Making the Most of Your Bankruptcy Leads
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009For many businesses that rely on lead generation, maximizing return on leads can be the difference between profitability and bankruptcy. Especially in tough economic times, it is more preferable to spend time on revenue-generating activities than on time wasters like dealing with bad leads. Fortunately there are ways to improve your lead handling approach, a major part of which is your selection of lead providers.
Price
It’s easy to compare leads providers based solely on price. If Company ABC charges $25 and Company XYZ charges $35 then ABC is better, right?
Well, not exactly. The price of leads does hit your bottom line as a business expense, but that expense will be offset by the revenues you ultimately generate from those leads. Thus, the real measure is how profitable those leads are. For Bankruptcy Attorneys, then, the real measurement of leads providers is the quality of their leads.
Quality
In most industries, higher quality can demand higher prices. (Witness the difference between buying a Rolls Royce and a Kia, or hiring Julia Roberts vs. that kid from your high school theater class.) With lead generation, the quality of a lead involves several factors:
- Is the individual an actual real person? — We’ve all chuckled at the Bart Simpson phone pranks, but getting leads from “Hugh Jass” and “Amanda Hugandkiss” is not funny when you’re having to pay for them. Unfortunately, a small percentage of these leads is to be expected in the lead generation business. The question is this: Does your leads provider make you waste time debating each one individually, or do they offer you a standard bad leads credit on your monthly bill?
- Can the individual be reached? — Sometimes, the individual filling out a lead form mistypes their contact information or omits an area code, yielding an unusable phone number or email address. Alternately, they might have entered all their information perfectly but for whatever reason are not available to be reached. We covered ways to track down hard to reach leads in a prior post. Every one of these leads that can be tracked down can be transformed into a quality lead.
- Is the individual interested in the product/service in question? — Think about a typical car buyer… They shop around for a while, narrowing down the make and model of car, until finally deciding what they want. Only then do they transition from “shopping” to “buying.” Similarly, individuals filling out your lead generation form may only be in the “shopping” stage. Depending on your industry, these leads may not be cost effective at all.
- Is the individual ready to “pull the trigger?” — You could have a great lead, good contact info, and they’re interested in the product/service you provide. What good is the lead if they already found another provider? Even worse, what good is the lead if your own leads provider sold the lead to one of your competitors first?!? (For that matter, what good is your leads provider?)
It’s easy to see how something as simple as buying leads can quickly become complex. When looking for a quality lead provider, the bottom line should always be quality of leads. That means you should look for:
- Some sort of “bad leads credit” on your monthly bill
- A higher percentage of leads that are ready to buy
- A leads provider that hasn’t already sold your leads to somebody else
Using these criteria to judge your lead provider and working this program can help make your leads, and your business, more profitable.