You Don’t Need a Unicorn. You Need a Closer.

I was on a coaching call last week with a smart, capable team who’s built a solid business. Leads come in. Referrals are warm. People are happy. 

But there’s one brutal bottleneck: 

Nobody has the bandwidth to follow up. 

Here’s what’s happening: a lead comes in. It’s hot. Everyone’s pumped. But nobody has time to drop what they’re doing, switch gears, and run that lead to the finish line. 

So the lead cools. The moment passes. And another opportunity slips away. 

Sound familiar? If you’re still juggling growth on the side… 

you’re not short on leads. You’re short on structure. 

What you need is a role not a miracle hire. 

We get hung up on finding “the right person” when we should be asking “what exactly do we need this person to do?” 

So let’s fix that. 

There are two jobs that matter here: 

1. The Dialer (Lead Generator) 

• Cold outreach 

• Lead nurturing 

• Follow-up touches 

• Invite-only webinars, list scraping, for-rent-by-owner calling 

• First contact, quick response, qualification 

2. The Closer (Relationship Builder) 

• Sales calls • Discovery 

• Proposal presentation 

• Conversion and onboarding handoff Stop asking one person to do both. 

Stop pretending your operations lead can do either. 

If nobody owns these functions, nobody drives revenue. 

You don’t need someone local. You need someone reliable. 

One of the concerns this team had was: “Can someone outside of our market really sell property management here?” 

Here’s the answer: Yes — if they have a script, a process, and a clear handoff. 

The Dialer doesn’t need to explain cap rates or zoning ordinances. 

They need to ask the right questions, qualify the lead, and schedule the next call with you or your Closer. 

Everything else is teachable. 

Here’s what I told them:

• Hire for the role, not the resume. Sales background > real estate background. 

• Train on the local market. A 90-minute Google Maps session can fix 80% of their knowledge gap. 

• Compensate like you mean it. base + commissions if they produce. 

• Give them a repeatable playbook. Scripting, follow-ups, lead source breakdown, weekly tracking. 

Don’t romanticize this hire. Don’t wait for someone who can “just figure it out.” System first. Person second. Most PMs hit 200–300 doors and stall. Not because they suck at sales but because sales is nobody’s job. 

Fix the structure. 

Fill the role. 

Stop losing money on missed follow-ups.