Does anyone have experience selling leads?

[seogeek]

I'm contemplating setting up a site to sell leads to local seo business owners. Has anyone done something like this before?

 

[red_devil010]

I sell leads currently to local business in my area. What would you like to know about it?

 

[jboogz2000]

I have a lot of experience let me know what you would like to know

 

[red_devil010]

@jboogz2000 are you in the local realm or national? I'd be curious to hear your take/strategy on approaching businesses and pitching them your leads? Thats one thing im having trouble with right now - cold calling, etc. A lot of service companies i've called are not interested in leads, not even free leads for a couple weeks.

 

[lyannastark]

Well, I don't know much about selling leads, but I do know a little something about sales and persuasion. I have to constantly solicit sponsors for events I host locally, and believe me, it's kinda hard to get people to give you their money.

This might sound hard, it might even sound pretentious, but the best way to get someone to even listen to what you have to say is to try to establish some kind of common ground BEFORE you try to sell them on your idea. The problem is, people HATE to be sold to, but they LOVE to buy. And when you cold call a company offering to sell them leads, the barriers immediately go up. They've shut you down before you can even explain that what you're offering actually benefits them. I remember when I used to email proposals that I thought were awesome only to be disappointed when I didn't get a response. People don't even hear you when you talk to them on the phone, they're just waiting for their turn to speak.

Get to know someone who makes decisions. One rule I have is to never take no from someone who couldn't have said yes in the first place. You probably know this, but I'm gonna say it anyway. When you call a company, you're usually shut down by a secretary, receptionist or otherwise low-level gate-keeper. These people are the devil. (Not literally ) But yeah. They're not paid to think. They don't care that your leads could potentially make the company a shit tonne of money.

Ask For advice. Now this is a simple way to reach out to someone with a high level and get them to notice you. For example Man X is the owner of a business. Get his personal email address. Approach him with a friendly email stating that you're an aspiring entrepreneur and you noticed he did X with his business and you're wondering if he could explain/tell you more/ blah blah blah. You get the picture. Usually, people who are successful don't mind helping people out. Don't forget to stroke the ego a little bit. If the person still refuses at this point, then they're just an asshole and you don't need to deal with them anyway. Don't mention your leads until after a couple insightful/friendly emails. You can say something like, I've recently started selling leads. Outline how your leads benefit you and a hypothetical company. Ask him what he thinks. Then go on from there. Well right now, I have my youth going for me, which does help a bit in the "asking for advice" part, but you have to be creative, because cold calling alone just doesn't really work.

This is something I've done personally (not in the leads business) and has got me meetings and secured sponsorship deals. It might seem a bit shady, but it is what it is. And to be honest, it's not really that shady at all as long as you maintain the relationship, let them know how your business is going, and if you can, be a customer of said business. 90% of selling is getting people to like you.

All you need is one reasonably high-level person from the company to put in a good word for you, or hear you out. It's pretty much networking if you think about it, and social media is so rampant these days that it's not really that difficult to find out obscene amounts of information about people.

When you finally get to talk to someone that matters, just show them the numbers, which is easy. Show them how much money they could make per lead, and why it's important to have them. This is the easy part, the hardest part is getting them to listen and take you seriously.

TL;DR : Network like a bitch

 

[jboogz2000]

A lot of businesses are tired of calls from marketing companies so, they shut you down quick. You must come at them from another angle and be less selling.
First thing they want to know is what you are going to do for them be prepared with how you can benefit them immediately with details it's all about them.
Not everyone will be privy to your valuable time so, look for businesses that are already advertising because they understand the importance of it. You do not want to waste time educating a business owner on why they should be marketing.
Market to high cost per sale companies most of them are already marketing in some way.
Try to market to people you already know the restaurant you visit, the dentist you go to, etc.. etc...
Get your name out their and network once you get a few cleints your on your way you will certainly get referrals if you impress.
Don't give up I have went through a load of no's so, just keep at it if you can rank you are a valuable commodity let the losers keep not getting customers you will find hungry smart business owners out their If you keep at it.

 

[jboogz2000]

Just be honest no selling pure facts yea or nea .

 

[TheSeo1]

cold calling alone just doesn't really work.

Cold calling works. The thing about cold calling is to scale it. Doing it yourself, it's a waste of time. Having a call center running for you is the way to go. Talking from experience.

What you personally have to do is the following: get a 'test session' with a call center. Spend about 400-500$ at least and see how many direct contacts you get. Calculate your average cost per contact and compare it to your average earnings from previous customers / make a REALISTIC prediction how many leads you can sell them.

It does not work in any niche, but usually, IF it works, it's worth the work. If you see a decent ROI, just scale to a higher budget on the cold calling and start stacking

 

[Walt Heisenberg Jr]

Well, I don't know much about selling leads, but I do know a little something about sales and persuasion. I have to constantly solicit sponsors for events I host locally, and believe me, it's kinda hard to get people to give you their money.

This might sound hard, it might even sound pretentious, but the best way to get someone to even listen to what you have to say is to try to establish some kind of common ground BEFORE you try to sell them on your idea. The problem is, people HATE to be sold to, but they LOVE to buy. And when you cold call a company offering to sell them leads, the barriers immediately go up. They've shut you down before you can even explain that what you're offering actually benefits them. I remember when I used to email proposals that I thought were awesome only to be disappointed when I didn't get a response. People don't even hear you when you talk to them on the phone, they're just waiting for their turn to speak.

Get to know someone who makes decisions. One rule I have is to never take no from someone who couldn't have said yes in the first place. You probably know this, but I'm gonna say it anyway. When you call a company, you're usually shut down by a secretary, receptionist or otherwise low-level gate-keeper. These people are the devil. (Not literally ) But yeah. They're not paid to think. They don't care that your leads could potentially make the company a shit tonne of money.

Ask For advice. Now this is a simple way to reach out to someone with a high level and get them to notice you. For example Man X is the owner of a business. Get his personal email address. Approach him with a friendly email stating that you're an aspiring entrepreneur and you noticed he did X with his business and you're wondering if he could explain/tell you more/ blah blah blah. You get the picture. Usually, people who are successful don't mind helping people out. Don't forget to stroke the ego a little bit. If the person still refuses at this point, then they're just an asshole and you don't need to deal with them anyway. Don't mention your leads until after a couple insightful/friendly emails. You can say something like, I've recently started selling leads. Outline how your leads benefit you and a hypothetical company. Ask him what he thinks. Then go on from there. Well right now, I have my youth going for me, which does help a bit in the "asking for advice" part, but you have to be creative, because cold calling alone just doesn't really work.

This is something I've done personally (not in the leads business) and has got me meetings and secured sponsorship deals. It might seem a bit shady, but it is what it is. And to be honest, it's not really that shady at all as long as you maintain the relationship, let them know how your business is going, and if you can, be a customer of said business. 90% of selling is getting people to like you.

All you need is one reasonably high-level person from the company to put in a good word for you, or hear you out. It's pretty much networking if you think about it, and social media is so rampant these days that it's not really that difficult to find out obscene amounts of information about people.

When you finally get to talk to someone that matters, just show them the numbers, which is easy. Show them how much money they could make per lead, and why it's important to have them. This is the easy part, the hardest part is getting them to listen and take you seriously.

TL;DR : Network like a bitch

Lots of gold nuggets here. But what if you want to sell leads to someone like a plumber or an air conditioning repair company, how do you befriend them?

 

[seogeek]

I sell leads currently to local business in my area. What would you like to know about it?

@red_devil010 What does your site look like? I'm trying to get an idea. What's easier I guess, selling leads, or selling your own services?

 

[red_devil010]

@seogeek Currently i have 3 sites for local and another one coming up the ranks. Im traffic leaking like crazy right now and through other sites, but all leads do come through my sites. The key here, from what I've encountered in the last couple months is this:

Try to market to people you already know

This has been the key to selling (or ranking and renting the site) to local businesses. I usually send all leads to one business exclusively for a fixed amount a month. The price i charge per month is dependent on the businesses' potential ROI on the leads I bring them. Some have lower ROI, others have higher ROI - find the happy medium and i noticed many will be more than happy to pay.

I have had trouble in the past selling leads to local businesses, that is why I asked the initial question.

My sites have a form and phone number above the fold and some of them have even generated leads within the first 3 days of being live. (I guess thats what having wikipedia backlinks does).

Are you looking for examples of how my site looks?

 

[Walt Heisenberg Jr]

@red_devil010
I have a local lead generation site that I was in the middle of working on, but then just left it a few months ago.

A few weeks ago, I was ranking position 22 for it where the keyword traffic is 480 and the cpc is around $40.

Here's how it looks:

I've ranked real business sites but never ranked fake local lead generation sites without any address above position 3.

I was thinking of doing a case study on this but since I've never ranked such a site or rented a site before, I'm not too sure if I can be useful.

 

[red_devil010]

@Walt Heisenberg Jr

This is Funny - I have a similar color scheme going on as Well - Orange - My conversions are pretty good, in specifically Form conversions, which is about 1 a day right now for the last 4 weeks without being on Page 1 at all (think Traffic Leaks).

I think you should do a case-study! Im sure there's tons of people eager to hear about this.

For Local, I noticed its all about NAP (name, address & phone number), local citations, etc. Use schema to markup your name and make sure its on every page. G eats it up. I've spoken to a couple of other people who also recommended dropping loads of content to outrank competitors. Im not sure how accurate that is, but I have local sites ranking with very thin content. In the number 1, 2, 3 spots for some competitive keywords and minimal backlinks (think towing).

Is this wordpress theme? PM me the theme name if so, I'd be curious in looking at it in regards to speed.

One of my lead gen sites has a 200ms TTFB and it ranked within a week w/ Wikipedia links. https://www.buildersociety.com/threads/show-off-your-pingdom-test-results.15/#post-1127

I was generating leads within 3 days on that one through, BING! , out of all places! HAHA

 

[lyannastark]

Lots of gold nuggets here. But what if you want to sell leads to someone like a plumber or an air conditioning repair company, how do you befriend them?

Well, to be honest, the same way you befriend anyone. I have the type of personality where could chat up a market vendor or a business executive and we'd be best of friends by the time the conversation's up. Not everyone can do this. I couldn't either, I was a socially awkward penguin. But it takes a bit of practice. PM me if you want some tips, if not, read the book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie. Getting people to like you is as much a science as it is an art. The best salesmen aren't good at selling, they're good at people.

Cold calling works. The thing about cold calling is to scale it. Doing it yourself, it's a waste of time. Having a call center running for you is the way to go. Talking from experience.

Of course cold calling works. Or else noone would do it. Maybe I shouldn't have put it that way. In my opinion cold calling just isn't that efficient, especially for the type of selling I do. But it depends on what you want to achieve. As I said, I don't know much about selling leads. Never sold one in my life. lol So maybe cold calling is most efficient for leads? I don't know. I assumed that 1) He would be only one doing the calling. The call center thing is a good idea IF you can afford it. If you can, go ahead. That approach also depends on the size of your market. I don't know how large his local market is. Does he live in small town Nebraska, or Brooklyn? I don't know. So that's also a factor to consider. If your local market is small, you can't risk a tiny conversion rate because your market might dry up. So my way might be a bit more tedious, but you'll get way better conversion rates, and it's free Not to mention the referrals.

A lot of businesses are tired of calls from marketing companies so, they shut you down quick. You must come at them from another angle and be less selling.
First thing they want to know is what you are going to do for them be prepared with how you can benefit them immediately with details it's all about them.
Market to high cost per sale companies most of them are already marketing in some way.
Try to market to people you already know the restaurant you visit, the dentist you go to, etc.. etc...
Get your name out their and network once you get a few clients your on your way you will certainly get referrals if you impress.

I agree. Exactly the thing I was saying. Get out there and network. I was simply describing how to get your foot in the door. Most people cringe when they think of networking. It's not about handing out business cards. It's about making friends. Friends who will recommend you to their friends, who you'll become friends with, who'll recommend you to their friends. You get the gist

 

[seogeek]

@seogeek Currently i have 3 sites for local and another one coming up the ranks. Im traffic leaking like crazy right now and through other sites, but all leads do come through my sites. The key here, from what I've encountered in the last couple months is this:


This has been the key to selling (or ranking and renting the site) to local businesses. I usually send all leads to one business exclusively for a fixed amount a month. The price i charge per month is dependent on the businesses' potential ROI on the leads I bring them. Some have lower ROI, others have higher ROI - find the happy medium and i noticed many will be more than happy to pay.

I have had trouble in the past selling leads to local businesses, that is why I asked the initial question.

My sites have a form and phone number above the fold and some of them have even generated leads within the first 3 days of being live. (I guess thats what having wikipedia backlinks does).

Are you looking for examples of how my site looks?

I'm more looking what you say? Like, do you say local 'insert niche here' for sale?

 

[red_devil010]

@seogeek

I call local businesses who i see are advertising using adwords and tell them I have a lead generation site (give them URL) and if they want to receive leads for 2 weeks for free and after that initial 2 weeks is up, its going to X amount a month ($250-$1000 depending on type of business).

Or better yet, Im sure you know people in your circle of influence who are in the service industry, start with them. This is how I landed my first 2 lead gen sites currently earning $600 from one and $500 from the other. Have at it. There's so many smaller cities that are always in need of good local seo. I want to get into e-commerce/affiliate work sooner or later, so i think local seo is a good primer to jump start those efforts.

 

[red_devil010]

Remember one thing when dealing with service industry, you will get turned down, hung up on, and probably cussed out a couple times. Keep calling and give them a reason to use you.

The pitch I use is this: One of the contractors I sell leads to used to get leads from home advisor for about $80-$100 per lead. That lead was not exclusive, it was sold to 2-4 other contractors. Why would you want to pay home advisor that much for a non-exclusive lead when every.single.lead i send your way exclusive and your the only one bidding on it for a HALF as much as you would pay from home advisor.


This approach has won many conversations several times.

 

[Walt Heisenberg Jr]

@Walt Heisenberg Jr

This is Funny - I have a similar color scheme going on as Well - Orange - My conversions are pretty good, in specifically Form conversions, which is about 1 a day right now for the last 4 weeks without being on Page 1 at all (think Traffic Leaks).

I think you should do a case-study! Im sure there's tons of people eager to hear about this.

For Local, I noticed its all about NAP (name, address & phone number), local citations, etc. Use schema to markup your name and make sure its on every page. G eats it up. I've spoken to a couple of other people who also recommended dropping loads of content to outrank competitors. Im not sure how accurate that is, but I have local sites ranking with very thin content. In the number 1, 2, 3 spots for some competitive keywords and minimal backlinks (think towing).

Is this wordpress theme? PM me the theme name if so, I'd be curious in looking at it in regards to speed.

One of my lead gen sites has a 200ms TTFB and it ranked within a week w/ Wikipedia links. https://www.buildersociety.com/threads/show-off-your-pingdom-test-results.15/#post-1127

I was generating leads within 3 days on that one through, BING! , out of all places! HAHA

@Walt Heisenberg Jr

This is Funny - I have a similar color scheme going on as Well - Orange - My conversions are pretty good, in specifically Form conversions, which is about 1 a day right now for the last 4 weeks without being on Page 1 at all (think Traffic Leaks).

I think you should do a case-study! Im sure there's tons of people eager to hear about this.

For Local, I noticed its all about NAP (name, address & phone number), local citations, etc. Use schema to markup your name and make sure its on every page. G eats it up. I've spoken to a couple of other people who also recommended dropping loads of content to outrank competitors. Im not sure how accurate that is, but I have local sites ranking with very thin content. In the number 1, 2, 3 spots for some competitive keywords and minimal backlinks (think towing).

Is this wordpress theme? PM me the theme name if so, I'd be curious in looking at it in regards to speed.

One of my lead gen sites has a 200ms TTFB and it ranked within a week w/ Wikipedia links. https://www.buildersociety.com/threads/show-off-your-pingdom-test-results.15/#post-1127

I was generating leads within 3 days on that one through, BING! , out of all places! HAHA

Yep, I'll probably do another case study soon on this site.

The reason why I can't use stuff like citations is because my site isn't a real business, so doesn't have a real address... I'm just intending to rent it out to clients.

That's why I'm curious if it's possible to rank such a site on top 3.

You also need to teach us how you make your sites so damn fast.

*I sent you a pm of the theme

 

[red_devil010]

here's a cool tip i got from @RadiantDarkness on BHU-

Post an ad on craigslist and pay someone $20 dollars (or however much you see fit) to receive your mail at their location. That way you can use that address on your site - I have done this with my friends' businesses. I just ask them to use their address for my lead gen sites; No customers will show up, its only for mail. Send them a giftcard and they'll be more than happy to help. Or maybe do some web site updates for them. etc

All my lead gen sites have addresses, local citations, phone numbers (twilio) and are all verified this way.

As for website speed - thats a pet peeve of mine - i constantly tweek sites until they are fast. Cache everything i possibly can for static sites and minify CSS, JS and html - compress images, defer js, the list goes on.

thanks for the PM!