How to judge a lead source in thirty leads
You can tell most of what you need to know about a lead source before you have spent much, provided you test it the same way every time.
Five questions to ask before buying anything
After I buy this, can anyone else buy it? Anything other than a flat no means shared.
What happens when a lead is bad — replacement, refund, or nothing?
Can I cap what I spend in a week, and change it myself?
What exactly arrives: contact details only, or something the seller actually said?
Can I choose where the leads come from, and change that too?
Run the test properly
Same markets, same tier, same follow-up process, for a fixed number of leads. Changing two things at once means you learn nothing about either.
Record contact rate and conversation rate separately. A source can be excellent at producing reachable people and poor at producing interested ones, and the fix is different in each case.
Warning signs
A guaranteed number of deals. Nobody can guarantee that, because nobody controls your call or your offer.
Pricing that will not survive a direct question. If you cannot get a clear answer on what a lead costs and what happens when one is bad, the answer exists and you are not going to like it.
Testimonials with no name, no market and no detail. They cost nothing to write.
Questions people ask
Should I ask for a free trial lead?
You can ask, but a single lead proves very little either way — one dud and one gem are both normal. A small paid batch worked properly tells you far more.
What is a reasonable price for an exclusive seller lead?
It varies enormously with how ready the seller is, so a single figure would be misleading. Judge it against your own cost per deal rather than against another provider's headline rate.
How do I know the leads are recent?
Ask when the seller last said anything, and check the date on the lead itself. Recency is the thing that decays fastest and the thing least often disclosed.
Keep reading
Get leads in your markets
Pick your states, set a weekly cap, and pause whenever you want. Every lead is sold once, to one buyer.