Investment leads

[undertheboardwalk]

Hi.

I run a fairly recently established alternative investment brokerage. My business relies heavily on cold-calling and the return on time, and thus on money, is not very high if you don't have access to the right leads.

I am in the process of buying pre-qualified leads from a leads provider, 50 leads at £25 per lead. The company supplying them seem ok, but I just wondered what sort of conversion rate it is reasonable to expect? 1 in 10? 1 in 20?

To be clear, my business is almost 100% over the phone. We are getting a website, and we already have brochures which we send out, but I would like to move to a much more face-to-face based model as we expand; but for now we are phone based.

But anyway, just really asking what I should expect from these leads? If the company selling them is telling the truth then each and every one of them is qualified to invest the minimum amount, able to deal now and has indicated an interest in hearing from my firm- so I would like to think that will mean, controlling for the variable sales ability from one salesman to another, and for other factors we should be bagging at least 1 in 20 or 1 in 30. Is this unrealistic? Should I buy more leads than I have? Fewer?

Thanks.

 

[Cynic]

Most lead providers resell their leads multiple times
Expect 0 conversions...

• We don't know what you are pitching to them
• We don't know HOW skilled your salespeople are

Better off generating your own leads or partnering with someone who already has their trust

Good luck

 

[dubOnline]

Hi Undertheboardwalk. How do they determine a qualified lead?

 

[RDlaw]

I think you give them a criteria they have to match then they are passed over if they meet requirements......

 

[Gregory007]

depends on what you...what is your offer? how skilled are your sales people? what do you currently convert on cold leads?

as someone said these qualified leads would have been sold to multiple companies..so it depends on your offer.

 

[jjoj]

There is absolutely no way of being able to offer an average without experiencing the quality of lead, how they came by them etc.

There's something called CPA - Cost per Action.

You spend some decent cash on a website. The website should cost you no more than £200 - 300 but you'll spend a lot more on testing and tweaking it to optimize conversions. You do this buy sending traffic to it, adjust send more etc.

The website should have 2 goals. 1 to capture an email address you'll do this by offering something for free. The second goal, and ultimate goal is to get them to call you, or to fill out a form asking to be contacted.

Once you've got this set up, you then contact a CPA Network. Basically, you'll pay them an agreed fee when someone fills out the form to be contacted or they ring. You'll pay a lot more than your going rate, but you'll only pay for anyone who genuinely wants you to contact them.

This Network is a middle man. They have a bunch of marketers who have websites or are email marketers. They send traffic to your site and you site holds some special code that lets everyone know when a form has been filled out. However, you don't pay for any crap. Only those who verify that they genuinely wanted you to call them.

It's a hot prospect you're getting, they are inviting you to contact them. Your conversions should be through the roof. Using this method you not only get the hot prospects, but you'll get an email list of those taking your freebie in exchange for their email address. This will also yield some business eventually.

If this is something you'd like to know more about I can explain in more detail how it works. I've set this up for a variety of companies in the past. A car credit company, a holiday website.

Hope it helps

 

[undertheboardwalk]

Hi Undertheboardwalk. How do they determine a qualified lead?

I think you give them a criteria they have to match then they are passed over if they meet requirements......

Yes, this is pretty much how it works. The leads company employ openers of their own, have access to people who have invested in other alternative markets before and then call them, give them a pitch we have come up with mutually, and see when they want a call back.

 

[undertheboardwalk]

There is absolutely no way of being able to offer an average without experiencing the quality of lead, how they came by them etc.

There's something called CPA - Cost per Action.

You spend some decent cash on a website. The website should cost you no more than £200 - 300 but you'll spend a lot more on testing and tweaking it to optimize conversions. You do this buy sending traffic to it, adjust send more etc.

The website should have 2 goals. 1 to capture an email address you'll do this by offering something for free. The second goal, and ultimate goal is to get them to call you, or to fill out a form asking to be contacted.

Once you've got this set up, you then contact a CPA Network. Basically, you'll pay them an agreed fee when someone fills out the form to be contacted or they ring. You'll pay a lot more than your going rate, but you'll only pay for anyone who genuinely wants you to contact them.

This Network is a middle man. They have a bunch of marketers who have websites or are email marketers. They send traffic to your site and you site holds some special code that lets everyone know when a form has been filled out. However, you don't pay for any crap. Only those who verify that they genuinely wanted you to call them.

It's a hot prospect you're getting, they are inviting you to contact them. Your conversions should be through the roof. Using this method you not only get the hot prospects, but you'll get an email list of those taking your freebie in exchange for their email address. This will also yield some business eventually.

If this is something you'd like to know more about I can explain in more detail how it works. I've set this up for a variety of companies in the past. A car credit company, a holiday website.

Hope it helps

This is interesting. And yes I want to avoid/move away from a coldcalling model- the hotter the leads the better. I provide the best service possible to my clients and I want to retain them for many years- so I would rather have 50-100 serious clients, who can invest six figures over time, than 200 people who invest £1k and then never any more. My gross margin is around 12%, so in taking on infrastructure (employees, premises, websites, leads etc) I need to be able to pay for all of that and pay myself out of 12% of what we turn over. All costs, except for my employees' commission, are fixed- so more revenue=more profit proportionately.

If you would prefer to talk via PM then we can do so, but can I get some idea of price and some idea of certainty?

I would pay much more for a lead if an average of 25% of them bought an average of £10,000 initially. It will be a worthwhile cost over time. Again, it is crucial that these investors are high net worth- people who can, when they see a decent return, fork over six figures or even more for an investment product like mine (which is unlikely to be more than 10% of an overall portfolio at any rate).

My other concern is a demographic one. Most investors are older rather than younger- due to the simple fact of generally being better off as you get older. A lot of older people are not terribly computer literate. Quite a lot of 70 year olds have the kind of money needed to make them a good client, far fewer 30/40/50 year olds do.

How do you qualify them as being right for the investment? Net worth etc? Is it just a basic qualification, e.g. "Minimum investment is £10,000- suggested minimum holding period is 5 years"?

 

[Cynic]

This is interesting. And yes I want to avoid/move away from a coldcalling model- the hotter the leads the better. I provide the best service possible to my clients and I want to retain them for many years- so I would rather have 50-100 serious clients, who can invest six figures over time, than 200 people who invest £1k and then never any more. My gross margin is around 12%, so in taking on infrastructure (employees, premises, websites, leads etc) I need to be able to pay for all of that and pay myself out of 12% of what we turn over. All costs, except for my employees' commission, are fixed- so more revenue=more profit proportionately.

If you would prefer to talk via PM then we can do so, but can I get some idea of price and some idea of certainty?

I would pay much more for a lead if an average of 25% of them bought an average of £10,000 initially. It will be a worthwhile cost over time. Again, it is crucial that these investors are high net worth- people who can, when they see a decent return, fork over six figures or even more for an investment product like mine (which is unlikely to be more than 10% of an overall portfolio at any rate).

My other concern is a demographic one. Most investors are older rather than younger- due to the simple fact of generally being better off as you get older. A lot of older people are not terribly computer literate. Quite a lot of 70 year olds have the kind of money needed to make them a good client, far fewer 30/40/50 year olds do.

How do you qualify them as being right for the investment? Net worth etc? Is it just a basic qualification, e.g. "Minimum investment is £10,000- suggested minimum holding period is 5 years"?

If you really wanted the big fat cats why not do a joint venture with some business attorneys/brokers and property agents/networks ?

Present your pitch in a webinar/teleconference call and start closing clients


CPA is not the way to go for this .... those leads are even worse

 

[beasty]

Undertheboardwalk

Sent you a PM, not sure if they arrive as you have only 3 posts?

 

[dubOnline]

Hi Undertheboardwalk. If you are wanting ongoing high yielding leads, I would consider inbound lead generation online. The model you described is mostly offline. Try something like this.

• Create some collateral that benefits your target market - A PDF of some description or bench mark report.
• Create a lead generation page and offer hte incentive away in return for their email address
• Nurture the new database over time
• Turn leads in to clients.

Hope that helps as a quick answer. Happy to skype if you want to have a chat - just PM me.

 

[The Byre]

Having read through this thread, I now know why I don't give people like the OP my money to look after. A six figure sum? I wouldn't give you two-and-sixpence! You don't even know how to find fresh leads, never mind find fresh investments!

Most lead providers resell their leads multiple times
Expect 0 conversions...

Ain't that the truth!

But then I hit this gem -

Most investors are older rather than younger- due to the simple fact of generally being better off as you get older. A lot of older people are not terribly computer literate. Quite a lot of 70 year olds have the kind of money needed to make them a good client, far fewer 30/40/50 year olds do.

I get tired of people like you making assumptions on my part! As soon as I hit 60, I got emails, messages, phone calls and letters telling me that I was

(a) About to die and therefore must start arranging (and paying for!) my funeral asap.
(b) Must plan for my retirement by giving people like you my hard-earned money.
(c) Go on some stinking cruise with a load revolting people playing shuffle board.

What you don't realise is that we over-60s are bombarded by this rubbish and it has no more effect than the bloke calling from Calcutta claiming to be from Microsoft has on you.

Those of us who have money, have money for one simple reason - we don't fall for every hogwash merchant that comes along.

 

[ASAP Marketing]

Why not get in touch with a few accountants. They may be happy to provide you with some 'warm' leads - their clients with high net worth - if the return is reasonable.
Presumably they will trust their accountant. Word of mouth is king!

 

[dubOnline]

Sent PM about lead gen services...

 

[ethical PR]

If you're going for wealthy older people - I wouldn't have thought that cold calling is the way to go.

Why don't you use communications channels that engage this target audience.

 

[MBPH]

This is something I never understand with businesses and leads tbh. I f you can't close a good percentage of cold calls then you ain't going to have much more success with a "warmer lead" tbh. Do you think if you can get warmer leads they're just going to call up and want to invest 10k because they opted in to a squeeze page that they've probably now forgot they actually opted in to. Warm calls are as much if not harder than cold calls as this "warm" lead will have shown a level of interest to 3 or 4 companies now aiming for their business. Send me a copy of your cold call script and I'll guarantee I'll be able to see numerous things that are wrong.