The price of a bad lead is not the price you paid. It is the hour you spent, the call you did not make, and the reputation you spent on somebody else's landing page.
Figures in this article describe the wider market and are drawn from the third-party sources listed at the end. They are not Lead Foundry results, and nothing here is a projection of what any individual broker will achieve.
Brokers price a bad lead at whatever the invoice said. That figure is usually the smallest component of what it actually cost.
| Cost | How it shows up | Roughly how large |
|---|---|---|
| The price paid | On the invoice | The smallest of the four |
| Adviser time | Six attempts, notes, admin | Around 35 minutes per record worked properly |
| Displaced attention | A live lead called later, or not at all | Frequently the largest |
| Reputation | A consumer who did not expect the call | Unmeasured, and durable |
The third row is the one that separates a nuisance from a real problem. Contact odds decay sharply with time, so an hour spent on a dead record is not merely wasted; it is an hour during which a live record was getting harder to reach.
Price it at what an adviser hour is worth to you, then note that most of an adviser's week is not available for this. Salesforce research puts the share of time sales professionals spend actively selling at around 40%, with the rest going to administration and internal work.
That means a bad lead is not consuming an average hour. It is consuming an hour from the minority of the week that produces revenue, which is the most expensive hour you have.
A consumer contacted about something they did not ask for forms a view about your firm, not about the supplier who sold the record. They will not complain, in most cases. They will simply not take your call in two years when the trigger event they will actually need you for arrives.
There is a compliance edge to this as well. In New Zealand, IPP 3A requires reasonable steps to make a person aware that you hold information collected from a source other than them. A call to someone who has no idea why you have their details is the situation that principle exists to address.
The version of this that is recoverable: A replacement policy makes the invoice whole. Nothing makes the hour whole, and nothing makes the consumer un-annoyed. That asymmetry is the argument for spending more per record upstream rather than relying on credits downstream.
Four things: the price on the invoice, roughly 35 minutes of adviser time across a six-attempt cadence, the live lead that was not called during that hour, and the reputation cost of contacting someone who did not expect it. Only the first is recoverable through a replacement policy.
Because it comes out of the minority of the week that produces revenue. Salesforce research puts active selling at around 40% of a sales professional's time, and contact odds decay sharply while an adviser is occupied elsewhere, so a dead record costs the hour and the live lead that aged during it.
Against criteria agreed in writing before supply started, through a per-record process with a stated turnaround and no cap. Check the claim window allows a full six-attempt cadence, because many invalid records only reveal themselves after several attempts, and a 48 hour window expires before you can know.
No. It makes the invoice whole and leaves the three larger costs where they fell. That asymmetry is the reason to weight supplier selection toward upstream quality rather than toward the generosity of the credit policy.