What About Leads?

“Leads” are a many splendored thing, especially in sales organizations that haven’t yet figured out the shortcuts that are actually short.

Leads fall nicely into the category called “Selling the Dream.”  Many who buy this Dream, too often are delivered the Nightmare, and not the shortcut.

There are exclusive leads, warm leads, hot leads, cold leads, info leads, referred leads, interested leads, guaranteed to buy leads, old leads, phone book leads, email leads, very interested leads, cheap leads, expensive leads, shit leads and even Glengarry Glenross leads, direct from Alec Baldwin, in his NYC accent.

All leads are wonderful.  And all leads suck.  Leads make perfect sense.  Until humans get involved.  Although a lead seller will swear it’s all highly reliable data, leads are human.  Uh oh.

I have bought insurance leads, life, health, telemarketing, direct response, B2B, LinkedIn, etc etc, in multiple industries over decades. 

No matter who the lead provider, prospects are people, and people are prone to do unexpected things.  Illogical things.  For example, buying things they don’t need and ignoring things they just said they were sure to buy.

From one perspective, providing leads is a great business to go into.  If the leads don’t work out, you still get paid, and you can just blame the salesperson for not closing.

If the leads do work out, that’s because your leads are so much better because anyone with a pulse can close them.

Almost as foolproof as selling guns to both sides of a war.

Only one small problem is that the business also attracts a lot of shysters and make-money-quick at everyone else’s expense kind of people.  They will be your competitors.

I have endured over a dozen of these lead generation demos recently, and it’s nearly impossible to tell them apart because nearly all of them say the same stuff to differentiate themselves.

Our leads are the best because blah, blah, blah, blah.  And you can trust me because our leads are exclusive and blah, blah, blah.  Exclusive, my ass.  Like a prospect only filled out YOUR advertising and no one else’s?  Really?  Good thing I’m stupid.

So if you go into that business, you better be unique enough not to be dragged down by your peers to compete on price and have a long-range plan to outlast the posers.

If you pull it off and create something worthwhile and unique, I will sign up waving a credit card with no limit.

Of course, you could also sell guns to both sides.  But I digress

Author: Paul Bunn

Practitioner, student, and trainer and coach in High Probability Selling for over a quarter century. View all posts by Paul Bunn