How to identify and acquire commercial finance leads
There are a few ways to acquire commercial finance funding leads. Identifying and qualifying them is the key. Even more so, getting your marketing qualified leads to provide you with their applications and documents is key. How can you separate and know which lead strategy is best for your business today? As we identify a few of the most popular methods for lead gen in the commercial finance industry, we will try to help you gain a clear picture of what makes most sense for your business. Whether you are broker, ISO, or direct funder we’ve got some tips for you.
Top 3 ways to obtain commercial finance leads
1) Marketing Automation:
- Advantages:
- Using aged leads to create leads allows time for the dust to settle on those leads who were looking for commercial financing and may have been pounded by an extremely competitive industry of sales people. How many angry customers have you or your sales team dealt with when calling a fresh lead from a lead provider?
- The leads/applicants who start an application based on marketing automation campaigns are typically working with you exclusively, not five other companies. You will have an opportunity to win a business customer for not only this round of funding but many more.
- Staying in front of thousands of merchants on a week by week basis allows for you to build a brand that looks much like a fortune 500 company.
- Disadvantage:
- You must have a good marketing automation software and implementation to make these programs effective.
2) Purchasing leads:
- Advantages:
- (Sometimes) fresh new leads hot off the press, you could get first stab at them if you are using the right sales enablement tools but you’re still relying on having the top 5% sales people in the industry in order to produce profits rather than losses.
- If you choose your lead marketing partners carefully you could see significant boosts in closing rates.
- The business finance industry is terrible at lead response management! See my lead response management study, you will be amazed!
- Disadvantages:
- As explained above, usually aggregators farm leads out to 3-5 companies and so they are bombarded by several business finance brokers, ISOs and direct funders at the same time. Some of the lead providers don’t even provide the leads when the form came in, they are often slightly aged putting your company at a major disadvantage and over paying for an aged lead. The point; your customers are sometimes grumpy as Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino.
- If no sales enablement tools are utilized, your closing rate is destine for 2-4% of the leads you are provided at a high cost per acquisition rate.
- Many business finance companies cost per acquisition exceed $2,000.
3) ISO/broker driven originations:
Although this style of lead generation is reserved primarily for direct funders and syndicate funding partners, some ISOs have built wholesale (co-broker) lead generation programs in obtaining leads.
- Advantages:
- Application and document submissions are usually stronger meaning you deal with higher quality applications.
- Lower overhead to your office since brokers usually run their own home offices or offices elsewhere. Having a sales team that handles their own expenses can be nice.
- Disadvantages:
- No control over your sales team since they are brokers running offices elsewhere. Some companies like OnDeck have cut down their wholesale program because they are having a difficult time selling their shareholders on the idea that it’s ok to put the business’ survival in the hands of independent sales people who they have not control over.
What’s the verdict?
As you went through the top 3 ways to obtain commercial finance leads you probably gravitate toward one style or another. There is a fourth style of marketing to get these leads that we didn’t discuss. Simply taking UCC lists and tasking telemarketers or sales people with dialing a list can be effective as well. However, word of caution, over generalizing your sales people into marketing and sales reduced profitability by at least 11 percent. Whether your appetite is for one style over another I want to encourage you to consider all of these methods. The top 10 companies in the industry have preferences just like you, however they also understand that a careful blend of marketing placement leads to domination.
Contact FinServe to discuss the various programs offered. FinServe can help you plan the strategic growth of your company, provide you with lead generation through all of these verticals listed and would welcome the opportunity to provide you some advise on your current situation. Whether you are a ISO Platform looking to increase funding opportunities or a direct lender we can help you with the lead generation you have an appetite for.
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