Paid 4k for exclusive leads three other people were already calling

Vendor sold me what they called exclusive motivated seller leads, $200 each, minimum 20. Their pitch was that everything came from paid ads, so these were owners raising their hand rather than cold records off a list. I bought 20.

First call, the woman said she'd already talked to three people that week and asked if I was with the same company. Second call, same. By lead nine I'd stopped being surprised.

I went back to the vendor and they pointed at their terms, which said the leads were exclusive to my ZIP codes, not exclusive to me. Different sentence than the one on the sales page, and I'd read the sales page. That's on me, I signed without reading the agreement.

Of 20 leads: 14 answered, 11 had already been contacted, 2 were renters who didn't own the house, 1 was a genuine seller who'd already signed with somebody else at a price I couldn't have beaten. Zero contracts. $4,000 gone, three weeks of calls.

What I'd do differently: ask in writing how many buyers receive each lead and get the answer in the agreement before paying, and buy 3 leads as a test even if the minimum is 20, which they'd probably have done if I'd pushed.

4 replies

2bmoreno23AB1B

I've got no experience with this yet, so I'm asking honestly. If the owner filled out a form saying sell my house, why would they be surprised that four people called? Aren't they expecting that?

2Rena Expert

ember, it depends on where the form was. An owner who fills in a form on one company's ad usually thinks they contacted one company. Lead vendors buy ad traffic and resell the same submission to several buyers, sometimes at the same moment, sometimes on a delay. The owner experiences that as four strangers calling about a form they filled in once, which is why the conversation opens defensive.

flint, the word exclusive does almost no work in this market. The questions that do work are how many buyers receive each lead, whether resale happens after a delay and how long that delay is, and what the refund rule is for a lead that turns out to be a renter or a wrong number. Get those answers in the agreement, since the sales page isn't the contract. Whether that page creates any obligation is a question for a lawyer in your state, and it's worth one hour of somebody's time before you sign a recurring agreement.

On the numbers, your 20 leads at $200 gave 14 conversations. That's a 70 percent contact rate, which is far better than cold data will give you. The reason it produced nothing is that you arrived fourth to a seller who had already been priced. Being first is most of what you're buying in off-market work, so a lead that's shared four ways is a different product than the one you thought you bought, at the same price.

Whether paid leads make sense for you depends on your close rate on conversations you generate yourself. If you don't know that number yet, you can't tell whether $200 is expensive.

1gregpowell66AG4BPRO8

11 of 14 already contacted and the vendor still calls it exclusive. That's a wording problem they get paid for.

flint, did you ask for anything back? I've had suppliers on the construction side fold instantly when I quoted their own marketing copy at them in an email. Not because they were wrong legally, they just don't want it in writing.

Paid 4k for exclusive leads three other people were already calling

4 replies