Pacing is the cheapest lever in lead buying and the one brokers most often leave at the default. It costs nothing, any competent vendor supports it, and it decides what proportion of an order gets the speed that makes it worth its price.
Two settings
| Setting | Set it to |
|---|---|
| Daily cap | What your floor dials inside five minutes, not what it can eventually process |
| Delivery window | The hours you are genuinely staffed, in the merchant’s time zone |
Those two are the whole of it, and the second is the one people get wrong. A lead delivered at 7pm to a floor that finishes at 6 is dialled the next morning at best — it is a fresh lead that arrives aged, at the fresh price.
Match pacing to capacity, not to impatience
- Work out sustainable new leads per rep per day, with the follow-up book counted.
- Multiply by reps who are actually dialling, not headcount.
- That is your cap. Ordering faster does not produce deals faster.
- Revisit it when you hire, and when your cadence changes.
The temptation is always to get the order in quickly, because a bought order sitting undelivered feels like money doing nothing. It is doing considerably less nothing than an order sitting in a queue unworked.
Questions brokers ask
What is lead pacing?
A daily cap and a delivery window controlling how quickly an order reaches you. It is the cheapest lever in lead buying and the one most often left at its default.
How should you set a daily cap?
To what your floor can dial within five minutes, counting the follow-up book — not to what it could eventually process. Ordering faster does not produce deals faster.
Why does the delivery window matter?
Because a lead arriving after hours is dialled the next morning at best. That is a fresh lead becoming an aged one overnight, at the fresh price.
Should leads be delivered at weekends?
Only if you staff them. Seven-day delivery into a five-day floor puts roughly a third of your order into a period where nothing happens to it.
What if a vendor cannot control pacing?
Treat it as information about their operation generally. Daily caps and delivery windows are basic controls, and a vendor without them is not built for buyers who care about speed.
Alex Makowski
Founder, Infinite Bookings
Runs the lead generation operation behind Infinite Bookings — paid traffic, the funding application, and the delivery pipeline that puts records into brokers’ CRMs.
Reachable directly at alex@infinitebookings.com or 732-609-7182.