Generating, tracking & Selling Offline Leads

I do either multi or solo lead offers. So you can offer say $5/lead but the lead will be sent to 6 companies or say $20 and they get the lead to themselves.

With phone calls I setup a free phone number so you can track number of calls, but usualy its easier to charge on a per month basis for phone number.

I usually make a call to 20 or so companies in niche to guage interest and then setup the site if it looks positive. At first I use SEO, youtube and article marketing to kickstart it so I can even offer a free taster to get people hooked. Once I have a stable relationship I boost it with paid advertising.

When I first got started in IM I made a full time income from just 1 customer who was not internet savy but needed leads. They paid me a percentage of sales and I was clearing $3k-$4k just from the one client. I made a mistake though as I was using their own website (I was very naive) and I let on too much about how it all worked which ended up doing me out of the deal. Now I make sure I own the domain that I am generating the leads through.

I forward leads manually as I usually have arrangement where they can claim back for leads without telephone numbers. If someone fills out a lead without a number but an email i fire off an email asking for their number to be contacted so I don't lose the fee for the lead. Keep a spreadsheet for each company you deal with.

Pricing is just what you can get. It depends on the conversion rate and margin in the deal. Most people will say its best to try and get as much as possible, but I would rather start of near enough free as long as the company passes my preliminary checks as I know once they start making money they will be hooked and I can put the price up or go to one of their competitors for a better deal.

Also put up an autoresponder with first email saying we will be in touch, and then an email a few days later making sure they have info they need and enquiry has been dealt with. If a company is slack with dealing with their leads then its time to find another company that needs the leads more so it is a more secure deal.

Encourage you clients to promote the web forms instead of phone numbers... always direct visitors to the form at every opp.

Freephone would be an idea but it's a shame that local numbers convert better.

I guess it depends on the niche with regards to emails, if I need a plumber fast I'm not going to wait around for a reply.

So Guerrilla, do you have a transcript you use for each telephone call or is it pretty much asking if they are interested in a lead generation trial using your website?

I'm in the UK too so I imagine getting clients interested and fighting it out to use the site would be a similar process for myself.

Have you found a high converting squeeze page you use or have any test data?

I might have a few designed and test the conv rates.

Thanks for replies.
Steve

The jist of it is I call up a company and ask if they would like to receive any business referrals. This allows me to get to the decision maker and have a chat.

I have found if I call up and start asking for money for leads I generally get shot down pretty quick. But if I call round with the site up and running and say "Hi I am calling from xyzniche.co.uk, we are getting enquiries and looking for a company who can handle the extra business etc..." then I am better received.

People really struggle with the concept sometimes. You have to say "This is where your customers will be going, they will be entering their details in this form, and it will send it through to you"

Barrier to entry is the fact they think you will send thorugh a load of junk leads and con them. I don't mention price per lead until the very end once i have established some rapport. Usually they ask me what I want and I say I am flexible. If they have a system setup to effectively track revenue we can do it like that but they never do, pretty much anything they suggest I point out that it is succesptable to clerical errors and the easiest way would be to track per lead, but any leads that come through from someone not interested or with incorrect details they will not be billed for.

The thing is, once you get something running smoothly you can whack it on PPC and ramp it up. I have setup some sites and ended up just putting adsense on them cos I couldn't get a reliable company to work with, but just 1 or two good companies is all you need really.

To start with I just upload WP 3.0 and my tweaked version of twenty 10 theme. Takes minutes and with few custom graphics looks pretty good. I don't want to mess around with it until I know I can get long term relationship with company. With lead gen I find that keeping it simple and concentrating on copy is usually the best policy. I usually ask the company I'm working with for some images that represent the benefit or quality of their work as that helps also

**EDIT**

PS. If you have a business in yellow pages you will get 1-2 calls every day offering directory listings and SEO services from companies out to do the hard sell with minimum wage monkeys. This is why I open with asking if they want business referrals so the secretaries are polite to me and don't give me an ear bashing thinking I am one of those salesman.

I just pass lead information via email through a signup form.

i.e. I use aweber on some, jotform on some others. In the interface, I just queue up both mine and the small businesses email addresses and then we both get the leads delivered in real time.

This avoids delay in them getting the leads, as most prospects are hot and ready when they sign up and the business needs to get on the phone with them ASAP.

You really only need a few clients, so I don't bother with automated software.


For my lead sites I use wordpress and I own the web property. I NEVER use the clients website for the same reason that GuerrillaIM posted.

Those of you wanting to track leads by phone number who want to use a local tracking number should check out Vumber.

http://vumber.com

Great thread here.

A couple of quick questions on lead generation sites:

1. This sounds like a great idea-What do you have for copy on the page? You can't pretend you're an actual roofer (to use an example of a niche) on the site. What do you call yourself? Are you saying on the site that you are a referral source for roofers for example?

Anyone know of a sample site I could look at? (it doesnt have to be yours or your niche- it's just to get an idea of what it would look like)

2. I think I saw a previous post that talked about some areas that you might get into legal trouble for lead generation-like dentists or medical. Anyone know the best safe but lucrative niches for this?