Remove this thread please.

Maybe the approach to take would be trying to offer free information that will educate them first? Show them how leads work, how leads will increase profits, etc.....and cleverly sell them on the idea of purchasing leads to generate more business through your free information package. Mail this information package out, drop it off in person - there are many ways to get the free information in their hands.

There are also many websites, blogs, newspapers, etc. that target your niche. Maybe having a website and purchasing ad space on these websites would land you more sales. Its not always the locals who could be looking to purchase leads.

Lastly, get involved in forums, social sites and online communities where they hangout and talk online. This might get your foot in the door and around that gatekeeper if you're active in local groups.

You know law offices spend money on advertising, and not because they just want to brand themselves. They're looking for new business. They rent billboards, do tv ads, yellow pages and spend money on websites. So, it seems the biggest hurdle you are having is getting your message to the person who decides their ad strategies. This is where you can get creative with direct mail and other ways that will minimize the gatekeepers role.

I see a couple issues that may be causing the problem.

1. You may not know the value of the lead. Were you selling it for $150 or $40? That wasn't clear. Maybe ask them what price they would pay. You need to find out what the right price is. If you are asking $150 or even $40 and they normally get similar leads for $5 you will never sell them.

2. They may not trust you or trust that the lead is real. You could offer a refund guarantee to put them at ease. You could offer them for free and than offer to sell them going forward after they see the value. No one wants to pay for junk leads and they currently have no way to know you are selling valid leads.

3. They may be too busy and have too many "free" leads coming in. Now of course those "free" leads likely are not free but they may not think of how much they spend on advertising on a per lead basis. And it may or may not be worth educating them on this vs. simply finding someone who sees value in the leads and will continue to buy them.

This site and others seem to think that lawyers are desperate for leads when IMO they are not. Even the cheap ones. In fact many would be better off raising prices and having less but more profitable clients. But that gets into true business consulting and not just service providing.

4. These leads may actually be contacting multiple lawyers and sites. Or at least that is the lawyers experence. Thus they don't need to buy the leads from you as they likely already have them. If you gave a name the one who laughed may have laughed because they just took that person as a client.

Think about how people use the internet. if you are not getting these leads to someone fast they are worthless because people don't wait to be contacted. Which has always been my personal problem with rent-a-site models. For them to work you need someone to take the leads but no one wants to pay before you have leads so you have to have someone to send them to free till you get enough to justify them paying.

5. Your site may not be getting valid qualified leads. Or at least doesn't look like it would get valid/qualified leads. If you showed them your site they may not think it is qualifying people right. And that may be why they don't want to pay for these leads.

Example: Let's say your site is a place to ask free legal questions. In my mind those are not good leads because of the following reasons.

• They may already have a lawyer and be looking for a free second opinion.
• They may simply be looking for "free" advice (aka they are leads for legal aid not real lawyers)
• They may not need the service for which they are asking a question about. (aka they may just be wondering about DUI not actual have a DUI)

Just because you have leads does not mean they are qualified leads.


6. You may simply suck at selling. A "fact" that is always given is that the number one reason people buy (or don't buy) is the sales person. Now this is the hardest one to test as you would have to hire someone (who didn't suck) to sell for you and see if they got different results.

Personally,

I would create a short DVD describing how the lead is generated while specifically speaking to the quality of the lead. It also may help to make sure you guarantee that no lead is more than 5 minutes old. After 30 minutes it makes no sense to buy a lead - google; "lead response managment" for data on this.

After I have a system to deliver the leads within 20 seconds, and my DVD done, I'd send the DVD along with a short note to 100 law firms via PRIORITY MAIL, because most of them are "gatekeeper proof" especially when you stamp "CONFIDENTIAL" on it...

This whole thing would cost me $750 ish, but when they called in, I could easily sell them upfront in bundles.

How much was your asking price?

legal/accountancy niche is hard to sell to. No idea why just is

Stop trying to sell leads.

Find out whether this attorney is having trouble finding qualified, focused, ready-to-pay prospects who can easily be turned into clients.

If they're "full" of work, why do they need you?

If they already have a leadgen service, why do they need you?

If they're not in either of these situations, and are starving for work, do you think you can now have a real conversation?

You guys keep coming at this from the wrong direction. "Can you buy what I'm selling?" No. You don't sell the drill, you sell the hole.

I had the same problem as you. I am in a city of 5+ million people and I set up a website to collect leads for lawyers, before the site was finish I started getting phone leads. I could not give away these leads for free, I called several lawyers and one even told me that the internet leads are not good leads. He believes that people who go online to find a lawyer cannot find one otherwise and as such has to resort to the internet..

For over 4 years was in this biz and flipped out to a hedge fund. You want to sell your leads to an Ad Agency and let them sell to lawyers. You simply get the leads and post into a data api and collect checks. Our system was setup we got advances based on volume. We spent about $3,800 a day on MS Adcenter and did about 600 inbound calls. The system still works to this day. Legal Leads is big business.

I have a mobile app Im releasing next month thats essentially a lead gen engine for lawyers.

Hedge fund bought you out? Thought was more like private equity? V.C..not Hedge Funds. which one and how much for?

You've got some serious players here giving you great advice. I can only offer up a couple of thoughts to go along with it. First is, if law firms are laughing at you and not interested, would it be because, and no offense meant, does your offer and business model come across as a joke, an inferior solution, compared to the lead generators they're used to? Are the law firms you've approached getting much better leads already? And speaking of lead generators, have you taken into account your competition? That's where you may want to focus by figuring out the competition's weaknesses and exploiting it.

You gathered some contact form completions that have to do with the General Law Niche and tried to sell the individual leads over the phone with cold calling.


So I would first say that I have not seen or heard of anyone selling individual leads to anyone in quite a while....I as a business owner would look at the phone funny if someone called me up and said, "I have a few qualified Internet leads that you might be interested in" and I am in the Lead Gen business. Now if you were to be selling a Lead Gen service, that is a different conversation of "Are you interested in getting more targeted and qualified potential customers calling you every month for a price much less that it costs through convention marketing methods?"

These law leads, are they targeted to one specific type of need? Divorce, traffic tickets, criminal..? If they are just all general law inquiries, that is a much hard sell than specific, narrowed down lawyer requirements. This is for many reasons but the top two are...specific law needs are much easier for the lawyer to know the customer value(thus knowing how much the lead is worth) and you can deal directly with lawyers that specialize in this type of law. So in terms of qualified and targeted, this talks about the targeted but in terms of qualified. "What you need legal help with?" is not qualifying anything...Qualifying would be, "You are looking to hire a lawyer to help you do X?" Sue my wife, get out of jail, make a will....These are qualified in terms of what they want to give money to a lawyer to complete a task for them.

I am not sure how you figure that these leads are "hot". If the person is on the Internet looking for help, there is at least 10+ web properties on the first page of Google that can help them and if you were one of them, I am guessing that atleast 8+ of the other properties would get back to them faster than in a few days(which is the time it took you to try to sell the leads). So the likeliness that these leads are still looking for a viable solution are getting pretty slim. So most businesses that have any inkling of the Internet would know that these leads have most likely been scooped up by someone already and they are not worth paying to have.

Last thing I want to mention is what you put in your Edit. If businesses are asking what you are selling or sound like they have never gotten a phone call like this before...well that tells me something right there. Either you do not know how to explain your own product or your product/business model is completely out in left field for these businesses. Either way, you are doing something wrong before you get on the phone and while you are on the phone. If you can get leads either through a contact form or get them to call a number, well you have something that businesses want...perspective clients/customers. Now you just have to massage and refine your business model/sales funnel in order to get those leads to businesses that want more clients/customers.