I have paid out more money for business leads than for any other source of new business. A business lead can be worth a few dollars or worth thousands of dollars paid monthly for years and years.
For example, I worked in the call center industry for over a decade. I made lots of contacts over those years. Even now, after leaving the industry, I can still refer work to some call centers and they are happy to pay me a commission on the business leads that I send to them. With very little work, I can bring in several thousand dollars of extra income.
While I was a call center owner, I would be glad to pay out referral fees, finder fees or broker commissions to those that brought is a solid business lead. Generally, I wouldn’t pay for just leads, I would only pay for business that I closed. From my perspective as a business owner, I figured that to sell a contract through my internal team, I had sales salaries, travel expenses, health benefits, advertising and marketing expenses. Add all of that up and I very well may spend 4% of my gross revenues to pay for that. The trouble was, if I had a sales guy that didn’t perform, I was still out that money.
