Two founders, one lesson: the leads were never the problem.

We looked at the Spanish property market and saw thousands of agencies. We thought what we always think: they must need more leads. So we built a lead service, with the brand, the ads and the copy. The deal was simple: pay a fair price per lead, we bring the buyers, you close them.

For a few months we kept hearing the same thing: these leads are bad. We assumed it was a few outliers. It was not. Almost every client left.

So we asked what they did with the leads. Many were not calling them at all. Others called once or twice, days late, and gave up. We asked which CRM and which phone system they used and got the same blank look. It took us months to accept that we were the outliers. In a market that hot, handling the inquiries that arrive feels like selling, and it works, right up until it does not. The business rides on listings and demand, and that is the feast and the famine.

To see for ourselves, we took one Marbella agency that had bought 200 leads from us, called them bad, and left. We offered to work the list and book the meetings. Forty-five days later the agency sold a €500,000 property to one of those leads. Six months on it was €1.5 million in sales, from the same 200 leads. The leads were never the problem. The way of working was.

We tried teaching clients what a CRM is and why the phone matters. It failed: every new system arrived as a chore. So we built the whole product around the way we work, and made the right way the easy way: a CRM with calling built in, calls recorded and summarized, Ask Fondaro to take the repetitive work off your desk, Reports to lift the whole team, and brochures worth opening.

That is Fondaro. We build it week by week, guided by the agencies that use it.