by Lon Lindsey

The network marketing industry is built based on sponsoring/ referring others to a chosen business. This means participants must consistently and persistently recruit new members to their business because the lifeline of ones networking business is sponsoring. Once sponsoring ends, business growth dies.

We are told the best source to go to for recruiting is ones warm market. It is, as long as your warm market has a vision toward what you are doing, but if they don't, you are pretty much wasting your time. Additionally, your warm market is usually limited to how many people you know. Actually what you should be doing is to consistently build your warm market. The way you do that is by utilizing leads or names from mailing lists as a basis to build your warm market.

Let me quickly take time to differentiate between leads and mailing list names. Leads are the names of people who have been screened enough to be considered a good prospect for an endeavor you are recruiting for. Mailing list names are names of people who have a common interest based on some kind of criteria that was used to group people based on that criteria.

Leads are considered a cut above mailing list names and often times will come to you with a phone number in addition to their postal address or email address. Truly good leads should be those people who have, somehow, indicated enough interest in what you are doing or in something that is similar to what you are doing. That means their interest needs to be screened beyond just whether they are interested in a business opportunity or not. Perhaps they have even been screened to the point that they are interested in a home-based business or maybe a networking business or maybe specifically a certain product based networking business. Leads tend to be more expensive than mailing list names, but they also tend to be more stable in terms of current information due to how the leads are gathered.

Mailing list names, on the other hand, are names of people who responded to a general ad or subscription or somehow indicated some interest based as a result of responding to someone or something. Often times, these names are sold from one list seller to another and is why it is possible to find the same names on many different list company lists. Mailing list names are not as expensive as leads, but current information gets outdated faster because of the mobile society we live in.

The truth about leads is that most companies that define their names as "leads" are actually providing little more than mailing list names. If you can find a "lead" company that actually screens names and gathers solid information from people as true leads, then a lead can be very valuable to you. Unfortunately most lead companies do no more than run a general "interested in a business opportunity?" ad and then consider responders to that ad as a "lead." There is, no doubt, truth to the fact that a current responder to an ad provides more up-to-date information than does a mailing list name, but I don't consider it an exceptional lead because enough screening has not been done to determine if it is a good lead for your business or just the name of a person who has an interest in some kind of business opportunity . Lead companies generally get .50 - $2.50 per lead simply because they claim they are leads when, in truth, they are simply good names of people who most likely have provided accurate information as to where they are currently living and maybe even a phone number. I personally feel "leads" are over-rated because they are called leads when in reality all they are, are names of people who have indicated a general interest.

Mailing list names, on the other hand, are less expensive, but you can usually figure on a "nixie" (undeliverable addresses) rate of 5% - 10%. Mailing list names generally cost from .10 - .30 each depending on the list and the criteria the list company used to put the list together. Mailing list names are generally grouped into large groups such as "opportunity seeker" or "MLM enthusiast", etc.

If you are willing to get on the phone and personally contact people, then I would suggest you utilize leads because you can further qualify them, but make sure the leads you are purchasing are truly leads and not just a list of names with phone numbers. Find out how these leads were qualified so you can determine if the cost justifies what you get.

If you are interested in just mailing a promotion out to find people who may be interested in what you have, mailing list leads provide another way to do that. You can almost think of it as your mailing out to people who may have a general interest in what you are doing, but using your mailing to generate your own qualified leads. In other words, the promotion you mail acts as a qualifier to determine who has a serious specific interest in what you are doing.

The way I look at it is, there is only one person who can determine real lead and that is the person who is in the position of looking for certain kinds of people to be leads. The best way to do that is to send a promotion or "teaser information" to people based on what you want to tell them in order to screen out the tire kickers and to filter in the truly interested people. The information you provide is able to convert mailing list names into your own personal leads.

I feel a person is better off generating his own leads based on his own information and criteria rather than paying big money for so called leads that really are not leads in the first place.

Some people will use a combination of the two. They will purchase leads for personal contact and purchase mailing list names as a way to develop their own specific leads to work on. Depending on your own situation, only leads or only mailing list names may be appropriate for you, but the important thing is that you know the difference between the two and to make sure the company that will provide you leads is more than a glorified mailing list company.