gonna take it on and show you how good I'm at. I'm a ninja. And so when a prospect says to me, we have a handle, you have a handle. That's great. So, Tommy what are your plans with the property? Mm. Now if I handle it, well, I hear them. I acknowledge them, make them feel good. I'm enthusiastic. I'm energetic. I'm not disagreeing with them. I'm not telling'em they're wrong. I'm telling 'em they're right. Oh, great. You have a handle. That sounds great. So I'm curious, what are you doing with the property? 1 23 main street, right? I sell it right. Okay. I get it. Use. Affirm and then go on with it. Ask the question of yeah. Three steps. Repeat. Absolutely. Step two. Affirm. Step three is your objection handler, which is a question designed to keep it going and it better be quick because they're trying to hang up and so you wanna keep the process engaged. Okay. That's phenomenal. Thanks for all the help. Sure. Jeff, my pleasure. Appreciate that. Sure. Thanks. Let's try it this week and come back and let us know how it works. Okay. Absolutely. Thanks again. Thanks Dave, Gwen, always. Nice to see you, man. Thanks for being on the call, your hand up there. How can we help you? Hey bill. Great to be here. Thank you again, always great stuff. When when you're leading the show here, so appreciate it. Thank you. I know you're not turn an account. But I no did have a quick question that you may or may not know the answer to and that's, is there any difference in how the taxable event occurs versus when you have and probate and the will is clear and there's, it's going to the daughter or whatever, and there are no other siblings. Is there any more tax benefit for her to actually take it into her name and getting the step up in basis and then reselling or versus doing it through the estate? Does the estate still have the cost basis of the original cost basis? Therefore having a bigger tax bill and was just wondering, comparing those two types of scenarios. Is there, do you know if there's any benefit one versus the other. So your question is, should she take it to avoid the tax on the estate? Cuz the decedent still has taxes to file. I, you know, I'm not an accountant and I would say that's a great question to ask an accountant and I need to get the answer to that question. I believe that it's stepped up because you, at least in California, we do a date of death appraisal for the purposes of establishing the value of the property. So, I'm guessing that's what that does. Because in essence, the estate passes not the property either way. So I don't but great question. I don't know the answer to, I don't pretend that I do, but next I talk to an accountant. I'm gonna ask the question for sure. Okay, cool. And I challenge anybody on the call. If your accountant answer the question for us, if you're not, we should all everybody this call. If you wanna make a great business development phone call. Accountants in your area until you at least get one and ask that question, tell them you're part of a national probate group. And the question came up and nobody knew the answer and ask if they would answer for you. And you might even ask several accountants, what a nice reason to call the accountants in your marketplace or your clients who are accountants or your personal client. What a great question to ask right? There you go. I'm gonna call perfect report back. Let me know I'm gonna do the same thing I'm making. In fact, I'm making a note right now. Just you gotta think of myself. Well, I could call like three different accountants. I mean, that's just an excuse to make prospecting calls account a step up or not when passing property and I, you know what, feel free. Send me this call. Feel free to ask me next week. If I remember to report back my answers. Okay, perfect. Perfect. And I had one other quick question came up, came to mind previous caller or whatever had asked about. You know, working through lists. And when you consider a number on your list, exhausted where you keep hitting it until you hear something cold numbers, I would call through the list three times letting it ring. Not four times, I would go through that list three times a four, I would exhaust it. So if I was doing circle prospecting in a neighborhood, I would call through that list, crossing out the disconnects, crossing out the bad numbers, whatever those are. And the end of that third call, I would put the date that I finish. And I would recycle that date 90 days later, that data's good. Again, 90 days later to cold call. Probate's different because until you reach somebody it's a already a kinda like expired listings. It's already somewhat curated. They're getting a lot of phone calls up front and at some point the phone calls start to drop off and anytime become on the phone is a good time to get 'em on the phone. So I would always call the newest ones first and then go back to the older ones and I would keep calling 'em forever. So I reach 'em because I could tell you in California, Dave you're in California. No, you're in Colorado, right? Colorado. Yep. In California, in LA county. The average time of selling a property is like two years. So I would keep calling them until I knew the numbers. No. Good. Yes, there's a lot at the end. They're gonna be older numbers. Maybe at some point you decide to drop 'em off but, you know, Get 50 bed numbers and try that for an hour and let me know, try that two or three times. Lemme know how that works. Okay, perfect. Okay. We've got bunch of thank you. I'm kind of falling behind here. I got a bunch in the chat box. I'm gonna kick. Andy is my last call live and I'll go through the chat box, try and knock some of those out. Andy. Welcome for a call. How can I help you? Let me unmute you real quick. Hey, bill, how are you? I'm great. Kind of piggybacking on that last call. I was, I'm getting back into the probate thing after being out for geez, maybe about a year and a half. And I've decided to go through the historical leads that I have. Beautiful. Do you have a different tact that you would take when calling a historical lead as opposed to a new movie? No. I mean, it's no different than calling old expireds. I would just say, I know she'd filed the probate a year and a half ago. My record show the property is still available or the property is still open. I'm going to see how it can be of assistance. Okay. So pretty much the same T but maybe mention yeah, hundred percent. I would definitely mention if, you know, it's older, the data comes with a file date. So you know that it's older. I would definitely call it forever maybe. And maybe you, you cycle through them. Three times and set 'em aside again and come back every 90 days to get through more quickly. But I would definitely do that. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Okay. I'm gonna try and get through, I, we have a bunch in the chat box that I wanna kind of answer. Let's see. Elizabeth, ask a great question. What if you're starting out, don't have revenue to spend a dollar system or hire assistance. You know, Elizabeth, I, but you, I got 10 fingers. They all can hit the button on the phone. There's no real, you can load 'em in a spreadsheet and click on 'em using I use Google voice or Skype out or whatever your phone system has. Or if you had to just use a phone in your fingers, I would dial it, but we reinvest money. I would not spend money before you have it. I wouldn't spend money. You don't have, I would not let that hold you up in your business. So if you don't have money to invest or to reinvest, then you need to get started and you're investing your time to get started, feel free to reach out. If that doesn't answer your question clearly for you. I. Chris says that the errors can sell their individual interests, that they don't wanna wait for the litigation. Yes. Errors can always sell their, their, if they wanna wait for litigation or just for the probate in general. Don mentioned Upwork as a upworks.com. I use Upwork for a lot of VA work, but again, they don't come trained in my experience having to hire them. There are companies that have trained ISAs that are, have systems in place to support them. I did not find Upwork. I views Upwork before they were Upwork. And I have currently seven VAs with them going on different projects, but I don't believe they have you know, odds are, you're not gonna find somebody who's gonna get done what you need. Belinda says she had ISA do calls for the list and she didn't get much. But you do have call reluctance. Yeah, Belinda, the problem is if you have call reluctance, you're not gonna solve that problem with an ISA because it they're gonna set appointments or leads for you and you need to be good on the phone to convert them. That's even the higher. Pay off business. So definitely if you have car reluctance, that's gonna be a challenge. Brian says, if there's one thing I could take off your plate to help you, what would it be? That's a great question. Again, I think that we wanna come from, I wanna come from being positive. I want them to be engaged in a positive way. Okay. Elizabeth says I'm in the same position. I'm glad you guys are helping each other out here. Role play is important. So I would say role play can be important. I've done a lot of role play in my career. I would say don't role play and then hang up the phone and not make your phone calls. Sometimes I know a lot of agents have hidden behind role play and conserve that work. I would rather you role play with customers and make the phone calls than role play with a partner and then not make the calls. Brian says too much explaining before they start talking. I would agree. And then he gets some sample scripts. Very nice. I think they look great. And somebody's gonna schedule fine. Okay, thank you, bill. Working team, some probate scripts. I would say probate ma Elizabeth probate mastery would have scripts there for you. Victoria says she's new to the program, realtor, mostly listing. Where did she get data? So, a number of people here today, we talked about all the leads.com as a source of data on my website. The LA probate expert.com. I actually have a page with all the various data. I'm not sure where you're calling from Victoria Torres. Maybe I should remember. I know I recognize your name, but hold on one second on a website, I have a page with all the data sources that I've discovered and I'll put it in the chat box right now. And if you know, you can try them, some cities and areas have some that don't have others. So, all the leads is national. Probates daily is national probates data is national. So try one that works for you, or if you wanna reach out to me you know, reach out and be glad to talk to you individually. Okay. So scripts. Wow. Got 21 call 21 things I didn't get to here. I got apologize. I'll let time kind of run out on me here. Oh man. Got to it all. Okay. Good. Last question. MENA, hand up. You've been patient. Sorry about that. I'm running fast myself. How can I get, how can I help you MENA? I've asked you to unmute, but you're in your hands up, but I don't see you UN muting. No last call marina. Okay, so we're gonna, I'm here. Sorry. Oh, no problem. How can I help you? I have a quick question. I've been door knocking around my house. And I through neighbors I heard that two families, well, two owners passed away. I check with the title company. They both have trust. So that means they're not going through through probate probably uh, what's the best way to reach out to families like that. You know, I can't say I've ever discovered a magic formula other than trying to find somebody who knows them and reach out to them mail to the house mail to the address of the tax records. That's what I did. Yeah. I I've done that in, I can't say I have any special talent in that area. Okay, great. Thank you. Okay. Sure. So I can't help more, but yeah, I think that's a magic question every once in a, where do I get, where do I get the trust lead phone number of the person who really controls the trust and the answer is they built the trust, so you can't find them. So, it's challenging. And but you know, once your door, one of the powers of door knocking is to ask about the neighbors. Sometimes you ask them and say, I've been trying to reach so, and so the neighbors will love the house to be sold because it will sell for high price. We'll bring typically more tax revenue and a. A new neighbor in a house that otherwise is abandoned. And so, you might ask them if they know where the who's in charge, where the kids are, who are running that. And that might be that's been the only thing I've ever done that worked for me. Okay. Sure. So I asked, do I have a training on Thursday? Yes, I do. Probate weekly.com is Thursdays 4:00 PM Pacific 7:00 PM. Eastern probate, weekly.com. I also have a Facebook group, probate experts in Facebook that said I also am regularly on the probate mastery, alumni chat board in Facebook, go there with questions. And that's why we have this call is to as to share together. So feel free to reach out to me there and I'll catch up with you. I somehow got through all the chat. I'm sorry. I kind of ran behind there, but you guys are really engaging today. Thank you for participating. And again, the purpose. This call is. We're it's the teamwork makes the dream work. We all, at some point in our career is whether you're new or established, like me start out with dreams of a lot of income and wealth and freedom. And and along the way we discovered or will discover that number one, it's more work that we thought it was number two, that we can't do it on our own. We need help. And Chad's an amazing coach and I've been working with him for three and a half years. Yet we need more than that. He can only be in one place at a time. And that's what this calls is design for us to work together and support each other and work on best practices today. The question is one that I should know the answer to him. I'm embarrassed that I don't, but I'll promise you I'll know it by next week. And I think anybody in the call today was serious about their probate business. She'll also find out how is the property value handled in a step up or not in a probate versus the sell the property in probate versus the the Taking the property and re selling it. It's a great question. I remember who asked the question, but I'm embarrassed that I didn't even know that, but I'm gonna find out and that's what this is for. We should all work to every day, improve to be better, to be, create more value for our customers, more value for our referral partners, attorneys, or whoever, and then, and do that by helping each other. So I'm here to help you. This is the probate master call. We do it every Tuesday, 12 noon, Pacific 3:00 PM Eastern, and all the other times it's posted on the website, probate master.com under the podcast. And there's highlights on the YouTube channel. Reach out if I can help you on bill gross. Thanks so much for everybody who participated really appreciate guys. Thank you so much. Thanks.