The fields that change how you open a call, the fields that are decoration, and the ones whose absence tells you the enquiry was never really qualified.
Lead suppliers compete on field count, because field count is easy to put on a comparison table. It is close to useless as a quality measure, since every extra question on a form both adds a field and reduces the number of people who finish the form.
The useful test is different: does this field change what I do on the call? Everything that passes is worth having. Everything that fails is a longer form for no gain.
Four, and they are consistent across both insurance and mortgage enquiries.
| Field | What it changes | What its absence implies |
|---|---|---|
| Verified phone with a verification timestamp | Whether the call connects at all | Verification is a claim rather than an event |
| Specific outcome requested | Your opening sentence and the whole frame of the call | The form asked for contact details and little else |
| Timing or trigger | Whether you book now or nurture | You will spend the first call establishing urgency |
| Source page or brand | What the consumer was told before they enquired | The operator may not own the source |
The timestamp is the part that matters. "Verified" without a time is a description of a policy. A timestamp showing an SMS code was completed at a specific moment is evidence about that specific record. Ask which one you are getting.
There is a large difference between "life insurance" and "income protection while I am self-employed", and the difference is the entire first two minutes of the call. A record that carries the consumer's own description of what they wanted lets you open by referring to their situation rather than by explaining who you are.
A mortgage enquiry from someone whose fixed rate rolls in six weeks is a different commercial proposition from one whose rate rolls in eleven months. Both are worth having. They belong in different parts of your diary, and you can only sort them if the field exists.
This field is doing double duty. It tells you what the consumer read before enquiring, which sets their expectation, and it tells you whether the operator has visibility into their own supply chain.
These appear on comparison tables and rarely change a call.
The field-count trap: Every additional required question reduces form completion. A supplier boasting 22 fields has either made the form long, which cuts the volume and skews who finishes it, or is filling most of those fields from inference rather than from the consumer.
| Verified phone with timestamp | Decisive |
|---|---|
| Specific outcome requested | Decisive |
| Timing or trigger event | High |
| Source page or brand | High |
| Best time to call | Useful |
| Inferred demographic bands | Low |
| Supplier scoring grades | Low |
Judge a record on the top group. A supplier who has the top four and eight sensible extras is offering more than a supplier with twenty fields and no verification timestamp.
The four core fields are the same. The qualifying detail underneath them is not.
| Insurance enquiry | Mortgage enquiry | |
|---|---|---|
| Outcome detail | Type of cover sought and who it is for | Purchase, refinance, first home or rate review |
| Timing signal | A life event such as a new mortgage or a new child | Fixed rate roll date or settlement date |
| Situation detail | Whether cover is currently held | Deposit position or current lender |
| Disqualifier to catch early | Whether they are outside the market you can advise on | Whether they are already unconditional with a lender |
The second question is the one that separates suppliers most sharply. A field the consumer typed carries their intent. A field appended by an enrichment vendor carries a probability, and probabilities have a habit of being presented as facts by the time they reach a CRM.
How Lead Foundry answers this: Every enquiry carries the consumer's own description of what they asked for, the verification event that let the record exist, and the source brand it came from. You can see which of our sites produced it on the record itself.
At minimum: a phone number with a verification event and timestamp, the consumer's own description of the cover they were asking about, a timing or trigger signal, and the source page or brand the enquiry came from. Additional demographic and situational fields are useful where the consumer typed them and much weaker where the supplier inferred them.
No. Field count measures form length and enrichment, not data quality. Every extra required question reduces completion rates, and appended fields carry probabilities rather than statements from the consumer. A record with eight consumer-typed fields and a verification timestamp is stronger than one with twenty fields and no evidence the phone number reaches anyone.
Yes, and it is one of the more revealing fields on the record. An operator who owns the consumer brand can always name the page and send you its live URL. An operator buying enquiries from an affiliate network often cannot, which answers a bigger question about the supply chain than the field itself does.
A record of when and how the contact details were tested on that specific enquiry, such as the moment an SMS one-time code was completed inside the form flow. It is different from a "verified" flag, which describes the supplier's general policy rather than evidence about the record in front of you.