Thank you for adding this very valuable information!

Also, just to be clear, I think the study is very statistically relevant. I am not sure where I said the opposite, but if I did I will chalk it up for typing too fast.

As many of you opined above and is the central premise of the paper (found here: http://www.leads360.com/contact/default.aspx?msg=whitepaper&KW=call_attempts_study), sometimes the most obvious and logical actions are never taken by lead buyers. I don’t necessarily understand why they don’t but I do revel in the fact that it means significant upside for those that choose to engage with their leads smartly.

We conducted the study based on several million leads that our clients tried contacting over a period of many months to have as diverse a data set as possible. We studied the effects of multiple call attempts all the way to 20 and I’ve published the entire results of our study below just to whet your intellectual curiosity. Some explanation is in order:

* Column 1 denotes the call attempt
* Column 2 denotes the percentage of ‘Contactable leads’ contacted – this is key to understanding the study and is NOT the same as Contact Rate. This means that the data set excludes any leads that were never contacted. This metric is a percent of the remaining leads in our study which we define as ‘contactable leads’
* Column 3 denotes the percent improvement in the ‘% of Contactable leads contacted’ metric for each successive attempt over the very 1st call attempt
* Column 4 denotes the percent improvement in the ‘% of Contactable leads contacted’ metric for each successive attempt over the preceding call attempt

Contact % of Contactable Improvement Improvement over
Attempts leads contacted over 1st attempt preceding attempt
—————————————————————–
1 39%
2 72% 87% 87%
3 83% 114% 15%
4 88% 128% 6.5%
5 91% 136% 3.4%
6 93% 141% 2.1%
7 95% 145% 1.5%
8 96% 148% 1.1%
9 96% 150% 0.8%
10 97% 151% 0.6%
11 97% 152% 0.5%
12 98% 153% 0.3%
13 98% 154% 0.3%
14 98% 154% 0.3%
15 98% 155% 0.2%
16 99% 155% 0.2%
17 99% 156% 0.2%
18 99% 156% 0.1%
19 99% 156% 0.1%
20 99% 157% 0.1%

As you can see, the benefits of calling start trailing off pretty steeply after the 5th or 6th attempt, we chose to prescribe 6 attempts as the cut-off. I beg to defer with LeadCritic in that this is a very statistically relevant study with a data set this size and of this heterogeneity, at least at a high level. I do agree though that to get maximum benefit from a study like this, one should conduct the same study but specifically for their own sales team to understand the effect of call attempts on their contact rate.

Cheers!

Nisheeth Singh
Director of Strategic Intelligence, Leads360

For the old school street Loan Officers(those that primarily suck up to Realtors) they might have tried buying some leads at one time, but for the reasons mentioned above, failed.

For some on-line lenders it’s the art of picking the low hanging fruit while other leads that might be good 1-6 months out fall to the floor.

I sound like a broken record!

The good news is that there are a lot buyers that do get it and that do implement very solid lead management best practices.

I have worked with a lot of lead buyers and you would be surprised.

One of the first things I learned 20 years ago about sales is the concept of “Six drips till you drop.” I can’t remember or find the Author of this concept, but the fact I was taught this 20 years ago, and Lead360 verified it is interesting.