You may already know that if you're using voice broadcasting, you will receive some negative transferred calls - including calls from folks upset that you called them, and calls that are simply unqualified. You may know how to create a message with a higher response rate to reduce the number of such calls. In this article I'll discuss another critical method that will actually reduce your response rate, and increase your negative calls. Believe it or not, you'll want to use this, that is, if you want lower lead costs.



Let me explain with an example. Warning - this is hypothetical, but this concept is generally valid.

Consider a broadcast to sell virtual offices with a Beverly Hills address to business owners. The broadcaster writes a message about how great a Beverly Hills address is, having a phone number service to answer your calls there, being to be able to meet your clients in your Beverly Hills conference room, press one for more info...

We'll assume that this message gets a 0.9% response rate. And that there are 0.3% of people who'll "press 1 for no good reason" - the inescapable negative callers. So this message will produce 1 call out of 3 that is negative, and 2 out of 3 will express some level of interest. Sound pretty good so far?

Sure, but the message failed to mention that this virtual office costs $200/mo. And when the 2 of 3 interested folks learn this, only 1 of them will consider paying that much. So, the broadcaster has found 1 caller in 3 that is both interested and qualified. These folks are the broadcasters qualified leads. And if the broadcaster is paying $6 per call, his cost per real lead is $18. Not too bad...

Now consider this...the broadcaster records a new message which makes it clear his service starts at $200/mo. Since 1 prospect in 3 was not interested in paying that much, this is a very important qualifier. So, what will happen with this new message? First thing, a lot of folks who aren't willing to pay that much will not press 1. So the overall response rate will go down. Let's say it goes down to 0.7%. And we're still stuck with the 0.3% of those "negative callers"...

Work the numbers and this means that with this new message, instead of receiving 33 negative calls per 100, the broadcaster will get about 43 - yuck! Just like we described in another article, if the response rate goes down, the number of negative calls goes up. Good grief, he gets ten more negative calls! How can this be any good at all??

Well, hang on... From a previous article, we learned that 0.3% of people are both interested, and willing to pay the $200 rate. So that means the broadcaster will also get about 43 positively interested AND qualified prospects per 100 calls. That accounts for 86 calls of 100, who are the other 14 calls? They are from folks who are interested but not willing to pay $200 - so why would they still press 1? 'Cause they're people, and people don't always hear everything, or act rationally even if they do. Some of the unqualified parties will also always press 1, no matter how much qualification is in the message.

Anyhow, let's work the numbers again - if the broadcaster was paying $6 per transfer in this scenario, he is now obtaining his "qualified leads" at an effective cost of $14. So...if the broadcaster is willing to endure a higher number of negative calls, he will also enjoy a lower overall lead cost. Paradoxical, but true!

Anytime you have a major qualifying item - it is critical that you put it clearly in your message, for just this reason.