An exclusive lead is sold to one broker and never resold. A shared lead goes to three to five brokers at once. Aged data is a lead resold months or years after it was generated. Exclusive costs the most per record and is the only one where your rep is the first call the merchant takes — which is the thing that decides whether any of it funds.
If you have bought leads before, you already know the words. What nobody spells out is what they mean in practice — specifically, how many other people are dialling the same merchant while your rep is dialling them.
Each dot is a broker holding the same merchant’s phone number. This is the whole difference between the categories — the price follows from it.
| Type | Buyers per lead | Typical price | Your position |
|---|---|---|---|
| Exclusive | 1 | $65–$120 | First and only call |
| Semi-exclusive | 2–3 | $25–$65 | Second or third |
| Shared | 3–5 | $10–$30 | Fourth or later |
| Aged data | Unlimited, resold repeatedly | $0.50–$5 | Months or years late |
Those bands are what the open market runs at — they are not our quotes. And the number that matters is not in the price column. It is the last one.
A merchant fills out a funding application because they need capital now. The broker who reaches them first is having a completely different conversation from the one who reaches them fourth. By the fourth call the merchant is tired of repeating their revenue, already has two offers to compare you against, and has started to suspect their information got sold. None of that is your rep’s fault, and none of it can be fixed by a better pitch.
Usually whatever the vendor needs it to mean. It is a marketing term, not a defined one, so pin it down. Sometimes it means two buyers. Sometimes it means exclusive within a state, or within a vertical — which is not exclusivity at all if you and your competitor both work nationally.
The common failure is not a lead sold to five people on day one. It is a lead sold to you exclusively on day one, and then resold as aged data eighteen months later. Both of those statements can be true at the same time — "exclusive at time of sale" and "we also sell aged data" — and most vendors will not volunteer the second one unless you ask.
Those 40-cents-a-lead aged data ads you see on Instagram? That is somebody’s exclusive lead being sold for the fourth time. Somebody paid full price for that record once.
Genuinely, sometimes it is. If any of these describe you, the cheap end is not a mistake:
If none of those are you, the arithmetic points the other way — and it is not close. Your reps cost the same whichever list they dial. A $20 lead that never picks up costs more than a $60 lead that funds, because the expensive part was never the lead.
Aged is a spectrum, not a category, and vendors lean on that. A 31-day-old record and a two-year-old record are both sold as aged, at wildly different value, often at a similar price. Ask for the generation date rather than the age bracket — a bracket lets a vendor round in their own favour.
| Age | What is likely true | Realistic use |
|---|---|---|
| 30–60 days | Still shopping or recently funded elsewhere | Worth a call; ask what changed |
| 60–180 days | Funded, gave up, or already stacked | Renewal and stacking plays |
| 180 days–1 year | Circumstances have changed entirely | Nurture list at best |
| 1 year+ | Sold many times; some businesses closed | Volume dialling, low expectations |
None of this makes aged data worthless. It makes it a different product with a different job. The mistake is buying aged data expecting it to behave like fresh, then concluding paid leads do not work.
Usually without lying outright, which is what makes it hard to catch. Three mechanisms do most of it:
If it is not in the agreement it is not a term, it is a hope. The clauses worth insisting on are short and no reasonable vendor should object to any of them:
A vendor who will commit to the first three and balks at the fourth is usually being honest about a system they cannot fully police. That is worth knowing and not automatically disqualifying.
Yes, and it tracks how many brokers are chasing the same file. Trucking and construction see the heaviest competition, so being fourth in line costs the most there. In thinner verticals — specialist medical, some regional service businesses — a shared lead sometimes still reaches a merchant who has not been called, simply because fewer buyers are working that segment.
That is a narrow exception rather than a strategy. If you know your vertical is thin and you have the volume to work it, shared can be defensible. Assume it is not, unless you have evidence.
Generally yes, if your floor calls quickly. The lead is a small part of the total cost of working a deal — rep hours are the expensive part, and those cost the same whether the merchant has spoken to nobody or to four brokers already. Exclusive leads are worth it when you can reach the merchant first; they are wasted when leads sit for hours.
Typically three to five, sometimes more. Semi-exclusive usually means two or three, but the term has no standard definition, so ask for a specific number of recipients in writing rather than accepting a description.
Yes, and this is the most common gap. Many vendors sell exclusivity at the point of sale, then release the record back into an aged-data pool after 30 to 365 days. Ask whether the record is ever sold again in any form at any point in the future, not just whether it is exclusive today.
They can be, for the right job. Records in the 30 to 60 day range suit a disciplined follow-up cadence, and older data suits renewal and stacking plays. The failure is buying aged data expecting fresh-lead behaviour, then concluding paid leads do not work at all.
Tag every lead by source in your CRM, normalise phone numbers and emails, and check for the same record appearing under two sources. Any overlap between two vendors who both claimed exclusivity means at least one is reselling.
We will tell you straight up if we cannot help you. No commission deals, no free trials, no chasing you for three weeks.