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I recently caught up with a friend who has built a successful SEO business based in Denver. He's doing virtually all of his marketing through direct sales, i.e. commission salespeople making cold calls and cold emailing business owners to sign up for his SEO service. Thought I'd share what I learned since it should be applicable to real estate sales as well.
First of all, he only hires experienced salespeople. It's a tough job, and it's better to bring on someone who won't waste your time, and who's used to the lifestyle. The best salespeople he's hired were former credit repair salespeople, tax resolution salespeople and YellowPages/DexMedia salespeople. Essentially people who had tough sales roles, had to sell tough products.
He'll give candidates his marketing assets, PDF templates, internal glossaries to look at. Then he'll ask them to call him back and pitch him on his service. He'll pretend to be a prospect and raise objections and see how they do.
He'll pay his salespeople 100% of the 1st month's billing, and then a 10% residual after that which is tied to quota attainment. He'll also discuss income goals and skill levels with candidates before hiring them to set their expectations, and make sure they have the right expectations for how much money they'll be making.
In return for the residual, salespersons are expected to be the first point of contact for customers, especially if they are angry or upset about anything. Only technical questions will be forwarded on to him as the business owner to deal with. Everything else? Call the salesperson, that's why they're getting paid the residual.
In terms of how he reaches customers, it's basically massive amounts of cold calling and cold email campaigns. He uses Sales Genie which is a database of all businesses. You have to pay for it of course, the free plan doesn't give you email addresses. He also uses Scrape Box to get email addresses from across the web through web scraping. He uses Atomic Email Studio for sending emails, and really likes this because it's a one time fee to purchase the software and then he can send as many emails as he wants. His team also uses auto dialers to dial many phone numbers at the same time, and only patch in one where the customer actually picks up. Other software he uses includes RankerX, Trello and Raven Tools.
The emails will be customized for the industry that the target customer is in, as will be the landing page that the email points to. Let's say he's targeting lawn care companies one week, then he'll have a landing page on his website specifically geared towards lawn care companies. The landing page will usually have a call to action at the top (i.e. click to call, click to form), and will also talk about their results etc.
On the execution of the actual SEO on behalf of customers, he has a VA team that does it. He has a web guy, he has a link building guy for citations, and he has a content person. These are all virtual assistants from countries like the Philippines. He also has a project manager. What is a virtual assistant by the way? It's just an assistant who works remotely and online, typically from a low cost developing country.
Lastly, he does do some banner ads and retargeting, but his success is overwhelmingly from this direct outreach, commission sales strategy. What do you guys think? Applicable to real estate sales?
First of all, he only hires experienced salespeople. It's a tough job, and it's better to bring on someone who won't waste your time, and who's used to the lifestyle. The best salespeople he's hired were former credit repair salespeople, tax resolution salespeople and YellowPages/DexMedia salespeople. Essentially people who had tough sales roles, had to sell tough products.
He'll give candidates his marketing assets, PDF templates, internal glossaries to look at. Then he'll ask them to call him back and pitch him on his service. He'll pretend to be a prospect and raise objections and see how they do.
He'll pay his salespeople 100% of the 1st month's billing, and then a 10% residual after that which is tied to quota attainment. He'll also discuss income goals and skill levels with candidates before hiring them to set their expectations, and make sure they have the right expectations for how much money they'll be making.
In return for the residual, salespersons are expected to be the first point of contact for customers, especially if they are angry or upset about anything. Only technical questions will be forwarded on to him as the business owner to deal with. Everything else? Call the salesperson, that's why they're getting paid the residual.
In terms of how he reaches customers, it's basically massive amounts of cold calling and cold email campaigns. He uses Sales Genie which is a database of all businesses. You have to pay for it of course, the free plan doesn't give you email addresses. He also uses Scrape Box to get email addresses from across the web through web scraping. He uses Atomic Email Studio for sending emails, and really likes this because it's a one time fee to purchase the software and then he can send as many emails as he wants. His team also uses auto dialers to dial many phone numbers at the same time, and only patch in one where the customer actually picks up. Other software he uses includes RankerX, Trello and Raven Tools.
The emails will be customized for the industry that the target customer is in, as will be the landing page that the email points to. Let's say he's targeting lawn care companies one week, then he'll have a landing page on his website specifically geared towards lawn care companies. The landing page will usually have a call to action at the top (i.e. click to call, click to form), and will also talk about their results etc.
On the execution of the actual SEO on behalf of customers, he has a VA team that does it. He has a web guy, he has a link building guy for citations, and he has a content person. These are all virtual assistants from countries like the Philippines. He also has a project manager. What is a virtual assistant by the way? It's just an assistant who works remotely and online, typically from a low cost developing country.
Lastly, he does do some banner ads and retargeting, but his success is overwhelmingly from this direct outreach, commission sales strategy. What do you guys think? Applicable to real estate sales?