At the time, Realtor.com was the most popular website to search for homes. Zillow and Trulia were still relatively new to the scene and were second and third. Top Producer was the most used CRM in the real estate industry. Think Salesforce, but for Realtors.
To start, I drove to two offices each day throughout the state of Florida and sold marketing and sales software to real estate agents. I had to leave my appointments with a signed contract, or the sale went to the inside sales team, and I didn't get the commission. I also spoke at national trade shows and conferences, again having to close that day or not getting a commission.
Doing what I teach you in this book, I won the President's Club Award in my first year. I was number one overall and was outselling even the most seasoned reps. At this point in my career, I had no experience in outside sales or selling SaaS (software as a service) products, so everyone was pretty surprised that I went from 0 to 100, real quick.
During my time at Top Producer and Realtor.com, I started using a Facebook Page, YouTube channel, and blog with the only purpose of being able to stay top of mind with the real estate agents I was meeting during my office visits. I decided to build a brand (with Steve Pacinelli, my boss at the time) called Tech Savvy Agent.
I had seen how cheesy a lot of the marketing that real estate agents were doing was and that they had an affinity for plastering their faces and names on everything. So, I decided not to go that route. Plus, what I was doing was against the rules at my publicly traded company, so using the pseudonym was a way not to get caught.
Within no time, I got more than 100,000 page views per month on my blog and garnered tens of thousands of fans and followers. I had only been a salesperson my entire life until I started Tech Savvy Agent. Now, I was a marketer, too. A marketer who started with social media and deeply understood the content and cadence needed to build a new and popular brand in a digital-first world.
After winning both the best blog in real estate and the most influential person in the real estate industry awards, I was hired by Inman News to be their chief evangelist. I toured the US and Canada as an emcee and keynote speaker at their popular events. Working there gave me insights and learnings from millions of page views and decades of content on Inman.com. More important, it connected me to the who is who of the real estate industry.
After Inman News, I was hired to be a sales coach and public speaker for the inside and outside sales teams at dotloop, a transaction management and electronic signature venture capital–backed SaaS startup. My official job title was “chief paper killer.”
As I taught dotloop's sales and marketing teams the conversion code, you could see the light bulbs going off. They left every sales coaching session empowered and excited to get back on the phones. They would often tell me they “just needed help closing.” But they would leave telling me that my advice was the “best sales coaching ever.” It was a game-changer they could start using on their next call.
During my third year with the company, Zillow acquired dotloop for $108 million. Not quite another billion-dollar experience, but a startup that takes on DocuSign and achieves a nine-figure exit is not too shabby. After leaving dotloop, their founder, Austin Allison (the coauthor of my first book, Peoplework) cofounded Pacaso, which became the fastest company ever to become a unicorn and reach a billion-dollar valuation.
Nowadays, I teach what you are about to learn in The Conversion Code at workshops, colleges, companies, and conferences. I'm also the cofounder of Curaytor. At Curaytor, we specialize in helping listing agents win more listings. We help them attract clients. We help them stop chasing leads.
We build sales and marketing software, and we offer professional marketing, advertising, and lead conversion services. We get hired by Realtors who are too busy to do everything themselves. They just want their marketing done right. They care tremendously about their brand. They want to be number one in their market. They demand an ROI (return on investment). Or else they churn.
Every month we generate tens of thousands of leads. We manage millions in ad spend. Our customers send hundreds of thousands of emails and have created tens of thousands of pieces of content on our platform.
Simply put, we do the conversion code for them.
Here are a few testimonials from our clients:
“Before using Curaytor, I was making $200,000 a year. It looks like my next 12 months will be in the $600,000–$750,00 range.”
“In the first six months, we bypassed our total sales from last year.”
“My business increased by over 100% in 12 months.”
“This will be our best year ever.”
“My business is up 52% since we partnered with Curaytor, and we are looking at growing another 50% next year!”
“Best investment I've made in my 14 years. Hands down.”
Using the conversion code for ourselves, Curaytor made the Inc. 500 list as the 303rd fastest-growing company in America. To ensure the success of my first startup, I got back on the phone and sold a couple of million in ARR (annual recurring revenue) using the same strategies and scripts in this book.
In the first two sections of The Conversion Code, I will teach you exactly how we generate high-quality leads that are easy to convert. I will detail how we use technology, people, and automation to turn our leads into an endless supply of quality appointments for our sales team.
With that being said, I truly believe automation is overrated and is being used as a crutch. Automation gives you an excuse not to do the actual work of picking up the phone and talking to people about if what you do is the right choice for them. If you want to make more money with digital marketing, social media, and online leads, you have to pick up the phone.
The idea of e-commerce is a myth for most. Sure, we may buy things from Amazon without ever speaking to a sales rep, but if you are in a professional services business like a real estate agent or a loan officer or if you sell B2B (business-to-business) SaaS products and you think you can simply get leads to buy from you without ever talking to them, you're wrong.
You aren't Shopify.
Bottom line? Most companies need to pick up the phone to close a lead but are so obsessed with working smarter, not harder, that they are tripping over nickels to pick up pennies. Conversations are what create customers.
Think of it this way: if you have more usernames and passwords than conversations with prospective clients, you are doing it wrong.
I feel blessed that I learned how to sell before I learned how to market. I learned how to convert leads before I learned how to generate them. So when I became a marketer, I saw a big responsibility in that role.
My marketing approach came from my work in the inside sales cubicle, knowing from firsthand experience how difficult it can be to dial for dollars every single day. I can't bring myself to do marketing that gets very good vanity metrics but very bad leads.
I know my sales script works, and I respect a salesperson's time because I am one, so when I teach you how to generate leads, my goal is quality, not just quantity. Marketing can do a much better job of sending leads to sales that are ready to transact. I bet if most marketers had to call the leads they're generating, they'd want to quit their job or fire themselves.
It's one thing to get someone to “like,” “follow,” or subscribe by email—it's another to get their time and it's a whole other thing to earn someone's business.
Every lead is now an internet lead. We're all online, every