Why Bought MLM Leads Don't Convert

You have run out of people to talk to. Or you think you have, which comes to the same thing. And somewhere in the search results is a company promising fresh, exclusive, real-time network marketing leads, delivered tonight.

I understand the pull completely. Before you spend the money, here is what is actually in the box.

Where the names come from

Almost all of it traces back to one of three places.

Incentivized opt-ins. Somebody filled in a form to get something free, or to enter something, or to see the results of a quiz. The form had a checkbox about receiving information on business opportunities. They wanted the free thing. The checkbox was the toll.

Co-registration. They signed up for one offer and the small print passed their details to a network of others. They have no memory of your company because your company was never mentioned.

Aged data resold. A list from 2019 gets scrubbed, relabelled, and sold again as fresh. There is nothing stopping this and no way for you to check it.

None of that is illegal. It is just very different from what the word "lead" makes you picture.

Exclusive rarely means exclusive

Pay attention to how the pricing works. A "real-time exclusive" lead runs several dollars each. An aged bulk list runs pennies. Same underlying data, different label, and the top-of-page advertising bids for these searches run into the twenties and thirties per click, which tells you what the margins look like.

Exclusive usually means exclusive within that vendor, for a window. The same person can sit on four vendors' lists at once. By the time you call, you may be the sixth network marketer to reach them this month, all opening more or less the same way.

That is the actual reason for the reception you get. It is not your script. It is the queue.

The conversation starts below zero

Here is the part that matters more than the data quality.

When somebody you know takes your call, you start at neutral or better. They will hear you out because of who you are, not what you are selling. That existing trust is doing an enormous amount of work, and you cannot see it because you have never had to work without it.

A purchased lead does not know you and does not remember opting in. So you are not starting at zero. You are starting below it, spending the first ninety seconds explaining who you are and how you got their number. You have to build from a deficit that a warm conversation never has.

That is not a mindset problem to be pushed through. It is arithmetic.

Run the numbers before you buy

Take whatever the list costs. Divide by the number of people who will actually answer. Divide again by the number of those who will stay on the line past the first minute. Divide again by the number who will take a next step.

Most people never do this, because the vendor quotes cost-per-lead and cost-per-lead is a number about the list, not about your business. The number about your business is cost per conversation. Work it out honestly and the picture usually changes.

The thing the lead list is standing in for

Nearly every time somebody tells me they need more leads, we go and look, and there are dozens of people already in their world who were never followed up with.

Somebody who said "not right now" in March. Somebody who watched the video and did not reply. Somebody who was interested and then got busy and it quietly died. Those are not dead. Most of them are just unattended.

Buying a list is more comfortable than going back to them, because a stranger cannot remind you that you dropped the ball. That is the honest reason the lead industry is as big as it is. It sells relief from an awkward conversation, and it charges by the thousand.

You almost certainly do not have a lead problem. You have a follow-up problem, and a follow-up problem does not get better by adding more names to the top of it. It gets worse, because now there is more to drop.

If you buy them anyway

Some people will, and there are situations where testing a small batch makes sense. If that is you: buy the smallest quantity the vendor will sell, treat it as an experiment and not a strategy, track cost per real conversation rather than cost per lead, and know your local rules on calling and texting, because those are your problem and not the vendor's.

And go work your existing list first. Not because I want you to feel guilty about it, but because it is free, it is warmer, and it will tell you within a week whether the problem was ever really the leads.

---

Following up properly is a system, not a personality trait, and it is most of what we build with people inside The Lost Transition. There is a live Mastermind every Monday at 12 ET and an Inner Circle session every other Saturday. Registration is free. Get connected with us.

— Robert Blakely, The Blakester