Prospecting, Persistence, and Attorney Relationships, with Bruce Hill

0:00 A probate expert welcome to our Probate Weekly live stream we get together every thursday 4 p.m pacific time 7 p.m eastern time now that distinction is important today I'm here from los angeles and our guest is in north carolina we get together every week and we try to help this is meant for people who are engaged in the process I'm not a coach I'm not selling anything I'm a practitioner I started this call because I needed it to learn to be better to hold myself accountable so whether you're investor wholesaler real estate agent looking to improve your game improve your business make more money and build more wealth we get together and I primarily every week try to interview a industry leader whether it be an attorney or a vendor or a coach that helps us in our business so I'm really excited today to have somebody who I've known and watched myself and paid money to get his coaching bruce hill from alltheleads.com chris welcome to our call today thanks bill I'm really happy to be here I've been I've been lobbying you to try to get on here for a while I've been chasing you down man like a hungry lion I've been chasing you and I was excited when I finally got you to come and so I introduced you as all the leads that's just really how I know you but I know you do a little more than just that as well or is that your primary focus so that's an interesting question and being a coach so I do coach being a coach I also have a coach and one of our primary focuses with my coaches what we call holding your image and I don't think that we invented that I'm pretty sure that was another big popular national coach that talks about that but we in the real estate space a lot of times tend to chase lots and lots of shiny objects so the image that I work on holding is that of a of a kind of a probate and prospecting specifically prospecting expert and trainer so I work with all the leads doing their coaching their training and

2:03 Managing their sales department and then a couple of other things as well and I would say I think that you know essentially that you say that because that was my assessment of you was as a coach in probate and specifically I thought what I enjoy about your reagan value is on prospecting phone skills objection handling that material I think is an important piece of it and where a lot of people get tripped up and I end up helping on this call and do the best I can and always want to get other perspectives and other flavors on that so let's just before we jump into that let's talk a little bit where you grew up and then how you get into real estate and then specifically how did you get into probate oh man so I grew up for those of you and I know bill you're a great friend with chad corbett I grew up about seven houses apart from chad corbett he was in west virginia near snowshoe if anyone is on the east coast and knows that ski resort I grew up in virginia though both of us were in the mountains we seven houses apart but that was about 15 miles because there was a big huge national forest in between us so mountains of virginia population of the entire county entire county was 2 000 people where I grew up went off to college got back from college and I swung hammers for about a year working to build houses and after crushing my hands to pieces and realizing that I wasn't any good at building houses I thought well maybe I'll be able to go sell these a little bit better than I can build them sold one house my first year I made a whopping eighteen hundred dollars I sold three houses my second year I made six thousand dollars was on the verge of bankruptcy unfortunately I was young and didn't know that I needed to pay for insurance and survived somehow until that third or fourth year kind of all started to come together so that's how I got into real estate there's a lot more to that story moved to roanoke virginia then at the

4:07 Peak of my career doing 250 houses a year in roanoke virginia it's where I met chad from it's where chad and I actually met each other we were competitors I decided to pack it up and move to raleigh north carolina like an idiot who walks away from business doing 200 houses a year it goes to a new market where they don't know anybody me so if anyone wants to know here's how I coach this is what I did don't do that wow but that I got into probate about the time I moved to north carolina been friends with chad for a little bit and he told me that I need to start getting into it I got into it I fumbled through some marketing techniques that some work some didn't prospecting techniques I got yelled at a few times I just asked myself you know there's is there a better way is there a way to have these conversations where you're not making people mad where you're truly offering value and you're influencing people to do what's in their best interest and the answer to that is yes so that's kind of how I got into the probate space and ultimately hooked up with all the leads as their trainer and I know you do this positioning I saw on prospecting and phone skills so talk a little bit about the particular offerings that you have and I know you launched a couple of via email today that I saw as well on listings can you kind of share a little bit with the sure the sub coaching or the sub topics that you offer absolutely and so outside of the probate space I have a course called the agent dna briefly on that because I know we're kind of all here talking about probate but briefly on the agent dna I was overhearing a conversation one day in a coffee shop and someone I think it was between like a pastor and maybe one of the parishioners in the church and the minister in the coffee shop said you know if you're a christian it just shows because it's in your dna and light bulbs

6:11 Went off in me and I look at all these agents all over the country and I realized that they're not if they're not getting the business that they want it's probably because they're not demonstrating the proper dna of a successful Realtor® that attracts business to themselves and so I went back I locked myself in a room for a couple of days and I put together this outline of a course called the agent dna so after that once every quarter or so got another one coming up in a month or two and I teach a listing class it's a couple hours long every couple of months I teach that just on how to nail a listing appointment a lot of people lose listing appointments whether it's probate or sphere of influence or wherever that lead source that lead may come from you lose listing appointments because you either are under prepared you show up and people don't trust your credibility because you don't appear professional or you're over prepared and they sit through a hour and 30 minute boring presentation and you look up and they're like either crying or they're falling asleep so we teach a process of how to nail listing appointments through a listing class let's see teach a class on investing and then ultimately I get into the weeds with probate foundations is a course that I run once a month through all the leads and then I do a prospecting mastery class that is a little bit more geared toward probate but the truth is that prospecting mastery class is gold it's a two-day class about five to six hours total and we just break down everything from your opening to dealing with objections to moving the moving the lead the prospect that you're on the phone with through to the exact answers that you wanted to get to without them feeling like you're guiding them through the conversation and that's ultimately what I love teaching and I love

8:14 Working the most because I was so awful at prospecting for so long you know I'm not sure what you were like bill some people are kind of natural communicators they're natural at prospecting their the force of their personality causes success that was not me I was cussed out I was hung up on I was asked to get out of houses I really struggled and I had to learn the subtle techniques of influence to be able to guide people from where they were to where I wanted them to go as long as it was done in an ethical way those are the skills of influence that I teach on these classes it seems like a lot of the classes you teach has a flavor or a underpinning of nlp of like you say a persuasion of emotions and things like that in your process absolutely I am not nlp certified I've taken a lot of nlp classes and I've taken a lot of those techniques I got some influence from sandler sales systems I got some influence from we were talking about tony robbins tony robbins has an absolutely amazing sales mastery class is what I think it's called different things like that so I've been a student of a lot of a lot of different masters in the in the prospecting and the sales game and I like people I like to take pieces from all of them so if we had a call today one of the reasons I did this is because I need it another is I want to give back I'm not selling anything here bruce does and I've bought some of bruce's coaching and I want to encourage you guys to investigate if it makes sense for you but I'd love this to be participative and I think the key to our business especially now when people are so uncertain and scared as bruce said whether you're a natural communicator or you're not you need to communicate with people more effectively one way is put your v your camera on show up here on

10:17 The call participate ask questions so either raise your hand with a zoom call or put a question in the chat box if you could start it with a queue I'll pick up on it but the goal is to be a participative now I'll just share with you it's my call and I like bruce and I've been chasing them down for a while to have a conversation so we could talk for hours but I'd love to get your questions answered as well so feel free to jump in and participate put in the in the queue or in the chat box or raise your hand so let's kind of talk to the agent who's just starting out because I you know like you I get a lot of those kind of questions hey I'm a new agent and I want to start on probate on one hand I always feel you know my and I'm just chris you know I'll give you mike have pat answered I'd love to get your feedback on one hand I always feel like I don't think I would start prospecting my cold-calling petitioners if I was a new agent and had never listed and sold a house but what I would do is learn about probate avoiding probate estate planning conservatorships guardianships and then share that with my center of influence as a starting point to look for that business maybe purpose somebody who's an expert or bring it to your you have a mastermind call you have a group and all the leads chad has a group probate mastery I have a group probably you know network with experts on this call if you run into a challenge but to try to stay out of the prospecting lane now I know that this is a little difficult for you because you work for all the leads you guys sell the data now but that's my answer if I'm wrong tell me I'm wrong and how would you answer that new agent who says I'm gonna start I've never sold a house and I want to pick probate as my marketing niche absolutely well first thing is google is free whatever state you're in and there's typically an attorney or two or 40 who've written blogs on what the petitioner what the personal representative executor needs to do

12:18 To go through probate so I want everyone that ever hears this to recognize that if you want to be perceived as credible and you want to attract business in a certain niche to yourself the best way to build credibility is to educate so when you go educate yourself I want you to look at the things that you're reading and that you're learning and immediately write them down in a way that you can begin to educate on those things to your audience the people that you want to do business with so if you go and you google probate in north carolina what's the probate process and you pull a blog up from an attorney or an agent or someone that might be an expert in that field and you find 42 different steps that they say that you need to do as the personal representative write those down put them in a checklist and all of a sudden you're going to begin to offer those to your potential audience if you learn it in order to teach it you'll retain it a lot better so that's step number one is just google come to podcasts come to masterminds get around the right people that know what they're doing second thing is recognize that any disagreements that bill or I'm I may have or any agreements that we have our process is a way it's not the way so when I am about to I'm about to give a little bit of a of a spin on something that bill said I want everyone to know that it's a way I went on over 50 listing appointments with my old mentor many years ago and we followed a specific listing process that worked 100 of my of the time for my mentor 100 I went out on my own listing appointment by myself for the very first time after going with him on over 50 over the course of a year and a half or so I went in the listing appointment I followed his exact process and at the end of it

14:21 Instead of them saying where do I sign which they said every single time to him they told me to get out of their house they said we'd like you to leave we'd like you to leave so when you guys are kind of listening to different approaches you're going to have to try different things out now I like getting into a new set of leads for a new niche and picking the phone up and prospecting immediately I would rather have people not get bogged down in the education and let your experience and your failures be the education now you guys know yourselves you know if somebody fusses at you on the phone you know if it's going to completely demotivate you and you're going to lose all interest and you're going to leave if that's you don't pick the phone up right away learn a little bit but if you're the type of person that's motivated to grow after failures pick the phone up make the mistakes make those prospecting calls even if you don't know a whole lot about probate as little as you may know about the probate process guess who knows less the prospect that you're calling they know less than you do and they're not sitting there with a list of gotcha questions waiting to trip you up so that's one of the reasons why I actually don't mind you guys calling and prospecting even with the possibility of getting tripped up occasionally because most of these personal representatives they don't know what they're supposed to know they don't they don't know if you say hey I'm a probate specialist they don't know that you might not really be a probate specialist yet and then you can learn a lot of the a lot of the probate process while you're in the transaction you can learn a whole lot now you need to be willing to go that extra mile if you're not willing to go the extra mile probate's probably not the niche for you but I'd like those of you that are new to

16:23 Consider your personality and whether failure is going to motivate you to get better if failure doesn't motivate you to get better go learn the process heavily first it does motivate you to get better pick the phone up fail a couple of times and make adjustments from there well and again I appreciate you saying that and I hope it comes across as I'm respectful that you know I do disagree I have an opinion I'm entitled to but the same token I also respect what you do and it is different for everybody you have to find the right process for you that's genuine for you that you enjoy that works to your skills and I for me personally when I started in probate and took all the leads coaching chad was a coach at the time he challenged us to go to court just to learn and see it once and I went there and realized not only you know I went to once I was fascinated by it I loved I was wearing a suit and tie and looked like an attorney my mother in heaven was proud I finally got to court but you know for me that fit going there every day most people wouldn't I live a half hour from the largest probate court in america I enjoyed it and so for me it worked it wouldn't work for most people and but I designed a system I didn't really care for me I didn't care everything worked for somebody else you know all the leads has you know literally thousands of clients and the enterprise assistant works for a lot so when I say I wouldn't recommend it that's really maybe my bias and I appreciate everybody again I hope it comes from appreciation I also will say to everybody in the call that while there's certain things they do that I'm never going to do I mean I was on a call today when I was in court on a court confirmation sale and I know between 10 11 on thursday is the all the leads online call that you know I drove home and I put that on to listen to because I'm going to pick up a nugget or two and in an hour I may not get much for 50 minutes but if I get a good nugget for two or three minutes and today you guys were talking about at the end the call about evictions well how important that is now to really you know and I said myself you know what I need

18:25 To call this guy and that guy and get that sharp sharpened up a little bit so okay so calling one question I have also because you're in a different market than me is you know in la there must be 50 100 real estate agents calling every probate case in l.a I know one of the features of all the leads is you guys have I think data in almost every county in america and that's a big advantage and now and outside of the amateur areas do you see the marketing appropriate marketing different in other areas that say metro areas versus semi-rural and rural areas to me it seems like a possibility is that what you see absolutely you know the timing that every family experiences while they're going through probate is different to the individual and their commitment to that process it's also different to the area's pace of life so you go to la people are running just everywhere busy they work late or early they have traffic to deal with they have school activities if they have kids they have business activities there's just a lot of stuff going on not to mention the court and judicial backlog sometimes the courts can bog things down a little bit as well you go to greensboro north carolina I just randomly picked that which might have 100 000 people in the city and you get off work and you've got a 10-minute drive home it's a little bit slower pace of life you have time to go clean the house out you have time to maintain the property you have time to do different things and you're going to get through probate a lot faster now those bigger cities there's more opportunity there's more opportunity but there's also going to be more competition so you have to be willing to stick with your lead for a longer period of time it's just going to take longer for that average person to get to the place where they're ready to sell if you're in rural roanoke virginia

20:27 Where I used to live you're ready to sell a house in a couple of months after you've filed probate so I want everyone to really consider the pace of life that you have in your area when you build your custom prospecting or marketing plan to these leads nobody should ever be getting leads picking the phone up one time or sending one single letter out and expecting overnight success that is sustained on one touch we should all be building a follow-up plan and a system that allows us to continue to stay in front of and work with and build credibility and rapport with the families that we're trying to work with you got to remember you're going through probate it's kind of a private painful experience you've probably lost someone that you're very close to and that first agent that calls you're not like oh man I'm so glad someone that I don't know called and asked me if they could sell my dead mom's house not to be crass about it but that's what you're thinking why would I be happy that you called and are trying to profit off of my loss so that's why I tell everyone that you've gotta be in this for the long haul you have to have more to offer than just hey I'm going to buy your house or I'm going to sell your house got to offer more and you've got to stick with it that's good advice yeah I do think I do think also in metro areas like la we're much more anonymous I think people don't know their neighbors and so mom and dad passed nobody really knows what's happening with the house next thing you know houses you know overrun maybe there's squatters in it we have more by percentage of that than anywhere else we're also interesting factoid elliott county is the most the highest poverty rate of any county in america and we're also one of the largest counties and so you think of that population I mean poor people the probate has a whole different flavor here than it does in you know parts of nicer parts of the country or other parts of the country so

22:29 So now let's change a little bit to an agent maybe who is looking to relaunch their business or add another spoke to their business they've been in business they're making some money not enough they want to add you know a couple deals a year 10 deals a year to what's already up and running they know how to sell a house what do you see is the biggest stumbling block or challenge those people have in jumping into building their business those agents generally have formed some bad habits specifically with regard to their prospecting techniques and habits and their marketing habits so let's take the average agent that's had some success with sphere of influence only maybe you have some really close friends that you've been blessed enough to have the repeat clients and referrals for you and then you come in and you expect that same amount of effort to generate the exact same amount of success in the probate space and these are kind of cool leads that don't know you they're highly motivated to sell real estate but they don't know you they don't have the relationship so you need to reset your mind when you're taking on a new niche like this that you're gonna have to go cultivate relationships just like you did with your sphere of influence the difference with your sphere of influence you probably weren't thinking about real estate when you built those friendships probate you're thinking about real estate so you're doing it strategically so that would be one mistake that I see agents make when they get into the probate space if there's if they're already successful is they think that what made them successful in one niche is going to be the exact same thing that makes them successful in another and in a space like this it takes some work now I'm here to tell you put that work in it pays dividends and it can actually be a very easy source of business once you've put the work in and you've established the systems and the

24:31 Credibility you know for all the legion I've done in my probate business the best business I got were seven influence attorneys one was not a probate attorney but you kind of refer me some business and the other one was I think of him as a probate attorney I think he's more of a civil litigator but I mean literally today just got a court confirmation on a 2.3 million deal I double ended very complicated probate he saw that I was an ex that was doing work in the field and approached me with this problem and I helped him work it out together and I think as a as an expert able to help him serve his client and get this deal done in a way that it might still be in litigation otherwise and you're right it takes time I saw in the chat box renee put it took over a year of cultivating a relationship with a local state attorney before I got one referral yeah rene that's what it takes it's like saying it took me a year I look I'm a I'm a city boy I imagine when you plant wheat you know you don't get the wheat for like six months or something right I don't know something like that you plan in the spring you get in the fall right so renee so a year but you got a referral and I think also you have a referral source somebody gives you one can give you more than one if they're not so this is the business we're in and if you cultivate the relationship with the people you know you sprinkle in the people you don't know this is where you build a business that thrives in the long run and changes you can be life-changing get out of the mindset of instant I'll tell you I'm sure bill you probably hear this a lot as well people ask you I hear it all the time I'll I will get a new subscriber that's getting probate they'll show up to a coaching session and they'll say I'm out of money I just spent my last 300 on leads I need to close the deal this month what do I do my answer is get lucky because this is one of those spaces that hard work pays off if you're throwing a dart at a dartboard and hoping that it hits right it might but it really might not

26:34 You are building a pipeline and to renee's point took a year of working with that attorney to cultivate that relationship and get a referral you do a good job with that attorney you're probably going to get another one and another one and another one so don't look at the single referral on the year that someone spent cultivating an attorney relationship don't look at this single referral that might be worth the year that it took I'll tell you what's guaranteed to be worth the year that it took that's the 10 or 15 or 100 referrals that attorney could bring to you so there's a lot of opportunity here and it becomes really easy when you put the time in I don't agree with you can I rejoice yeah go ahead yeah can I just say you know this is one of the leading estate and probate planning attorneys in my area so I already know that I have his endorsement it was really important when I first met with him I let him know you know that I was the area's only I'm certified probate real estate specialist and that and I took information to him to show him this is the information that I provide to my clients you know to probate clients this is how I partner with you and your team you know and these are my processes and so it was extremely important to have that meeting with him so that he knew that number one I understood his language that I had a knowledge of his process and that he understood I was in this for the long haul I'm not looking for you know one and done so I know it's going to be one of many to come he probably handles close to 100 probate cases a year wow the official term for that is boom chocalaca yeah but he's actually one of three attorney relationships that I've been cultivating for a year well and it's interesting and I just

28:38 Want to you know I need to check myself maybe but when people read in the chat box rene put I mean I just changed it took over a year of cultivating relationship with a local real estate team before I got one for all I am sure 99 of the real estate agents and investors rehearsals on this call said a year but when you put the context on is one of the leading attorneys in the field in your market area who does 100 a year which means you have a chance you know if you get ten percent market share you shot 10 deals a year from the sky for years if you improve the relationship you don't have to just don't lose it and try to improve it constantly that's a phenom that's a home run that's definitely worth the time challenges most real estate agents can't last so long they can't wait a year that's the challenge they have so well thank you have a question right now we're just going to clarify no I just I just wanted to you know bring some clarity around that and just say you know for those of you that I mean I've only been I have only been working probate as a niche for since july of last year so oh my gosh renee but this one that he just gave me will be my fifth probate case for the year those the other two were actually double-sided deals so I get to count them in real estate I get to count each side as a transaction sure so I double-sided both deals but those came from actually you know doing mailers to people that you know have lost loved one after their probate had been filed so I know that once they file for probate they're that much closer to making a decision to sell the property and so I don't approach people until after probate's been filed but it was sending letters cultivating those relationships as well but this will be my fifth deal for the year how many letters do you send to a prospective family they I actually have a 21 week or 21 touch program that I use for them so they get a combination of letters cards emails texts

30:42 Sometimes I'll drop by and just leave something on their door I always come from contribution I always give them something of value every single time so that they see that I'm not in you know I'm really here to serve them and to be of service to them whether they use me or not that's fantastic yeah if you thank you andy thanks for sharing all that you know I always feel like if whatever you're doing isn't enough just do more you know I mean if you contact him 21 times that's not enough try 25. I mean that's grant cardone right just 10 times 250 times will get you more business than 21 I think I'll tell you 21 will get you a lot of business apparently one touches is amazing now if you guys are only doing 21 mail touches you gotta you got to make some phone calls in or some door knocks in but 21 touches that's incredible renee by the way so renee mentioned a certification and bill you may know more about this but we've had a couple of questions in the chat asking where to get certified I know of two and I'm pretty sure that renee probably got certified maybe through mti yeah yep sounds like the yup sea press and then our good friend chad corbett has pro probate mastery which is an amazing class and a great certification as well those are the two I know about bill you may know more I know of a few more actually I try to collect them and if anybody in the call knows more please email me text me I try to keep track of it and put on my website in california we have this certification from one of the leading probate attorneys in la paul horne I had him as my guest last week and he does a class that's really about the probate process it's pretty california specific with the forums not much on how to get business mostly on the process but it is california specific in particular but yeah and again they might call if you know of other ones I'm always looking to answer that question which is the best one and I will say I took c press I took all the leads I've taken probably mastery

32:43 Kevin sales is a title rep who was doing classes in california I think he is now probably 101. So I've done about five or six to me expertise is a process that's not a destination and too many agents will say to me I took a certification five years ago and I'm certified but I'm not getting any businesses why would you think you would yeah and yeah and that you guys and I know with all the you get the little file but the file doesn't call anybody the file doesn't door knock anybody you put the file in your emails about as much as you get yeah yep and I think with you in look I know I thought it was on your call today that your certification isn't the end of the ride with your company but more is the mark of finishing a process or a piece of the process right but I go on there regularly to hear people have problems and how they solve them because it's about educating yourself yeah if you can hear other people's problems I told you guys earlier learn from mistakes that you've made there's no better mistake to learn from than somebody else's mistake so get yourself into orbit around those that are doing the work I want you guys to do the work as well but there are people that are doing the work that you could hear the challenges and the mistakes they made I could give you a boatload of mistakes to avoid chief being don't use the restroom in a house that doesn't have water turned on [Laughter] I learned that doing reo's but yes the same problem I literally when I took all the leads coaching it was taught by chad back then and he challenged us to go to court and I started keeping a list of all the mistakes I saw that agents make and even the most active Realtor® in listing the highest end property in probate in l.a county routinely made a number of mistakes that I saw and so I started making a list of mistakes and then a list of the

34:46 Solutions those mistakes and I that became content for my social media that became my checklist for my process and when I talk to attorneys all the time I'll say well here's what I've seen other agents do that I know and I'll send them the document they'll go yeah I've seen all those things and so I learned from what others do make mistakes I rather them I rather learn from other people's mistakes of my own yeah you know I'll tell you guys something bill asked me a question a little bit ago and I just wanted to get this get this out there I've got a couple of a couple of folks that are throwing some chats into the message here and I want to point something out really quickly so bill you're in la I'm in raleigh north carolina I see at least two other people in the raleigh area on this call I'm sure that there's some other folks from l.a other folks from seattle washington area renee a lot of people always get hung up on what the competition's doing what's the what's the competition doing number one is I guarantee if you're prospecting for business it's going to be a lot less than those calling for sale by owner and expireds guaranteed probably a lot less than those circle prospecting there is a lot of business in the probate space to be had especially if you leave from value I have not found any place to compile this data exactly I'm working on compiling it now bill maybe you know where it is but a general rule of thumb is I find that somewhere in the in the vicinity of 40 to 55 of all probate cases will have a house to sell so because of that you should not allow yourself to get deterred away from this niche because you think that there's competition there's we're all going to carve off a little piece of our pie okay in our business and someone else could come in and do it a little bit better than you and guess what they might get a little bit bigger piece of the pie but you're still going

36:48 To get a piece of the pie so don't I haven't heard anyone say it I hear it all the time people ask about competition don't get hung up on the competition some of my best coaching clients live in my market and I will teach them everything that I know tell them exactly what I do and I know that a lot of them won't go do it but those that do it makes me better makes them better so we've got to come at this not from the standpoint of what do I do to capture all the business and make sure no one else is going to get it but recognize that a rising tide lifts all ships so we're here to we're here to help I know that bill leads with value that's what I try to do and that's a mistake I see a lot of people make is they want to know how much competition there is and they based whether they're going to pursue this niche on competition and that's the last thing you should be basing your decision on right well sir mark point out there's another certification estate specialist from the national auctioneer association pretty intense program I've looked into it that's what I'd like to do but you have to go in person I think to an event but it looks very complete so thanks for sharing that mark eric on our youtube asked a question who should I reach out to first the pr or the attorney or both I love that both answers yes you want to you want to have a you want to have a track for both you don't want to treat both parties as you don't want to look at the one probate case and pretend like okay I gotta call everyone talking about this specific probate case but you're gonna build your attorney relationships and your attorney marketing and prospecting plan separate and don't tie it to the individual probate cases when it comes to the individual probate case you're going to call the personal representative and maybe the additional heirs

38:50 The attorneys you should be reaching out to consistently anyway whether they have a case that's in that month's file or not reach out to the attorneys consistently and just kind of treat it almost like it's its own niche very good yeah the answer is yes good call both renee is that another question you have yeah no actually I just wanted to add to that bruce and that when you're when you're prospecting and reaching out to the attorneys again their biggest pet peeve is dealing with real estate agents that don't know what they're doing in probate and so you always want to make sure that you are referencing the file number the case file number when you're dealing with an attorney because that's the language that they speak that's what they're not going to necessarily know the client by name but they're going to know the case numbers so make sure that you're referencing your case numbers when you're sending them any information you may throw the client last name in there they have no idea what the client first name is so case number this is in regard to the estate of mr smith case number da you're doing that slightly different from my prospecting approach to attorneys not wrong actually absolutely correct so those of you that are going to prospect the attorneys based on the case use renee's approach when I go after attorneys I'm always going after them in general I want to build a general relationship with them and I do it through third-party relationships so I look for financial advisors accountants insurance brokers those professionals that are heavily networking and referring the attorneys I build a relationship with those folks first and then I ask them for introductions to their estate planning and probate attorneys so generally when I reach the attorney it's normally from a warm referral of someone that they know like and trust and it's not normally with regard to a

40:53 Probate case number renee's is slightly different absolutely 100 percent correct so when I tell you not to reference the case number it's only because I'm usually going after them more loosely than with regard to it in a state well and can I also say that when I first started prospecting for the attorneys I did basically like a door knock approach so I would I went to their office I took a dozen krispy kreme donuts and because I didn't have the expectation that I was gonna actually speak to an attorney I didn't think I was gonna get past the gatekeeper so the donuts were for the gatekeeper and I would say whether the attorney see you know receives these or not is between you and jesus I don't care you know I just wanted to drop off some information and introduce myself and schedule and you know get on their calendar for just a brief 15-minute conversation that's how I started and then every month I would drop off something else so you know one month that was popcorn sometimes it was coffee on a wednesday afternoon I mean I would drop things off all the time much like your sales reps do like in the dental and you know in the medical field I just acted like a sales rep would drop things off every month I would you know take information for the newest prospects for that particular office and for the specific attorneys to leave with them and would just let them know that I'd follow up with them you know in a couple of days I usually did the drop-off on thursdays and then followed up on tuesdays that's called guerrilla marketing folks and that's a masterful technique at guerrilla marketing that's the way you do it yeah thanks again for sharing so in the chat box then eric continues she also reached out to the amended petition as a pr before the hearing I think I think that's I'm not familiar with the terminology but maybe we have alternate petitions we're

42:56 Competing petitions we have objectors we have heirs and I think the answer is yes you should contact everybody I've personally got business from contacting objectors or heirs in the case and then should I try and attend the virtual hearings or in person I would go in person if you can now that's what I did and built my business on today I had a court confirmation I went in person could have done it virtual but number one spend time with the attorney that's he was there for an hour who else is he going to talk to but me the court's pretty empty by comparison of the old days so he wasn't asking for him to talk to about me that's why I would go in person of course and meet the client as well so I would say if you can go in person go if not go virtual bruce do you have experience going to court specifically as a lead generation technique or in the now during covid virtually very little you know I always kind of relied on someone else to pull my list for me I take the philosophy who not how I couldn't sell 250 houses in a year without having a whole bunch of who's to do things for me now I have been and I have pulled my files I've been and I've sat through hearings maybe once or twice each primarily as an education to myself but I don't make it a habit to go but I do believe that a lot of you guys should make it a habit to go so you should go to those I'm not the guy that's going to tell you every nuance of the process behind the court doors and that's my goal to do that and that's just the difference of our marketing approach and one fits for me and one fits for you and we should both work the one that fits for us absolutely so I can't wait to ask you this question when you said yes I get this all the time and I'm not selling the data so I don't really care but I get this all the time people say you know I just signed up for all the leads probate daily probably data probably money whatever source I got the data and I got the numbers I have x number of leads

44:57 But the leads aren't good oh yeah I saw the movie gary glenn ross so I would I would refer you to watch that movie a few times and never say the words the leads aren't good but I generally tell people I gave you a diamond mine it was with a billion dollars you wouldn't complain about the dirt you'd be too busy digging out the diamonds and selling them how do you answer when they say when they say the leads aren't good the numbers are good most of the numbers aren't good what do you say to them I'll tell ya I usually try to head it off ahead of time so I'll tell someone when they're starting when they're starting in probate or I did this with agents that would join my team I'd say hey look I'm going to give you 50 leads a month there's one thing I don't want to hear I don't want to hear that leads aren't good because 98 of them aren't going to be any good for you two percent are going to be great for you so don't worry about the 98 don't worry about the dirt that's in the diamond mine and the diamond mine so you know the leads that's just establishing the proper expectation and understanding what that expectation really means 85 percent of your leads aren't going to answer the phone yeah maybe even more you're an la bill might even be more okay they will take multiple times of communicating and reaching out before they answer or respond sometimes they'll never respond sometimes they'll answer and they'll say nope you got the wrong person guess what maybe they're lying maybe they're having a bad day a lot of times they answer and say no got it all taken care of don't need anything and you as an agent or someone working this niche are going to take that at face value you have to realize that many times they're in a place of unconscious incompetence they've never gone through this process before they don't know what they're doing they don't know what help they need and it just leads them to naturally say no we've got it all taken care of because

46:59 They don't even know what they're answering those all those answers and lack of answers on the phone lead a lot of people to say that the leads aren't good you're going after one to five percent conversion rate on your lease it means that 95 to 99 are going to seem like junk to you but one to five percent conversion rate is a great living and that person not only is it good to put food on your table but it really makes a monster impact in the in the life of the person that does want your health and is willing to talk to you at the time so who cares if a bunch of people don't answer the phone you're looking for the person that really values what you do and the reward that comes out of that person or two or ten beyond just financial is immense you get referrals from them I don't think I've ever done a deal with anyone in probate that I haven't gotten multiple pieces of business from I really can't think of any that I haven't gotten multiple or enjoyed working with I mean I think somebody didn't get business from but I enjoyed working with them and felt like I contributed I think that's a part of this that's so great we have a chance to feel like we're making a contribution and the other thing I tell agents is it's a mindset thing that you know if you get 500 leads and you dig through and let's assume 100 are bad phone numbers right well if you call through them once you're not done with those hundred and then now you can just recall the 400 or whatever the your process is your competitor's starting still has to call through the 500 and I assure you they're not going to they're going to get discouraged so just think of that as like a wall that you jump over you've eliminated that wall now is the obstacle for your competitor but you got over it if you're determined to get this done and so I think oftentimes when people say that to me and again I'm not saying the data so I don't have to back it up but I would say the data is the data it's really what you do with it you know it's not it's not the sword it's the swordsman it's

49:01 Not the was it's not the dog the fight the dog it's a dog in the fight you have to make those decisions and put the effort in and but if you do those bad leads will trip your competitor and they'll be just the process you go through to get to where you want to go the your competitors it's another reason I don't worry a whole lot about competitors is because most people will go through and they'll get that 15 answer rate and half of them will say nope we've got it taken care of almost half will say hey leave us alone or we're the wrong person but you get those diamonds in there and your competitors are going to hear no five times or they're gonna go through 15 10 or 15 dials without an answer they're going to say this doesn't work this absolutely works you do have to change your perception and your expectation and then you also need to if you're looking at it from a business standpoint and I'm breaking from the idea of talking about value and the emotional feeling that you get when you've helped someone so I'm breaking from that and strictly looking at the dollars and cents when you get into the probate space if you stick with it's really common to 10 or 20 times your investment it's really common if you stick with it and it doesn't take a whole lot of deals to do that from a business standpoint so yeah I mean that's the process we're in that's what we have to commit to and get through to get the business and you've said a few times it's worth it's worth it I mean there's been life-changing money for me three and a half years ago I had to relaunch my career I've been in management consulting and you turned out to be with the wrong companies and make a career change and it was tough at 60 years old and here I'm three and a half years later I made a lot of money I've built some nice wealth of good investments and all because the income I can generate I mean it's crazy today I just got a quick confirmation on a 2.3 million deal and double ending

51:04 Because of this business and the probate and the focus and I do it my way that I enjoy that most of us you wouldn't enjoy it that's okay do you do you I do me but for me it's worked out really nicely so okay so I put in the chat box I have a list of the data sources on my website all the ones I'm aware of if you're aware of another one we have feedback on any of them feel free to text me or email me I'd like to be the resource so when people say well where can I get the data you can go to court and get it in many counties some counties you can't you can buy the data from various vendors the most I think I mean I'm guessing the most popular the most well-known is alltheleads.com where bruce is a coach and they have a website where you go on and you can look at your county and see if they have them or not and they do a real good job of those I would say you have to agree or disagree but I would say all the leads is a little higher value data they spend a little more money and time cleaning it up and they have a more of a full marketing package they're offering you we can integrate mailing with a phone call and crm with the coaching as well so take a look at that and there's other ones as well they put on the website so I don't want to ask you a question what's the best source of data cause I think that's gonna be tough for you to answer oh yeah no I'll give a pretty biased unbiased answer I mean the fact is there are lots of great ways to get data you can get it for free you can get it for free and then you can put names and numbers into a skip tracing engine and find contact information for a lot of people and you've spent very little money it's high on the labor side it's low on the cost side so it depends on you depends on your budget your time your willingness and ability to go get the data if you want to go through some other cheaper lead sources there are cheaper lead sources ours really does kind of scrub those leads down for you there's a lot of different services from an isa to call your leads to mail team to mail the leads to

53:07 Someone to build your website so there's a lot of different ways that you can do it many times and this is the buy side of me but it's true to my business even before I was with all the leads I'm always looking to systemize and automate my business if I can spend an hour on a listing versus the 20 hours that someone else might take from listing to close I'm gonna do it so that's me I do have a future episode of this call scheduled with tim who is the ceo of All The Leads to talk about the other products the marketing and the mailers and the flyers and I'm a client I use the brochure I use the website I've used the mailers and such so we'll talk about those in details but again they're full service I think answer to that question but I do think that one of the things I would you know caution anybody you need to have a budget and think about what you're going to do so you buy the data we're going to do with it if you're going to buy it and do one mailer you're probably going to run out of gas before you get to where your destination is you know I would think you have to mail this probably six times before you start seeing a reasonable return on your investment but you know you get 500 leads you know a dollar a piece for a postcard in postage that's 500 bucks six times that's three thousand dollars it adds up doesn't count the data and the work so you need to really think through your budget to say well how can I last at least let's say six months before the miracle happens to get through that and so just make sure you plan accordingly you know phone calls don't cost much if anything and door knocking doesn't cost much going to court meeting people doesn't cost much so those different options yeah so we're here at the end a little bit bruce is available do you want to talk a little bit about you have a call every thursday at I get it at noon pacific time 3 p.m eastern time where oops yeah man 10. I'm sorry 10 o'clock okay 10 11 yeah 10 o'clock pacific time clock pacific time on thursdays or

55:09 One o'clock eastern time it is it's run through all the leads so if you could go to alltheleads.com look at the training schedule right on the front page of the website and there's a zoom link you guys log in watch and listen to the questions that come pouring in just like we do here it's interactive I hate it when it's not interactive I do not like lecturing an empty room or a bunch of little zoom boxes so we love the questions we love your success stories so if you guys want to know what other people are doing to either run into or create their own challenges or doing to see success jump over there it's every single thursday at one o'clock eastern yeah I jump into it the only challenge I have I used to have was a I was a court till 10 30 I'd miss it often like today but it's great and I try to catch it but you also record it's on your youtube so I tend to watch it there as well and then somebody interested in you as a coach I know all the leads is one of the sources but here's your chance to pitch your other business what else do you offer you mentioned quite a few programs how else would they reach you if they want more information well I do private coaching very little the majority of what I do is focused on as much free group training as possible we have a couple of paid courses so the agent dna I mentioned a little bit ago is a paid course it's three days long the prospecting mastery is a paid course they're all very affordable with it and as they relate to other paid courses and then there's a bunch of free stuff that's out there as well thanks winston's a great client of ours and we work with really closely I think winston comes to a ton of the trainings that we offer now aside from working with all the leads through with their sales department and their training department and doing some one-on-one coaching I will probably not be the cheapest

57:12 Coach you would hire mainly because I don't have a lot of space in my calendar for coaching privately aside from that I do run a va and an isa agency we train our offshore we don't have americans so we'll hire from mexico philippines egypt and we'll train them specifically on scrubbing through leads to call with a heavy emphasis on probate we do more than probate but we do a lot of cold calls through lists for those agents that might be intimidated with the phone or maybe they're really busy and they're they just don't have time to make calls that's what I have going on as well so it's kind of four different hats that I wear but most of it is that of a trainer or well really it's mostly that of a trainer sometimes I'm training isas sometimes I'm training an agent very good well bruce I look I've enjoyed your support as a coach I think winston and I were both on the prospecting class she did a couple months ago together but I really enjoy your weekly calls and the programs you have thank you so much for being on the time today and sharing with everybody bill I really appreciate it what's I say is an inside sales assistant inside sales so somebody makes phone calls inside is the answer for melita so hey a couple of things coming up if you're in la today I'm hosting a free brew real estate event at all seasons brewery on la brea just south of wilshire and if you're on this call and you tell me you are I'll buy a free beer so come see me so 5 30 to 7 o'clock I put in the chat box I'll put it again a list of upcoming events and then tomorrow in diamond bar we do training for real estate agents it's really for our team but we invite other agents to make it bigger and better that's in down bar is our agent's helping agent series friday morning at 9 00 a.m and then if you hit the upcoming events link there it has that as well as my live stream I do Probate Weekly this call every thursday 4 p.m pacific 7 pm eastern I also do a live stream on real estate investing and then next week on thursday is our vendor expo here in la

59:14 We'll have 250 people together investors wholesalers real estate agents my favorite live event of the month I go to that every month as well so again bruce thank you those who participated renee in particular thank you for participating we do this every thursday thank you guys make it a great week I appreciate