Is your firm ready to buy leads? A checklist for immigration firms

Not every firm should buy leads. I tell some firms that on the first call, and I would rather say it here too.

Buying leads works when the firm is ready to handle them. When it is not, good leads go cold before anyone talks to them, and the money is gone. So before you buy, go through these questions honestly.

Do you have room for more cases?

This one sounds obvious, but it is the one firms skip.

Every lead needs calls, messages and often a consult. Multiply that by the number of leads you plan to buy each month, and check it against the hours your team really has.

If your team is already at full stretch, new leads will wait. And a lead who waits usually finds another firm.

Can someone call new leads back within minutes?

Speed matters more than anything else in the first hours. A person fills in the form because they are worried about their case right now. Reaching them within minutes makes a clear difference to how many you reach at all.

Office hours make this harder than it looks. Many people fill in forms in the evening or on the weekend, when they finally have time to think about their case. Some live in another time zone.

So ask yourself: who calls the lead who writes at 8 p.m. on a Saturday? If the answer is "Monday afternoon", plan for something better, like a quick message right away and a call first thing the next working day.

Will you follow up for two weeks, not two days?

Many leads don't answer the first call. That is normal. People are at work, busy with family or not ready to talk yet.

The firms that sign the most keep going. A simple plan:

• Days 1 to 7: two calls a day, at different times.
• From day 8: one call a day.
• Emails on days 1, 3, 5, 9 and 14, each with a different purpose.

In my experience, a lot of leads only answer after several attempts. Firms that stop after one or two calls lose them.

Who on your team owns new leads?

Name one person. Not "the team", not "whoever is free". One person who sees every new lead, makes the first call and keeps the follow-up going.

When nobody owns new leads, everyone assumes someone else called. Leads sit for days, and the firm decides the source was bad. With a clear owner, you always know who to ask what happened to a lead, and the answer is in the sheet.

Do your fees make the numbers work?

A lead costs money before it becomes a client. Your fee on a case has to cover that, with room to spare.

Work out your cost per signed case before you buy. If one case earns your firm enough to pay for the leads it took to win it, the numbers work. If your fees are very low, they probably won't.

Can you track what happens to each lead?

You don't need software for this. A sheet with five columns is enough: date, source, contacted, consult booked, signed.

Without it, you can't tell whether a source works. You will only have a feeling, and feelings are bad at counting cases that sign four months later.

Do you expect leads or guaranteed clients?

A lead is a person who asked for help and passed a few checks. It is not a signed case. Turning one into the other is the firm's work.

If you expect every lead to become a client, any lead source will disappoint you. If you expect to do the work of signing them, good leads will pay off.

What does a good first month look like?

If your firm is ready, the first month is mostly routine. Each new lead gets a call the same day, ideally within minutes. Consults go in the calendar with a date and a time. Every lead gets a line in your sheet.

At the end of the month, don't judge the source yet. Count how many leads you reached, how many consults you held and how many people gave you a date. Those numbers tell you whether your process works.

Then look again at month three and month six. That is when you see what the leads were really worth, because that is when many of them sign.

Who should not buy leads yet?

Be honest with yourself here. Buying leads is likely to be a bad fit if:

• Immigration is only an occasional part of your work.
• You have no room for more cases right now.
• New leads usually wait a day or more for a callback.
• You expect a lead to be a guaranteed client.

None of these is permanent. Fix the one that applies, and then come back to it.