Comments on: A Couple Hot Topics of Lead Management

By: lrm trainer

lrm trainer — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 22:23:20 +0000

This is great information. Great insight on times to buy leads. Often we put so much effort into the best strategies for gaining leads but day of the week is often overlooked.

By: Jeremi McMaster

Jeremi McMaster — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 18:13:14 +0000

Everyone should buy leads on the weekends and staff for weekends as well. in my former life as a Branch manager we would take about 150 leads per day 6 days a week(no friday) and we found that those who worked weekends funded, 20% more per month then those who elected the 5 day work week. Im not a fan of returns as it takes up to much time the best is to negotiate a solid deal and understand there will be some fall out for bad leads. If your deal is good enough per lead it works out better because your time is spent working deals instead of fussing with returns and paying more for your leads. All in all the more time on the phone the more deals period.

By: Lead Critic

Lead Critic — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 04:18:48 +0000

Understood, good info. It is always good to hear others results. We saw a difference between the days of the week a lead was purchased on, no matter when the lead was called.

Good stuff.

By: Jay Dunsing

Jay Dunsing — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 22:00:31 +0000

Maybe a clarification is needed. All my leads are delivered in real time. Leads delivered on a Saturday called on that same Saturday converted at a higher rate to application as fewer companies buy on the weekends and certainly fewer companies work weekends. Conversely, leads delivered on a Saturday not first called until Monday converted at a rate similar to a lead delivered after 7:00 PM weekdays not called until the next morning. To summarize I have always bought leads 7 days a week and about 355 days a year (take away holidays). Stated even differently (and contrary to what my anecdotal opinion was prior to the study) a lead delivered at 2:00 AM CST time converted to an application the same as a lead delivered at 2:00 PM CST.

Did I help you more or confuse you more?

By: Lead Critic

Lead Critic — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:20:07 +0000

“In an analysis I did about 1 1/2 years ago I noticed that there was no material difference in the time of day or the days in which we bought leads in terms of conversion ratios. I also noticed that my LO’s were twice as efficient in taking applications on the weekends per hour spent on the job as they were from Monday through Thursday (Friday was terrible).”

Seems somewhat contradictory, no?

Assuming all leads are delivered in real time and you don’t have many days where leads didn’t get called until the following day, I would conclude that leads purchased on weekends had applications taken more efficiently then any other day.

By: Noel Collins

Noel Collins — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 20:32:52 +0000

Jay, ahhh love the terminology. How do you define an application?

Credit pulled no deal, credit pulled potential deal, taking enough information to move forward and/or kill the deal.

Details please, all the analytics guys will go crazy not knowing what your LO’s are doing that constitutes “2 applications”.

By: Jay Dunsing

Jay Dunsing — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 19:06:13 +0000

In an analysis I did about 1 1/2 years ago I noticed that there was no material difference in the time of day or the days in which we bought leads in terms of conversion ratios. I also noticed that my LO’s were twice as efficient in taking applications on the weekends per hour spent on the job as they were from Monday through Thursday (Friday was terrible).

In my current smaller environment we are cranking it up nicely as a result of Leads360′s pull distribution.

Lastly, I don’t return leads for credit. I just negotiate hard on price up front and pay attention to trends where campaigns may run into a higher % of leads being put into our “Return for Credit” status. If trending is bad I’ll talk to the vendor and work something out, still not returning leads for credit, however. In our office we push the LO’s to make at least 50 calls per day or take 2 applications.

By: Noel Collins

Noel Collins — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 17:10:28 +0000

All business owners should implement best practices with regards to lead buying, calling and analyzing performance.

Critic’s posts provide the tools to run a “Best Practice” shop regardless of the lead type, vertical or management style.

In addressing the point on weekend leads – yes everyone should work 7 days a week but also dial leads from 6am to 8pm.

Extend the hours and days your company is working to maximize returns from marketing expenses.

Extended hours and days also provides employees the flexibility to pick and work shift/days that meets their needs.

My employees always loved working when it made sense for them or their families; some were early birds and others needed to work later in the day.

By: BootyJuice

BootyJuice — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 04:39:21 +0000

I often wondered why most shops didn’t buy weekend leads — it always seemed crazy to me. Restaurant owners work Tuesday through Sunday, why can’t mortgage brokers ? Glad to see that I wasn’t crazy Noel, I always figured that the buyers of the weekend leads would get the above mentioned advantages, it tended to be a head-scratcher for me that people wouldn’t buy these leads and work them on Sunday and take another day of the week off.

By: Noel Collins

Noel Collins — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 16:18:22 +0000

Good article Critic, a few additional notes about purchasing weekend leads.

1.) They are less expensive because most people dont buy them.
2.) Most people still don’t work on the weekends, you can get a great converstion from these leads.
3.) It increases your buying footprint with your lead provider.

There are unseen benefits to being a buyer with a good buyer profile. Lead providers are willing to compromise in area’s they normally wouldn’t when you buy leads all week long.

I did find in our analytics that leads purchased during business hours converted better due to our response time.

We responded to new leads an average of 24 seconds after lead delivery. According to most lead providers our firm had the best lead converstion and data to support response time conversions.