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| Buying Mortgage Leads Part 2 |
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| Written by LeadPortal | |
| Friday, 03 December 2004 | |
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1. If it looks to good to be true, then it is. There are no if's and's or but's here. Figure out the current rate for exclusive/non-exclusive mortgage leads and if you see a company offering leads well below the going rate, they are most likely crooks. 2. You must understand the difference between a lead generation company and a lead broker. Lead generation companies actually generate their own leads. Lead brokers buy and resell leads from lead generation companies and from other lead brokers. It is generally safer to buy leads from a lead generation company because you can ask specifically, "Where do you generate all of your leads?" If the lead company refuses to tell you, then they are probably crooks. A company like LendingTree can tell you exactly where they generate their leads and this is nice to know. If a company claims to be a lead generation company, but they will not show you their lead capture site, then they are probably lead brokers. Lead brokers are not necessarily bad lead providers. There is much more risk involved because you are not sure where the leads are actually coming from and most likely, the lead broker does not even know. Lead generation companies often have a don't ask don't tell policy on where mortgage leads come from. Some leads might come from a lead broker that were bought from another lead broker that were bought from another lead broker. If all of these lead brokers are honest, then there will be no problems. If you have on bad apple in the lot, then you may call a lead only to get screamed at for being the 50th broker that has called them. Ever called a lead to hear that and wonder why? Now you know. Most lead companies use the built in excuse that the lead must have filled out another lead form and that lead company was the one reselling the lead 50 times........ just don't get fooled by this line twice. 3. Ask the lead company some basic business questions and write down their answers. A. How long have you been in business? B. What is your corporate name? C. What state is your business licensed in? D. Do you SPAM people? Take these answers and tell the lead company you will call them back in 20 minutes. Using the answers from A, B, and C, go to Google.com. Whatever state they said their business is registered in, do a search on Google for that state's secretary of state -- "Illinois Secretary of State" for example. In almost every single state you can search through the corporate database to find if in fact the company is a legally registered LLC or Corp. You can also see when they licensed their business. Doing background checks for LeadPortal, we found companies that both lied about being LLC's and also lied about when they were formed. Shocking, but true. If you can not find any information in the state databases, try http://whois.webhosting.info/LEADCOMPANY.COM where LEADCOMPANY.COM is the website address of the lead company you are researching. This will generally show information such as when the domain name was first registered. Again, go to Google.com and this time try searching for "LEADCOMPANY.COM spam" and see if you see any results. Some lead companies spamvertise for their own domains but many have 500 different web sites so you can not tell if they are spammers or not. 4. Another good check is to go to http://www.bbb.org and search for the lead company there. You can find a lot of complaints about a lot of lead companies at the bbb. You must learn from other brokers' problems just like you are learning from ours right now. 5. Use your gut feeling. I have talked with countless brokers who have been taking by lead companies. If you ask these lead companies the questions above and they will not answer immediately, you have something to worry about. 6. Make sure their lead return policy is fair but also make sure you understand what a lead is. You are a salesperson and every lead will not be a sale. You should be happy with closing 10% of leads you receive maybe more, maybe less. If you can not grasp that, don't buy leads and don't complain to the lead company every time you can't close a lead. That is your problem, not theirs. 7. Finally, look at their web site. Although some bad lead companies can have nice web sites created, often it is easy to see through the "fluff" of a pretty web site and determine if you are dealing with a real company or some guy trying to resell you junk mortgage leads. Our checklist is below. Some of the points don't make sense but as a broker, I would recommend coming up with your own checklist so you can weigh the good and the bad of each lead company you contact. This article was written by the team at LeadPortal.com. Lead Company Checklist
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| Last Updated ( Thursday, 31 March 2005 ) |
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