While you will understand the sarcasm in the advise, you can really grow your business by avoiding these pitfalls. If the list looks too long or if you think, if following the best practices is a waste of time, then you have to rethink you business strategies.

#1 Buy old / aged leads generated via Internet: This is self explanatory, I guess. Buying old leads is a recipe for disaster. The consumers (and businesses) want immediate response when they submit their contact information on the internet. When you buy old leads, there is every possibility that the prospect has been contacted already by one or more sellers and they tired of talking to more sellers.

#2 Decide by Lead Pricing: Use the Lead Price as the primary decision making criterion. When there is a clear quantitative factor, why bother about other qualitative factors?

#3 Don’t waste your time by researching Lead Sources: There are tons of lead providers and sources if you it Google. It is physically impossible to research, verify and validate lead sources. They why bother? Just pick the top one or two sources and order the leads.

#4 Don’t bother about leadgen methods and practices: You are paying and buying leads. Just trust that your lead provider will do every rule in the book and make sure that you are getting the right leads. After all you have too much to do and cannot waste time investigating what your vendor does, right?

#5 Do not open email box in the evening; you can call the prospects tomorrow: Don’t you have a life? Just because the lead information was sent by your lead vendor in the late afternoon, you cannot afford to lose your baseball game on the television. Remember that your competitor who got the same lead info would have contacted the prospect and closed the deal. Also, revisit point #1 above.

#6 Trust your Lead Supplier: You spent a lot of time sifting through all the search queries in Google or Yahoo and finally have chosen a lead supplier. Can you doubt the capabilities of the vendor who came on top of the search results? Also remember that they had a flashy website and busy sales reps.

#7 Don’t generate leads on your own: It is time taking and painful to generate your own leads, even only a fraction of what you need. Why spend time in understanding the technology buzzwords and deciphering the jargon? You strength is working the phone.

#8 Deal in multiple lead verticals; one might work: Try your hand in multiple segments or verticals. Core competency is an old phrase.

#9 Don’t be proactive: Well, you have spent awful lot of time in learning new things. After a couple of months, you hear that there are new toys in the game. How many times a person can keep updating stuff? Who invented this continuous improvement process, as if you are manufacturing air plane engine?

#10 Don’t deploy a web based Lead Tracking and Management system: The email is easy to handle. You can take a peek and act on it immediately. If required, you can also throw in a couple of spreadsheets and cut and paste the prospect information. Why waste energy learning a new tool?

You got the idea now. Unfortunately, internet adds to the complexities in life, contrary to the claims that internet simplifies life. Whether you like it or not, if you want to sell anything (or grow a business), leveraging internet is critical. If you don’t want to lose money in the web lead buying process, practice the opposite of the above mentioned advise and you will reap the benefits. Happy selling! Or buying Internet Leads!

Many lead distribution companies and agencies, especially when they are new to the online lead generation and distribution business, struggle to survive and grow. While it looks easy and enticing from the outside world, it is often laborious and error prone, unless you understand the intricacies of the web lead sales business.

Customer Feedback

The other day, I was speaking with one of our long time customers who has branched out recently into online lead generation for a specific industry niche. Whenever I have a chance to speak with the clients, I always make sure that I inquire about their business with questions such as (1) if they are doing good, (2) how is the industry doing, (3) how their CUSTOMERS are doing, (4) their sales projections and actual sales numbers, (5) technology trends in the industry, and (6) how we could help them further by adding / enhancing our lead distribution and management software solution.

I make sure that this conversation is casual and personal, rather than formal and rigid. If you ask these questions genuinely, most of the customers respond positively and open their thoughts. It gives a chance for them to reflect on their business from a different (supplier’s) perspective. Unlike formal online surveys sent via email invites, which is a great tool to collect customer feedback and opinion, this personal one-to-one discussion can be constructed instantly based on the situation without any pre-planning. The conversation could be a couple of minutes or it can be 20 or 15 minutes depending on the customer’s comfort level and positive engagement.

Leadgen Case Study

Coming back to my specific discussion with a client, I inquired about quite a few support requests from him. He responded immediately saying that several of his customers have dropped out immediately and he had to make changes in the system configuration to alter the lead delivery flow for other customers.

When I probed further about the reasons for clients dropping out, he mentioned that they were buying leads from a new internet lead generation media agency and it seems that the conversion rates for these leads were very low.

He immediately started researching the lead sourcing practices. As you know, many leadgen companies will not give you the sources or methods of their leadgen practices. He found out after some research that the leads were generated using co-generation method! Obviously, it was not their first choice of the online subscribers. Probably the visitors were either forced or enticed into opting into the additional service categories.

Generally, the leads generated using co-registration methods will convert less. These could be used  for long term nurturing or up-sell processes, but not for immediate telephone follow-up.

This scenario shows how your lead quality can be affected without even your knowledge. Hence lead sourcing (or buying internet leads) should be taken as a continuous improvement process. The quality of purchased or outsourced leads can change overnight as the affiliates and media agencies change their processes.

Solution

If you want to be successful in lead generation business, you have to leverage third party lead vendors. If you need to use vendors, you have to be proactive in doing the research on their leadgen practices and make sure that the led quality is on par with the leads generated by your own company using pay per click (PPC) or search engine optimization (SEO) strategies. Also, measuring the consistency of lead quality on an ongoing balance is an essential step. As mentioned earlier, you don’t need a special measurement tool for this; just speak with your clients. Another easy check is to see if they are placing repeat orders with you. If not, you have a problem on hand and you need to diagnose the same for treatment. Happy selling!

Per LeadCouncil website, the organization’s objective is to create and increase awareness about online the lead generation and distribution business. In addition, it will also help to connect the lead buyers and lead sellers using tools such as directories, research studies, certification, etc.

Online lead technology vendors who provide software and related services for lead generation, distribution, delivery and management will also be part of the membership organization.

The impact and success of the organization will become clear in the next few months. We need to wait and see how small organizations will be brought on board, as most of the online lead vendors and buyers fall into this category.

Apart from evangelizing, I assume that the organization will take up public policy and advocacy related activities in the longer term. You may take a look at the LeadsCouncil website and explore if it is worth associating your business with the independent alliance.

#1 Lead Posting / Integration Options to meet your Customer Requirements

Most lead buyers will be have different lead posting requirements depending on their lead distribution, delivery and management system. The following are some of the options, which in turn will need customization or minor tweaking:

• Basic HTTP Posting
• Advanced HTTP Posting with return of critical information
• SOAP based API
• Advanced Authentication
• Fixed / Converted  data formats

If your lead provider cannot have multiple lead posting options with flexibility, you may not be able to satisfy certain customer requirements.

#2 Capabilities of Lead Vendor’s Technical Team

Even if the lead posting system is flexible enough, the customers will come with a ton of custom requests. Unless your vendor’s technical team is capable and willing to address these requirements, customer needs cannot be met.

#3 Response Time to address Technical Requests

The vendor support team should be agile and quick to respond to the requests. The turnaround time should be short enough to service the customers. Your lead providers should be flexible to accommodate the work at short notice. For example, if you need to post 100 sample leads to a large customer’s lead management or CRM system, the same should be done within hours; not in days or weeks, unless it requires super customization!

#4 Quality of Leads

Assuming that the vendor is able to deliver leads in time, the quality plays an important role in lead conversion rate. Understanding Vendor’s Web Traffic Generation strategies and processes might help you get an insight into the lead quality. Other traditional methods such as reference check will add great value in this area.

#5 Optimum Pricing

As pricing is relative to the quality and performance of the leads, evaluating and arriving at an optimum price is critical. The pricing is very elastic and hence the vendor’s pricing should be assesses based on both objective and subjective factors.

While evaluating lead vendors and partners, the above considerations should be factored in. If you are new to the business you may be content with your lead generation using Search Engine Marketing (SEO and PPC) and Social Media / Web 2.0 strategies. However using lead gen vendors who specialize in specific verticals and have long experience is required to scale up your lead business operations. Any missteps in lead buying will lead to customer churn and loss of revenue. Hence spend some time researching the vendors and their processes, ask questions and make a decision that will be a win-win for both the all the parties concerned.

Here are 5 key considerations that you should take into account while choosing a Lead Distribution Software Service for your business.

#1 Flexible Software System

The lead distribution software should be flexible to accommodate all your requirements. A large / complex system may not necessarily mean it is flexible. You should weigh your current requirements and needs in the near future. If you are new to the lead generation and distribution business, invest some time in understanding the systems in the marketplace, industry practices, and technology developments. Remember that online lead generation and distribution business is closely tied to the internet technology trends.

#2 Match your business requirements

As mentioned above, a ton of features in the lead system may not address your business specific requirements. Understand your verticals, do some research or consult with couple online lead generation and distribution consultants. Money spent on these aspects will be worth the investment in terms of risk avoidance and mitigation.

#3 Agile technical support and services

If the software service provider is a behemoth and you are small business organization, probably they may not match your speed. Success of internet lead generation and distribution is all about timing and great customer support. You cannot be waiting for days and weeks to address specific technical support requirements. Remember that the internet works 24X7 and consumer lead requests are generated 24X7. If someone says that “our implementation team lead is on vacation for couple of days and hence the lead posting integration has to wait until next week”, better watch out. You customers (lead buyers) can just opt for another lead provider in a matter of minutes.

#4 Full Service as an option – a must

While you may prefer to go with self service options in the initial phases of your lead business, full service option will be way to go once you establish yourself. You must focus on generating leads and signing up customers, not on day to day technical operations management, unless you are restricted to a small niche which will leave you with plenty of free time. Make sure that your lead distribution software provider has the full service option when you need it.

#5 Double as your Business Consultant

As I mentioned above, the internet industry and online lead generation practices undergo constant change. You might be often needing help in using the technology trends to your advantage. A good lead system service provider can help you leverage the technology in terms of lead generation as well as distribution and delivery improvements. Small customizations and tweaks to the processes would be able to bring in significant benefits and maximize profit. For example, if you are generating internet leads using Pay Per Click (PPC) method with Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc., managing the campaigns could be integrated with the real time lead delivery system, so  that you can save money when sufficient lead orders are not available. If your system can help in Tracking and managing the demand for real time leads, it will be a great help for you as a business owner / executive. You would be able to figure out other improvements and benefits by working with your service provider acting as a consultant.

While there are several other factors to be considered while choosing a lead distribution system, these five key considerations should be the top ones in your mind. Whether you are operating in one lead vertical or in multiple industry segments, you can leverage lead distribution the tool to grow your business.

Depending on your business needs, you can pick and choose the features to be used and leave the rest of the functions. Though web based lead distribution and delivery solutions such as LeadPro247 are easy to use, you should understand the underlying principles and concepts of lead generation and distribution, in order to maximize the benefits of deploying such software. The above chart shows a high level overview of the LeadPro247 lead distribution solution. This is applicable for any lead generation distribution software service.

Note that the lead generation is not the core function of a Lead Distribution system. However, it helps to integrate with the landing pages and registration forms and capture the leads. In other words, lead generation websites and the lead system have to work together. For more detailed discussion on Landing Page principles, design and deployment, please take a look at the other posts on the subject in this blog.

To summarize, the following are the functions of any lead generation capture and distribution system:

• Integrate with Lead Capture landing pages (used for lead generation)
• Interface with 3rd party lead vendors, affiliates and partners to capture / collect leads from their systems
• De-dupe, Srub, Validate, and Verify leads captured
• Maintain lead buyer / client profiles, including delivery methods and payment modes
• Maintain Sales Rep info and provide sales / commission statements
• Maintain lead order parameters and filters for each client’s orders
• Distribute exclusive / shared leads to lead buyers based on filters and conditions via the Lead Distribution Engine
• Deliver leads to lead clients via Email / SMS text messaging / API interfaces / HTTP posting / Fax / Back office Lead Retrieval System, etc. based on the buyers’ preferences
• Process payment via credit card gateways or accept manual payments
• Accept credit requests from buyers for bad / invalid / duplicate leads
• Process credit requests and provide substitute leads
• Provide lead capture, delivery and sales statistics for lead distributors / companies
• Back office access to view / manage / download leads delivered

As mentioned earlier, you may not be needing all the features and functions for your business. Also, some of the Lead Distribution and Delivery systems may miss some of the features and have more frills. You need to research and evaluate the software system before finalizing the deployment.

The blog will include the following categories of resources, among others:

• Insurance lead management best practices
• Lead tracking tools, software and services
• Tips and tricks
• Lead management Guides
• Resource links
• Insurance Lead generation practices and processes
• Leveraging social media for customer acquisition, retention and service
• Internet lead buying – concerns, issues and best practices
• Lead distribution and routing engines
• Lead quality
• Lead nurturing with drip emails and follow-up tracking
• Lead conversion issues
• Technology trends and impact on insurance agencies
• Industry happenings
• Tutorials, webinars, etc.

Insurance verticals

The site will not be restricted to any particular vertical or segment. It will cover all segments and insurance types including individual insurance and group  insurance practices. Whether you are a single agent practice or a multi-agent, multi-location insurance agency, the site will be a great service.

Health, Life, LTC, Automobile, Homeowners, Business / Commercial, Annuities, RV/Boat, and Renters Insurance related information will be included in the blog resource.

If you are direct user of the leads generated, then you will be wasting your sales team’s time and efforts with poor quality leads. Implementing Lead Verification as part of your lead generation, capture and distribution will help you control lead costs and improve the lead generation methods.

Business to Consumer (B2C) leads are prone to much more misuse and quality issues, when compared with Business to Business (B2B) leads. However, Lead verification can be used for both type of leads. As an aside, you may take a look at an earlier post on 10 Tips to Improve Lead Quality in Lead Generation, if you have not seen it earlier.

Lead Quality Improvement

The quality of leads reaching the sales team or the lead buyers can be controlled to a great extent by employing multiple methods. These include:

• Lead Scrubbing
• Lead Validation
• Lead Verification

Note that these are post-capture processes and hence you cannot control the quality of leads at the point of sign-up, registration or generation. Let us discuss the Point of Lead Capture quality considerations in other posts.

Lead Scrubbing

Lead Scrubbing is a simple lead cleansing process. A set of words or text strings generally used by the online fraudsters are used as a reference point and the key properties of incoming leads are matched against the same. Any matches are marked as such and scrubbed. The following lead profile properties are used for scrubbing:

• Email Address
• First Name
• Last Name
• Company Name

Lead Validation

Lead Validation is the process of validating the lead data for correct format and layout. Examples of lead properties used for Lead Validation are:

• Email Address
• First Name
• Last Name
• Phone / Fax Numbers
• Zip / Postal Code
• State / Province Code
• Country Code
• Numeric Data fields

The lead distribution and management system can validate the formats and flag the leads, if found to be invalid. Note that most of these validations can be performed on the landing pages and hence you can save a bunch of money if you can implement these checks at the point of sign-up! However, if you are buying leads from affiliates and publishers, and not directing traffic to your own landing pages, then you may not have much control on your landing pages. Post-capture validation is the only option in such cases.

Lead Verification

Online Lead Verification is the most valuable and intensive quality assessment process which comes to the aid of lead generation companies and distributors. Again, this is a post-lead-capture process and hence you can not prohibit the bad leads hitting your marketing / leads database. However, by deploying suitable Lead Verification process, you can verify the lead parameters and then make a decision whether to pass on the lead to the lead buyer or your sales team.

As the name suggests, the lead verification is carried out generally online and hence can be used in real time lead generation and distribution situations. Once the lead information is received from the landing pages, the lead management system will subject the key data elements to dozens of tests and determine the quality of the lead.

The following lead parameters are used to verify the lead. Obviously, if the lead captured does not contain all these data elements, then the quality assessment will be less accurate.

• First name

• Last name

• Email Address

• Address

• Phone Number

• Gender

• Date of Birth

• IP Address

Based on the input values, the verification process will return the corrected values as well as a set of useful quality parameters (which may vary from system to system). Most of useful will be Overall Quality score, Overall Quality Result, and type / technology of telephone numbers provided. It may also provide alternate telephone number and address. Let us dedicate any post entirely for Lead Verification processes and services.

At the highest level, the Overall Quality Score can be used to take an instant decision and treat the lead accordingly. For example, if the score is leass than 50, probably the quality may not be very high and hence you may avoid selling it to your high value customers.

Since Lead Verification involves comparision with millions of publich and proprietory database records, the verification services are generally provided as a per transaction fee based service. The typical cost per transaction varies from 25 cents to 35 cents based on volume of leads verified on monthly basis.

Conclusion

Choosing and employing the lead quality assessment strategies is a scenario specific one. What is highly recommened for a specific scenario may not be suitable for another business case. Hence you need to weigh your specific use and determine the optimum deployment. If you can offord the cost and resources and required inputs are available, certainly employing more than one process is recommended. As a note of caution, employing the lead verification process does not mean that you can rest easy; you have to constantly reassess the lead sources, processes, and results and improve the procedures as required.

Inman News TV posted a brief interview with Dave Wengal of Targus Info recently. As Targus Info is one of the leading service providers vouching for lead quality,  Dave’s observations are interesting for industry insiders as well as newbies.

Many lead distribution software providers have established relationship with Targus Info in order to integrate their Lead Quality Verification feature.

Another interesting observation is that Dave states that Pay Per Call is taking off as a new lead generation strategy. If I understand correctly, this is same as that of “Call Me” button feature provided on web sites several years back, but never gained momentum. Let us wait and see if it clicks in this reincarnation.

If you are a GSA (General Sales Agency), the lead distribution is essentially a function of assigning the leads to your agents based on certain rules and policies.

Lead generation firms and lead sellers distribute the leads based on their sales lead distribution rules to meet the requirements of the lead buyers (independent or captive agents and / or insurance agency firms).

Distribution for Insurance Agency

Since over 75% of US population is using the internet and the internet is increasingly used to buy and research  products and services such as insurance policies by the consumers, internet based insurance leads have become a source of business for insurance agencies.

Whether you are generating your own leads on the internet or purchasing leads from internet lead vendors, quick and efficient distribution of leads to your agent is of prime importance.

Using an automated lead distribution and management system, the leads can be captured from your web sites as well as the lead vendors’ systems. Entire process of manual entry of prospect information into the lead management system can be avoided by picking a suitable lead distribution software system. Of course, the leads collected by traditional means such as networking meetings, seminars, personal visits and phone calls can also be entered into the system, so that the leads can be managed and tracked in a central database.

Once the prospects are in the system, these can be distributed to your agents in real time using preset rules. Some of the options for distribution are:

• Geography (such as County, Zip Code)
• Seniority of the Agent
• Type / Profile of Lead
• Round Robin method

Distribution Options for Lead vendors

Lead Vendors can use an effective Insurance Lead Distribution System to collect the leads in the database from their own lead generation sources and third party sources, distribute the leads to their clients in real time based on extensive filter criteria, process payments based on order conditions, track and process lead credit requests / returns, and obtain sales reports.

The following criteria could be used for real time insurance lead distribution:

• Geography (State, County, Zip codes)
• Lead Types
• Lead Profile parameters (such as preexisting conditions, current insurance situation, past incidents, etc.)
• Client Priority
• Exclusivity (ex. Exclusive, Non-exclusive, Semi-exclusive)
• Number of Times Lead Distributed
• Carrier Restriction
• Volume Pricing
• Price of a Lead
• Payment Status

The leads can be delivered in real time using instant email alert notifications to the agents or agencies. The lead information can also be provided as an attachment in CSV or XML form depending on the lead buyer requirement.

The lead buyers can also be provided access to the lead tracking system, so that the leads can be tracked online for increasing lead conversion rates. This could be a great value addition for the customers.

The insurance lead distribution and management systems such as LeadPro247 will generally support unlimited leads clients and online payment processing based on the payment terms agreed on. The clients can also make credit requests for invalid leads using the online system, which will lead to increased customer satisfaction.

Insurance Lead Types

Many insurance lead vendors and agencies deal with multiple insurance verticals. The insurance lead distribution and management software systems generally support the following lead types, unless it is a specific industry oriented system.

• Health Insurance Leads
• Life Insurance Leads
• Home Owner Insurance Leads
• Mortgage Protection Insurance Leads
• Auto Insurance Leads
• Renters Insurance Leads
• RV / Motorcycle / Boat Insurance Leads
• Annuities

However, the system must be capable of handling the specific lead profiles for each insurance type.

The system must also be configurable and flexible to suit your specific requirements. LeadPro247 Insurance Lead Distribution System is one such system tuned to the requirements of the insurance marketing vertical. Whether you are a muti-agent, national marketing insurance agency or a lead provider catering to the insurance lead buyers, the system will help you distribute, track and manage the leads. If you are an independent or captive agent, the system can be beneficialy used to track, nurture with drip email marketing (with built-in autoresponder service) and track the leads for better conversion.