Companies who experience extensive growth first experience extensive growth preparation. In the following interview, Chris Smith, co-founder of Curaytor, gives us insight into the tools he utilizes to succeed.
Chris Smith
Co-founder
Curaytor
Orlando, Fla.
Chris, you have had a long relationship with Top Producer and Move, Inc. In fact, you were one of the co-founders of Tech Savvy Agent. After Move, Inc. you launched your new company, Curaytor. What does Curaytor do?
I look at Top Producer, Market Snapshot and the other tools I was selling at Move, Inc. as the “bricks” an agent or broker needs to build an online business. There are plenty of these bricks available and they’re effective only if they’re implemented and “mortared together” as a functioning lead system. That’s what Curaytor does; it enables you to take an effective tool like Market Snapshot and drive leads to it and create marketing and better sales practices around the execution so that you get more lead opportunities and close more of the opportunities you already have.
How long has it been since you worked at Top Producer and Move, Inc.?
I started with Top Producer in the summer of 2008 and stayed until the summer of 2011. I have had a relationship with Move for seven years.
What did you learn at Top Producer that helped you transition to a consulting, marketing and coaching role at Curaytor?
The best part about my time at Top Producer was that I got to go to two real estate offices a day, every day. Working belly-to-belly, in the trenches was critical for me to truly understand what agents needed help with.
You were recently on a webinar with Top Producer that featured Market Snapshot in the context of generating seller leads. I heard that there was such great attendance that they actually had to turn people away with almost 5,000 registering. What made this webinar so popular?
There are three things that truly made this webinar stand out: 1. The topic. People are really looking for listing leads right now. 2. Because of Tech Savvy Agent, our new Web show Water Cooler and the Facebook Groups we started, agents are looking to us as the experts in the field. 3. Move and Top Producer have tremendous reach.
So you’re helping agents and teams learn how to use Market Snapshot to drive listings?
Market Snapshot for us is like a bed at a hotel. It’s an expected experience. If every client and person in your sphere is asking how the market is, you need a digital tool that can answer it at scale. As for seller leads, they want data, not a phone call. If you don’t provide data, you don’t get the call.
What’s the right way to use something like Market Snapshot? Do you just “set it and forget it” or is there more involved?
We play offense with our technology stack. Step one: sign up every past client and person in your sphere. Step two: run Facebook ads driving new leads. Step three: call everyone that opens their report each week.
How many Market Snapshots should a productive agent send out?
Thousands.
How do you acquire a bigger list? Who do you recommend offering a Market Snapshot to?
We use Facebook Ads targeted by zip code and send the clicks to a landing page.
After people have been seeing these reports, do you recommend contacting them or do they contact you?
Any salesperson that waits for people to call them isn’t a salesperson. You can see in the dashboard everyone that has viewed their report, when and how many times. Snapshot eliminates the cold call!
Are all these reports kind of the same? Why is it you recommend Market Snapshot?
People don’t just want data. They want hyper-personalized data. I love Snapshot because it’s focused on their address, not “the market.”
For more information, visit www.realtor.com.
