As I see it, radically different models have to either give the consumer a better experience, or give the lead buyer a fundamental edge in closing sales. DoublePositive is trying for the latter. Things like MortgageMarvel are trying for the former. Nobody is attempting to do both.

Time to make this a hot topic for LeadsCon. Call Jay and put it on the schedule.

I suppose DoublePositive is not far off from what I was proposing.

Lets also get something straight, all lead providers distribute leads based on price/bids, that does not make them an exchange, however I agree that what many do with regards to aggregating leads does allow you to consider them a mini exchange, I guess.

I think your idea clearly comes from the technical point of view and not the marketing point of view. There are major flaws in allowing buyers turn on or off lead flow when ever they want, especially if you specifically are driving the marketing and incurring the marketing costs. DoublePositive allows their buyers, of hot transfers, to turn on and off leads when they want, because they don’t incur a cost until the lead is transferred. Of course they have overhead, etc, but very little, or no marketing is spent to generate the call. They rely on lead providers to send them unsold inventory and assume the risk.

Your model of generating the calls through your own marketing and giving the buyer full control is not a feasible one, in my opinion.

Respectfully, try again

A good exchange would solve that problem by providing information and liquidity. The only way to do this effectively is to provide a greater audience for lead sales. What I imagine happens now when a provider’s supply outstrips demand, is that they sell stale leads and hope nobody notices… because I know that you can’t tune your media spend down retroactively as JB suggested. Or they basically foist the overage onto a friendly buyer at a discount (almost certainly telling the buyer that they are privileged to be offered rare opportunity to purchase at a discount). Instead, an exchange would say, have buyers compete to determine what that discount should be.

This is all boilerplate, everyone knows this.

Until buyers can demand certain quality metrics, there won’t be much value in an exchange. What happens now is that the providers each treat themselves like mini-exchanges. They basically say, how can we maximize revenue by selling our nightly catch to buyers in the most advantageous way to us given our order book. And they are so far not buying the notion that an exchange helps them much.

I think the only possibility is to turn this whole thing on its head. Lets assume every LO (I’m going to use this term to mean “call center operator) has a cell phone. Buyers bid on calls to their LO phones. The LO can use the system to “turn on” or off their order (meaning, I’ll accept a call or not) or set hours. During “on” hours if the system routes a call to them, they have “purchased” a lead. Now on the display advertising side, the exchange is operating web properties that say – “don’t give them your number… the calls will never stop! Instead call the Loan Officer you want from whatever phone you want.” – the implication being that the borrower can get some anonymity if they so choose. All calls go to a call center and are then routed to the selected LO. The buyer shops can supply information to the exchange that is helpful in differentiating the choices that a customer makes – recent loan rates, the cost of a filling or botox injection, a pretty picture of the LO, whatever. Now you have a “lead exchange” that offers something new to the buyers and sellers – buyers can have choice and control, and sellers can bid only on hot calls, not potentially stale leads. The buyer info gets routed to the LO at the time of call by the system, so they can still have data in front of them when they talk to the customer.

How now, brown cows ?

Feels like volume (lead supply) at lead exhanges could still outstrip buyer demand. In fact, because exchanges don’t control their marketing volume, it feels like.the problem (supply/demand imbalance) is MORE LIKELY to happen at an exchange than at a typical aggregator site.

So what’s the solution to that? More exhanges?

What am I missing here?

I don’t want to get argumentative (*ha!) but I have some trouble believing that your systems and contracts allow you to adjust your media spend quickly enough to account for outstripping the order book, or that your customers like being told prices are going up today because you are short of leads. In other words, I think that the decay problem means that providers still benefit from tools to increase liquidity (otherwise they are selling stale leads or eating the loss on media spend).

However, you did say something very interesting — “Maybe the lead needs to change so the amount of information that is collected changes, or the integration with customers change”

I think you are right about that – a more radical disruption than any of the exchanges have provided thus far is what’s called for.