Firstly a little background on ourselves. We come from a cold-calling background, but no more – we now purchase leads from lead providers.
Let’s get one thing straight – lead providers will get a name and a number at all costs and sell it at the highest price they can achieve. Some are better than others, i.e. some will take further information and complete a mini factfind for you prior to selling you the lead.
As you can imagine, the conversion rates on these are greater that the likes of lead generation sites. They all profess to sell you the leads in real-time, which is debatable, as our leads are phoned within minutes of us receiving them and on countless occasions there is no answer.
The other thing all brokers will have heard from prospects is ‘we were looking for an online quote and didn’t want to be phoned’. When you approach the providers with this, the answer is always the same. As long as the name and number are correct, they can’t give a refund.
I suggest that when the prospects enter the various information-gathering websites that the providers use, a strapline should be obvious prior to the person filling in their details. In large letters it should say: ‘By filling in the following information you will be called by a Financial Services Authority (FSA) registered whole of market broker within the next 24 hours’, and it should not appear at the end, as a user will submit the information regardless as they have spent time filling the details in.
Lead providers should be regulated by the FSA. Then perhaps the quality of the leads they are providing would improve. They all profess to listen to broker feedback but alas, no change. Why is this? They are making more money by providing quantity rather than quality.
Ian Rogers
Creative Asset Management Solutions ltd
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