double POSITIVE Marketing Group, Inc.

You guys know me – booth babe.

So last month at Leads-Con East, I am chatting with this guy who says he’s a big leads buyer.  He likes our LIVE Hot Transfer concept, and wants his enrollment officers to receive live, interested leads on the phone, but …

“Can’t you guys qualify them more?”

This comment shows how times have changed.  In the old days, companies were simply handing a fat pile of leads over to sales, and asking them to call them all.  It was like looking for a needle in a hay stack.

Then DoublePositive came along and found the needle in the hay stack.  We patented the LIVE Hot Transfer process, so that companies could receive phone calls from live consumers who were ready to talk with a salesperson.

Now this guy wanted to know if we could take it a step further and thread the needle for him.

“We do some simple qualifying,” I cautioned.  “But in my opinion, you should be careful what you ask for.  You might do yourself more harm than good.”

He said, “Why?  If I’m talking to people I can’t help, I want to filter those people out.”

“I understand,” I said.  “But you need to be careful who you filter out, or you will filter everybody out.”

“Not sure I follow,” he said.

I tried again.  “Think of it this way.  What if they have a family member you could help out? What if you discover there is another service or product you could provide?  You never know unless you talk to them.”

He shrugged.

“You are basically asking the call center agent to make that decision for you,” I said.  “That’s not wise.  What you should do is, let us eliminate those consumers who really had no interest of ever speaking to you about your product or service.  Let us take away that work for you.  And the rest?  Those who have raised their hand and said they want to talk to you?  You should take those calls as fast as I can transfer them to you.”

“I don’t know,” he said.  “There’s got to be an easier way.”

I gave him one of Sean’s great lines: “There’s nuggets of gold in the hills.  Finding them is the hard part – that’s our job.  It’s your job to work them.”

“Well, I need someone who will do all the work for me,” he said.

At this point I just had to laugh, shake his hand, and wish him luck.

So I’m writing this post to help folks understand.  There is a right way to use a LIVE hot transfer service and a wrong way.

If you want us to call your leads and transfer back only those that are ready to talk business, that’s the right way.

But you want us to call, qualify the lead, sell for you, close the deal and just send you the money …

Booth babe says, “Good luck.”