Why Not Buy Leads?
Leads are the lifeblood of any business, regardless of whether you are a million dollar company with hundreds of employees around the world, or a small business on the internet with only one person working behind the scenes. It is thus of no surprise that most companies are looking to get as many leads as they can. So, why not buy leads?
First of all, many business and customer leads are sold by lead generation companies. These are organizations that specialize in collecting, organizing and selling leads to interested sales people or businesses, which might include you. Their incentive is to collect as many leads as quickly and cheaply as they can, and then sell them to you for a profit.
So, why not buy leads? The short answer is because they are often of low quality and you are thus unlikely to be able to convert them into customers or sales. Why? Because lead generation companies are typically paid based on the volume of leads they have. The more leads they have to sell, the more they can charge for them.
In other words, lead generation companies tend to sell large numbers of leads, regardless of the quality. To many of these companies, all leads are created equal. Customer and business leads are treated like commodities that are gathered and sold in bulk. They have no incentive to ensure that the leads they sell can easily convert into customers or sales.
Many ignorant small business owners (and sales people) Buy Lead in Bulk from lead generation companies thinking they can spend money as a shortcut to getting more sales, but in reality they are not getting quality leads most of the time. You see, the problem with buying leads is that the ones you get are often unlikely to convert into buyers.
In essence, all you’ll be getting is just a list of names and phone numbers (or perhaps, physical addresses or email addresses). But just because you have someone’s name and contact information, doesn’t mean that they are primed to listen to your sales message. What is often missing in these leads is the intent to buy what you have to offer.
There is thus a difference between a qualified prospect, and a mere suspect. A prospect is someone who has demonstrated the intention to be interested in what you have for sale, whereas a suspect is someone who might or might not be interested at all.
As a sales person or business owner, you don’t want to waste your time, money and effort on the latter group. Suspects do not turn into prospects unless they have displayed some sort of behavior that shows they are looking to solve a problem that your product or service can help with.
The best type of prospect or lead is one that is actively searching for solutions to solve their problem. And you are unlikely to find such leads when you buy them in bulk from lead generation companies.
In this way, purchasing a list of leads in your marketing efforts may prove to be a costly mistake, especially if they come at a high cost. By contacting these people who may not have explicitly given their permission to be contacted by you, you are risking the reputation of your brand. Even worse, your emails may end up triggering their spam filters and be put on the spam blacklist.
In fact, depending on how you contact those leads, you may be breaking the law by sending unsolicited marketing emails. To make sure you are not doing anything illegal, please read up on the CAN-SPAN act (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003). This is the relevant legal document you should take a look at when considering to buy leads.
Business marketers and sales people are busy people, and so they tend to look for hortcuts to getting qualified sales leads, by buying them. Unfortunately, truly effective leads can’t be easily purchased. They have to first be educated about why they need your product or service before they can develop the intention to buy what you have to offer.
So once again, why not buy leads? The answer should be obvious by now. By buying leads, you are not really buying a list of prospects. You would likely be paying for a list of people who have never heard of you, and are not interested in what you have to say (or offer). Most of the time, Buying Leads for Your Business is simply a waste of your hard earned money.
GET THIS FREE PRESENTATION on how not to buy leads anymore.
