Question

Topic: Other

Compensation For Generating Qualified Leads?

Posted by Anonymous on 8/3/2010 at 1:36 PM ET 250 Points
Hi everyone! I have been working with a small PR/Marketing firm for a year now and have just begun working on a marketing campaign that uses a points system to generate qualified leads. My job is to call businesses and gather information in order to determine the value of the lead. The more information I gather, (ie: budget, need for product, timeline for purchase, etc.) the more points I assign and once the total reaches 20 points the contact is deemed a qualified lead. Then I turn the leads over to my boss, who sells them to our clients. Up until this point, I have been paid by the hour for all of my work. For this campaign, I have been informed that I will not be paid my regular hourly rate, but will instead only be compensated for the qualified leads. So I am wondering how other people normally get paid in this type of campaign. Thus far, 900 people on our list have been contacted and out of those only 7 have been qualified leads, which is a bit discouraging. I just think it's a little unreasonable to ask us to put in a great deal of hours when we are not guaranteed any kind of return. I want to make sure that I am not being taken advantage of because it appears that the callers are doing all the legwork and basically volunteering their time for free. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks so much!
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Levon on 8/3/2010 at 1:52 PM Accepted
    Sounds like you are doing all the leg work. I would charge them $1000+ a lead or whatever those 7 leads come to in combined hourly effort.
  • Posted by telemoxie on 8/3/2010 at 2:47 PM Accepted
    I was in business for a dozen years as an independent sales lead generator, and I used to turn down deals like that all the time.

    Maybe the new deal is great, maybe it's terrible. I don't know, I was never compensated in that manner.

    Many people want to pay you as an independent contractor, but they want you to really function as an employee. For example, are you able to take on additional clients? To you work from your own facilities? Do you work set hours? Are you subject to detailed procedures, e.g. are you forced to use a certain salesforce animation software package?

    do you have sales experience? Do you have any technical skills? These things can dramatically improve your marketability and your billing rates. I strongly recommend that you read at least one sales or marketing book per month.

    My solution was to work for multiple companies on a part-time basis. In this way, I could let the market set my rates, and I could walk away from people who treated me poorly.

    Believe it or not, what you do is difficult and valuable and important. If you are stirring up business, you deserve to be paid.

    If you like, I would be happy to discuss this further one-on-one. No charge. Simply click my user name, check out my profile and give me a call. Good luck.
  • Posted on 8/3/2010 at 3:18 PM Author
    I appreciate the responses! I am an independent contractor and I get paid $16 an hour. For this project, we are paid $5 per point for qualified leads, which totals to only $100. So if I work a 20 hour week and end up getting 1 or 2 leads I'm still getting paid significantly less than I normally would with my hourly rate. And based on the fact that only 7 out of 900 have been qualified leads so far (and this project has been in motion for a few months now- I was just recruited last week), the probability of getting even 1 lead per week is not good. As far as the remaining leads, we may or may not get compensated for those under 20 points depending on whether or not another client purchases them from the firm. I was recruited for this project because of my excellent track record, but almost all of the work I've done for the firm has been in PR. So I am in very unfamiliar territory with this marketing campaign and don't know how these things normally work. I just feel like the way they are paying us doesn't make any sense at all.
  • Posted by michael on 8/3/2010 at 3:39 PM Accepted
    My advice: Run. You're not being paid enough. There is no guarantee that the people who receive your leads are even working hard enough to convert them. THAT hits your pocket.

    Good people are hard too find and worth paying. Try something like jobfox.com and see what other pay plans are out there.

    Michael
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