Virtual Wholesaling: Lead Mix, Spend, and Deals a Month

A real virtual wholesaling operation running 15 to 20 contracts a month spends roughly $15,000 to $17,000 on marketing, about $20,000 all-in with the CRM and tools, and splits its leads across three channels: cold calling, pay-per-lead, and mass texting old data it already paid for. That’s the shape of ProHome Ventures, a three-year-old company doing $60,000 to $80,000 months with an eight-person, almost entirely remote team.

Tyler Williams started the business with his partner Leo in July 2024 on a $7,500 investment — enough for a CRM and one cold caller. This article breaks down the channel split and conversion rates, the spend increments that unlocked each revenue step, how he vets lead vendors after losing $5,000 to a bad one, the SOP system that removed guesswork from closings, and the three things that still break deals: title, reductions, and a softening buyer pool.

From the Real Estate Pros Show

This article draws on an interview with Tyler Williams of ProHome Ventures on the Real Estate Pros Show, hosted by Quentin Edmonds.

The Three-Channel Lead Mix Behind 15-20 Contracts a Month

Cold calling is the bread and butter. Of 15 to 20 contracts a month, 10 to 12 come from cold calls placed by a team based in Colombia. Tyler learned the channel working inside a Raleigh wholesaling office doing $3–4 million a year in assignment fees, and he’s blunt about the “cold calling is dead” content that circulates on Instagram — it’s where most of his leads come from.

The cold call vendor he uses now runs longer conversations, 15 to 20 minutes, rather than the three-minute, five-question approach common in the space. They deliver leads through a dedicated Slack channel, push them into the CRM simultaneously, and offer live transfers — something none of the four cold call companies he’s used previously provided.

Pay-per-lead is the love-hate channel. It produces a couple of contracts a month and some of the biggest deals the company has done, but it also delivers a steady stream of houses that are simply listed on the market.

The third channel costs almost nothing extra. For the first two years, ProHome pulled a minimum of 50,000 absentee-owner records a month filtered for 20 to 100% equity. That built an archive of roughly a million records sitting in Google Drive. They signed up with a text blast service and started feeding that old data back in — 50,000 outgoing messages a month, unlimited incoming.

On day four of texting, a lead that had been dead in the CRM for 10 months came back and closed as a $31,000 deal in Fayetteville. The current cadence is simple: records pulled in July get dumped into the texting service in August. The plan is to move from 50,000 to 100,000 messages a month.

What Virtual Wholesaling Actually Costs Per Month

Marketing runs $15,000 to $17,000 a month. Add the CRM and the smaller tools and the all-in number lands around $20,000. That spend supports the 15–20 contracts and the $60,000 to $80,000 months, with a peak month of $115,000 and a stated goal of hitting $100,000 consistently in 2027.

It did not start there. The business launched on $7,500 — a CRM and one cold caller. Everything since has been added in increments tied to revenue steps rather than ambition:

• $20K to $40K months: hire a dispo person.
• $40K to $60K months: add another seat.
• As assignment fees climb: dedicate roughly $3,000 more to PPL and $4,000 more to cold calling, then scale the texting volume.

The logic behind prioritizing dollar growth over headcount growth is that more revenue buys more lead generation, which is what actually grows the business. Tyler’s framing: you are not a real estate investor, you are a sales and marketing operator. Leads come first, or nothing else matters.

One caution on the spend profile — consistency beats spikes. His stated preference is $100,000 to $105,000 every month over $165,000 followed by $47,000. Lumpy revenue makes it impossible to time hires and marketing increases, and it tempts you into coasting after a big close. His office rule: there is no better time to close a deal than right after you closed one.

We’ve done it 25 different ways. This is the way that we know works. There’s no guesswork, no "well, maybe we should do it this way."

— Tyler Williams, ProHome Ventures

Vetting Lead Vendors So You Don’t Burn $5,000 on Nothing

Early on, ProHome picked a PPL provider without research and spent about $5,000 over three months for zero deals. Roughly 5% of those leads even answered the phone. The vendor had also positioned herself as US-based and wasn’t.

The vetting process now looks like an investigation. Before sending money, Tyler reaches out to anyone he can find associated with the vendor — what do they like, what do they dislike — collects testimonials, and takes calls with people inside the vendor’s own company. The reason is simple: anyone selling leads will sell you a dream on a sales call.

He’s cycled through three different cold call companies for a specific and predictable reason. Vendors take on too many clients, and lead quality degrades. You start receiving contacts like an owner who just renovated a house two months ago and wants retail for it — which counts against your monthly lead allotment even though it’s unusable.

Two terms worth negotiating before signing:

• A refund policy for already-listed properties. His current PPL provider refunds leads that come through listed on the market. That alone changes the real cost per usable lead.
• Live transfers and delivery method. A transfer after a 15-minute conversation means the seller is at least willing to talk.

Know your conversion target before you judge a vendor. PPL is currently converting at roughly 1 in 12 to 1 in 15. The target is 1 in 7 or 1 in 8. He also doesn’t chase exact lead counts — 38 good leads beats 60 mediocre ones.

Running Acquisitions and Dispo With a Fully Remote Team

Eight people total, six on payroll plus the two partners. Two acquisitions reps, two dispo, a transaction coordinator, and a dialer named Mike in Pakistan who personally places around 160 dials a day working old leads to revive interest. He was hired for a two or three week project and refused to leave. Acquisitions sits in Mexico and Colombia.

The partner split is clean and based on background. Leo handles dispo because he flipped 15 to 20 houses a month in Miami and understands renovation budgets, holding costs, and what hard money carry does to a buyer’s number over three months. That knowledge is what most wholesalers lack when they price a deal off ARV minus rehab. Tyler runs acquisitions, trains the reps, and tracks their KPIs.

Training happens live every Wednesday. Tyler pulls one or two calls from the prior week — usually one strong, one where the rep dropped the ball — and walks through them minute by minute, pausing to show where the seller opened a door the rep didn’t walk through. If someone mentions a spouse’s illness, ask about it. The goal is conversation, not a word track.

Three structural choices hold the remote team together:

• KPIs gate the weekly salary payment. You hit the numbers to get paid.
• Salaries are deliberately low. He doesn’t want anyone depending on a $2,000 month; commission should drive behavior.
• Hire three at a time, expect one to stick. Everyone gets the same tools and the same shot.

The stated preference is three killers over ten people getting by. Adding too many people at once makes processes go slack when nobody can look over a shoulder.

The SOP That Takes Guesswork Out of Every Closing

ProHome built a standard operating procedure system in Google Drive during the first six months of the business, before hiring anyone. It covers transaction coordination, dispo, and acquisitions. That timing matters — the SOP was built from trial and error on their own deals, so by the time there was a team, there was something to hand them.

The practical payoff is the elimination of 10 to 15 minute questions after a contract is signed. A deal goes under contract, the rep opens the SOP and reads the next step. The purchase agreement and assignment of contract go to the title company and the transaction coordinator already knows the sequence without asking.

The underlying principle is repetition. As Tyler puts it, they’ve done it 25 different ways and this is the way that works, so it gets done the same way every time. The document isn’t frozen — odd title situations or unusual closings get an amendment, and new state wholesaling laws force compliance adjustments. But the baseline doesn’t move based on who is handling the file.

Compare that to a newer operator: every closing becomes an improvisation, trying to remember which step came next on the last one. That’s where mistakes live.

Tyler rates the company’s operational efficiency at 8.5 to 9 today. In the first year it was a 3 or 4, when they were holding onto whatever they could and trying not to fall off the boat. The thing that moved the number was having enough cash stability to stop reacting and start documenting.

Where Virtual Deals Break: Title, Reductions, and a Softening Market

The most expensive lesson was $29,000 in Georgia. Tyler distrusted a particular closing attorney and said so — in his view they look for every reason not to close. His partner wanted to use them one more time. The deal had heavy title problems, the attorney laid out a month of curative work, and Tyler knew the seller wouldn’t wait that long. He did it anyway, spending $1,400 of his own money on notaries and errands.

On the day of closing, the attorney informed them the seller had already closed with someone else the month before — meaning the deal could have closed all along.

Title isn’t the only thing that moves fast. A seller once sent a letter showing the county was auctioning her property the next day. Tyler had to call the county in Georgia that morning and get the auction stopped by explaining the purchase was in process. Those calls don’t get delegated.

Neither do reductions. On any contract where the projected spread is thin — a deal only projecting $10,000 — he contacts the seller weekly, sometimes twice a week, and builds genuine rapport. Not as a courtesy, but because he knows that two or three weeks out he will need a $10,000 to $20,000 reduction to get it assigned, and that conversation goes differently with someone who has been talking to him all month.

The market makes those calls more common. A Georgia house that assigned at $90,000 last year with buyers competing for it is now hard to move at $70,000. Sellers remain anchored to last year’s prices. Listings that drew five offers in two days now sit three weeks before a walkthrough.

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to run a virtual wholesaling business each month?

ProHome Ventures spends $15,000 to $17,000 a month on marketing and roughly $20,000 all-in once the CRM and smaller tools are included, which supports 15 to 20 contracts a month and $60,000 to $80,000 in monthly assignment fees.

That is not a starting number. The company launched with $7,500 — enough for a CRM and one cold caller — and added spend in steps tied to revenue: a dispo hire at the move from $20K to $40K months, another seat from $40K to $60K, then roughly $3,000 more to PPL and $4,000 more to cold calling as fees grew.

Is cold calling still the best lead source for wholesalers?

For this operation, yes — 10 to 12 of every 15 to 20 monthly contracts come from cold calling. Tyler learned the channel in an office doing $3–4 million a year in assignment fees and it has remained the primary source three years into running his own company.

The quality of the calling matters more than the channel. His current vendor runs 15 to 20 minute conversations rather than three-minute scripts with five basic questions, delivers leads through Slack into the CRM, and offers live transfers after the seller has already agreed to talk.

Can you really get deals from old lead data you already paid for?

Yes. ProHome pulled at least 50,000 absentee-owner records a month with 20 to 100% equity for two years, accumulating about a million records that sat unused in Google Drive. Feeding that archive into a text blast service produced a $31,000 closed deal in Fayetteville on the fourth day — from a lead that had been sitting cold in the CRM for 10 months.

The mechanics are straightforward: records pulled one month get loaded into the texting service the following month, at 50,000 outgoing messages with unlimited incoming. Circumstances change, and someone who wasn’t selling a year ago may be selling now.

How do you vet a pay-per-lead company before spending money?

Treat it like a background check. Collect testimonials, reach out directly to other investors using the vendor and ask what they like and dislike, and take calls with people inside the vendor’s own company. Tyler describes his current process as acting like the FBI, and it exists because an unresearched provider cost him about $5,000 over three months with no deals and roughly a 5% connection rate.

Also confirm two things in writing: whether you get refunded for leads on already-listed properties, and what your realistic conversion rate should be. His PPL converts at 1 in 12 to 1 in 15 against a target of 1 in 7 or 1 in 8.

What should you look for when hiring offshore acquisitions reps?

Look for people who care more about commission than salary. Tyler deliberately keeps salaries low — he doesn’t want a rep depending on $2,000 a month — and gates the weekly salary payment behind KPIs so the money follows performance. His reps in Mexico and Colombia outwork the American hires he started with, who he had to push to make 30 or 40 dials a day.

Expect attrition. He hires three at a time, gives all three the same tools and training, and expects one to stick. Weekly live call reviews every Wednesday are how he identifies which one.

The bottom line

If you’re building toward a virtual operation, document the process before you hire the people — the SOP built in ProHome’s first six months is what turned a 3-out-of-10 operation into an 8.5, and it cost nothing but discipline.