The fee math on 62 leads only worked because of one rule I set

$9,400 on $840 of spend across seven months reads fine until you price your hours. What were the hours? I've watched people run this and land somewhere near $14 an hour once you count the driving and the calls that go nowhere, which is still fine if the actual product is the relationship with two active buyers. Sounds like that's what you were buying, so the fee was a rebate on tuition.

6.5 percent on 62 is 4.03, so you're one closing away from either 4.8 percent or 8 percent and the sample can't tell those apart. I'd stop quoting the rate and quote the two numbers that are stable, which are your $840 of spend and the $9,400 of fees.

The 19 predictable rejects bother me more than the conversion. That's 30 percent of your output wasted on criteria that fit in a paragraph. Did neither investor volunteer them, or did you not ask? Because if they wouldn't put price band and property types in writing, I'd read that as them not valuing your time, and I'd want to know that in week one too.

The one lead one investor rule is the part I'd keep. I've been on the receiving end in a small way, three addresses passed to me by a guy who does lawn work on my block, and he sent two of them to another buyer the same week. I found out because the seller mentioned two people had called. It didn't cost me money, it cost him me. I don't take his leads anymore.

@meridian, what happens when the investor sits on it for three weeks and doesn't say yes or no? Does the date he passed exist if he never actually passes?

Running a small team, the exclusion criteria thing is the same failure I have with intake on service work. If you don't write down what you won't do, someone spends a day on it.

One suggestion. Turn their answers into a five line checklist and put it at the top of your own lead sheet, then have the investor initial it once. Not because it's binding, it just forces them to actually answer instead of saying "send me anything good." "Send me anything good" cost you $840 worth of nothing.

The attribution fix @meridian describes is the operationally important part of this post, and it's worth being clear about what it does and doesn't do.

A dated email with the address in the subject and a confirmation of receipt gives you a record of what you sent and when. It doesn't create a claim to a fee. The claim comes from the fee agreement, and if that agreement is verbal you're relying on the investor's willingness to honor it. Two things commonly go wrong. The investor already had the address from his own list pull, which happens more often as court sourced probate, tax delinquency and pre foreclosure data gets easier to buy, and duplicate discovery is the main competitive pressure on this role right now. And the deal closes months later through an entity the investor doesn't mention, at which point the trigger event in your agreement matters a great deal.

On @cairn's question about a lead going stale, the usual mechanism is a stated review window written into the arrangement, for example the investor has 10 business days to say yes, no, or already have it, and after that the lead is free. Silence counts as a pass. That's a term you negotiate, not a rule that exists on its own.

One caution on the shopping question underneath this thread. Passing information for a fee is the scouting role. Marketing the same property to multiple buyers while representing what the seller will accept starts to look like brokering in a number of states, and where that line sits depends on your state statute and commission interpretation, so confirm your specific setup with an attorney licensed in your state. @meridian's one lead one investor rule happens to keep the conduct simple as well as the accounting.

The line I'd want in writing is the one nobody thinks about, which is what closing means. I've read a finder's fee arrangement that said payable at closing and the investor closed by taking an assignment of a contract from a third party, then argued that his closing hadn't happened yet because he never took title. He was being cute, and he still paid, four months late.

So define the trigger as any transaction in which the investor or any entity he controls acquires an interest in the property or assigns a contract on it. And put a date on it, 10 days after funding, not "after closing." @meridian, your $2,900 fee, how long from close to check?