I think we all know that data is the key to successful campaigns. As a lead buyer it is extremely important to aggregate your data to a single location where you can properly analysize the data. From there you can determin what sources, filters or sales persons perform the best. For the lead providers they can determin which marketing campaign is performing the best or the worse. Bottom line, data is the key to a successful marketing campaign.

Taking it a step further, with regards to lead buying, sharing that data amoungst your partners is key too. For most this is sounds like a broken record. Sharing data ranks up there with lead scoring for most popular topics in 2008. Maybe I am alone here, but if I have to sit through another conference session on the topic of lead scoring and how great it is without any applicable information being given, I may have to…I don’t know, somthing horrible. I digress, however it is amazing even the most “savvy” buyers or analyst simply want to put up a fight for data.

Fundamental #1

Give feedback to your provider, good and bad. If you can provide the leads that actually performed well back to the source it will help them optimize their efforts.

You may not see a huge change in your conversion numbers right away, but it will give the lead source indicators to make immediate or future changes that will eventually pay off for you.

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How easy is it to let the simple things in our businesses slip through the cracks?

I bring this up because of an email I received a few weeks ago. The sender was looking for advice on lead buying and I caught myself starting the email saying, “Buying leads is very simple…”. And in fact it is very simple, however the problem with that statement is not the fact that I said it was simple, it was the fact that I had become complacent.

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Last week we briefly discussed lead volume per sales agent and more specifically how many leads each agent should have in their pipeline at any given time. This question is first in a number of lead management questions you should answer prior to starting another day of business.  There should be a number of business rules that should resonate with everyone in your company. The first we touched on last week and that is to call each lead 3 times a day until the lead is contacted. Another rule that you will need to create has to do with the life a lead in your system.

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I had a great conversation the other day on the topic of lead volume per agent/ loan officer. The discussion evolved from the question I asked regarding how many leads each agent had in their pipeline at any given time. The answer was 150  to 200 leads. Based on my experience that seemed like a lot of leads to be in one agents pipeline and they couldn’t possibly be working all those leads properly. Each agent at this company was required to price out and process each loan they received and in many cases were not able to call leads while performing these duties.

What is the correct amount of leads an agent should have in their pipeline at any given time? I think this is a question that is often overlooked and is usually answered with a simple guess, but I am going to suggest something very trivial and that anyone can implement. Sometimes the simplest things are overlooked, but can have the biggest affect on conversions and ultimately your ROI.

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This is really simply too.

I have said it a number of times and I promise this will be the last. I talk to lead buyers every day that choose not to take leads on weekends, however typically I can talk them into taking the leads by telling them my many examples of how they convert better then leads during the week. I am getting tired of it, though. Yeah, I am tired of putting up the fight every time someone wants to buy leads (The good news is that I am not a sales person, so I can get a way with this). I am going to do a favor for those of you who buy leads on the weekend and stop preaching the strategy. Either take them or leave them for someone else to close.

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Some time back, there was a conversation born from another post as to whether or not companies are really selling Internet leads in real-time.  I have to admit that the suggestion that companies are not, caught me by surprise.  The suggestion was that lead providers – and I am talking about the legitimate ones, not the bottom-of-the-barrel lead aggregators – are actually selling leads that were not generated in real time.  I think that this is nonsense.

There are exceptions to this rule.  For example, I know from some of my clients who participate, one major lead provider has a legacy program that is either called, or is simply referred to as the, “Lender of Last Resort,” program.  In this, lenders can act as a “safety net,” and leads that would otherwise go unmatched would be sent to these lenders of last resort at the end of the day, or even maybe the following day .  But in this example, the participating lenders know what they are getting, I have to believe, and are paying a significantly reduced price for these leads.  But other than that this, as well as other aged lead opportunities that other reputable lead companies provide, it is my belief that the lead companies are genuinely selling leads in real time.  I would love to hear from some representatives of the lead companies chime in on this to validate my position.

One concern was that companies allegedly stopped sending a time/date stamp as one of the data components with a lead.  I did a little investigating on behalf of my company and learned that while we do send that data, many of the lead management systems don’t capture and pass this data (if I am wrong, please jump in and correct me.  I’ll give the lead management companies a special invitation to do so since they are all always so shy about touting your wares [a little sarcasm]).  My suspicion for this is that in years past, there were some issues with the lead management systems delivering leads in real-time.

Specifically, I had numerous first hand experiences with a certain LMS (and I won’t throw them under the bus here because I know they have fixed this issue), where there were sometimes as much as 15 minutes between when we delivered the lead into the LMS and when the clients actually received the lead.  So, my guess is that because of this inefficiency in the past, maybe this data was not captured or provided on the LMS’s end.  But I would still maintain that the credible lead companies capture and send this information.

I would challenge you, the lead buyer, to verify that you are getting this information from your lead providers.  If you are not, find out if it is the result of the lead provider not sending the information, or the LMS not capturing the information.

The reason why you need to know this is because when your LO comes up to you and claims, “I just called this ‘real-time’ lead as soon as I got it but I was the 93^rd person (a little more sarcasm) to speak to the consumer,” you will now be able to address the facts.   The facts are, if the lead is time/date stamped then you can show this information to the LO.  If you don’t trust the time/date stamp, then you can take it up with your lead provider.  But odds are it is a real-time lead and the consumer simply did what most consumers do and that is go to multiple sites and fill out multiple forms and then complain as if they had no idea that they would get multiple calls per inquiry that they made.

So, I am not saying that re-selling doesn’t happen, but I do believe it to be the exception and not the rule.  What are your thoughts?

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Just a little rant:

I have mentioned this and asked this question before, however I think it is worth asking again. What is the correct price YOU should pay for lead?

This may be different for each and every one of you and mostly likely is. Do you know what your target price is? I know many would say that your target price is a low as you can get it and I would respond by telling you good luck with your business and recommend that you keep you resume on monster.com. I have heard some say a lead is a lead and in some cases you could make that argument. I however, based on my experience as a buyer and a seller don’t completely buy into that thought and therefore believe there are different values for different leads. I think ultimately that is based on your conversion. If your conversions are low, you typically are looking for a cheap lead, possibly remnant volume. If you are closing leads you are more willing to pay more for them. This, at face value is very simple, but so many really have no idea where they stand and how much is an acceptable lead price for their company.

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I just want to think out loud a bit, which I guess isn’t much different then most of the post here, so pardon the random direction of the post.

I was just thinking about mortgage lead prices and what the true value of a lead represents. I guess in most cases it is different for each buyer, which leads me to my question. Is there a fixed value of a lead? In the good old days of the mortgage industry leads were being sold in the $40.00 and up range. Back then most lead buyers had no problem paying the higher prices due to the higher returns they were seeing. Today, I think lead prices can now find themselves at a far lower price, but what is reasonable. Clearly you get what you pay for and at the other end of the spectrum you can pay way to much for what you get too.

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I wanted to discuss a few issues that have continued to come up in the last few weeks for me in my daily discussion.

The first is the topic of returning leads or negotiating a flat rate. We discussed this topic last week and I posed the opinion that negotiating a flat rate of return with your lead providers will save you time formating the returns in the numerous different formats that each provider requests, however it does not let you off the hook for returning the bad data to the provider.

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Maybe this is a dumb question, but the results could make these easier on your life and at the same time possibly worse.

LowerMyBills some time ago decided to no longer except returns and instead began to bake in the return rate into their prices, supposedly. This is some thing I did frequently as a lead buyer because it made my life a whole lot easier, but was it the right decision? If you buy from multiple sources you know each provider expects you to return the leads differently and within different time frames. This can be very time consuming and even a little frustrating. Requesting a percentage of the price be reduced eliminates much of that pain, however it also reduce much of the feedback that the lead providers will ever receive.

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We have sporadically discussed lead management benchmarks here for the past few weeks and have an ongoing survey running that continues to be very tight race. I want to bring it up again and source an 8 month old study performed by MIT. The study has been out for sometime, as I just mentioned, and I have been putting off discussing it for a while now. Not because I think it is unimportant, because it is very important for people to read. I simply just had more time sensitive topics that arose and continued to put it off.

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When I was a kid, I used to read books on cool things such as the Loch Ness Monster, Sasquatch and the Yeti. Those things interested me because I thought it was really fascinating to think something like that could exist. But now that I am a more logical and practical thinking adult and I know that it is not possible for something like this to exist. It is time that we as a market, come to grips that Exclusive Leads, just like the Sasquatch, do not exist.

I bring this up because I still have conversations occasionally with lead buyers inquiring about exclusive leads. My recommendation is typically this, “If anyone tries to sell you exclusive leads, then also inquire if they have a nearby bridge that they could also sell you, or maybe some beach front property in Nebraska.” I think I have made my point…

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It is summer, time for baseball. Personally, I think watching baseball on television is about as exciting as watching food spoil. When I was a kid, my grandmother got a new video camera. She proceeded to make a video of her Christmas tree where she would zoom in and out on every single ornament, all the while my Grandfather is in the background snoring like a diamond-toothed chainsaw. I got to watch every single moment of that video tape and probably enjoyed it more than I would enjoy watching baseball on television (going to the ballpark is another matter, but I digress…). That said, there is a very popular offensive philosophy in baseball coined in the early 1900′s by “Wee Willie” Keeler (thanks Wikipedia). He said about hitting, “Keep your eye clear and hit ‘em where they ain’t.” I think this approach applies well to Internet leads.

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I am frequently on the phone with lead buyers discussing how to work leads. The range of competency is pretty wide, especially between different verticals. Mortgage lead buyers have a hand up on most other verticals, from what I have seen. It wouldn’t be fair to assume that all insurance lead buyers don’t know how to work leads, but many mortgage lead buyers would be shocked at hear what suffices for the insurance lead buyers.

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I know I have gone out of order with my LeadsCon recaps posts, but I think by now you all know I do things my own way and a little out of order. Day two, I must admit was a little slow moving, but included some very good session.

I am not going to go through each session for this post and am only going to highlight a few them. The first session I want to discuss with you is the “Lead Buyer Perspective” session. The panel included Chris Meerschaert formally of Quicken Loans and now with Adchemy. Adam Graff of Career Education Corp, Jordan Drew of findalocalagent.com, Todd Davison of Bulldog Solutions. The session was moderated by Rick Natsch of Potreto Media Corporation.

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How, it was only a have day that only included two sessions, but what a great way t start off a conference. First, I must say I was surprised by the turn out and the packed house!! Great Job Jay.

Let me give you all a brief run down on the the first day here in Las Vegas. I guess I should also premise this post by mention that the crowd here at LeadsCon is a nice mix of affiliate marketers, lead providers, lead sellers, ad networks and everything in between. It a very diverse crowd, which I think it going to continue to lead to great discussions and insight. Hopefully I can pass along some of the conversations to those of you who could not make it.

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I had a great conversation the other day with an industry peer and we came across an interesting subject that I think is worth  discussing with you. It regards buying purchase leads VS. refinance leads.

There are some real benefits in buying purchase leads and certain situation were they make complete sense. Most if not all companies focus on refi leads for their main source of business and this is perfectly okay. While I was a lead buyer I stayed far away from purchase leads because they did not make sense for our model. Our model was similar to 95% of all companies at that time and that was to “turn and burn”. Not literally but our sales team was extremely used to the 30 day sales cycle as well was the whole business was. When you start throwing in purchase leads this tends to throw the typical business cycle way off. It is my opinion that large sales teams that want to be extremely efficient and performance driven should probably focus on one type of lead. Smaller shops can work both purchase and refi leads in combination a little better, however I am only speculating on that statement. If you are running a call center I suggest breaking it up into teams and let each team handle a different type of lead.

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Yes, as the title reads, It’s a Buyers Market, If You Didn’t Notice!

There is no better time to be buying leads and perfecting your game. Lead costs are at all time lows. I don’t care what people have told you in the past or what high level executive you know at LendingTree or LMB that told you 2-3 years ago leads were cheaper, your wrong. Leads 2 years ago were selling on average for $38 to $46 and the premium stuff was going for more. I know, I know there were good prices 2 years ago, but on average the average Joe was paying those prices. Today, times have changed and prices have dropped. I really don’t want to go into why, because that will get me all worked up.

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This is one of the biggest mistakes I see lead buyers making with their leads. An Internet leads, if generated with any level of integrity, is not a cold call. It is an initiated, hand waver!

Think about what a quality Internet consumer lead implies:

• There was a need
• They have done some level of research (i.e., did a search, read an email, had a discussion)
• They provided private contact information

They are asking to be called so don’t treat them like strangers–complete the experience. Continue Reading

I have already gotten quite a few inquiries about the spreadsheets that I mentioned in my most recent post. I thought that because of this, I would follow up with some screen shots using the business case I described in the post. After all, the picture is worth a 1000 words.

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