ProspectMX: A Story of Opposites Attracting

Having strong backgrounds in the Real Estate industry, Rory Wilfong, Steve Young and Dave Conklin started what grew to be an Inc. 500 company in early 2004. This company specialized in generating leads for real estate agents on a national level. The trio discovered they made an amazing team, as they all brought different talents to the table that perfectly balanced each others’ strengths and weaknesses.

Rory Wilfong specializes in sales, customer service and motivation; Steve Young handles all finance, legal and CFO responsibilities and Dave Conklin controls all aspects of programming, technical and design departments.

The guys had some ties before coming together in 2004. Rory and Dave had worked together as DJs and MCs for a company that provided entertainment for weddings and corporate events all over Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland. Dave moved into real estate and Rory eventually did the same, where he teamed up with successful mortgage broker Steve Young.

When a west coast company approached Rory and Dave about buying real estate leads online, they immediately realized that Dave had the expertise to build a site that could do a similar thing. Once the site was up and running, offering homeowners a free market analysis of their home, the guys ran into one tiny snag: they were getting leads from all over the United States - but they only serviced Lancaster County and surrounding areas in PA.

Rory’s salesmanship and customer service skills surged to the forefront and he began developing a business plan to find real estate agents who would want the information their site was gathering. Given Rory and Dave’s tendency to sometimes forget to look before they leap, they turned to Steve. Steve joined the pair to offer his financial and legal expertise, but most importantly, his conservative outlook to the company.

With NO start-up capital whatsoever, the 3 founders grossed over $360,000 in 2004; over $2.5 Million in 2005; and $3.6 Million in 2006. In late 2006 the guys decided, still without any outside investors, to add several services to the company, resulting in the creation of the Agent Success Center, an automated CRM (Customer Relationship Management) program called Prospect Cultivator and RemarkableAgents.com – all invaluable additions to the company’s family of businesses.

This comprehensive marketing solution, available for the first time as a whole package in August of 2007, includes lead generation; a multi-paged, fully-loaded website; an automated Contact Management System; a blogging platform; motivational coaching and marketing training; accountability coaching; a graduated educational program; and hundreds of helpful tools, downloads, and tips to help better the career of any and every real estate agent. These additions to the original program have dramatically increased client retention rates due to the low month to month cost of the subscription program.

In the fall of 2007 the 3 owners decided to hire someone with a strong real estate background and knowledge of the Internet that shared their ideals, enthusiasm and vision of growth for the company to run the show. This left the 3 guys open to focus their attention on their next project – ProspectMX.

The Concept And Creation Of ProspectMX

In late 2007 ProspectMX was born (though the seeds of the concept were sown once they began brainstorming ideas to add to the real estate marketing company). The main emphasis of the company is to provide customized Prospect Acquisition and Internet Marketing Solutions with guaranteed results to any business that needs leads/prospects. In other words – if ProspectMX doesn’t provide the number of leads expected – the customer doesn’t pay.

It was very exciting for the guys to take their years of real estate lead generation experience and open it up to every business on the planet. In early 2008 it became apparent to the trio that their expertise could fill a void bigger than just Prospect Acquisition for businesses. They discovered that every business they talked to were absolutely intrigued by the whole concept of internet marketing, everything from SEO practices to link building and the ease of getting them found on the Internet and what this means for a business wanting to be a known expert in their field.

Many businesses have no Contact Management System in place for following up with potential and past clients – making it the most natural thing in the world for the guys to reproduce the platform of the automated CRM (Prospect Cultivator) they had developed, offering a customized version to any business in need.

After all these discoveries, the guys are now focused on making ProspectMX the nucleus for a complete Web Marketing Solution for businesses, everything from SEO & PPC, Social Media and Web Design/Re-Design focused on lead generation to Consulting, Training and Hands-On Web Marketing Workshops. The power of the Internet is still not being used fully or properly by most businesses today and ProspectMX is out to help change that one business at a time.

In August 2008, the former real estate marketing company was honored by Inc. Magazine as one of the 500 fastest growing privately held companies in the US.