[jotucker1983]

Karen,

Great post and I agree with a good chunk of what you said, however, from my experience it's all about the leads. What is a lead for our space? A lead is a guy with a business that generically qualifies for the product, who at this very moment or in the upcoming short term, will have a need for alternative working capital for (insert whatever reason here).

You can find this guy through a variety of ways, such as through strategic network referrals, large marketing budgets, or even through doing random cold calling out of the Yellow Pages.

But note, the issue with the random cold calling is that your conversion to leads is going to be very, very, low, which means you usually burn the hell out and don't generate enough leads to produce enough new applications, to produce enough fundings for you to have staying power. That's the honest truth because you just will not have many small business owners from a generic pool, who will have a need for alternative working capital with sky high rates.

- Gatekeepers don't matter
- Zig Ziggler books don't matter
- Positive affirmations don't matter

Either the business needs alternative capital or not. If the gatekeeper on the telephone is pushing you away from speaking with the "owner", it's usually for a reason and that reason is because the "owner" has told them that they don't need any thing.

Also the problem with UCCs is that the record is getting 10 - 20 calls a week. After so many calls, the owner tells the gatekeeper to no longer push through anymore calls to him. Either he's found the company he will work with (and told said rep to call his cell) or he will renew with his current company, but he's done entertaining more companies. That's the truth.

Why do you think we all get paid ***Rockstar commission *** If clients were easy to find and their was an automated way to do it, the Lenders would drop our commission to 1% because they wouldn't need us.

Correct, but what they would do instead is hire internally with a "base pay" and say that to get a "bonus" you have to hit some significantly high set quota amount that usually nobody hits or if somebody hits it, they will make sure to set it much higher next time so nobody hits it. They will also rotate guys out often, and when they hire the next set of guys they will make sure to set their base pay even lower.

We get paid a lot in commission because we are entrepreneurs. We have identified some open demand in the market (a pool of guys with need for alternative capital) and we are bringing them to our lending/funding partners for servicing in exchange for 2% - 10% in commission on the funded amount. A robot can't do that. An offshore little girl in a call center can't do that. It takes a sophiscated, analytical, and technical "professional" with business acumen and capital to do that.

It's why those of us that practice true "business development" will never be replaced by a robot or a little girl in a call center in India.

[Franklin]

Karen,

It's why those of us that practice true "business development" will never be replaced by a robot or a little girl in a call center in India.

There are certain tasks that automation will never replace, like human relationships, but there are plenty of grunt actions, like manually dialing a phone, or counting numbers and data points, that a robot can easily replace and do more efficiently than a human with feelings and emotions that deals with boredom and de-motivation.

Even if a robot can generate 1 qualified app from 1500 phone calls, they can do it in under an hour, and for less than $30.

If you paid a telemarketer $12 an hour, they would take a whole day to generate 1 - 2 apps from the yellow pages (if we say 1.5 apps, that would be $96 for the day, or about $64 per app out). A robot is cheaper, faster, doesn't complain, doesn't take bathroom or smoke breaks, doesn't burn out, and if you tell it to triple it's production, you don't need to say one word, just give him a slap in the head (or move the slider on it's interface a little to the right).