Print this page

3 (INEXPENSIVE) THINGS YOU CAN DO TO FILL YOUR PIPELINE WITH PROBATE LISTINGS

Written by Posted On Sunday, 02 June 2019 12:44

Zig Ziglar said: “You are out of business if you don’t have a prospect.” Brian Tracy said: “Keep your sales pipeline full by prospecting continuously. Always have more people to see than you have time to see them.” Many other successful entrepreneurs, leaders and businesspeople alike all echo the same sentiment that you must always be filling your pipeline with more business. As a Realtor, I am sure you can attest that if you do not have any listings and you are not working with any buyers, you will soon be looking for employment. You need clients, just like I need clients and just like every business needs clients.

I am often asked how Realtors can get probate listings. I sometimes say that there are lists they can buy or I give ideas that require the Realtor to spend money. For some Realtors, that is not an issue, but I know for many, especially the newer Realtors, money is tight, and they may not have an extra $3k-$5k to throw down every month for a company to manage their list and mail out direct mail pieces. I get it. And the truth is, money cannot buy you the success you want. Trust me. I have spent more money than I would care to admit trying to grow my business and I have been susceptible to those SEO, Google-Ad, PPC charlatans who claim they can get you on the first page of Google and guarantee 100 new leads per month. What I have found though is that doing some of the hard work that we often want to pay someone else to do ends up slowing our growth. If you are sincere that you want to grow your business and you want to list [insert number] properties per month/year and you want to earn [insert number] per month/year than you need to roll up your sleeves and put in the work.

Below are 3 activities that you can do that WILL lead to probate listings. I can’t tell you how long it will take and I can’t tell you how much effort it will take but I can tell you that if you are persistent and disciplined, you will get listings. And before you say that you can’t do that because… your market is different or that it makes you uncomfortable, or that you don’t have the time, etc; I would encourage you to reevaluate whether or not you want to be a Realtor and take an honest look at what you really want. If you are ok with doing a few deals per year and just passively getting clients from your friends and family, then maybe you don’t need to put in the hard work (though I think friends and family referrals dry up at some point). However, if you are serious about trying to build a pipeline that never dries up and you want probate listings to be part of the source of those leads, please read on.

#1: Write Articles / Blog

This one is as simple as they come. Take 2 hours per week (or month) and write something that provides value and establishes you as an expert in probate and real estate. The hardest thing is not to overthink this. Is every article you write going to go viral and will Forbes and other magazines start asking you to contribute? Will CNN stumble across your blog and invite you to be a weekly guest on their real estate and probate segment? I doubt it. Your articles will have typos and your friends and family likely will not acknowledge what you wrote anything but that’s OK! This is not about perfection. It is about providing real value and doing it consistently.

Let’s just say that it takes you about 2 hours to write a 1,200-word article/blog and you do this twice per month. In one year, you would have 24 pieces out there. This may not sound like a big deal, but it is huge. For better or worse, we tend to believe what we read, and we tend to view authors as experts in their field. If you have 24 articles and someone is searching for a realtor who can help with a probate listing (which I guarantee people search for that), and they come across your articles and see all the useful information you have put out there, chances are you are in a good position to get that phone call/email. You can also use these articles to promote yourself on other platforms like social media and direct mail. There are so many options and it takes no money! It just takes some time and discipline to sit down and do it. This is the hard work that most of us don’t want to do.

I hope you take this one to heart as I am confident it will help grow your business exponentially. Be prepared however that you will not likely get a client as a direct result of writing one article. If you do, great, however don’t expect that. This is an activity that builds upon itself and requires consistency to see real results. Try writing 1-2 articles per month for one year and just see if it creates any more buzz and if you start getting more referrals. If you don’t, what’s the worst thing that happened? You did not spend any money and you spent relatively little time and gained a lot more knowledge in an area, which can only help you. Go for it!

#2: Get to Know The Funeral Home Directors in Your Area

Please keep reading even if your reaction is that this sounds sleazy or icky in some way. As uncomfortable as this may be, we all intuitively know that everyone will die at some point. And unless you have a large piece of property and your loved ones are going to bury you themselves, chances are we will all be visiting a funeral home at some point (either to pre-plan or after we pass away). I know that is an unpleasant thought for many, but it’s going to happen. Funeral homes are a legitimate business and funeral home directors are amazing individuals who do a necessary job that most of us could not think about doing. I just want you to internalize that for a moment.

Now, how can you provide value to funeral home directors. The obvious is that at some point in your career you could be in a direct position to make a referral to a funeral home. This might happen but it is most likely not the biggest value you can provide. Your value to a funeral home director is being a trusted resource for their clients.

A good funeral home director, like a good Realtor, goes the extra mile for their clients. A good funeral home director does not just preform the funeral service and then send the family on their way never to speak with them again just like a good Realtor doesn’t sell a client’s home and then never speak with them again. They, like you, find other ways to help. The funeral home director will likely ask the family if they need an introduction to a good attorney, realtor, counselor, psychologist, etc. The surviving family members and friends are going through an extremely difficult time at this moment and they want someone to extend a helping hand; wouldn’t you?

Are you a compassionate Realtor who can empathize with a grieving family and look past the potential listing and see an opportunity of how to help these individuals? Maybe they need help removing the items in the home or maybe they need help finding a babysitter for the grandchildren for a few hours while the surviving children take care of legal and financial aspects that need to be resolved right away. Each situation is different, but I can guarantee that if you become the funeral home director’s right-hand person, and you come at this from a place of giving; you will begin to see referrals coming your way.

My suggestion would be to befriend a few of the funeral home directors in your area and just get to know them. This is about building relationships. Maybe drop by with a box of goodies for their staff and just introduce yourself as the neighborhood Realtor or send a few handwritten, personalized notes to the funeral home telling them what you do and how you can be of service for them. This is about building a relationship and this may take time but if you are persistent, genuine, authentic and really trying to provide value as opposed to just trying to get business, then this is a great low cost way to eventually have a steady stream of referrals coming your way.

#3: Research Public Records

This is a more common way of looking for business as a Realtor, but it is highly underutilized when it comes to looking for probate properties. I am going to preference what I say below by stating that each county and state is a little different. As I write this article, my company, The Probate Law Firm, is currently only doing probates in the state of Florida and within Florida, each county is different. However, we have found that in almost every county we operate, it is possible to locate properties that need to go through probate by using the techniques described below; but this may not be the case in all counties and in every state.

Generally, if you search the property appraiser’s website / tax appraiser’s website you can identify who the owner of a given property is. If you know the property address and you see that the property is owned by “Estate of [insert name]” then chances are that the property needs to go through probate and you could help the heirs sell this property. Most likely if you already have an address in mind, then you have some sort of connection to the person(s) wanting to sell the property. However, you can use public records to prospect for probate listings by doing the following:

Go to your county’s relevant website where you would search for a property (usually the property appraiser’s website) and in the place where you would search by owner, insert the words: “Estate of.” Or you may just try the word “estate.” Again, each county is a bit different but, in most counties, we have found that by putting some variation of estate / estate of and then searching, generally a list of several hundred properties come up that are owned by an estate of someone. This probably means that the previous owner has passed away and now the property is owned by their estate. A probate will need to be opened and title transferred before the beneficiaries can sell, rent or really do anything with this property. This is where the savvy Realtor comes in.

You have an address of a property that you know must go through probate. The beneficiaries might not even know that a probate is necessary. So, you can create an inexpensive mail campaign educating the potential client about the probate process and letting them know that you can help. Again, you must come at this from a place of empathy as someone may have recently passed away and this could still be very difficult for the family. However, this is such a great opportunity to demonstrate value to the surviving family members.

You could do a 5-week campaign educating the client about what probate is and how you have done [insert number] amount of probates before and can help them through the process. Assuming you have a team (an attorney / CPA / Financial advisor / etc.), you can tell the prospective client that you can take care of all aspects of this for them. Trust me, most people don’t even know what probate is, including my fellow attorneys, and most people just assume that when their parents pass away, they automatically become owners of the property. You, as an expert in probate, can help guide them through the process and educate them.

I think you could even make a visit to the home, maybe with a small condolence gift. Again, think outside the box here but keep it simple, authentic and come from a place of love. I could write more on the topic of the type of marketing campaigns you could do here but hopefully this is enough to whet your appetite and get you started.

Final Thoughts

If you were to pick just one of the ideas above and really spend time building out the campaign and testing and tweaking it, you are sure to start building an evergreen pipeline. Will you get referrals right away? Probably not. You may not even get referrals within the first several months, or maybe even a year. However, don’t let that discourage you. Don’t be deceived and fooled by the many companies and individuals out there promising quick results and instant riches. That is an illusion and you will go broke real quick if you aren’t careful about tuning out a lot of that noise. Again, I am speaking from personal experience when I say that there are a lot of persuasive people/companies that promise great results. The saying, “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is,” has a lot of truth in it. You have to put in the work to get the results you want.

I hope you have found this helpful and if you have any feedback or suggestions please message me on Facebook or visit The Probate Law Firm at www.probatefirm.com

Good luck out there!

Justin Stivers

Rate this item
(1 Vote)
Justin Stivers

www.probatefirm.com

Latest from Justin Stivers

Joomla! Debug Console

Session

Profile Information

Memory Usage

Database Queries