A car shopper hit our site at 9AM in the morning. When we pinged our network with the lead everyone turned the lead down because apparently all the auto dealers in this specific zip code where capped for the day. We offered the lead several other times during the day and still the lead was not accepted.

At our last offering for the day, one of our buyers accepted. Why did they accept the lead? The dealership cap had been lifted because they were an hour ahead of us and it was now 12AM on the east coast.

Auto dealers, think about this; if you had six customers standing outside your front door, would you let five come in and then turn customer number six away and tell them to come back tomorrow? No, you’d make adjustments to take care of the customer no matter how long it took.

Why should leads be any different? Fixed daily caps only hurt auto dealers. We understand the need for a monthly budget, but auto dealers and lead providers need to start thinking about putting adjustable caps in place. Allow for an overage of 5-10% of your normal daily lead volume. This will allow dealers to get that extra lead that might close vs. having it hold over till the next day and loose it to another competitor.

A last thought on caps; lead generation is a random service. No one can predict exactly how many folks will fill out online applications on any given day, but yet auto dealers and lead providers treat leads like a predictable commodity. Be flexible with an adjustable cap on your leads and you may get an extra lead or two that will turn into a sale. Timing is everything with respect to Internet leads.

Lead Dispatch International won’t try to fit every lead into a round hole or as we like to call them “lead buckets”. We believe all leads fall into different buckets or categories. Leads should be categorized properly so they can be directed to the correct end user. This ensures that the prospect gets the service and attention they need.

Think about this, does a new Corvette dealer want a lead from a prospect with low income and 30 days on the job? or does a Realtor want a lead from someone really looking for a pay day loan? This frustrates everyone involved in the process.

You can count on Lead Dispatch generating the highest quality targeted leads possible. This will correlate to better conversions on your leads and fewer bad lead returns.

Here are some of the “lead buckets” or categories we have defined for our company. If  you are in the market for additional leads you might want to grab a bucket that you might not be aware existed. If  you are a broker or trading partner, we encourage you to talk with your retail customers to consider exploring some missed opportunities.

Validation Errors - Many leads never get placed do to data validation errors (see Lead Over Validation) such as a questionable name, phone numbers, mis-typed email addresses, etc. These are still good leads, but they get over looked because of a single validation error that prevents them from getting placed with a broker, lender, or auto dealer that could get in touch with the customer just by picking up the phone. Think about it, the person that fat fingers their email address; is that a valid reason to disqualify them as becoming a potential customer? they still want your product or service. Eventually, these leads fall into another category we call 30 days.

30 Days - Leads that may have a validation error end up falling into this category. Leads that go through a trading network and don’t get placed cannot reapply for a minimum of 30 days because the entire network deems this lead as a duplicate. Additionally, we see leads and have the emails to back them up that a lead that sells does not always get called. So the folks that want a car, boat, home, etc. and don’t get called end up having to wait 30 days again as well. This is foolish and the lead industry needs to make system wide adjustments for this scenario. Looking for additional sales leads? Ask us about leads in this category.

Low Income Leads - This is a segment that often gets overlooked and left frustrated because they are the most easily discarded leads. We see auto leads all the time that get overlooked at face value only to find out later that a prospect might have had money to put down, a co-signer, or family member willing to help with a down payment. Since we don’t bump incomes like some lead generators, we provide real income values just as the visitor completed it on one of our sites. These are still good leads, they just require a little more effort in some cases.

No Contact - It’s hard to believe that a company that buys leads would not contact the prospect, but it happens every day (Look for some email responses soon). In doing lead analysis for a customer it was concluded that 25% of their leads never received a phone call, or only one call attempt had been made with zero follow  up after that. These are good prospects evidenced by the fact that it was placed through a network or broker. We’ve even called on behalf of the prospect to the broker or network that placed the lead and many times after we make a call, the prospect still does not receive any communication. These folks end up falling into the 30 Day bucket as well because they cannot be resubmitted to a broker or trading network as they will be rejected as duplicate leads.

No Social Security Number - To us here at Lead Dispatch, this is one of the most valuable type of leads to get over looked. Many above or high income prospects don’t want to provide social security numbers over the Internet. These prospects still want a car, boat, home, or service you provide. It simply requires that someone pick up the phone and make contact. Leads with no socials are actually less of a liability than leads with social security numbers. Fortunately, we have the experience of working with a progressive auto group that believes in picking up the phone and talking with a customer or prospect.

Not Placed - This type of lead typically will not get placed because of demand for leads in a specific zip code, but these are prospects are still looking for your product or service. Think about, some folks will not get called when they are possibly within a just a few miles of the business that wants to talk with them, but because they are just outside of a targeted zip code they will never get contacted. We like to call this lead discrimination and think the lead industry and lead buyers need to adjust by allowing the prospect to determine how far they might travel to meet with a potential business.

We see the same situation over and over. A prospect sits between two or three major cities, but businesses did not go out far enough to target a zip code just on the fringe and this potential customer does not get placed, but they still want your product or service. Looking for more qualified leads? You might want to consider looking at leads that do not get placed within 1-10 days.

As you can see from the examples above, Lead Dispatch is committed to identifying different leads types vs. massaging or manipulating customer data to create false or bogus leads.

Give us a call today to discuss how we can help generate Internet leads for your business.

This is where Lead Dispatch feels the lead generation community has got it all wrong along with the end user, or retail customer buying leads such as auto dealers or realtors. We do not want to say there is not a need for strict data scoring in some cases, but let’s stay focussed on what a real lead is. (See - What is a lead?) - Enough information to contact a ready and willing prospect for your product or service.

Let’s explore some examples below of Internet lead over validation and typical outcomes:

• Email Validation - This is a poor data field to post reject a lead on as there are numerous reasons an email address may not validate (network outage, fat finger, email filtering, dns issue, black list, etc.) If phone numbers and address are all valid, call the prospect and ask for a valid email address. This is still a good lead.
• Word Validation - Some lead systems validate data fields to check for vulgar words or common fake names such as Mickey Mouse. Over validating can cause false scoring resulting in names like Virginia being post rejected as a vulgar word for containing “virgin”. Word validation should be filtered to a function where human intervention can confirm manually that the lead name is truly false or just allow the retail customer to receive a credit on a bad lead. (Let’s keep it simple)
• Social Security Number - Many lead wholesalers and retail customers will reject a lead missing a social security number. This is foolish in our opinion. Many folks still feel uncomfortable  giving out their socials over the Internet and many wage earners with higher than average incomes don’t want to provide their socials until they meet with the salesperson. Consider this, do you really want to miss out on a potential customer just because they don’t want to provide a social security number over the Internet? is the relevant lead information enough to contact the prospect and set an appointment?
• Phone Numbers - As with email validation, automated phone validation can have its own issues as well. Someone can move, change numbers, phone can be in the name of a spouse, outdated phone directory information or a temporary phone outage as we have seen in numerous cases.
• Zip Codes - We like to call this “lead discrimination” and will be posting some more information on this soon. This occurs when a possible prospect or customer is rejected at the ping or post rejected because they have the wrong zip code. Think about it… if a zip code is off by one digit and being adjacent to an acceptable zip code, that individual or entity is left in the dark wondering why no one will call them. This can be solved with better communication between lead generators, wholesalers, and the retail buyer by asking the prospect completing an online form how far they might be willing to travel or allowing some flexibility in zip code validating to ensure adjacent zip codes don’t go unserviced needlessly.
• Others include - Income, Length of employment, Job Title all of which are subject to being validated incorrectly.

The consequence of leads being over validated on one or multiple fields is that the end user (auto dealer, Realtor, etc.) will miss out on potential business and the online customer becomes frustrated because of little or no communication on the status of their request. Additionally, that online customer is out of play for 30 days as their information cannot be resubmitted over the trading network as it is now deemed as a duplicate lead.

Lead over validation primarily affects the lead generator from a business perspective as lead brokers and retail lead buyers routinely expect the lead generator to absorb the loss of potential revenue on good leads that are falsely rejected. Lead Dispatch is calling the industry out to resolve this issue collectively.

Also see: Bad Lead Over Sensitivity

Let’s contrast that to the lead industry. What constitutes a real lead? While a perspective customer may not always be able, a potential lead or customer is one that is at least ready and willing.

Back in the early days of auto and real estate sales (before everyone had a computer) “real” sales people would be willing to call any name or number to qualify a potential customer or prospect.

While some may disagree, a valid lead is any basic contact information for a ready and willing prospect that will allow a salesperson to make contact with that person or entity.

Think about it, ever ask anyone for a referral? What does a salesperson typically ask for? A name and phone number. Would you tell them that  you could not accept their referral because they did not provide you with a valid email address, social security or work number?

Want to read more? Continue to What Is a Lead Worth