Long before I got into consulting I used to sell leads to mortgage brokers.
(If you want to talk about shady, look into generating and selling leads for mortgage brokers. Sheeesh.)
We sold leads for about $100 a pop, which was about 20x more than most other lead providers were charging.
Companies like LendingTree would generate a single lead and sell it a bunch of companies. We generated exclusive leads and sent it to one company. We had more demand than we could possibly handle.
Why?
Mortgage brokers realized that the first person to get a lead on the phone was statistically going to come out on top and win the client.
If it meant paying a premium on an untouched lead that was significantly more likely to close, it was a no-brainer.
So when I started to grow my agency and we started generating leads of our own, I made sure that we followed up on new leads as soon as possible. It didn’t matter if it was midnight — if my phone dinged and it was a new lead, I’d respond right away and try to setup a meeting.
Our leads raved about our responsiveness. You wouldn’t believe how many times I was told, “I haven’t heard back from half of your competitors!” It worked, and it was one of the things that I credit to winning so many blind inbound leads that reached out to us (after Googling us or being told by a peer to check us out.)
But we don’t want to be glued to our inboxes.
We don’t want to be stuck responding to emails in the wee hours of the night.