Our VP of Innovation, Kristine Gentry, recently appeared on Think Realty Radio with host, Abhi Golhar. Below is a link to that interview, followed by a transcript of the show. Check it out to learn more about probate leads:
https://thinkrealty.com/radio_episodes/probate-leads-with-kristine-gentry/
Interview Transcript
Speaker 1: Get into a real estate of mind right here with Think Realty Radio hosted by Abi Golhar breaking down the latest market news tips and strategies. Abi Golhar is nationally recognized for his real estate expertise. It’s only on Think Realty radio and it starts right now Think Realty nation. It’s your host, Abi Golhar.
Abi Golhar: Welcome to Think Realty radio. Now on the show we have some stellar guests and every now and then we have a strategy for you that you can really, really do a deeper dive into to find out whether or not a it works, it makes sense, but based on our suggestions were kind of like prodding you along to take a look at it. This entire show is devoted to one strategy that I love, love, love, love to take a take a look at and participate in and help people out with real estate investing. I get it right. It makes sense. There’s like this inventory shortage and people are complaining about not finding any deals. And when you go onto the MLS or when you do a search with your real estate agent, a real estate broker or wholesalers, they keep coming up with the same deals in the same properties.
Well you have to look elsewhere. And if you’re a real estate investor, you know this to be true. Many real estate investors will take a look at their market plus a few others around them within a hundred or 200 mile radius. Awesome. But you might be missing out on an opportunity and a lead source that’s right underneath your nose to talk about. This is my good friend, Kristine Gentry, from US Probate Leads. She’s the Vice President of Innovation at US Probate Leads. And I want to pick her brain a little bit about watch this specific, um, what the specific kind of a lead source is and what it means and how to get involved. Because I’m a savvy investor at least. So I’d like to think, and I want to bring her on. Let’s do it. Kristine, welcome to the show.
Kristine: Thank you. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Abhi: Got It. So tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Kristine: I am the VP of innovation at US Probate Leads, and we are a family owned company and I work with, um, my dad and my brother started the company, and I’m joined them to try to help grow US Probate Leads and figure out what we can do to make our services better for our customers. And we’re always looking at what people want and what they need to help them specifically in the probate and market. So in addition to selling leads, we’re trying to do as kind of holistic service where we can help people learn about what probate leads are, how do you use them, and, and how to make them easy and effective as a source of finding leads and investing for them.
Abhi: Yeah, and it’s a really interesting world. It’s a really, really interesting world, but there are a lot of folks out there that need the help. They need the guidance. And by folks, I mean your, the, these individuals that have now inherited property because there’s a loved one that passed away, and now they’re going through the probate process. So we’ll dig into some of these details in a little bit. How did you get your start in real estate investing?
Kristine: We actually started with basically really from an IT background. My dad and my brother, both IT/computer engineering guys, and they were just kind of looking, got interested in real estate in general came to find out about probate leads and thought because of the untapped nature of this market that they would be a great source of leads. And they started collecting them at the courthouses and going in and manually writing down all the information. And as computer people they kept, again, there has to be a better way. How can we automate this? It just takes way too much time to get the leads and then, you know, you have to work the leads from there. So the business came about as sort of quickly around from, we want to invest in some real estate sort of as a side thing too.
We’ve got to figure out a better way to make this, to make leads easier for people to get into use. And so they collected them all in the Dallas Fort Worth area is where we started. And we’re gathering leads and met up with other investors who said, oh yeah, we’d be interested in those. And, and they sold some to them. And then they said, well, can you do, you know, this county? And they just gradually started expanding and going to different counties and really went from initially planning to just invest in real estate to seeing, oh, there’s a need to, to, we figured out a way to get this data and make it, somewhat automated and simplified the process for investors. And we can go around and do that in counties all over the country, and sell the leads to investors in those different areas because there’s so many leads that we can’t even as a company invest in all of them. So there’s just a ton of leads out there. So that’s really where we’ve put our time is in helping gather the leads and helping other investors invest in these properties.
Abhi: We’ve had the on a you on the show before talking about probate leads. Let’s do a quick little refresher because this is a lead source that not a lot of investors, even your pro investors, I mean you talk about seasoned folks that had, that have been investing in real estate for 10, 20, 30, 40 years. I mean, they’ve heard of probate leads and they still haven’t really taken advantage of them and helped the families along the way. So give us a little refresher if you don’t mind.
Kristine: Yes. Probate leads, like you mentioned, are when someone has passed away and their property, has to go through the probate process, through the court to be passed down to their heirs. And then the whole process of probate is released settling the estate so that any taxes and debts are paid by the assets in the estate and then what’s leftover is distributed to the heirs. So for a lot of people, when they pass away, there’s some sort of property, that they are passing on. They are leaving behind. And typically, especially if it’s older people, that property has either been paid off or they have a lot of equity in it. So the heirs are just inheriting, you know, it’s kind of extra for them. And a lot of times they don’t want the house. They already have their own house. Maybe they live somewhere else.
They just don’t need it. So, they’ve suddenly got this house and now they’re responsible for, especially if they live somewhere far away, they don’t really have time to take care of it or maintain it or get it ready to go on the market. And so, this is why these are good leads. You can usually have people who get this house and they just want to sell it. They don’t really want to take the time to fix it up for going to market. They haven’t put money into it themselves. So they’re not super concerned about getting the absolute highest value they can get. Often they are, they are overwhelmed with all the responsibilities of dealing with the estate. So this is one more responsibility. So having an investor who can come in and say, Hey, I can help you, by taking this off your plate, I can pay you, you know, a good amount for it and it’s all profit to you.
But they don’t have to do any work. We usually find the executors are excited and happy to have someone who can help them sell the property quick without them having to do any work for it. So, a lot of times there’s multiple heirs, so say you’re going to make an offer that’s, $20,000 less than market. If you divide that by three or four people, each individual’s getting, a little, $5,000 less than they would have. And this is extra money anyway, so they, they’re not too concerned. So usually that’s where we can make more of a lower offer to help them get out of the house quick, without having to put in too much work in it and they are happy to, to let it go. So there’s, there’s just thousands of properties like this across the country that are really good opportunities.
And like you said, a lot of investors are not, don’t work these leads. And I think it’s out of misconception that, oh, if it’s a probate lead, like does that mean it’s held up in the courts and that can’t be sold and it’s going to be a lot of, and we just don’t want to deal with it. Or the other problem too is just getting the leads used to be really a pain. You, you have to go to the courthouse and it’s all paper and sitting there and writing down data. And it’s a lot, it’s a hassle. So we’ve made that easier for people, and it’s a great opportunity.
Abhi: All right, so we got to go to break. When we come back, I want to share with you the way that I used to do with the old way that I used to do it here in Atlanta, and I have a feeling you’re just going to laugh at me. So when we come back, my old way of doing probate leads and kind of get in touch and also with the probate process is all about cause we got to go to break, get in touch with me with questions or to think realty radio.com and a USprobatesleads.com for Kristine Gentry.
Abhi: [inaudible] we’re back with think realty radio and your host and real deal maker Abi Golhar. We’re back to think realty’s radio, everybody. It’s Abi Golhar your host for this hour. My guest today is Kristine Gentry from USProbateLeads.com. We’re talking about an opportunity, possibly a new way that you can explore finding leads in the real estate space, especially given the inventory shortages. So, and that being said, before the break, I was talking a little bit about an old way that I used to find my probate leads. And I mentioned Kristine’s probably gonna laugh at me, and I can already kind of hear her laughing at me as well in her brain. She’s like, oh gosh. So, I live in Atlanta, and I used to go to Fulton, Dekalb county still has the old paper method. So, what I used to do is, and they had like these books and they’re just like racks and racks of these books, and they’re in these like really kind of hard to open like binders. So you open the binder and like you stab yourself and you start bleeding. And that happened to me in the very first try at like got cut under my nails.
That wasn’t really fun. And I was looking through, I was looking for like probate forms and then a petitioner or something. And I found a couple of these forms with the information of the all the heirs, the petitioner, and then sometimes the attorney, uh, that was, uh, that was willing to now or that that had a, that the family had hired. And I used to take pictures, not from my phone. I used to upload them to Dropbox. I used to have a VA, a virtual assistant, scrub all the pictures, upload all of this information to an excel spreadsheet. And then I used to look through this excel spreadsheet and make sure that everything was entered properly, scrub these addresses against the USPS database, and then use mailers and then mail out to these folks. So it was this really long convoluted process, but now with USProbateLeads.com. I mean, you don’t need to do that anymore. You just go to USProbateLeads.com you can download the list with the county’s, et Cetera, because y’all do the hard work. Right?
Kristine: Right, exactly. And it’s funny because you know what you’re saying about going in and dealing with the, the big binders, and some counties, that’s exactly what our researchers still do. I mean, they’re still going in and they’re manually, even some places don’t allow you to take pictures. They don’t allow you to have a computer. So we actually have people manually write down the information. Then we have some automated back end processes. Once they get it into the spreadsheet, which is still, you know, there’s, there’s manual stuff going on there. Then we clean up the data and do some backend checks and make sure everything is good before it goes out to our customers. So it’s still, you know, it’s a lot of the courthouses just haven’t updated the way they keep this data. So you can still go in there to old file folders and dusty papers and you know, it’s, it’s kind of a mess, which, which is the reason why people aren’t getting into it.
That’s all they think of. You know, maybe they go and try it once and go, oh, this is a pain and they’re done. But yes, we do the hard work now so that customers just have to pick which county they want. Then we offer a huge variety. I mean we customize the number of leads that people can get when they place an order. So if they want to just do a test drive and check it out and say, you know, what is this like, they can just buy a limited number of leads for that county. Or they can sign up from monthly subscription and get anywhere from 25, 50 or a hundred leads per month depending on how, how big of a company they have or they want to have. Um, so you can sign up for monthly subscriptions at those different levels.
Kristine: One of the things that we sell is historical data, which I think with leads, people are used to, you want the latest, you want the current, but with probate leads you don’t necessarily want what was just filed right now because if someone has just filed for probate, that means I’ve just recently lost a loved one. They probably have no clue what they’re going to do at the house. So, we collect that data every month. And you can get fresh leads each month. But we also think that going back three months, even six months, we even have customers lately saying, give me two years, I’m going to go back two years and go through this data because we know that some people will say maybe there’s a family member who lives in the house for a while, and it takes a couple of years before they’re ready to sell.
Or maybe they decide to rent the house for a little while and then they sell. So, we’ve had people going back as far as two years and have luck finding houses that we got the information from through the, through probates…Getting it monthly. And even going back three months, six months in your area and seeing if there’s any properties still held in that estate can, can lead to a lot of success.
We’ve had people find really great deals doing that. So, we make it easy. We make it, it’s really customizable and get what you want. We, and I think this is the biggest problem customers have. Sometimes they’ll say, okay, I’m going to get these leads and reach out to him once. So they’ll send out a mailer. So, we can do mailers services for you. Again, some letters and some postcards, whatever you want and you customize it however you want and send it. So, people didn’t even have to deal with, I don’t know how you did your mailers, but you know, we have people like stuffing the envelopes, right?
So, and, the other thing, I think the thing that our customers are missing right now, a lot of them is, is that you have to be, you have to repeat mailers. You can’t just mail once because you might for a small percentage are going to hit it at the right time where they’re going, oh wow, I am ready to sell this house. And look, I got this letter from this person, I’m going to call him. But for others that may not be the time they’re going to sell. So if you send again in another month or we actually recommend every other month just kind of keeping your mailers and in, in their mailbox, kind of fresh at the top of their mind when they do get ready to sell. So, it’s not somebody you can reach out to once. We’ve seen people who are most successful continually reaching out maybe for a period of six months, um, or six times over a period of a year. So, every other month for a year is what we recommend people do.
Abhi: So you covered a lot. I want to read because the, the, the operations, right? Like that’s where I struggled the most because I was the person this was, and this was many years ago, I’ll have to send you an email with like some screenshots of this stuff, and I think you’ll just find it hilarious. But this was, I think maybe in 2012 or 2013, I used to go to the court house, take pictures and all this stuff. And you’re saying now are these, are they all digital? Like how do you download everything so quickly? Because that can be really tough for an investor, like invest the time and go there and do everything themselves.
Kristine: Yeah. So it, the files are not all digital at courthouses. In fact, in most of the files we have some, they’re digital and so they’re easier to collect. Um, but even for an individual to and collect and scroll through, you have to have the decedent’s name. And some places there are certain requirements. So it’s hard for an individual to search that information and find what they want. But in a lot of courthouses, it’s still paper. It’s still paper files. We have people who go in and gather the information, and then they put it into our system. And then we do a lot of backend skip tracing and data checks where we compare to other sources of data and make sure that we’re giving clean quality data to our customers. But all our customers have to do is order the data and then they get an email that the spreadsheet with all of the information. So, they get information on the executor or the personal representative. They get the decedent’s information. They get if there’s an attorney, they get that information. They just get a spreadsheet full of information..
Abhi: We’re back with Think Realty Nations, Abhi Golhar Think Realty Radio. My guest today is Kristine Gentry. We’re talking about probate leads, and she is the VP of innovation at USProbateLeads.com. Let’s go through the probate process from start to finish. How does that work? What do I need to be aware of? Because for a lot of pro and new real estate investors, this is something that can be a little daunting.
Kristine: Yeah, so what happens in the probate process is when someone passes away, then someone files to be the executor of the state, which is also called a personal representative. Now we ought to just say executor because it’s shorter, but in a lot of places, that person’s called the personal representative and it’s that person’s responsibility. The court has to grant them that role and say, yes, you are in charge of this estate. And then it becomes their responsibility to settle the estate and kind of gather all the paperwork, check taxes, to check debts, to check all assets, everything that the person owned from the estate and they first have to pay the taxes if there’s any taxes owed and when they settle this state, there will be taxes. And then pay any credible debtors. So if there’s outstanding debts that they need to pay, they have to do that second.
And then last whatever assets are leftover, they are responsible for distributing them, among the heirs, either as laid out in the will or if there’s a trust or according to the law if there wasn’t a will. And, interestingly a lot of people don’t do wills, so it ends up going by whatever the law states as far as who gets what property. But as far for an investor, the main thing you need to know, I feel like people get really worried about probate and they can just kind of stay away because they’re scared. They don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s really not that big of a deal. What you need to know is it makes sure that the person you’re talking to, who is the name that we’ve given as executor or the personal representative, they have filed with the court to have that title.
So as long as it’s approved by the court, then they get something called the letters testamentary that shows that they are in charge of this estate. And once they have that and the court has identified them as being in charge, they can go through the process to start selling off property. So they, they should be making sure they’re checking on Texas and debtors so that they’d know how much, um, how much money they have they owe for the estate versus how much they’re going to get from whatever property assets they have. Um, but they can still move forward with selling the house even or, or any property even while they’re figuring out taxes and debts and everything because they still need that cash. If there’s taxes to pay off our debts to pay off. So as long as they have been appointed by the court and they have a letter that says yes, they are in charge of this estate, then they can move through the process of selling the house.
Kristine: Now that one kind of other, I guess other pieces of information to make sure you know is you want to figure out how many heirs there are because the heirs will have a say in what happens with that house. So say there’s one, you know, a house and three heirs and one wants to sell but one doesn’t, you kind of have to um, try and get that other person on board or the people have to buy out that person, you know, or that the person doesn’t want to sell. I’d have to buy out the other two. And a lot of times they don’t have the cash to say, I’m going to pay you off. I can keep this house. So what we’ve, you know, people who work probate leads have found is a lot of times if there’s a kind of a holdout on the heirs, if they talked to them themselves, say, hey, let me get this person to call and kind of just see what’s the story here.
Kristine: They can sometimes help them move to the point of being ready to sell. A lot of times it’s just out of maybe sentimental reasons or maybe just kind of internal family conflicts, dynamics that they don’t want to agree to sell. And when they talked to an external party, they, they changed their mind. But so dealing with the heirs can, can be the, I think the part that could be difficult if there’s a whole bunch of heirs. On the one hand you’ve got more people splitting the money. So they should be less concerned about, um, you know, a little bit of a lower offer because when you divided among more people, it’s not that big of a cut to what they’re going to get. But on the other hand, you got to get all these people to agree to sign the property. So, and you never know.
Kristine: I mean, probably it’s, sometimes there’ll be a situation where it’s just a mess and the people are fighting and it’s going to be difficult and it may be one where you say, yeah, and we’re just going to walk away and not worry about this house. Um, and other times you get people who are already to sell on the same page. It’s easy. They need the help, they want the help and they’re, you know, ready to sell. And, and those are the, those are, you know, like any real estate investment, those are the deals you’re looking for is the ones where everyone’s on the same page. Everyone’s, um, has the same decision about how much they want to get from the house and the timing and selling it.
Abhi: Yeah, you bring up a really good point about having the multiple heirs. I remember there was one negotiation that I was in and we all met at, it was like a Panera or something, and I was looking through this document, and I didn’t realize that there was a back page to it. And so it was the attorney, the petitioner, and then like two heirs. I failed to see where it said all the heirs would be like continued. Like the list continues on the back on the next page. And then there were like an additional 15 people listed. So I’m like, all right, you know, we can meet at Panera. It’ll be great. It’ll be nice, quiet, like no big deal. Oh No. Let me tell you. We took over this Panera, and I felt so bad for the restaurant and I’m just like, all right, I’m just, I’m going to have to buy. I’m buying everybody coffee. And then I’m like, it was just a mess. Uh, but it was, it was just funny to me because I had no idea you could have like 18 or 19 or as many heirs as you want listed on this, uh, on this document.
Kristine: Yeah. That it, that is really funny and that they all wanted to come and not, uh, you know, maybe say, okay,
Abhi: so go meet and tell him what the,
Kristine: what’s going on here. That’s,
Abhi: Yeah, because generally, generally the petitioner, right? Like the families in that person’s the petitioner and that petition speaks on behalf of the family. But then if you have like family fighting or like, I suppose just bad relationships within family members sometimes, then everybody wants to just like see and be a part of it and see what’s being heard said and all that. So yeah, I thought that was just like really interesting.
Kristine: Did that one go through?
Abhi: That one did go through for us? I think it was like the coffee and just like cranking it out with them because it started, the meeting started at 8:00 AM and didn’t finish until 3:00 PM
Kristine: oh my God.
Abhi: Every body needed to be heard. And everybody was like this, like this family forum. Oh Gosh. Even the attorney left, they turned, he’s like, I’m outta here because I’m not gonna, I’m not responsible for this cycle on my billable hours that I’m not, you know, it was unbelievable to me. So I was sitting there in the hot seat for the longest time just being grilled. But that’s what happens, I guess. Right.
Kristine: Yeah. And I think that’s the good thing. Like that’s where, that’s what people need. They kind of need this outsider who can come and is sort of the objective party and let them all air their grievances and make sure everyone’s heard. And um, so that’s, that’s, I think probably investing is fun and interesting because you can develop a relationship with the people and they usually, they need someone and it that helping part. They really need help. They’ve got a lot on their plate. They’re usually mourning, and they’re happy to have someone who’s, who’s really genuinely wants to help them. So I think, um, from that perspective, it’s a, it’s, it’s a really great business.
Abhi: Yeah, no, for sure. And the objective needs to be helping people if the objective goes and shifts to money and that’s all that you see, this business isn’t for you because people will see right through that and know that you’re just in it for the money because you’re asking questions like, so how much is your house worth? And you’re talking about the cosmetics of the house, but you’re not addressing the emotional need that they have. And not that you’re a licensed psychologist, but you’re just kind of playing, like you said, that mediator role. Everybody needs to be heard. A family member just passed away. It’s a hard time for everybody. You gotta be that person. The strength that that family sometimes needs. You then give them the permission to be accepting of themselves and to have that openness and
Abhi: conversations with other family members that they normally wouldn’t have. So more questions for you. When we come back after the break, you want to get in in touch with Kristine and her team and want to learn more about how probate, real estate investing can help you get in touch. Super easy way to do it. Go to USprobateleads.com we’ll be right back after these messages.
Speaker 2: we’re back with Think Realty Radio and your host and real deal maker, Abhi Golhar.
Abhi: All right, we’re back. It’s Abhi Golhar with think realty radio. My guest today, Kristine Gentry of usprobateleads.com. We’re talking about the probate process. We’ve talked about how this probate lead in general can be a good lead source for your real estate investing business. If you’re having a hard time finding deals right now in your market, you might want to turn to probate. Now. Kristine, let’s talk a little bit about the market. Give us some insight into the probate market. Is this a highly kind of like exclusive, um, like your delta platinum diamond triple diamonds, medallion member club? Do you have to pay a lot to be a part of this? Like how do I, what’s the state of the industry? What’s the state of the market? How do I get involved?
Kristine: Yeah. No, it’s not as super explicit, crazy high end. Probate leads do typically cost a bit more than other leads, but they are usually, um, a better lead source. You’ll have more success with them. But we, like I said, that we have a huge variety of lead options and pricing. So for people who want to just start out, they can purchase 25 leads and depending on your county the pricing varies. So, um, it depends on how many leads there are in that area, how hard it is to get the leads. I just recommend that people go on our website. You can explore, you can check different counties, you can see how much the different packages cost. But they’re typically, you know, starting around, 25 leads for maybe 180 a month, 50 leads $220 and a hundred leads $320. But that’s kind of a generic.
Kristine: So it depends on the county. Like I said, there’s different variables. Um, and we recommend people, if you’re really gonna build this business to, you know, purchase leads on the monthly basis and just get your mailer system going. And reach out every month to all your leads. Every month your lead list will grow and grow and grow. So you’ll be sending out more and more mailers. And then you’ll start getting your phone calls and you’ll start, start buying more and more properties. Um, as far as the number of leads to that are out there, as you know, the US where we’re in an aging population, we’ve got, um, the greatest generation and then the baby boomer generation are kind of nearing the end of their lifespan and more and more are passing away. And so there’s more and more properties going into probate.
Kristine: And in the next, um, 20, 30-year time period, there’s going to be over $1 trillion in assets passed from generation to the next generations. And that includes, of course a lot of houses, but there’s, there’s a ton of different properties that get passed down in probate. So, as for your listeners who are interested in whether it’s, um, it’ll be a multifamily or commercial or, um, farming ranch, there’s all sorts of, you know, any property like that if someone inherits, goes through the probate process. And so these leads can connect you to all sorts of different properties in addition to just residential real estate. Our lead numbers just continually grow. We collect about 60,000 a month and every month we’re seeing more and more in the different, uh, well throughout the US as we collect leads. So, uh, and, and that number is expected to just keep continually into continuing to grow for the next 20 to 30 years.
Kristine: So that’s why they keep telling people is a great time to get into this industry. This lead source is not going away. They’re going to keep a, it’s going to keep growing. And, and it’s not like we keep saying it’s not an oversaturated market as far as a lot of investors don’t really know about it or don’t understand it and just start working these leads. So, um, yeah, we have some really big counties that we have one, one customer in only one person buying those leads for some of our biggest counties in the, US. So there’s not a lot of people competing against them. You know, people will sometimes ask us about that and if we don’t do exclusive rights, but we don’t have counties where we have 20, 30, 40 people buying the leads for those counties. So it’s, it’s a good market. It’s not over-saturated and it doesn’t cost a lot to get in. You can start small and grow, work your way up or if you’re, it’s for our larger investors.
Abhi: So on a scale of like the, the importance of probate leads as a tool in one’s tool belts for investing in real estate, where do you think it falls? Like honest maybe, I don’t know. Maybe on like a scale of one to 10, one being like, it’s completely useless, which I know you’re not going to say, but then 10 being like this needs to be looked at immediately.
Kristine: Um, I mean, I think it’s a eight, nine or 10. It’s, it’s up there. This is a good, I think for people who are in real estate investing, it’s another option, right? It’s maybe not the only one. I mean, people could start off of this one if they aren’t doing it. There’s, but we know it’s growing. We know that the opportunities are really good, that stories we hear of, of people, finding great properties in probate. I love talking to investors who even, you know, I think most of them use it as an additional source of leads. We do have people who that’s their main source, but people always have wonderful stories of great houses. They found, in probates and, it’s, we know it’s a, it’s a great market. We know there’s great leads out there and we know not, not a lot of people are buying them. So yeah. Anyone who’s interested in expanding or getting into residential real estate, I think it’s a really, really great option, and we’ve now made it so easy that it’s kind of a why not, you know, take some money, put it in and see what happens. It’s, it’s going to work.
Abhi: When I get these leads from usprobateleads.com, are they, do they expire? Is there like a, do I have to call them by like a certain call day? How does that work?
Kristine: No. Um, there’s no expiration at all. You, they’re your leads, you can do what you want with them. Um, and like we said, I that we think just reaching out to the people repeatedly over a period of, you know, maybe a year, um, is good because you never know when they’re going to be ready to sell. Just because they filed for probate doesn’t mean they’re ready to do anything with that house. So until you see that that property has, has been sold, you want to keep reaching out as often as you can. Um, well, you know, relative, not too much. You didn’t want to overwhelm them, but you want to reach out so that when they’re ready to sell, they think of you and they have your name and, and you know that letter and they go, oh yeah, someone sent us a letter and they’re interested in selling and I’m going to call and find out.
Kristine: And then our biggest, if you get your mailers kind of automated, you’re not seeing a lot of time with that. You can ask me all the time with leads. So what you need to spend your time on is making sure to talk to the people when they, when you do get phone calls or emails, when someone reaches out to you, that’s a big step for them. They’ve decided they’re ready to sell and you want to make sure you are ready to help them and answer any questions and just be there to support them when, when they’re ready. So you kind of have to be on their timeframe once they call.
Abhi: What tools do you recommend for investors, um, to kind of scale up that business? Do you have like an autodialer? Do you have any emails, CRM systems?
Kristine: Um, yeah. Um, I think email CRM systems aren’t, well I’m backing up. Let me, it depends on excel, where we’re recommending as they send out mailers. So they’re mainly going to get phone calls or emails coming into them. Um, I definitely think you want, you know, a good phone system so that someone is always answering this phone who can talk to people. So it’s not just a if possible you don’t want to just to answer in service, it’s going to take a number and you call back later. You want to have someone who can really talk because that person is ready to talk when they call. Um, and then I really don’t recommend an auto email. If you’re checking your emails regularly, have a team who can respond to your emails. You want to kind of get that person on the phone. If they do email you, you want to call them back or um, send an email to schedule a time to talk.
Kristine: So a lot of the reaching out or respond, you know, responding and it, you have to do it yourself as far as other CRMs. You do want a good CRM to make sure that you’re tracking the customers and any information you get from them or what you know about the property you have tied into that person or if you need to do follow-up calls or whatever. So, um, yeah, there’s so many great CRMs out there. I think it’s, um, it’s up to personal preference which one to use. But you do need a good CRM. I would say that for sure and a good phone system to make sure that you can get your calls or someone is going to pick up that call if the phone rings someone who knows Your Business and can really talk to the person who’s calling you.
Abhi: Two more questions. Tool related number one, a mailing services is something that you guys offer because for me, I, I’m, I, I can’t lick stamps. I can’t lick stamps on envelopes anymore.
Kristine: We do, we offer a mail service. So all you have to do is, um, I mean we have your leads, we get your logo, your contact info. Um, people can send us a letter that they want or we can give, provide form letters, we could do postcards. We make it super easy for our customers to get mailings out.
Abhi: Awesome. And the second tip I’m going to have to write about on [inaudible] radio.com. So go there, check it out. You want to get in touch with Kristine after the show. Super easy to do it. USprobateleads.com. Kristine, thanks so much for jumping on the air. Thank you. Got It. Think Realty nation got questions. I’ll tell you where to go. We have a print magazine called Think Realty magazine as well. You can take it up at Barnes and noble until next time. Happy investing.