What’s Too Many…?

Today I would like to examine a question that many lead generators, lead buyers and marketers are asking themselves:

How many times should a lead be sold, what’s too many?

If you poll 100 people in the lead generating industries you’ll get a variety of answers with no clear cut answers. Most of the lead generators look at it from a revenue generating stand point.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to calculate out that if they can sell the same lead multiple times at the same rate they can triple and even quadruple their incoming revenues with no additional effort or spend on their side. So with this thinking, generators want to get the most bang for their generating efforts and sell that lead again and again and again.

 But how does this impact the lead buyer? The lead buyer knows that they have a much better chance of selling their products / services to an exclusive lead.  However, exclusive leads are more expensive than a shared lead and can be as much as 2-3 times the price of a shared lead. If you can afford exclusive leads go for it. These leads should perform much better than a lead being shared between you and 2, 3 or 4 of your competitors.

Here’s an important tip – If you buy shared leads you need to set up what’s ever necessary to get that lead from the lead generator near to real time as possible and follow up as soon as you get it. Believe me your competition is doing this exact thing!

Here’s another important tip - If you buy exclusive leads you need to set up what’s ever necessary to get that lead from the lead generator near to real time as possible and follow up as soon as you get it. Believe me your competition is doing this exact thing!

So what’s the correct answer? I don’t know and I don’t think anyone else really does either.  Poll enough people in the industry and you’ll get multiple answers.  Shared leads may work with ABC Widgets while only exclusive leads work for Acme Widgets. Don’t automatically accept the theory that paying twice as much for an exclusive lead won’t work simply because of the cost increase. That exclusive lead, while costing you more money initially, may increase your sales conversion substantially.

Test exclusive and shared leads and see what’s most cost effective, fits your budget and works best for you.