Selling phone lead gen: How to weed out junk calls?

I get a load of junk calls in my business. It's a part of hanging out your shingle. I don't like getting bombarded by marketers, but it's necessary to deal with the masses to mine out the people selling things that you actually need. I don't know a way around it.

Don't be on pages 2-6 in Google for any keyword + city / city + keyword... At least the SEO guys will stop calling... A lot of other marketers too.

No matter what you do, you will never be able to weed out all of the crap calls, wrong numbers, telemarketers, etc, etc. There are a few things you can do to lessen the amount drastically.

First of all, you should invest in something like Analytic Call Tracking, Hot Prospector, wp call tracker, twilio scripting, etc if you are going to continue with twilio numbers. Or you can go with something like Callrail, ring central, etc. These applications/services allow you to start global number blocking lists that can easily be added to on a number by number basis or in bulk. Also, most of these have call classification, so you or your client can log into classify the calls as leads, hangups, answering machine, spam, etc. Then set it up to only bill for the ones you want to bill and bypass the rest.

Second is to know where you are putting your number and where it gets put without you knowing about it. If you did a coupon mailing, then you need to re-examine that mailing list. If it was from the client, where did they get it from. If you got it, find out more about it. If you just used a service, find out more about that....because it is very possible that your list is the exact reason why your number is being spammed so much.

If you put your number online on a website you own, do it in the form of a image and not text. There is no reason that you need anyone scraping your website for your virtual phone number in the text. Only marketers do that and no reason for them to call it. If you are using methods that need to have text, try to make sure that the phone number text can be changed and is editable after the fact. So you can change numbers if you have to due to the number being compromised due to spam.

This moves us into the fact that it best to have a few number setup and ready for each campaign. It puts you in the mindset that you are not locked into a number and if one is bad from the start or goes bad, you can drop it without losing everything for a while. There are times when you just buy a bad number from twilio, but you should always turn the number on for a few weeks before putting it into a live client campaign. So you can weed out any numbers that get a ton of spam already or belonged to someone from a previous business that is still listed places, etc. You will easily know when a number is bad if you are getting calls but have not put the number anywhere yourself....drop it and get a new one.

IN terms of blocking numbers, you will quickly start seeing a pattern of numbers that belong to the bad callers and you can easily start blocking those patterns. Much better to block 80% of the spam and a few leads then to allow that 80% to piss off the client.

A trick I have been using for a while is to set up an IVR system on my lead campaigns that is just a middle point but does the same thing. So the callers hears an IVR system with 2 options, press 1 to discuss a free quote and press 2 for all other inquiries. This easily drops many automated calling systems that are setup in a weak way, it forces the caller to press something so there has to be a human involved and most new leads will use the first option, while "most" returning customers(that called same number), telemarketers, etc etc use option 2. Then option 1 and 2 are sent to the same number with different whispers. Whisper 1 is "A New Quote Lead", whisper 2 "General Inquiry". Then the client knows when a new quote request is calling and when everything else is calling, plus easier to manage the call tracking, identification and billing if most is going through one option over the other with some simple reporting.

As for billing. If you are having trouble with bad leads, low quality that the client complains about, etc...then the only thing to do is to listen to the first few seconds of each call. In those first few seconds you can tell if it is a marketer or someone calling about buying or information about a service the client provides. Once you start only providing good leads, then it is just auto billing what ever you consider a qualified lead, by minimum call length usually. Then it is up to the client to tell you the date of the Non Lead calls if there are any.

I use ACT (Joe Troyer Analytic Call Tracking) They still come but I can block the number. So the same number will not call twice.

Once again love what CageyVet is bringing to the table here. Even though there are certainly ways that you can prevent many of the calls from coming through, you are never going to have a 100 percent flawless list. It just does not happen. Better off just trying to make the most of it and getting your list organized as best you can.

We are doing hundreds of calls a day and you have to get some form of blocking in place. We have our own customer call tracking/billing software and we block about 90% of the calls and it saves a TON of money on your Number Minutes.

There is also a service out there called NoMoRobo.com which is free and you can be integrated as well...

We used to have problems with our Lead Purchasers not wanting to answer the phone when only 1 in 10 calls were a good lead, but now days just about every time our customers pick up the phone it is a good call and the few Telemarketers that go get thru are blocked IMMEDIATELY!!!

It was a "Game Changer" for us.

Matt,

I was working on this today and I can't seem to find a way to use Twilio Numbers. It is very weird that Nomorobo uses Twilio as it's backend telephony but it doesn't support Twilio numbers. Unfortunately Nomorobo seems like so many other products that has so much potential but falls short from follow thru with the developer. I'm sure I'll find a way to hack it and make it work, but let me know if you find any better results.

And just to make a few points that were mentioned on this ticket.

1. There are so many better products with better support than Joe Troyers ACT product. Those guys just want the extra income and don't really care about your service. They claim to have the good support but they actually only made about 25 tiny code changes in a 2 year period. At best they are for Noobies. It was so profitable they came out with their monthly service to get even more money out of noobies.

2. We find that the AUTO BILLING method that CageyVet mentioned actually misses a lot of billable calls.

What we find is many calls can take place in the time-span less than 60 or 90 seconds that are billable. I believe Winter's system auto bills based on time and he tends to use 2 or 3 minute (120 - 180 seconds), which is WAAAY to long in our experience.

What we find is some contractors will catch on and simply tell the caller to call them back on another number and the total call is only 20 seconds long.

or;

A perfectly good Billable call just takes place in less time because an operator simply took a message to get a call back. Call Duration really varies alot depending on the niche as well. And we find different salepeople have varying duration of calls; so there are to many factors to simply bill based on call duration.

We programmed our system so we can do a quick manual review of all calls which only requires you to listen to the first few seconds of the call to determine if it is billable or not. Do this we find it produces quite a bit more billable calls. I would have to say 30% more off the top of my head.

Once the calls are reviewed, they are then sent automatically to billing cron job that sends invoices, process credit cards and CHA-CHING!!

The extra few seconds reviewing calls will pay off!

why not have a VA screen calls for you and transfer accordingly. If you set up a VICIDIAL then you can transfer and record the call, that way proving the call was legit and billable, thus being able to charge more for the leads you create. FYI sending coupons may not be the best way to generate leads, direct mail only yields 1/2 % response rates. Very expensive when you are just selling leads.

Try the attached report to help you. I have a guy on my list who bagged a client his first week, just last week I believe... and has 4 more waiting in the wings. Getting clients is easy... As far as pitching, and writing quality leads: this report (FREE- No Optin- No self promotion-No Upsells), will help you tremendously.

You should always guarantee up to 10% "re-writes", in case any lead goes out that's unqualified. Figure that into your equation. That guarantee will also help you close deals and get paid upfront. Additionally, when you use that guarantee in your sales pitch, it let's the client know ahead of time that there may be a UQ here and there, so they won't go ballistic, and they know you have it covered. (Expectations Management).

However, using the information here, "UQ's" should be rare henceforth.

Again, the report is attached to post, and it doesn't lead into any kind of sale or anything like that... I say that in case someone wants to flag it as self promotional and hinder me from helping you here...

You want to succeed at this? Read it!

I have seen more than a few people succeed at starting a phone lead gen biz after reading this information and applying it.

It's been awhile since I've revisited it, but I don't think there is anything you need to know that it doesn't cover. Others have succeeded with it, and I haven't heard any complaints. The only way to fail is to not implement it.

Enjoy.


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If you are using Twilio, its easy to block automated telemarketers and robocalls.

Set up short recording and use the <Gather> verb that requires the caller to press "1" or any key to connect the call. I do this with my home phone (I ported my home phone number to Twilio and use an Obi 100 with Google voice so that outgoing calls are free) and automated calls from telemarketers have been completely eliminated.

Telemarketers call many numbers at once and take any call that has been answered. When you require a key press by the caller, the call simply won't connect and eventually will disconnect after many rings on the callers side.

For the one's that say they are using ACT, you can blacklist telemarketers right from the admin panel. Just go to Admin > Manage Companies > Blacklists. It's right at the top before the Company Names. I add the same blacklist for every customer and add to it as I find more spam calls. It stops a lot of the bad calls.