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An aged lead and a real-time lead can be the same merchant. The difference is when you reach them, and that difference is the whole premium. An aged lead is priced to be called whenever. A real-time exclusive lead is priced on the assumption that your phone rings while the merchant is still holding theirs.
What the premium buys
| Aged lead | Real-time exclusive lead | |
|---|---|---|
| What it costs | Cents to a few dollars a record | About $50 to $200 a lead, by source |
| When it can be called | Whenever | Now |
| Who has called already | Usually several brokers, over weeks | Nobody, if you are first |
| What the merchant remembers | Often nothing | The form they submitted a minute ago |
| Called an hour later | No different | An aged lead, at the real-time price |
The whole point of running real-time exclusive leads off Meta, in Alex’s words, is that the moment the merchant opts in on the landing page, on their phone, you are calling them and helping them and nobody else is. That moment is what the extra dollars pay for. Calling in five minutes, an hour or the next day keeps the price and throws away the product, which is why he calls it the highest level of waste in the account.
Why five minutes is already late
The usual target, ours included until this video, is five minutes with sixty seconds as the stretch. The video moves the line: sixty seconds is the standard and five minutes is already burning the spend. The reason is the competitor. On the pickup-rate board the first other broker calls one minute after submit, and nothing stops the merchant filling in other applications the same morning. Exclusive means nobody else buys your record; it does not mean nobody else is dialling.
Adjust the floor to the lead
- Take delivery by webhook straight into the CRM, not a sheet or an email. Sixty seconds does not survive a step where somebody has to look.
- Assign to a named rep with an alert that interrupts, and keep reassignment after five minutes as the safety net rather than the target.
- Only take delivery in hours somebody is there to dial. A real-time lead that lands at 6am in an empty office is an aged lead by nine.
- Measure time to first dial by rep in seconds, not hours, and read the median.
If Alex had to pick one of the five essentials, this is it: by far the highest-leverage way to make more money from ads already paid for. The other four — the passcode, the pixel, budget and creatives and drop-off tracking — decide which merchants arrive. This one decides whether you are the broker they talk to.
Questions brokers ask
How fast should I call a real-time MCA lead?
Within sixty seconds of the merchant opting in. Calling in five minutes, an hour or the next day is burning the ad spend that produced the lead.
Is five minutes fast enough for speed to lead?
Not for real-time exclusive leads. Five minutes works as the point where a CRM reassigns an untouched lead, not as the target; by then another broker may already have called. The target is sixty seconds.
What is the difference between a real-time lead and an aged lead?
When you can reach the merchant. A real-time lead is priced for the moment they opt in, before anyone else calls; an aged lead is priced to be called whenever. A real-time lead called a day later is an aged lead you paid the premium for.
Why do real-time exclusive MCA leads cost more?
Because you are first. The premium — about $50 to $200 a lead depending on the source — buys the chance to reach the merchant while they are still holding their phone, with nobody else calling.
Will a lead vendor refuse to sell leads to a slow sales team?
We do. Our real-time exclusive leads are $60 per lead, and if we do not think a floor will call inside sixty seconds we would rather not sell them, because leads that sit are wasted.
Reference
Watch: five Meta ad essentials for high-revenue MCA leadsThe sixty-second board, the recap and the other four essentials.
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.