valuing the price of leads: is there a guide?

The first thing you have to figure out is how much it is worth to the business. Obviously a lead for a florist is going to be different than a lead to a plumber which is different than a lead to a lawyer.

You also need to take into consideration how hard it will be for you to get the leads, but I think primarily it should be based on the value to the customer otherwise you could end up underpricing yourself because the ranking wasn't too hard, etc.

that's what I mean though.. let's say a new customer for an accountant is worth $500 (just an arbitrary number here)... so how much is that lead worth? There must be a formula to help decide how much to price leads in various fields.

Id say base it on 10%-20% of the first sale worth of the new client, then upsell to train the business on how to increase the long term value of each client and thats where they adn you make the big bucks

I can only speak about law firms and leads. It depends on the type of lead, in other words is it a bankruptcy lead, an accident, a dog bite, medical malpractice etc. They all have set market prices and most lead vendors sell leads to multiple buyers.

However, selling leads to attorneys opens up a whole different can of worms. To put it simply, leads sold to attorneys MUST come from another attorney. This is an issue of fee splitting which is a serious offense. Serious enough to have an attorney disbarred. If you check out some lead landing pages for law firm leads, you'll see a disclaimer on the bottom of the page that states something along the lines of "the attorney responsible for this advertisement is.."

In addition, attorneys do not buy leads based on the potential outcome of a case. I promise you that if you ask an attorney how much a particular type of client is worth to them, you will hear a pretty fast click.

So my best advice to you is to not bother with leads for law firms unless you can satisfy all the required criteria.

Interesting, JMB. Thanks for that link & list. BTW I'm from Vancouver and I moved before the Olympics :'-(

I've been paid $1000 for a lead. Now I know this is stunning. It IS unusual. The reason is I provided a pain-driven lead to a Customer Relationship Management system (CRM) Value-Added Reseller (VAR) at the point which the sales team I handed it off to knew exactly what the prospect's underlying issues were. They wouldn't have to worry about price. All they had to do was tie up some loose ends on the technical side, which I really didn't care to do, and they'd get a great customer. This wasn't commission. They still had to "close" the deal.

Just like in the writing field, you can make as much money as your expertise is worth when generating leads for others. Of course, it's relative to the value of the solution you bring. The higher the value, the higher the skill level required. Select accordingly.

Further Thought:

The lifetime value of the client is a good idea. Then divide it by the number of prospects you typically must move through to get a sale. Dave Kurlan, who knows more about Sales than I do, says the number is around 9. Maybe fewer. That's manageable. So it's a $500 job; divide by 9 and you have $55. I think that's reasonable for a slightly qualified lead.