Anyone who runs a business will know that lead generation is vital for ongoing success. Generating leads is necessary for profit and success.

It’s why so much money is spent each year on obtaining high-quality leads and why a lead-generation strategy should be a priority for anyone with serious commercial ambitions.

The practice of selling leads can be very fruitful, whether a company is getting too many leads or simply looking for an additional revenue stream.

Understanding how to sell leads not only helps to further your business goals but also serves to assist customers in finding what they’re looking for.

If this is something that applies to you, come with us now as we look at how to sell leads and how LeadFellow makes the whole process easier.

Selling Leads? Understand Your Offering

When you’ve decided that you’re going to sell leads, you must begin by establishing what service or product that involves.

Once you have determined this aspect, you then have to determine what your offering will look like as you’re selling leads to others.

Companies that sell leads will have their own way of working, but let’s see how it’s most commonly done.

Traditional Lead Generation

The important aspect to consider is how you’re going to obtain the leads to sell. As such, are we just talking about lead overflow or the generation of new leads to sell? It’s an important factor to determine.

As a lead seller, your lead generation strategy will usually involve traditional marketing techniques that you’d normally to attract customers.

Generally speaking, a company will generate leads using digital marketing via social media, SEO, and paid Google ads.

What often happens is that the lead seller will simply be making use of leads that they can’t or don’t have time to convert.

Buying 3rd Party Leads

However, some choose to take things to the next level by actually buying 3rd-party leads to then sell them in the same way.

By supplementing their flow of leads artificially in this way, they have more leads to monetize.

Rather than simply selling on these leads, however, it’s necessary for the selling company to add some value to the process.

Having a Network to Sell to As You Generate Leads

Once you have decided HOW you’re going to be selling leads, you now have to think about WHO you’re going to be selling them to.

This is perhaps the trickiest part of the process of selling leads, but also the most important. So who is it possible to sell to?

Other Competitors

Probably the most suitable recipient for your lead generation overflow is your competitors – typically those who aren’t as successful at obtaining them.

This is the group that will be reaching out to the customers personally, as the lead quality is high – meaning it’s warm.

When selling leads to a direct competitor this way also ensures that your lead generation efforts will produce the right kind of lead quality.

Wholesale Buyers

Also known as lead aggregators, wholesale lead buyers refer to those mentioned above i.e. businesses buying leads with the express intention to sell them on.

Despite offering high lead quality, lead sales of this type will command a lower fee for each one, compared to selling to a competitor.

That said, companies like these are easier to find and start working with than competitors looking for quality leads.

Establishing a Cohesive Purchasing Process

Ok, so after you’ve determined the right lead generation process, and who you’re going to sell to, you then have to work out your purchasing setup.

For instance, when a lead generation business sells a lead, how will the end customer receive that lead?

How will one client or multiple clients get each lead?

Will your quality leads be emailed automatically to the recipient? Will there be some kind of portal that needs to be logged into?

There could even be a CRM that the buyer gets leads posted to for retrieval in the customer’s own time.

How will you charge for each lead?

Then there’s the question of how you’re going to bill for each lead. Will be in real-time? Will it be periodically at the end of each week or month?

Determining these factors ahead of time is very important, so there’s a real need to give things the required attention.

LeadFellow – Simplifying a Complex Process

We’ve covered the main elements of lead generation, finding lead buyers, and how to invoice customers for quality leads via your own business.

The basic steps are laid out, but we haven’t gone into all the ins and outs of finding and servicing lead clients.

There is an easier way to sell quality leads

The truth is that it’s a complex process that takes time, effort, and know-how to complete successfully.

The good news is that there is an easier way to monetize any new lead that you can’t or don’t want to fulfill yourself & it’s by working with LeadFellow.

LeadFellow Does the Legwork For You

Our innovative, easy-to-use tool makes light work of selling/sending leads to providers. Both parties can easily track and monitor them.

Every marketer, whether part of a scrappy startup or a global brand, eventually asks the same question: “Are we spending our marketing budget wisely?” It’s a fair concern, especially when advertising costs are rising and competition for attention is fiercer than ever.

One of the most practical ways to answer that question is by tracking Cost Per Lead (CPL)—a metric that tells you how much you’re paying to get someone interested in what you’re offering. It’s not flashy, it’s not trendy, but it’s one of the most important numbers in performance marketing. Why? Because it directly impacts your ROI, your ability to scale, and your overall business sustainability.

Let’s explore what CPL really is, how it works, why it’s important, and how tools like Leadfellow are redefining its role in modern marketing.

What Is Cost Per Lead?

Simply put, Cost Per Lead (CPL) measures the amount you spend to acquire a new prospect who shows interest in your product or service. A “lead” could be someone who fills out a form, books a demo, downloads a freebie, or signs up for a newsletter.

Example:

Let’s say you spend $5,000 on a Google Ads campaign and it brings in 500 leads.
Your CPL = $5,000 ÷ 500 = $10 per lead.

Sounds simple, right? But here’s where it gets more interesting.

Don’t Confuse CPL With CPC or CPA

Marketers often mix up CPL with other similar metrics like:

• CPC (Cost Per Click): How much you pay for each click on an ad.

• CPA (Cost Per Acquisition): How much it costs to get a sale or final action.

The difference is crucial. CPL sits in the middle of the funnel. It tells you the price of interest—not yet a purchase, but a solid step toward one.

Let’s say you’re running a Facebook campaign. You get 1,000 clicks (CPC), 150 people sign up for your newsletter (CPL), and 20 of them actually buy something (CPA). Each number tells a different part of the story.

How Do You Calculate CPL?

The formula is refreshingly straightforward:

But here’s the smart part: break it down by channel. Don’t mix Google Ads, email, and LinkedIn into one pot. Analyze each separately.

Why?

Because not all leads are created equal. Maybe email gives you cheap leads, but they’re low quality. Maybe LinkedIn costs more but gives you enterprise buyers.

Why CPL Actually Matters

Let’s get something straight: generating leads is not the goal—profitable leads are. CPL helps you see whether your marketing investments are driving efficient, scalable interest. Here’s what makes it so useful:

• Targeting Effectiveness: Are your ads reaching the right people?

• Budget Optimization: Are you wasting money on poor-performing channels?

• Sales Alignment: Is the sales team getting enough qualified leads to work with?

• ROI Calculation: You can’t measure return without knowing the investment.

A Deeper Insight: When Low CPL Isn’t Good Enough

Let’s say your Facebook campaign is pulling in leads at $3 each. Great, right? Not so fast. If 90% of those leads never open your follow-up email or pick up the phone, your “cheap” leads aren’t really helping.

Now imagine a Google Ads campaign where CPL is $15, but half of those leads turn into paying customers. In this case, a higher CPL delivers more value. That’s why you should always evaluate CPL alongside lead quality, conversion rates, and customer lifetime value (CLV).

How to Lower Your CPL Without Losing Quality

If your CPL is too high—or just not delivering ROI—consider the following strategies:

1. Refine Your Audience Targeting: Make sure your ads only reach people who truly need your offer.

2. Improve Landing Page Performance: A/B test headlines, visuals, and CTAs.

3. Offer Better Incentives: Free trials, eBooks, or consultations can improve opt-in rates.

4. Use Retargeting Wisely: Bring back those who didn’t convert the first time at a lower cost.

5. Automate Lead Nurturing: Use email flows or chatbots to qualify leads before sales steps in.

These tactics are part of any strong performance marketing strategy, and each can be tracked and tweaked to drive down CPL while maintaining (or even improving) lead quality.

A Smarter Way to Pay for Leads: The LeadFellow Model

In traditional marketing, you pay for leads before they convert. That’s risky. You’re investing upfront without a guarantee of return.

Leadfellow flips the script. With their platform, you only pay for leads after they convert into paying customers. This performance-based model removes much of the uncertainty and lets you manage CPL in real-time—only rewarding results.

Bonus: Lead Monetization

Leadfellow also lets users earn money by referring clients or connections. Think of it as building a referral ecosystem—one where you can monetize introductions without running complex affiliate programs yourself.

FAQ: Common Questions About CPL

Q: What is Cost Per Lead (CPL)?
A: CPL is the cost of acquiring one interested prospect—usually measured by dividing total campaign spend by number of leads.

Q: How do I know if my CPL is good?
A: Compare it to your average deal size and lead-to-sale conversion rate. A $10 CPL is great if each sale brings in $1,000.

Q: Is a low CPL always better?
A: Not always. If low-cost leads don’t convert, they cost more in the long run.

Q: How can I reduce my CPL?
A: Improve targeting, optimize landing pages, use better offers, and analyze performance by channel.

Q: What makes Leadfellow’s CPL model different?
A: You only pay once a lead becomes a paying customer—reducing risk and boosting efficiency.

Final Thoughts: CPL Is Just the Start

Tracking CPL is about more than spreadsheets. It’s a window into your marketing efficiency. But remember—it’s only one part of the bigger picture. Combine it with insights into lead quality, customer value, and conversion rates, and you’ll gain a much clearer view of what’s working.

The distinction between cold, warm, and hot lead is one of the most frequently discussed topics in the sales world. However, before you get into the differences, you should have a basic understanding of the various kinds of leads that exist and how they function.

What are sales leads?

What are sales leads, and how do they differ from marketing leads? These are companies or individuals who might become clients for your organization in the future. Sales leads can usually be managed using online and physical platforms such as trade shows, press releases, direct advertisements, promotional campaigns, and so on.Getting adequate leads is critical for any business, and generating them is the key component in the wheel that typically starts the process. Leads are individuals or organizations who may be interested in your services or products but whom you do not have full knowledge of their interest or when they will make a purchase decision.

What is Cold Lead?

What exactly is a cold lead? If you’re wondering what a cold lead is, be aware that they’re individuals or organizations who never contacted your company or showed any interest in your service/product and were irritated or put-off by your attempts to contact them.Cold leads are those which have to be nurtured more carefully and over a longer period of time in order to yield sales. These are majorly leads that are kept in view most of the time.

What is Warm Lead?

Warm leads are people or businesses who have expressed an interest in one of your services or products before. They might have expressed their interest by following your social media profiles, filling out contact forms, signing up for your newsletter or email marketing campaign, following up on referrals from other clients or consumers, and so on. These contacts are more interested in learning about your products and services and are more inclined to convert into paying customers. Before they result in sales, these leads require careful nurturing.

Qualified leads are, in this case, crucial to discuss. These leads are frequently considered superior since they represent people or businesses who are nearing the conclusion of the sales process. A qualified lead is one that is looking for a certain product on Google or similar internet platforms and has a demonstrated and particular want that is prompting him/her to seek out a company like yours.

What is Hot Lead?

Hot lead is a sales term that refers to a potential customer who has shown a high level of interest in a product or service and is considered more likely to make a purchase. A hot lead may have already expressed interest by filling out a contact form, requesting more information, or engaging in a conversation with a sales representative. In contrast, a cold lead is a potential customer who has not yet shown any interest in a product or service and may require more effort to convert into a paying customer. The term “hot lead” is commonly used in sales and marketing to describe the most promising prospects for a business.

In conventional business, a lead is simply any person who inquires about your goods or service. However, in the world of affiliate marketing, a lead is someone who has expressed interest in your brand and may be interested in purchasing from you. The BANT method can then be used to determine their nature:

BANT:

B – This is the significance of Budget, which implies that the prospect has already made a budget and is ready to spend it once the project’s proposal has been authorized by management.

A – Who is the authority figure in this sale? Who makes the ultimate decision?

N – Does the prospect have a true need for my product? Is this a universal need on the team?

T – The Time Frame is the duration, also known as the duration. How much time will the prospect need to come to a purchasing decision?

Difference between Cold, Warm & Hot Lead

The difference between cold, warm & hot lead can be enumerated through a short and simple table:

What are the Stages that explain each lead?

There are a number of stages in the entire sales cycle that might be used to express each lead in more creative ways. Here’s how it looks from another angle:

Cold Leads – These are the leads right at the beginning of the sales cycle who reject your calls/emails/other marketing outreach initiatives. These are ones who do not show any interest or do not respond to the company’s efforts. While you may nurture these leads over a longer period of time, only a few of them may transform into warm leads.

Warm Leads – These are people or businesses who you notice as those in periodic engagement with your company or marketing channels. These are the people who start reading your posts, liking/following your organization, sharing contact details and signing up for email newsletters. They start engaging with your organization likewise. You start nurturing these leads likewise and learning more about their needs, issues and how you can solve the same.

Hot Leads – These are qualified leads that have been nurtured and are ready to make the purchase or any other transaction. These are people who are now directly seeking a particular service for fulfilling a need which has already been identified by you and you are engaging for fulfillment of the same. These are leads which have to be now managed for closing the final transaction.

Leadfellow shortens the sales cycle tremendously

Qualified leads can be obtained using a variety of approaches, some of which are revolutionary, such as Leadfellow, where each member of the team is empowered to develop qualified leads for the sales staff. They are rewarded and acknowledged for generating qualified leads and this helps to create a sense of urgency.

After the handoff to the sales team, organizational revenues rise with a shorter sales cycle. Qualified leads are most often generated as a result of employees and partners utilizing their personal networks. This eliminates the need to deal with cold leads while also allowing for more warm leads and qualified leads for the sales department to use.

Cold calling

Cold calling is one of the hardest marketing activities. If you know how to do it well, however, the closing percentage can end up being pretty sweet. On average, the closing percentage is 1-3% and the success is often dependent on the price and quality of the product or service.

Cold calls are being made also today. They are vitally important for companies that are just starting out and who do not yet have proper resources for marketing or for hiring external salespeople. Nearly all successful salespeople have done cold calling during their lifetime and probably will do it again.

Tips for cold calling

Here are 5 tips we have gathered from their success:

#1 Focus on the client, not yourself. Listen to the client and to what they have to say, identify their needs and focus on those needs. Don’t talk extensively about yourself or your company, but instead, focus on them.

#2 Don’t build your sales calls on a set scenario. Do not build a script. Premade scenarios and scripts will turn you into a robot who is clearly reading pre-written words. No one is interested in hearing that, so a real dialogue never gets born. Every sales call is different and making a call without listening to the client is a waste of time. Build your call on an interactive conversation.

#3 Ask strategic questions. Questions lead to answers. Questions help to create a dialogue which helps you build your sales pitch and answer questions. Without strategic questions your call can turn into small-talk from where it is difficult to get to the point. Come up with some important questions first and ask them in the right place as part of the dialogue.

#4 Don’t try to close the sales with the first call. Statistics show that salespeople sell the least during their first call and that success factor grows with time. Naturally, this depends on the price of the product/service but it can be said that 80% of the sales are closed during the 5th call.

#5 The key is in simplicity. The easiest you can define your product/service in a call, the easier it is for the client to buy it. Complicated description of a complex product – FAIL. Clear and simple description of a complex product – SUCCESS.

To understand how we make sales calls today one needs to know the history of telemarketing.

The roots of telemarketing date back to the mid-20th century when a group of housewives started calling people to find potential cookie buyers. Around 1965, telemarketing became more popular, and more people became professionally trained to make sales calls. Five years later, telemarketing became widely recognized.

From ground rules to laws

In 1991, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act was passed by the US Congress which established some rules that telemarketers had to follow. For example, they were not supposed to call potential customers before 8 am or after 9 pm or use artificial or prerecorded messages. They also had to maintain an internal Do-Not-Call list and always state their name and the name of the company they were working for.

The act created some ground rules but the rising amount of sales calls and the assertive behavior of salespeople created a public uproar in the US in 2003. That resulted in the passing of the Do-Not-Call Registry Act law. This law created an option for consumers to willingly opt-out of telemarketing by registering their phone numbers on the list.

The Do-Not-Call list, caller IDs, and answering machines made it easier for people to ignore cold calls and telemarketers and to eliminate them completely. That forced salespeople and telemarketers to reinvent their methods to be more acceptable and less intrusive to potential clients.

From assertiveness to personalization

Today, cold calling isn’t as cold as it used to be. The tone of sales calls is mostly nonintrusive, personalized, and genuine. The internet and social media have given salespeople and telemarketers a huge potential to learn about their potential clients beforehand and to personalize their message for each client.

The future of telemarketing will be directly related to constantly developing technology. There are already some companies out there that are using automated but human-assisted telemarketing where the voice of the talker is pre-recorded. The salesperson just chooses the right answers through an interface and the so-called sales bot does the talking.

Read more about personalized cold calling from How to make more efficient cold calls?

Hang Up on Telemarketing

Gone are the days of dreaded telemarketing calls interrupting our dinner or stealing our precious time. It seems like the universe has finally come to its senses and handed over the reins to a much more delightful and effective approach: referral marketing.

Picture this: You’re peacefully enjoying a meal with your loved ones, savoring each bite, when suddenly your phone rings. But fear not! Instead of an awkward conversation with a stranger trying to sell you something you don’t need, your phone buzzes with a notification from a friend recommending a product or service they genuinely love. Cue the collective sigh of relief.

Referral marketing has stepped up as a breath of fresh air, replacing the tired old ways of telemarketing. It harnesses the influence of personal connections, capitalizing on the trust and authenticity inherent in recommendations from those closest to us. Imagine it as a virtual grapevine, transmitting uplifting vibes and practical advice, all without the cringe-worthy sales pitches and mechanical monologues.

A warm lead can be defined by the word itself. Warm means positive, closeness, good contact and safety. A good example is a children’s game where one kid hides something and the other one has to find it. When the searcher is getting closer to the object, the hider shouts “Warm!”.Therefore we can say that a warm lead is someone who is ready to close a deal. A cold lead is exactly the opposite: you are far away from closing a deal or finding a lead, and there is probably a long way to go until the cold lead turns into a warm one.

What does it mean in sales?

Sales activities are set in place to get from point A to point B. Point B stands for a successful deal or sale. There are many different possibilities and channels for getting to point B. [Check out our post Sale channels – how do they work?]

Sales channels create a way that can be either easy or hard. The easy way means that you have to put in less effort to achieve the same results compared to doing it the hard way. The key component in an easy way is a warm lead.

A warm lead is an icebreaker, a conqueror of the first barrier, the remover of the first filter – you have quickly made your way to a point where it would otherwise take a long time to get to. Figuratively, you have just taken an elevator straight to the top of a skyscraper by just pressing one button, while your competitors have to take the stairs instead.

The most common channels to obtain a warm lead, starting from the warmest and ending with the coldest, are:

Recommendations – a friend, a partner, a relative, a client, a competitor or whoever recommends you as someone selling great products or services.

A current client – they know you, and you have an established relationship.

Re-marketing – a person who has seen your brand somewhere and knows something about you. This could happen through newsletters, advertising campaigns, websites, and social media.

LeadFellow is focusing on the first channel – recommendations. Refer someone through our software and control and monitor your best salesman basically for free!