What Do You Want in a Lead Company??

[Dglossoplend]

Lot's of you buy leads and most are very unhappy with them. Mostly lost revenue.

I want to know if you could have the perfect lead generation company what would you want it to do. How would it work?
What would you pay for good solid leads?

I have a way to develope this and am wanting feedback from all of you agents out there. Give me the goos, bads, and uglys.

I am imagining a service that is a match maker in a sense. Pairing a client up with an agent that matches his field, personality, expectations, location etc. These will not be clients blasted out to tons of agents. This is a personal touch!

Hope to hear some good feedback

 

[YouGotMyMoney]

You can't make both the lead vendor and the lead buyer happy at the same time in most cases.

 

[Crabcake Johnny]

It would be high priced quality and there would be a waiting list....which was the way is was when I signed up for InsureMe in 2004. I was put on a waiting list and it was like 2 months before I started getting leads.

Of course 75% answered, almost 100% of the information was real and ROI was fantastic. That model didn't work. Why? Because they didn't jack the lead prices high enough.

The result was uneducated agents were buying them and not closing. So you have a model where InsureMe was giving quality but it didn't matter - constant agent turn-over. In the mean time, solid closes couldn't get enough because volume was spread out to pikers who couldn't close a barn door with a tractor.

They should have tripled the rates, locked in the closers, make good money and called it a life. I had had to run a lead company that would be my MO - shared with 3 agents, over $20 a pop with guaranteed valid information (all info valid) or it's a credit.

Beyond that - no pikers. $1,000 upfront to fund your account. You'd be allowed to cancel at any time for a full refund but $1,000 to start the flow, no pausing except for vacations. A lead comes in at 8pm? Tough. Work it.

 

[Frank Stastny]

That sounds like a very time consuming/expensive way of doing it. It doesn't sound like most agents would be able to afford the lead with that approach. Do you have a price range in mind?

I understand what you said you would like to do but cannot envision how you are going to go about matching a prospect with an agent.

I think the biggest thing most agents are looking for is that the lead they purchase was submitted by a real person who is sincerely interested in making a purchase.

Also a fair return policy for the ones that are not ligit. That will only work if honest agents are dealing with honest vendors. When one or the other isn't, then problems occur and people get very unhappy.

 

[Crabcake Johnny]

Possibly a bidding system on the leads and let the quality speak for itself. On a bidding system, if I'm getting genuinely good leads that I'm closing for $10 a pop shared and the bid goes to $12, I'm right in there at $13.

This worked well for Vimo live transfers...which might set the "crash and burn" record for failure. They opened with a bang and a bidding system. I was doing well at around $25 for transfers and bid up to $35. Credits for BS. Then not even two weeks into it then disallowed all credits and their affiliates went mental trying to drive traffic with "$1 a day health insurance." What was once worth $30 became worth 5 cents.

 

[YouGotMyMoney]

One issue I see is this. Based on reviews here on this forum, we have two ends of the quality spectrum: HomeTownQuotes and InsuranceLeads.

From a serious buyer POV for health as an example, both have it wrong. IL didn't focus enough on quality and HTQ focuses TOO much on quality, to the effect of losing volume buyers.

There are a few lead companies who have a middle ground, and that's where the agents who spend over $2k a mo on leads are at.

So, in order to be successful you need a certain amount of volume buyers. That means you need affiliates. You need to be getting organic, and PPC leads via BrokersWeb/Surehits listings to get the volume in addition to having affiliates.

What are you going to offer affiliates to steal them away from their current vendor relationships?

For example, your not gonna get me to move for less than $15/lead.

 

[Frank Stastny]

Years ago I purchased Med Supp internet leads from a company called 1st Insurance Leads, I think that was the name of the company. They had a bidding system and the leads were definitely "exclusive".

I think they are $10 each based on zip code. If another agent was already getting them for the zip code I wanted I could out bid him. Sometimes I would go as high as $15. The quality was great and I made sales until one day the quality went in the toilet. I tried other internet lead companies and theirs were mostly junk.

I used them for about six months and then I stopped buying them, a short time later I tried to contact them again and the company vanished.

When it was working it worked very well and I liked the idea. They gave refunds on the "bad" leads and were a pleasure to work with when the leads were good. I'm sure that's why they went out of business.

 

[VolAgent]

The theme that seems to keep being repeated is this.

Everything was going great. The vendor was cranking out leads and everyone was making money. Suddenly, the vendor got greedy and no longer cared about quality. Very shortly I stopped buying leads and now the company is out of business.

 

[Frank Stastny]

The theme that seems to keep being repeated is this.

Everything was going great. The vendor was cranking out leads and everyone was making money. Suddenly, the vendor got greedy and no longer cared about quality. Very shortly I stopped buying leads and now the company is out of business.

What that tells me is that lead companies cannot make as much money as they want to make and still provide a quality lead at a fair market price with a reasonable credit for the ones that are bogus.

Are they greedy or is the current way they are doing it necessary to stay in business? Either way it doesn't seem to be working well for agents.

I can't justify that kind of expense and hassle when I can easily generate them all by myself.

 

[YouGotMyMoney]

Frank, how many hours of cold calling does it take you to generate 1 med supp sale?