VAs Who Work Skip Trace Lists — How Do You Decide Who to Call First?

[Chris Arnold]

Question for the VAs, cold callers, and lead managers who work with wholesale lists: When you receive a skip-traced file, how do you usually decide which records to call first? A lot of skip trace files seem to come back with plenty of phone numbers, but not always much direction. For example: * Which owner match looks strongest? * Which phone number should be tried first? * Which records look motivated but hard to reach? * Which leads may be false positives? * Which records should be researched before calling? * Which ones should be lower priority? I’ve been looking closely at this problem because most people talk about skip tracing as “getting more numbers,” but the real issue may be what happens after the numbers come back. For VAs and callers, a raw skip trace file can still leave a lot of guessing. My current thinking is that AI could be useful before outreach starts by helping score and organize the list around things like: * Contactability * Owner/name match quality * Phone confidence * Motivation indicators * Best contact path * Call-first priority * Research-first records * Possible false positives Not to replace the VA or caller, but to give them a better starting point. Curious for those of you who actually work these files: When you get a skip trace list, are you usually given a clear call order, or are you mostly just working through the list from top to bottom?