Selling leads to multiple buyers

Exclusive and shared leads

An exclusive lead is sold to one buyer only. A shared lead, also called a multi-sold or semi-exclusive lead, is sold to more than one buyer, usually a small fixed number such as two or three.

Both are legitimate. Which one you sell is a commercial decision, usually shaped by the vertical and agreed in each buyer's contract. What matters is that everyone knows which one they are getting: the buyer, who prices it accordingly, and the person who filled in the form, who should expect to hear from more than one company.

Why sell a lead more than once

Comparison and quote products are the clearest case. Someone asking for car insurance quotes, or for several installers to price a job, wants to hear from more than one provider. Selling that lead to a single buyer gives them less than they asked for.

Then there is the arithmetic. As an example, a lead that sells to three buyers at £8 each earns £24, where the same lead sold exclusively might fetch £15. The numbers vary by vertical, but shared leads often earn more in total, even at a lower price per buyer.

It can also rescue volume. Buyers with small caps or narrow criteria can share leads that no single buyer could take on their own.

The trade-off is that shared leads convert less well for each buyer, because every buyer is racing the others to the phone. Buyers know this and price it in. If a buyer finds out that a lead sold to them as exclusive was also sold to someone else, the relationship is unlikely to survive it.

Pricing shared leads

Shared leads are usually priced per buyer, below the exclusive price. Some agencies offer both: pay more for exclusivity, or less to share. Others offer each lead exclusively first and only share the ones no exclusive buyer accepted.

Whatever the model, write it into the buyer agreement. State how many other buyers might receive the same lead, whether competitors could be among them, and how returns work on a shared lead. Disputes about shared leads are nearly always about expectations nobody wrote down.

Consent and transparency

In the UK, using someone's details for marketing is covered by data protection law (UK GDPR), and marketing calls, texts and emails are also covered by the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR). Selling a lead to several buyers does not change the basic question: did this person agree to be contacted by each company that will contact them?

In practice that means the form should be clear about how many companies may get in touch and who they are, or at least what kind of companies they are. The consent record should travel with the lead: what the person saw, when they agreed, and on which site. If a buyer asks for proof of consent on a lead you shared, you should be able to show each of them the same evidence.

This is general information, not legal advice. How far a consent statement stretches is a question for your compliance adviser, and the regulator's guidance changes, so check the current version rather than relying on a summary.

Keeping competitors apart

Not every pair of buyers should share a lead. Two brokers comparing the same product may be fine. A buyer and its own reseller may not be. Some buyers write it into the contract: never send us a lead you have also sent to a named competitor.

That needs a rule at the point of delivery: if this lead has already gone to buyer A, do not send it to buyer B. It also needs dedupe and suppression per buyer, so that the same buyer is not sold the same person twice through two campaigns, and a buyer's existing customers are kept out.

Multi-sell and the waterfall

A waterfall normally stops at the first buyer who says yes. Multi-sell changes the stopping rule: keep offering the lead until the number of buyers you want have accepted it, or you run out of buyers.

The rest of the waterfall still applies. Each buyer is checked in turn against its caps, filters and hours, and a buyer who rejects the lead or times out does not count towards the total. A lead set to sell three times might be accepted by two buyers and turned down by the rest. That is a normal outcome.

How it works in Hawfinch

Hawfinch can sell one lead to several buyers. Each delivery group has a delivery count, which sets how many buyers in that group can take each lead. It starts at one.

Inside the group, buyers are tried one at a time in the order the group's distribution method gives: by priority, in turn (round-robin) or by weight. Each buyer gets its usual checks, such as caps, active days and hours, dedupe, suppression, filters and HLR, and is sent the lead by direct post or ping post. Ping post works as it always does: one buyer is asked at a time, a 2xx answer is a yes, and there is no auction or bidding between buyers. The group stops once the delivery count is reached. Each sale counts towards the group's caps, and a lead will not sell more times than the group has room for under them.

Groups run in priority order, and by default the next group is still tried after a sale, so a lead can also sell in more than one group. If you want a later group to take only unsold leads, add a filter to it on whether the lead has already sold. To keep competitors apart, use the sold-to-buyer filter: it stops a lead reaching a buyer once it has gone to the buyers you name in the same distribution.

Each buyer link has its own price. The lead's record shows every buyer it was offered to, with the outcome and price, and its revenue adds up every sale. Consent fields your supplier sends are stored on the lead along with the full raw request, so the evidence stays with the lead.

Multi-sell is included on every plan, as shown on pricing. You set it up on each delivery group in campaigns, and the features page lists everything else a group can do. Every attempt is recorded on the lead in lead management.