[DirectMedia_Scott]

Hello everyone:

I'm a funder and have been in the industry for a number of years. Without any marketing, I consistently do between $50-$75,000 of funded deals every month. These deals come to me from a network of referring brokers, CPAs, and the like. Thus they are easily converted into deals.

I tried to launch my own outbound campaigns for new business but haven't gotten the results I'm looking for. Of course, I've tried multiple sources for leads (all websites that are well discussed on this forum). But to be honest my conversion rates just aren't that high, or they're not as high I'd like them to be. My results are the same regardless of whether who I've chosen to provide leads.

Example -- recently I launched a campaign focused on businesses that have been around for 1 year or more that did at least $100K in revenue last year with 500 credit or above. I received 32 leads so far. Here are my stats:

8 refunded leads (no contact information or no money) 25%
10 no answers 31% (30+ call attempts over 3 days with emails)
2 not interested 6.2%
5 that never sent in signed paperwork and then went silent (15%)
7 apps generated - 22%


Out of the apps generated:

1 had a pre-existing default that nullified him from lenders
2 that didn't qualify due to terrible credit and/or industry type (and yes I took them to all the vultures)
1 app that got terms from lenders but didn't take because he didn't want the high interest
2 that funded
1 app that's still waiting for responses from lenders

Average deal size was $6000 (which is nothing). I barely made money back on these leads and terminated my relationship with a provider who is touted well on this board. Perhaps a case can be made that I got out too early, or that I got a bad batch. But I haven't had much luck beyond these dismal results pay per lead campaigns in general. This is just a recent example.

I'm about to try live transfers. I've never done that before. Should I anticipate better results? Is my method broken? What can I correct?

We'll for starters, funding 2 deals out of 32 leads, isn't really horrible. That said, the average deal size is what killed it. I think it's fair to assume that if each of those deals were for 25k, you'd probably be pretty happy.

My company offers live inbound callers from the radio. Each inbound caller is exclusive and comes to you in real time. We convert higher than direct mail, and much much higher than press 1's.

Regardless of the avenue you choose to try next, it's wise to realize that you will ultimately have to sort through some riff raff to get a good application that you can fund.

The two main questions you have to ask your self when evaluating a lead source are as follows. 1. Did I make my money back, and keep a decent cost per acquisition? 2. Can I scale this lead source to higher volumes to bring in more income?

If the answer after a test is yes to both of these questions, you'll find your self a winner.