Every day I talk to people who are wanting to buy leads.

Every day I see people going through the existential crisis of to buy, or not to buy leads.

There are three kinds of “lead buyers” out there- people who have bought leads and been “burnt”, people who have never bought but have heard of those who have been “burnt” and those who have bought and succeeded.

If you spend any time on the internet researching this – the horror stories are endless.

The reality is, the only true horror of buying leads would be one thing:
They took your money produced 0 leads and vanished.

In which case you would just call your credit card company and report it as fraud (I don’t recommend doing this if it’s not actual fraud- there can be serious consequences).

Those companies would quickly lose their merchant accounts and no longer exist.

So there’s not actually as many “scammers” out there as one would be lead to believe. There’s so many systems in place in todays day in age that exist to protect you, and get the bad guys off the platforms.

Anyone who’s been around longer than 90 days and has active clients I can say with confidence, is not a scammer. It’s not that easy to scam people these days. You simply cannot get away with it multiple times. That’s not to say that there aren’t newbies out there- so make sure to do your research to see how long they’ve been around.

Why is it though that there are so many horror stories about lead generation? Yet there is such a high demand for it? It’s really a paradox.

In the next few sentences I’m going to tell you the absolute truth about it all.

Business Opportunity “Investments”

Buying leads is a business opportunity investment.

It’s no different than buying a franchise, joining an MLM, investing in inventory for a store front or renovating a building for a new restaurant.

The funny thing about business opportunity investments is that they have a massive fail rate.

People all over the world start new businesses every day. In fact nearly 3,000 new businesses are registered every single day in America. Yet many businesses don’t make it.

In fact, according to Investopedia, 75% of businesses won’t make it just past a decade. Yet most people work for 30 years. Some industries have an even worse fate, take real estate for example. 87% of realtors will not survive in real estate for 5 years.

The Bell Curve effect

At this point you might be reading this excited about lead  generation and are now feeling nothing but doom and gloom. There’s a reason why I’m prefacing you with all this information before getting to the point.

People, human beings.. Us. You. Me. You’re neighbor. We are not programmed to win.

We are programmed to be mediocre. Survive and conform within our social circles of average. Support the bell curve.

So unless we have a predisposition to winning and were raised in the billionaires club, those who win are simply statistical outliers.

Everyone else will succumb to an average life.

Which means, they will not do extraordinary things in business.

They will take fewer risks, they will be less committed, they will easily give up on things that seem overly challenging.

We are a society of quitters.

It’s not our fault though, it’s really just our nature. Anyone who does things out of the norm of the social circle is chastised for being different. So naturally we do not want to stray too far. Nor do we want our peers to cast away into other directions, we must bring them back to our level. It’s actually just a survival trait we have.

Understanding what lead generation really is

Let’s focus for a quick second on what the core of lead generation is without the fancy term. It’s a form of direct response advertising that causes people who might be interested in something to raise their hand, and exchange their information so that they receive what they desired – generally a phone call or consultation. We will call them prospects. Those prospects then go into the pipeline of the business owner, and the business owner is to reach out in an attempt to make a sale.

It’s merely the act of introducing a business to a prospect without having to stand on the corner and shake the hands of strangers in hopes of finding one who might be open to learning about what you have to offer.

It’s no different than going to a networking event, sending out mailers, door knocking etc.

It’s just a-heck-of-a-lot easier because it doesn’t take a lot of time.

It just costs money.

How the successful outliers think

For the average person, they value money over time, for successful people they value time over money.

Which takes us back to the average person. The average person will happily trade 40 hours per week doing something they don’t enjoy to take home an average income.

Though the average person only actually gets 3 hours worth of work done- the rest is wasted.

What they don’t come to terms with is that time is non renewable. So if there are ways to increase money while minimizing your time…

Chances are you would be happier and wealthier.

But again- people are average and teaching that mindset is easier said than done as our social circles will always try to pull us back to the median income with the 40 hour work week.

Now those who realize that their time is worth more than money, the statistical outliers, the ones who make it past 5 years in real estate or 15 years in business..

They find ways to maximize their income and minimize their time spent on things they either don’t like, are inefficient, or don’t move the needle forward.

If you spend 40 hours per week door knocking 300 houses and only 3 hours of your week are actually spent with prospects. You have wasted 37 hours.

If you spent money on “lead generation” and got in front of 3000 people and spent 40 hours only working with those who have high intent to transact – you just maximized your time by 13x and your efficiency by 10x.

You are now 23x more productive.

Imagine getting an more hours in a day and being 10x more efficient. Meaning more time spent on things you enjoy and having more wealth to fund things like vacations, fun activities, fancy date nights etc.

That’s how outliers think.

The average person would look at the cost of lead generation, and accrue it to how much time it would take to make up for that potential loss if they don’t earn anything.

This is starting out from a scarcity mindset. Which will quickly escalate to: If they don’t make an instant ROI, they get post purchase remorse, and begin panicking because they money is more valuable than their time.

They will begin engaging in activities that will actually cannibalize their success.

Money Mindset Matters

That negative mindset bleeds into the possibility of lead generation working, they become nervous when talking to their prospects (the term “a desperate person never gets a sale” is a real thing).

They then lose focus and begin engaging in activities to try to make their investment back by engaging in their old ways of drumming up business instead of focusing on their lead generation efforts. “I know effort x used to get me y, so I should begin doing that so I don’t lose my money”.

It spirals out of control and their peers tell them they shouldn’t buy leads (average people bringing average people back down) and it’s this perpetuating cycle.

Then you have the outliers. They see the value of their time. They make decisions based on sound logic of, “if I can use advertising to get in-front of x number of people and maximize my time- how can I further maximize it by creating systems to become even more efficient?”

That’s a winning mindset. There’s no emotion tied to the investment. So they make clear, logical decisions on if it’s going to work.

They make decisions based on “if my initial investment is X, and I stand to make Y, it’s worth the risk to try it”

Where as average people will do emotional mental gymnastics looking at their initial cost instead of their opportunity cost. They will consult with people who are not where they want to be, and will make decisions based off of emotion. If you’ve ever read any number of books on business you will quickly learn one of the key lessons- emotion kills business.

Is it worth it?

Is it worth it to maximize your time and be more efficient and value time over money?

It is worth it to break through the confides of being average and elevate to a new level of success in your life?

Those are questions you ultimately have to ask yourself.

The outliers are the ones who survive and eventually thrive in business and break through the social confines of being average.

It really comes down to if you want that or not and how badly. Our client Zahid was terrified to invest in lead generation but after one week- he closed 2 deals within a week with our service. Watch his story here.

Successful people make decisions fast

There’s no reward if there’s no risk.

If you’re a realtor who’s curious about our pay per appointment lead generation model or our pay per close model click here and we can chat more.

If you’re curious which platform is the best to advertise this article will help you here.