The case rests on two prices. The price per record is the one suppliers quote. The price per client decides whether your marketing paid for itself, and shared records are dear on that measure however cheap they look.
The price per record and the price per client
A lead is the product of advertising spend. Someone paid for the ad, the landing page and the checking that turned a stranger into an enquiry. Sold to one firm, that firm carries the whole cost, and the price per record shows it.
Sold to four firms, each pays a share and calls it a bargain. The bargain ends when the investor picks one of the four. Three firms now own a record that produced nothing, and their price per client went up, not down.
What does a shared record do to an investor over a morning?
Every firm on a shared list knows the clock is running. The Harvard Business Review studied 1.25 million sales leads for The Short Life of Online Sales Leads. Firms that made contact within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead as those that waited an hour more. Against firms that waited 24 hours or longer, the gap was more than 60 times.
So four firms ring the same investor inside the hour. The first call is a conversation. The second is a repeat of it. By the third the investor is irritated, and the fourth goes to voicemail. The record is used up by lunchtime, and the investor has learned that enquiring was a mistake.
One call, made when you are ready
An exclusive record removes the race. Nobody else is ringing, so the adviser can read the stated goal, budget, deposit and timeframe, form a view, and then call. The investor hears one considered opinion instead of four pitches.
For an advisory that matters more than it would on a sales floor. The product is a plan, and a plan is sold in a conversation with room to breathe. Divide what you spent on leads by the clients you signed, and the dearer record is the cheaper one.
What the word has to cover
Exclusive at the moment of sale is the easy part. The word earns its price only if it also covers the ways a supplier gets paid twice for one record. Each of these turns an exclusive lead back into a shared one, only later.
- Re-selling: the record is never sold again to anyone, under any campaign name, at any later date
- Recycling: the record is never pushed into a later campaign as aged data or a warm list
- Duplicates: a repeat enquiry from the same investor is treated as a duplicate, not as a fresh sale
- Adjacent buyers: the record is never passed to a broker or a sales agent alongside the advisory
What you pay for, and what you do not
You pay one agreed price for each lead that passed the checks and matched the brief you gave. The price is set in writing before anything runs and does not move. There is no retainer, no lock in and no minimum term, and the advertising is our cost whether it produces a lead or not.
A wrong number, duplicate, out of market enquiry or non investor is replaced or credited when flagged within five business days. What is never on the invoice is a record somebody else also bought. Each lead goes to one advisory, and it stays there.