I want to sell leads that convert to the field I want to sell them to since it's far more profitable to take a percentage of the sale than selling the leads outright. Does anyone know how to track these leads as I will only be selling these leads with a email and phone. Do I just trust the company and hope for the best?
I've been doing this successfully for 4+ years now so let me give you some advice.
I pay for everything on my own. I also do most the work on my own except for simple things like outsourcing citations. But I do the website, the copy, forwarding numbers, hundreds of geo-targeted pages, graphics & photos, VSLs, hundreds of geo-targeted YT videos, G local, Yahoo, Yelp, Insider Pages etc, review network, fake & real reviews, spamming classifieds, etc etc. It's a long list of things. Although the first few leads can dribble in as soon as 2 weeks, leads really don't kick up for 3-6 months. Then I slowly grow them for another 1-2 years, they become fully fledged authority sites, generate lots of qualified leads and that's when the real money is made (5 figs / month).
You're 100% right that it's more profitable to take a % of the commissions. So you need to understand the main function of your business. Although YOU are a marketer and will be generating leads.... your business is *brokering* leads. So your business is 2 businesses. The lead generation side. Then the brokering & monetization side.
Most people can't generate leads nevermind the quality & volume of leads that's necessary in this field. Because most people AND businesses are method-obsessed.
But let's assume you know what you're doing. That you're willing to sacrifice everything it takes to make this work.
You probably don't wanna hear this, but you absolutely 100% need to LIVE where your main business & funnels are operating.
I build funnels primarily for 1 state (NJ). I might do work in NY or PA. But you'd NEVER see me building funnels out in California or Florida. And there's thousands of logistical reasons why. First, I need to personally interview, meet and get to know any broker I'm hiring. Cause that broker will become the "frontman" for my business. He plays many different roles. The role of the owner. I put his pic on the homepage. I need him to direct, record and produce any marketing material I'm doing. It's the same for the companies we work for. And the same for the people they subcontract their work to.
So I NEED to inspect everything. If I'm sending leads to your business, we're meeting in person. I'll interview you. Then I need to see your business. Your office, your staff, your salesmen, your market dept, your overhead, profit margins, ROI, etc. I need to know how your business works from soup to nuts BEFORE I EVEN THINK of sending 1 lead to you.
Then I'm gonna look for red flags. I'm gonna ask your marketing dept what they're working on. Let me see some recent campaigns. I'm gonna find out what the ROI on those campaigns were. I wanna met your top salesman. I wanna know how much he sold last month. I'm gonna roleplay with your salesman. I'm gonna ask how much you pay for internet, how much you pay for office space, how much you pay your secretary or paid to get your trucks painted or what you do on the weekends. If your manager tells me you go to Atlantic City every weekend and have a bad habit of gambling, or going to strip clubs.... this is shit I'm gonna find out. If I criticize your business that's a good thing. That means I'm actually contemplating working with you. If I'm polite and casual, I'm leaving very soon.
So YES, trust is a huge asset. But it's not the only thing I'm looking for. I need to know you're running a tight ship. I need to know your ship doesn't have 100 holes patched with plaster that are gonna leak & drain revenue from what I already know my profits should be.
There are many other logistical reasons for living local. And I couldn't possible write everything. But something as simple as familiarity. There's a million different ways this can be defined in numbers. Like me KNOWING the consensus data for my target state. It's taken 4 years to (accidentally) memorize most those numbers. If you ask me about any town in my state, I likely know by head if that town has more than 40,000 people. Many towns I know the exact #. I know avg household incomes. Race distribution. I know a lot about geography. How many ft above sea level certain areas are. Lakes, bays, ponds, rivers, streams, underground caves or capillaries .... all this shit is important to know both for targeting and because of the industries we work in.
So if I'm scaling into a new vertical and targeting a different industry in the same state... I don't need to research every town to know which ones to spend the most time on.
Anyway, I'm getting off point. To keep it short I hire a broker. I handle the online shit the broker handles the phone calls and everything else. He decides which company (of just a few) will get which leads and also negotiates after every job what our cut will be. He ALSO runs leads himself in 1 industry. So all those leads get monetized directly by us. In every other industry we send the leads to companies we fully know and trust, then they cut us a fat commission, everyones happy, the brokers happy, I'm happy.... but NONE of this would be possible w/out a broker and if I didn't live close to where I work.
One last thing, if a company doesn't close a lead we never give that lead to another company. As we already know which company is best ahead of time. So we'll let them work the lead for months if they need then just negotiate our cut down the road. Even months later if the lead doesn't close the company just tells us. Sometimes customers disappear just to call 6-12 months later and we'll get paid a year down the road. As far as how you "track" the leads ... we really don't. Because the businesses we send leads to KNOW we have the leads contact info. They know that lead spoke to our broker before anyone else. Which means we can (and will) call that lead up anytime under the front of a "check up" or to run a "satisfaction survey".... and if we ever find out x business sold that job and didn't tell us .... THAT business is cutting it's own legs off. So it's the model as a whole that prevents people from ripping us off. If we're making you a shitload of money, what on Earth would you risk stealing leads for? We're gonna find out immediately and you're gonna ruin the best opportunity you had. Very few if any sane bastards will gamble an early retirement over 1 no risk lead we sent them for "free".
-BB
