You buy a list, you pull the skip traces, you or your VA start dialling. By the time you reach the woman with the inherited house on the east side, three other buyers have already called her that week, because they bought the same list from the same vendor. She is annoyed before you say your name.
What actually stings is that you would have been the right buyer for her. You close in cash, you would have let her leave the furniture, you have done four probate deals in that zip code. None of that matters, because the conversation started with an unsolicited call instead of her looking for help.
So the acquisition cost creeps up. More list spend, more dialler minutes, more pay-per-lead vendors selling the same seller to you and two competitors. Margin per deal narrows, and the month you pause spending the pipeline empties.
Meanwhile someone in your market has a page about how probate sales work in your county that has been up for three years, and the sellers who search at midnight land on it and call one person.