Buy your leads or make them? Do both

I got a good question in the mail: someone is trying to sell me leads to call. Should I buy lists, or should I go to social media to produce leads for my team?

That is an easy one. Do both. But the question behind the question is the one worth answering, because where the leads come from matters far less than what happens to them once you have them.

The three things you can control

In selling there are three things you can control: what you say, how you say it, and how often you say it.

What you say is your scripts and your objection handling. As the owner, that is on you. Even if you are the rep, it is still on you, because it is your income.

How you say it is training and drilling, until you know the material by heart and never have to think. Here is why that matters: you are in the pitch, the prospect throws something at you, and your answer is not instant. The moment you say uh, you have lost that sale. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, you might dance and save it, but the odds are gone. So you train within an inch of your life.

How often you say it is volume, and this is where I see most people fall down. In one of my operations the callers have to dial the phone about eighty times to get somebody on the line, get them to give up some time, and get them through a real presentation. It is work. It is hard work to earn thirty or forty minutes of a stranger's attention.

Know what a lead really costs

Here is the element the email never mentioned: what does the lead cost you? Not just the invoice from the list broker. The commissions, the salaries, the phone system, the people booking the appointments, the whole machine around the lead. There are a million ways to structure it, and you need to see every cost inside yours.

When we first played with social media leads in Italy, they were painfully expensive. We did not shrug and quit. I sat down with real professionals, we went through it meeting after meeting, and we brought the cost per lead down to a small fraction of where it started. Massive difference. But you do not get that by handing social media to somebody who claims they know what they are doing. You get it by working with people who actually do, and by staying in the room yourself.

Meanwhile our call center in Florida buys lists all the time. Penny leads are cheap one at a time, but when you buy them by the hundreds of thousands, the check you write is serious money. So you had better know: are the reps actually working them? Are they pushing all the way through? Or are your leads quietly burning in a drawer?

Watch it like a hawk

Put statistics on the whole campaign. How many hours is the rep in the seat? How much talk time? How much of the day is spent actually in the pitch? In my rooms it runs around three and a half hours of real pitching. Then the percentages: how many calls answered, how many got past the gatekeeper, how many reached the decision maker. Your CRM has to let you disposition every call, or you are flying blind.

And watch for the rep who hits his number early. His week ends Thursday, he has a strong Monday and Tuesday, and by Wednesday he has made what he is used to making. What do you think happens to your leads on Thursday and Friday? He pops the clutch and coasts, and he could not care less about closing. That is where sales management earns its pay. You cannot let paid-for leads die of comfort.

Beware the secret sauce

One more thing, because it will happen to you. A salesman improvises an answer one day, gets lucky, and decides he has found the secret sauce. The others hear about it and start copying him. Two weeks later your stats crash and everybody is confused.

Your leads did not change, so something else did. Get in there and investigate what they started saying differently, and put the standard back in. The standard way you sell your product is technology. Protect it.

So: buy lists, make leads on social, try it all. Then train, manage, measure, and keep your attention on every moving part. It is hard work, and it is the road. There is no other choice.