Ping tree software has been a game changer for the leads industry. Verticals like home improvement, insurance, and auto finance use it almost exclusively, and more and more industries are picking it up every year. But every rose has its thorns; ping trees are easy to use, lucrative for buyers and sellers, and can give peace of mind about your system, but they can be abused. Here are a couple of tricks that your buyers and sellers may try to use to "cheat the system." Keep an eye out for:
The Phony
Lead sellers have been known to intentionally sell Mickey Mouses and Donald Ducks at 123 Fake St to their buyers. Any obviously fake lead probably cost them nothing to receive, so any non-refunded phony lead they sell is profit for them at your expense. Luckily, there's some handy tools like leadQC to minimize these phony leads.
The Scrub
Maybe the lead has all the right contact info, but some of the details aren't very valuable. Auto insurance may not want to pay full price for the lead that has a DUI, and the health insurance agent doesn't want the lead who smokes two packs a day. The lead seller can go into their system and manually edit lead info to make it more appealing to buyers, and by the time the buyer finds the right info, the refund period has already expired! Talk about shady business.
The Refund
Lead sellers aren't the only ones with fraud potential. Some less-reputable lead buyers have been known to make use of the contact info they buy, even going so far as to copy it down on paper for later, and then request a refund on the lead! This is not only theft, but it also devalues the lead, because it's lost its exclusivity.
So what do you do when you find these points of fraud? You can drop the company from your system, sure, but there are other ways to penalize bad leads that don't cut off your relationship with what could be otherwise reputable or useful brands. You need to make sure your ping tree software enables you to keep track of every company individually, and can reward and punish them for contributions to your business.
If your ping tree software can't do all that, try one that does. boberdoo has been building lead distribution and ping tree software since 2001, and our system has state of the art tools to make sure your leads are the highest quality they can be. Click the banner above to request a demo, or give us a call at 800-776-5646.