I had the pleasure of meeting Mike Khristo, one of the co-founders of a ManyUP for lunch today and I was able to find out what ManyUP is all about.
Let me first start by saying that it is really promising to see the progression of the industry with products and services like Sparkroom, LeadIDentity and now ManyUP. I am just really excited about the industry… Anyway, here is the deal about ManyUP and I hope to get more detailed about the platform later down the road. ManyUP, from what Mike told me is a combination of a lead exchange, distribution system and a re-monetization tool. The system allows users to buy leads through the exchange, distribute the leads based on a scoring system and then possibly refer the lead to another user within the ManyUP system. The last part is the most interesting to me and I think will be the most beneficial to many of you buyers in the industry today.
One area where companies typically miss the boat is in the area of cross selling there leads. In today’s market we see a number of mortgage companies taking on debt settlement, financial services and of course investment real estate and successfully are able to cross sell a lead into these different verticals if they can or cannot fill the consumers mortgage needs. What ManyUP provides is a network to refer and cross sell leads into other verticals without specifically going into the vertical itself.
Example:
A lead comes into your system as a mortgage lead (it could be any type of lead, but I will use mortgage for this example), the loan officer pitches a the sale of a refinance loan product, but also finds out that the consumer is looking to remodel their home. At that point the loan officer can refer/sell, with the consumers permission, the lead to a contractor in it’s area. This action give the lead buyer the chance to possible fully recoup the cost of the lead.
There are number of other features of ManyUP that are quite interesting, but unfortunately I don’t enough details to fully describe to you. However, I will through out another little tid bit about the referral system, it is all based on social scoring system that leaves the integrity of the lead referrers in the hands of the network.
Once I find out more about the product I will pass it along to you. ManyUP is just starting its private beta and I suggest keeping an eye out for this company in the future. If the product makes it through beta it could easily change your business and save you thousands.
We will simply have to wait and see.
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I’m not so impressed. I think this task is better suited for the leadgen companies. Here’s the top result so far from your poll “Your the 10th company that has called me in the last 20 minutes”. The leadgen companies are going to figure out that they will have a better lead for all verticals if they help the consumer go farther into the sales cycle and better determine what their real-world options are. For example, if they know they wont be able to sell the lead in the mortgage vertical the form should be smart enough to offer the consumer another service. There are other problems with this model… most salespeople are wholly commissioned based and have little incentive to refer someone out to another service if they didn’t pay for the lead personally… plus… do you think the consumer is going to want to talk to another 10 debt settlement, loan modification or credit card companies after the onslaught of mortgage firms that just called????
Dan,
I unfortunately think you are completely wrong and very optimistic. First, lead companies are already doing this, hence the poll results and this old post by SilenceDoGood http://blog.leadcritic.com/bigmortgageleads/penalty-for-unnecessary-roughness
It is my opinion, that proper referring of leads is best in the hands of people actually speaking with the consumer.
From what Mike told me the lead, if referred would only go to one other person and would be exclusive .
As I mentioned, I like the idea but if it comes to be what I described, will have to wait and see.
Dan what are you doing to recoup the cost of your lead spend? Do you cross sell any of your leads?
I think many lenders are probably looking at loan modification/loss mitigation, debt settlement, etc. Do you think they would be looking to cross sell outside their core competency (probably into less lucrative vertcals) if they were able to put their efforts into another loan?
I’d like to hear from a lender that has implemented cross selling of internet generated prospects and had success. Anyone out there???
The SilenceDoGood post points out a bad version of leadgen trying to better monetize a lead. It’s all about monetizing the lead and not really about helping the consumer.
Critic – When you were buying leads from many providers do you think anyone in your company would take the time to take whatever actions were required to login in to the manyup web-site and offer up this consumer for another service just to get the cost of the lead back? Did you have pre-negotiated discounts to avoid the hassel of returning bad leads to providers? Or did you and your staff put effort into returning each and every bad lead?
It just doesn’t seem practical to me unless I was exclusively purchasing on their platform.