5 Hot Tips To Bringing In Top Quality Leads « Direct Response Marketing

Feb 21 2011

5 Hot Tips To Bringing In Top Quality Leads

By Rich 18 Comments

If the 3 most important words in real estate are Location, Location, and Location, then the 3 most important words in direct response are Quality, Quality, and Quality.

I know a lot of guys that can hit a hundred leads a day and create more value than publishers that hit a thousand leads a day. There’s all types of pitfalls and tricks to hitting massive numbers, but at the end of the day your backend stats will tell all.

My good friend Gary McNelley, owner of MarketHealth.com, noted that 1 hardsale is worth 10 trials. I couldn’t agree with him more.

Here’s 5 tips on how to garnish top quality leads:

1. Strategically Align Your Campaign

Discover complimentary services and strategically align your offer. Do you have a fulfillment company? How about an auto-dialer? Great! Create a strong referral agreement and align yourself with the top CRMs, website designers, traffic sources, merchant processors, and hosting companies.

Go above and beyond your competition. Create enormous value for your referring partner. Payout weekly, or even daily. Make your referral program fully transparent. KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). Don’t add bullshit legalese, just make it point blank.

When leads come in, follow through. Go above and beyond to show that you value the free leads you’re receiving – bcc your partner. Put them on 3 way and mute the call. Let them know that you’re going all out to close the leads they’re sending.

If you do this you’re leads will start flooding in. So long as you have the systems in place to handle the volume – bliss!

2. Strictly Control Your Traffic

I talked to a really sharp Purdue grad. gone internet marketer named Rahul last week. Rahul noted that he was running a free trial offer on Azoogle at a $45 CPA. When he told me this I could literally feel my blood pressure rise. This poor bastard had a vacuum on his wallet and was about to learn about it after it was too late.

Rahul quickly pulled his offer and started reaching out to mini networks.

At most, you should have 5-6 publishers pushing volume to your accounts, and each publisher should hit a minimum of a few hundred to a few thousands leads a day. If you’re paying these publishers then you have absolute right to know exactly who they are, and it’s your right to work with them direct.

For advertisers starting out, there’s no need for more than 1 publisher or subid running your offer at any given time. (period)

3. Stick to Highly Targeted Traffic Sources

Focus on top tier traffic sources. i.e. If your running a PPC campaign, target commercial intent keywords.

4. Create A Barrier To Entry

Small, low profit clients often take just as much time if not more to manage than high end clients.

Set barriers to vet the wasteful leads. Then create a service or referral partnership to monetize the lower end clients. From my experience, life is better when you sell them down the river

5. Turn Away Those That Don’t Meet You’re Criteria

This tip is similar to 4, though mutually exclusive. One of my recent projects targeted politicians, high profile individuals, professional athletes, and established corporate brands. Approximately 90% of our leads do not fit this criteria.

We have created referral partnerships with our competitors to monetize these non-qualified leads. We simply forward the leads that do not qualify and let our competitors handle them.

Part of my new years resolution was to stop doing business with low profit / overly needy clients. The barrier to entry I created was an hourly consulting fee of $350. The moment a prospect gives us a modicum of belief that our cost is a problem, we cease communication. Why?

They just qualified themselves as overly needy / low profit. I work with a handful of top notch advertisers, some that are more capital intensive than others. The one common trait all share is their unwavering tenacity to succeed – they put their money where their mouth is.

The results: more money, more free time, and less headaches

In direct response marketing, the quality of your leads is everything.

CraftyK

Allow me to be the first to admit that I needed this lesson today. I find myself in this situation often and realize that I have spent to many hours on the phone with leads that have no intention of becoming clients. Looking back on it now, had I shared your mindset years ago, my business would be bigger than it is right now. I would have been able to focus on quality clients and leads and walked away from those that weren’t worth the time or effort in the end.
- http://www.GormanEconomics.com Rich
  
  ABC
CraftyK

Allow me to be the first to admit that I needed this lesson today. I find myself in this situation often and realize that I have spent to many hours on the phone with leads that have no intention of becoming clients. Looking back on it now, had I shared your mindset years ago, my business would be bigger than it is right now. I would have been able to focus on quality clients and leads and walked away from those that weren’t worth the time or effort in the end.
JaimeB

“The moment a prospect gives us a modicum of belief that our cost is a problem, we cease communication.”

I am going to print that sentence off and tape it to the top of my computer screen. Just today I received an email from a client who wanted me to work over the weekend to complete a contract for social media and content. I received an email back from her today requesting that we also develop her website and include monthly website maintenance in the contract. The kicker was that in addition to adding the website build and monthly website updates, she also wanted the price reduced by more than HALF.

Talk about overly needy, low profit.

Thanks for the encouragement to tell her to hit the road.
- http://www.GormanEconomics.com Rich
  
  Join a good affiliate program and send the lead to another company that’s less expensive.
JaimeB

“The moment a prospect gives us a modicum of belief that our cost is a problem, we cease communication.”

I am going to print that sentence off and tape it to the top of my computer screen. Just today I received an email from a client who wanted me to work over the weekend to complete a contract for social media and content. I received an email back from her today requesting that we also develop her website and include monthly website maintenance in the contract. The kicker was that in addition to adding the website build and monthly website updates, she also wanted the price reduced by more than HALF.

Talk about overly needy, low profit.

Thanks for the encouragement to tell her to hit the road.
KConway

Let’s talk about barriers.

What kind of barriers do you use? Emails? Contact forms? Answering services?

I would be interested to know how you funnel your clients through your barriers in order to maximize your time and filter out clients that could be moved on to other providers.
- http://www.GormanEconomics.com Rich
  
  It depends on the business.
  
  We use emails at direct response with an upfront cost for our time.
  
  In other company’s we use answering services. We take down information and call back after we’ve researched the client. There’s all types of clues you can pick up on – from industry to to professional experience – it’s all based on tone.
KConway

Let’s talk about barriers.

What kind of barriers do you use? Emails? Contact forms? Answering services?

I would be interested to know how you funnel your clients through your barriers in order to maximize your time and filter out clients that could be moved on to other providers.
Jermaine

Great article. It’s so easy to take every lead and attempt to run with it. In the end you lose money trying to juggle serious paying clients with those who are “just shopping around” and have no intention of moving forward.

Thank you for the reminder that business is business.

Oh, and I really like the idea of moving some leads down the river. Perhaps this would help us avoid some of our bottlenecks.
Jermaine

Great article. It’s so easy to take every lead and attempt to run with it. In the end you lose money trying to juggle serious paying clients with those who are “just shopping around” and have no intention of moving forward.

Thank you for the reminder that business is business.

Oh, and I really like the idea of moving some leads down the river. Perhaps this would help us avoid some of our bottlenecks.
Samantha

Do you have plans on writing a little more about each of these tips? I would love to know more about how you control your traffic and how you find the highly targeted traffic sources.
- http://www.GormanEconomics.com Rich
  
  Hey Samantha, more to come What specifically do you want to know?
Samantha

Do you have plans on writing a little more about each of these tips? I would love to know more about how you control your traffic and how you find the highly targeted traffic sources.
TMan

Thanks for writing this article. I really needed this today. I find myself focusing on clients that I know aren’t worth the time or effort. I sometimes feel like I can encourage them to spend more or continue their work even with a limited budget. This post was the final push I needed to finally tell them that they aren’t going to make the cut.

It’s easy for me to feel as though I, as the service provider, must take on every client that comes my way. This post is a reminder that my clients need to pay for my expertise and that I need to stop underselling my services.

Thanks again!
TMan

Thanks for writing this article. I really needed this today. I find myself focusing on clients that I know aren’t worth the time or effort. I sometimes feel like I can encourage them to spend more or continue their work even with a limited budget. This post was the final push I needed to finally tell them that they aren’t going to make the cut.

It’s easy for me to feel as though I, as the service provider, must take on every client that comes my way. This post is a reminder that my clients need to pay for my expertise and that I need to stop underselling my services.

Thanks again!
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GetBigGetMoney

If you dont mind, can you explain these 3 paragraphs, it seems very important only i dont understand.
1. Strategically align your offer.
Discover complimentary services and strategically align your offer. Do you have a fulfillment company? How about an auto-dialer? Great! Create a strong referral agreement and align yourself with the top CRMs, website designers, traffic sources, merchant processors, and hosting companies.

Go above and beyond your competition. Create enormous value for your referring partner. Payout weekly, or even daily. Make your referral program fully transparent. KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). Don’t add bullshit legalese, just make it point blank.

When leads come in, follow through. Go above and beyond to show that you value the free leads you’re receiving – bcc your partner. Put them on 3 way and mute the call. Let them know that you’re going all out to close the leads they’re sending.