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The complaint every owner hears from the floor is that the leads don’t pick up, the numbers are bad, the batch is bad. The usual answer is a tool: a new dialler, local presence numbers, voicemail drops, FaceTime audio. Alex runs a lead company that sells every type of lead, from twelve-month-old aged records to real-time exclusives sent the second the merchant opts in, to around fifty brokerages, and he sees the pickup rate on all of them. His conclusion is that the tool is rarely the reason.
The dialler has to work. It is not why they don’t answer
Alex does not say the dialler is irrelevant. It has to be in order, and every number has to be verified, which is the one-time passcode against “validated” question. Calling fast and more than once, from a number the merchant can place, is hygiene too, and the four causes of low pickup covers each. But those are the floor of doing the job. Once they are in place, nine times out of ten the reason a lead does not pick up is the lead.
Who else is calling your merchant
Every broker who has the same record is calling the same phone. Merchants already get fifty or more calls a day, and the ones on a widely sold list get them from shops that bought exactly what you bought. By the time your rep dials, the merchant is screening every unknown number, and no dialler setting gets through that.
| What you bought | Who else is calling | What the rep runs into |
|---|---|---|
| Aged leads, resold 50 times | Every shop that bought the same list, for months | A merchant who stopped answering long ago |
| Shared leads sold to 50 or 100 brokers | Dozens of shops, within minutes | A race nobody can win by dialling faster |
| Shared, to a handful of buyers | A few shops, at the same moment | Winnable if you are first and say which application |
| Real-time exclusive, sent only to you | Nobody on this form; maybe another form they filled out | A merchant expecting the call: a layup |
There is no truly exclusive lead in MCA; merchants shop, and an exclusive lead can still have filled out four forms. What you control is how many brokers are calling because of the lead you paid for. Alex has a line for the vendors at the bottom of the table: he does not know how they sleep at night, reselling the same list to fifty different shops.
Fix the leads, fix the pickup rate
There is no secret hack. Call higher-quality, higher-intent and less-shopped leads and the pickup rate follows. Across Alex’s clients, real-time exclusive leads with OTP-verified mobile numbers are called within sixty seconds and pick up at 40 to 50%, because nobody is chasing anybody. Whether you can afford those today is a separate question, and paying with time or paying with money is how he answers it.
Questions brokers ask
Will a new dialler fix my MCA pickup rate?
Rarely. The dialler has to work and the numbers have to be verified, but once that is in place, nine times out of ten a low pickup rate is the leads. A merchant who has had dozens of calls from other brokers will not answer yours whatever dialler places it.
Do local presence numbers increase pickup on MCA leads?
They help at the margin, and are worth having. They do not fix a lead that fifty other brokers bought. Alex crosses local numbers out on the board for that reason: the problem is who you are calling, not the number you call from.
How many calls a day do merchants get from MCA brokers?
Fifty or more, on the board in this video, for merchants on widely sold lists. That is why a lead resold to many shops stops answering unknown numbers, and why a lead sent only to you the moment it opts in does not.
Are shared MCA leads worth buying?
Shared to a handful of buyers, they can be, if you call first and say which application you are calling about. Leads shared with 50 or 100 brokers are not worth buying at any price, because every one of them is calling the same merchant.
What pickup rate should real-time exclusive MCA leads get?
Across Infinite Bookings clients, real-time exclusive leads with verified mobile numbers, called within sixty seconds, pick up at 40 to 50%. Called hours later, they behave like aged leads.
Reference
Watch: fix the leads, fix the pickup rateTen minutes on why the leads, not the dialler, decide the pickup rate.
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.