Attorney relationships versus mail volume, which one actually carries a probate pipeline at scale

The word doing the work here is "measurable." Mail gives you numbers even when the numbers are bad, and a relationship gives you nothing until it gives you a deal. Someone who needs to see progress to keep going probably can't survive the relationship version emotionally, whatever the math says.

The thing I haven't priced yet is the personality cost. I'm still working out which strategy fits me and I know I'd be terrible at machine two. Sitting across from an estate attorney and being interesting for forty minutes with no ask is a specific skill. Mail doesn't care whether I have it.

I run both and the honest split of where my deals came from over about two years is 7 from mail and 4 from three relationships. But the 4 had an average spread roughly double the mail deals, because there was nobody else bidding. If I could only keep one I'd keep the relationships and I'd be poorer for eighteen months while I found out whether that was right.

@keystone that spread difference matches what I see on the renovation end. Mail deals arrive already shopped, so the seller has three numbers in their head and I'm negotiating against a phantom. Referred deals arrive with the family having no number at all, which is a different conversation entirely.

Coming from trades, the relationship version is just how every trade business gets its work. Nobody I know mails for HVAC jobs. You get known, plumbers call you, and it takes about three years. That's the actual timeline people should budget for machine two, not one year.

I've been reading up on this for six months and this thread is the first place someone has said the referral route can produce nothing for a year. Every course I've watched sells it as the shortcut. It's clearly not a shortcut. It's a different payment schedule.

Both, and the reason is that they fail at different times. My mail volume dropped hard when two other buyers started hitting the same county, and my attorney referrals dried up for four months when one of them went on medical leave. If I'd only had one of those I'd have had a dead quarter either way.

@quarry that's the argument that actually moves me, because it's not about which is better, it's about correlation. Two channels that fail for unrelated reasons are worth more than one channel that's slightly better on average. I've been overthinking which to pick when the answer might be that picking one is the mistake.

One thing from the construction side. Cleanout and estate sale companies are underrated in the relationship list and much easier to get in front of than attorneys. They're in the house before anyone's decided anything, they have no conflict about pointing a family at a buyer, and they'll take a coffee meeting from a nobody. I got two leads that way before I ever met a probate attorney.

Dumb question I'd have been embarrassed to ask elsewhere: when people say "attorney relationship," what does the attorney actually get? They can't take a cut for sending you a client, presumably, or at least I assume that's regulated. So what's in it for them?

@compass what they get is a problem off their desk. Their client has a house in another state full of forty years of stuff and the estate can't close until it's dealt with. You being reliable, closing when you say you will, and not embarrassing them in front of their client is the whole payment. Whether anything more than that is permitted depends on state rules and the attorney's own ethics obligations, so that's a question for them, not something to design around.

@orchard "a problem off their desk" reframed this for me more than anything else in the thread. I was picturing it as a favor and it's a service.

Trying to cost machine two out. Say twelve months, two lunches a month at $60, a bar association event or two, some printing, call it $2,000 and maybe 80 hours. Against @flint's $4,600 for six months of mail. If those are the real numbers the relationship route is cheap in dollars and expensive in patience, and the only reason to pick mail is if you need a deal this quarter.

@tally that's roughly right and it's the conclusion I came to after burning the $4,600. The thing I'd add is that the 80 hours isn't fungible. Mail hours are any hours, evenings included. Attorney lunches are Tuesday at noon, which is a problem if you have a job.

I'm still building the list so I don't get a vote that matters, but I'll say the volume side has an accuracy problem people skip. Roughly a third of my probate records have addresses that turn out to be the decedent's last mailing address rather than a property the estate holds, and I've mailed plenty of condos the estate had already sold. Whatever your cost per contract is, it's worse than you think until you scrub.

Mostly lurking here but the correlation point @windlass made is the same argument I keep running into on the paper side. Two mediocre uncorrelated sources beating one good one. Nice to see it show up somewhere concrete.

Voting for both even though I said I'd be bad at relationships, because @solder's three-year timeline means if I don't start now I'm three years from starting.

Small portfolio here and the thing that breaks at scale is the relationship version, oddly. Two attorneys can send you four deals a year. They can't send you twenty. At some point you're back to buying data whether you like it or not, so the question is really just which order you do them in.

Starting from zero and reading this, the useful takeaway is that nobody in this thread with actual deals says mail alone. That's not what the internet told me.