(1888PressRelease)
November 22, 2007 - Mortgage Leads, Insurance leads, Consulting Leads, Real Estate Leads. You name it, if you are in a service business such as a mortgage broker, insurance agent, realtor or consultant; you have probably received e-mail spam or have seen numerous advertisements in trade magazines from companies who claim to have hot leads to potential customers ready to buy.
I too have seen and received many solicitations to purchase leads. When I was an Insurance Agent, I received spam and cold calls on a regular basis trying to get me to sign up for insurance leads. Although I initially resisted, I finally gave in and agreed to sign up to receive insurance leads from a well known insurance lead supplier. They wouldn’t sell me exclusive leads and I was charged $9.00 per lead.
It didn’t take long before I started receiving leads. I felt it was important to call on the lead immediately, not only because I was not receiving the leads exclusively, but also because consumers expect immediate service. I called and left messages on their home phone, cell phone and sent e-mails. I usually waited a day to receive a return call. When the call never came, I’d leave messages and e-mails again and typically never was able to reach most of the prospective leads. This soon became a very common pattern with each lead I sold to me from the lead generation company.
After receiving more leads, I did eventually connect with some people. Unfortunately, they weren’t ready to buy. In fact they seemed a little surprised by my call. After about 15 leads I started to get the feeling that these were not leads that were generated from a consumer inquiring about an insurance quote on a website somewhere. The leads seemed more like the result of a company cold calling and selling the mediocre results to the lead service that I was using.
Nevertheless, 20 leads later and nothing even remotely close to a sale, I decided to cancel the service. This turned out to be more difficult than I anticipated. I was only 45 days into a 90 day contract and as a result had to continue the lead service until the end of the contract term. However, when I asked them to cancel the service after the 90 day term, they said they could not pre-cancel and that I would have to call back after the remaining 45 days of the term were up and advise them to cancel at that time. Obviously they wanted to make it difficult for me and hoped that I would forget. I didn’t forget however, and cancelled the service at that time.
I have talked to other service businesses and professionals who have used lead services and none have told me that it’s a sure clad way of obtaining new clients. From the feedback I have received, it seems like closing ratios are 5% to 7% at the very most.
The question in my mind is if buying leads is an effective way to generate future clients? I would have to conclude that it once had the potential of being a fantastic way for business to acquire clients. Unfortunately, the current quality of leads being sold have turned what potentially could have been a cost effective method of obtaining clients to potential waste of money for the most part.
I have always felt that there has to be a better way to connect service businesses and professionals with potential clients. As a result, I developed http://www.YouRequire.com to be an online marketplace for consumers to find service businesses and professionals. Consumers can post a request for service, whether it’s looking for a mortgage broker, realtor, attorney, insurance agent or other service business or professional. These service requests are then forwarded to local service business and professional members of the site. Membership to the site is free, and so are the free leads that are distributed to the members from each service request.
It is my hope that service businesses and professionals will use YouRequire.com to obtain leads rather then other lead generation sites. Hopefully http://www.YouRequire.com will make it easier for consumers to shop for various services as well as make it easier and inexpensive for service businesses and professionals to find potential clients. If you are a professional or owner of a service business, I encourage you to join http://www.YouRequire.com. As more and more people use the site, the easier it will become for members to obtain leads and generate possible new clients.
