Why you should stop buying UCC data

If you run a merchant cash advance shop with five reps, ten reps, or even 50 or 100 reps, and you are buying UCC data, in this video I want to explain my theory of why you should stop, or slowly phase out relying on UCC data. This is coming from someone who is obviously part of the leads space, and who is usually a very straight-up “if it makes money, it makes sense” type of guy. Even if I’m only making 2x my money, that’s still profit and it still makes sense. I’m a pure numbers guy. But I’m still encouraging you to stop buying UCC data and to do what we call inbound real-time exclusive leads instead. You’ve probably seen an uptick in inbound leads, and people seeing great results with them.

And it makes sense why, and I’ll go through that. Instead of having ten reps calling UCC data all day, there’s a much better alternative, and it comes down to a few things. But first, real quick, so you know who I am and why you can trust what I say in this video: my name is Alex Makowski, I’m based in New Jersey, and I run Infinite Bookings, which is an MCA lead company — lead aggregator, lead generator, whatever you want to call it. We’ve been around for just over three years, so we’ve been through a lot of cycles of different types of leads and different lead providers. Our best seller is real-time exclusive leads. We have real-time shared leads that are shared with two other people, live submission data, aged leads — pretty much every lead product under the sun

that we’ve built up over the years. At the moment we’re processing close to 1,000 leads a week from our Meta real-time submissions, and we work with over 50 brokerages nationwide, plus or minus a few. You can connect with me on these social channels. Now, without any further ado, let’s get into it. The only pro of UCC data is that it’s cheap upfront. It’s literally cents, pennies on the dollar, and you can get hundreds of thousands of them. That’s good on paper. It’s cheaper than real-time leads, where you hear people quoting $30 or $50 — we charge $60 per real-time exclusive lead — and there are people charging $120 or $200 a lead. So compared to that, obviously you want the cheaper thing. So on

paper, UCC wins. That’s just about where it ends. That’s really the only pro of UCC data. Cheap actually isn’t cheap in the long run. What I’m looking at is the full-funnel metrics, from first dial to the actual funded deal and how much that deal funded for. I don’t really care how much my cost per lead is; I care how well the leads actually perform. So there are two other numbers that most people don’t take into account. People ask me, what’s the cost per lead, cost per lead, cost per lead. They don’t ask the questions that are arguably more important. The first is: what is the cost per funded deal? How much marketing spend does it actually take to fund one single deal on

average? Say you funded ten deals in a month: how much money did you actually spend across all of them? And then you want to look at where the biggest concentration of deals came from, so you can optimise for next month. Number two is the time and effort per funded deal, because I can technically bring your cost per funded deal and cost per lead down to zero, which sounds good in theory, but you’re going to be dialling 16 hours a day and calling dead leads. So time and effort come into play too. Now, I understand your argument this whole time has been: “Look, I’ve got a floor of 20 reps. They have to be doing something all day. I can’t have them sitting around doing nothing and only pay $60 for one lead.” I understand what you’re saying, but I need you to look at this on an economic level.

The one pro UCC data has, like I mentioned, is an extremely low cost per lead. Real-time leads are expensive. They’re not meant to be cheap, and cheap real-time leads are not good. When people tell me they’re getting a $10 cost per lead and they got it cheaper, I know they’ll come back to me in three months, or even in a week, because those leads aren’t good. Cheap leads are usually not actually cheap. That’s the main message I’ve seen over the years. Then you have the cost per funded deal, which usually ends up being high for UCC, because you have to go through a ton of leads. And even if it’s a comparable cost per funded deal, your effort per funded deal

and your time per funded deal are going to skyrocket if you’re only using UCC data. You’re calling eight, ten, twelve hours a day — even if you worked 24 hours a day, which you’re not — and your effort per funded deal is still going to be immense compared to real-time leads. I’ll do the math for you in a second. So, what a UCC deal actually costs you. You buy the list. That’s the cheapest part of this entire thing. Then you have to cold call them, email blast them, SMS blast them, and leave voicemails. You put them into your system, and you’re cluttering your entire system with terrible data. And you have to follow up. These people are being shopped around, and the risk of your lead going with another broker is so much higher than with real-time leads. And you still don’t even

know. Whereas with real-time leads, if you have full control over the system, or you buy from a trusted lead vendor, the second they verify their phone number with a six-digit passcode, they’re sent to you, and you or your rep call them within 60 seconds. That’s the only way it works. And they pick up: “Hey, yeah, I just opted in for capital. I’m looking for $50,000. I make $100K a month. I have no previous defaults. I have a 720 credit score.” You’re talking to someone who has a completely different experience from your UCC data, and that’s why it’s a different sell. A lot of people have to get used to selling real-time leads, because it’s almost like a layup. You’re getting everything on a silver platter compared

to UCC data, where you’re fighting with 50 other brokers and people aren’t picking up. Your response rates are literally around 1%. Our pickup rate on real-time leads is close to 50% — 40 to 50% across all of our clients — and the reason is that they’re connected within a minute of expressing interest. Much better. You’re not fighting other brokers. You’re using a simple, elegant system, and that is where the industry is heading right now. Real-time is the cream of the crop. It’s the highest-quality lead you could possibly get. They’re fresh, literally seconds old. They’re exclusive, or

they’re shared — we sell shared leads to up to three brokers, so you’d be competing with two other people. And intent: that is one of the most important things, because they said “call me”. They said, “I’m looking for this, can you help me with this?” They literally raised their hand. You’re not interrupting their day; you’re answering their questions, and it’s like a layup. That’s the only way I can describe the feedback my clients give me: these leads are layups. So you’re playing a smarter, more elegant game. You’re not calling 300 people a day, hating your life and getting cussed out every moment of the day. That is 2015. Shops are still doing it. I go to shops in New Jersey, in Staten Island, in Brooklyn. That is not the smart way to do

this anymore. The old-school shops are eventually going to have a rude awakening. Calling UCC data and spamming dials will still fund them some deals, but they’re going to get wrecked by the people who understand the marketing side, and who understand that it’s much better to pay more per lead and have a better lead, because it’s not just the cost per lead. It’s the cost per funded deal and the time and effort per funded deal. So play the smarter game. Now, this isn’t bulletproof. It’s not a silver bullet. You still have to call the leads within 60 seconds. It’s simple, but it’s not easy — like everything that’s good in life. You have to be on the phone. When we send you a lead at 8pm, you call them. When you’re driving to the gym at 7pm, or at 5am when you’re

just waking up, or you’re talking with your wife, you have to call the lead. Unless you’re burning your own money — it’s not my money, I’m already paid. You’re burning your own money if you’re not calling the leads within 60 seconds. Imagine taking the $60 and lighting it on fire. How does that make you feel? You have to be the first person to call. If the lead is exclusive this matters a bit less, because other people won’t be calling them, but it’s still equally important. Number six: real-time leads, the pros and cons. I’ll start with the pros. A lower cost per funded deal, or maybe equal, depending on your data and how good you are at calling and closing. Way less effort per funded deal: you might need 20 leads, even 30 leads, to

fund one or two deals. Much, much less effort. Higher-quality merchants. You control who you reach: say you don’t want trucking companies, or you don’t want people under a 700 credit score, or you want people who own houses so you can do a HELOC — a super hot product. It depends what you’re looking for. You control who you reach, and it’s a proven system: X input equals Y output. The one con, and it really isn’t even a con, is that you pay more upfront. You have to put up the cash to invest, and take a bit of risk with the right lead vendor, or with the right creatives if you’re running the campaigns yourself. Those are the pros and cons, but keep in mind your cost per funded deal is still probably going to be equal or lower, and your effort per funded deal is definitely going to be lower. So, number seven:

you pick who you talk to. You get their industry, monthly revenue, credit score and past defaults. You see all of this before you even call them. And with the algorithms Meta has nowadays, we’re able to get so specific with the leads you’ll get over the next week, based on the leads we send back through the data set, that you can literally predict how many deals you’re going to close from how many leads you’re going to get. Meanwhile, UCC is a gamble. UCC is gambling. It’s an uphill battle, you’re working so hard, and you’re going to have a rude awakening if you don’t start trying different methods soon. Now, the math gets super predictable with ads and with

real-time leads, which is why it’s great. Say you spend $1,000, and think about how many deals you would fund, and how much effort you would go through, with $1,000 worth of UCC data. $1,000 in ads, at a $33 cost per lead if you’re running the ads yourself — obviously we charge $60 a lead — gets you 30 leads. Real-time exclusive leads, just for you. They know your company and they know you’re going to reach out. Hale & Sons Landscaping, Florida: verified email address, phone number verified with a six-digit passcode, $70K a month, no defaults, requesting $50K, for example. And you have 30 of these. Say you get 30 of these a week; you’re spending $4K a

month on ads. Say you fund two of those deals, which is very typical. With our leads, the average client has a 5 to 8% closing rate from leads. We have roughly a 15 to 20% lead-to-application ratio, and from application to approved it’s roughly 40 to 50%, which is awesome. From there, it depends how good the sales team is. But you’re looking at a $500 cost per funded deal, which is crazy, and to be honest this is more than a conservative example. $500 per funded deal is great. If you fund $50K, you’re making really good margins. But even if it goes up to a $1,000 cost per funded deal, that’s still fine. You’re still in the green, and you don’t have to be

dialling and hating your life every day you go into the office because you’re calling UCC data. That is not the way to do it. Like I said at the beginning of the video: if it makes money, it makes sense. I’m a pure math guy, a numbers guy. If I put in $1,000 and make $1,500, that’s still profit. But I’m also an optimiser, a maximiser. I think: how can I slowly move away from this thing that’s only making me 1.5x and phase it out — keep it running while it works, so I don’t go to zero — and introduce things that give me a 5 to 10x ROAS, or return on investment? And the truth is that Meta knows more than any list you can ever find. A UCC list gets you a number, a business name, a state, an old filing,

whatever it is. Meta knows what they care about. They’re in these people’s minds. They know their interests, who they follow, how long they look at a profile or an ad, how long they watch a video, when they scroll off. They literally know these people — and they know us; I’m not saying we’re any different. They know these merchants like the back of their hand. So who do you think is going to get a better-quality merchant on the line? So you pay more per lead. That’s fine. In retrospect, cost per lead doesn’t matter that much. You put in less effort per funded deal and less time per funded deal, and you actually pay less money per funded deal. It’s the best of both worlds. The one thing is that you have to be comfortable paying more per lead upfront to get a higher-quality lead.

That is where it starts. You either work smarter — with an intelligent, elegant system where you’re not chasing and fighting with 50 other brokers like you have been for the past ten years — or you work harder. That’s what this is about. You’re slowly going to have a rude awakening that UCC lists aren’t the best way to go. Even though they were the best way, and you’ve probably made millions and funded millions in deals with UCC, there are better ways to maximise what you get out of each dollar you put in. And I guarantee that even if you run your own ads, and don’t pay me a single dollar, you’re going to see a better return there. So if you found this video useful and found something you want to

implement, don’t just keep it in your head. Implement it. Put it into your system. Start running ads. Increase your ad budget. Use the things that make your ads more effective. If you’re only using UCC or aged lists, try some real-time leads. Take the risk, because you’re going to have a rude awakening, and the cost of trying it now is going to be ten times less than being forced to try it in two or three years, when it’s a completely different ballgame. Marketing companies like mine are coming into the industry and ruthlessly implementing new strategies that are out-competing the old-school shops. So if you’re an MCA shop looking for high-quality real-time exclusive merchants, or shared with up to three brokers,

that on average do $30K to $100K a month — with some unicorns doing a quarter of a million or a million a month — in top industries like restaurants, medical, home services and landscaping, requesting a bare minimum of $15K, though our average is much higher, with phone numbers verified by a six-digit passcode and no previous defaults — pure A and B paper — book a call in the description below. Check out our website, and look at what we’re doing. If you want to implement this on your own, that’s awesome; try it. But if you just want to buy leads on a pay-per-lead basis, we charge $60 per exclusive lead. Book a call below or send me a DM on Instagram and we’ll get

you sorted. Like I said: implement, don’t just keep it in your head. Actually put this into your system, so it can actually make you money.