Financial advisors with growing businesses are always on the lookout for time-efficient ways of generating high-quality leads. Contracting with a lead aggregator as part of a broader marketing strategy can be an effective way of quickly increasing the number of prospects your firm is working with, but not all aggregators are created equal. This is where the demo becomes essential.
While a demo call gives the aggregator an opportunity to present their services, it also serves as a two-way evaluation to see whether working together makes sense. This is your opportunity to thoroughly vet the vendor and gain a clearer idea of how this partnership fits with your company’s goals and standards.
Most walkthroughs follow a similar structure, offering a straightforward overview of the aggregator’s services and process.
If you have a developed lead-buying process, you may already be evaluating vendors against specific criteria. If so, it’s helpful to send this information to the presenter in advance so that they can tailor the call to your key criteria.
The presentation will often start with a brief recap of the services the vendor provides. If they have several offerings, they’ll tailor this section to your particular needs and may introduce how the partnership could be scaled up in the future to encompass more of their services.
This is also the appropriate time to further clarify your needs and verify that the aggregator can meet them. This includes lead details (AUM, location, household income) and what you expect from the partnership.
The lead aggregator may request that some questions be answered in a later part of the presentation or with a follow-up email, but don’t move forward with a working relationship before confirming that the vendor can accommodate your must-haves.
As part of the overview, the lead generator will explain how they get their leads and what processes are in place to qualify them. While they may not disclose every source, they should provide an overview of their primary acquisition channels.
As part of the conversation on where they get their contacts, the aggregator will explain how they qualify potential clients for your criteria. This is clear for many lead vendors, as they often have a questionnaire where people seeking financial advisors add their own data. Some may use additional information sources to further qualify prospects.
Fraudulent leads are an inherent risk in lead generation, so reputable aggregators will have systems for quality control. These include tools for verifying phone numbers or email addresses, automated reviews for fake names, blocks on IPs previously marked as fraudulent, and proprietary systems for catching fraud based on internal data.
While results can vary, it’s important to ask about expectations around volume, close rates, and other key performance metrics that are important for your financial advisory firm.
The provider will probably share ranges for the more common indicators of quality like schedule and close rate within the presentation. If you have more granular questions about payback periods or customer acquisition costs, they might need to share that in a follow-up email (especially if you want breakdowns by other factors, like geo or AUM).
During your demo, the lead aggregator may also present testimonials from past or current clients. While these details can be encouraging, maintain a critical perspective when evaluating their relevance to your firm. Consider whether the companies getting the positive results were similar enough to your company for their testimony to be meaningful in your decision-making process. If not, ask for results from companies that are most comparable to yours in size, sales capacity, and budget.
After the foundational details are addressed, there will usually be a platform walkthrough where the lead provider shares more about what site visitors see when they’re matched with financial advisors. They may also have an advisor-facing version where you’re able to adjust campaign setup and change how your profile appears to people who match with your firm.
The level of platform interaction required of advisors will vary. Some vendors will request information from you and add everything into their platforms themselves, and others might ask you to login to complete the details. Most advisor profiles require similar information, such as team photos, branding elements, a summary of your company and its certifications, and relevant links to your calendar and website.
This section is one of the most important to understand. Once the vendor knows your lead criteria, the full pricing and contract details might need to be shared later in an email follow-up rather than live on the call.
The lead aggregator should be prepared to share their general pricing structure. Most operate on a cost-per-lead basis, meaning that the financial advisor pays for the contacts as they’re transmitted. Others may offer volume-based pricing (where the price per lead varies depending on how many they’re sending) or have some KPI-based pricing.
Any of these structures may change depending on your criteria. For example, if you want to buy 30 leads per month that have $1 million or more in AUM, your price is going to be different than an advisor looking to buy 30 leads per month in the $100K-$250K AUM range.
The vendor should also disclose contract requirements, minimum commitments, and cancellation policies. They should follow up in writing with all of these details.
Many of these questions should be answered over the course of the call without prompting. If they are not, here’s a list of some of the top questions financial advisors should ask during a lead vendor demo.
Be wary of overly optimistic claims – unrealistic promises are often a sign to proceed with caution. These are some things to watch out for during your call:
Vague or evasive answers about sources and quality: This behavior could signal broader issues with a lack of transparency or weak internal processes.
Promises around payback periods and ROI, but no recourse for if those fall flat: If you’re working with a very well-established lead aggregator and you’re buying enormous lead quantities, maybe they would have enough data to make revenue-related claims. For most providers, making accurate ROI guarantees is challenging because it depends in part on factors outside of their scope, such as sales execution and market activity.
Lack of transparency around pricing and contract terms: If you can’t seem to get a straight answer when asking about what you’re buying, it might be time to look for a different lead provider.
Pushy sales tactics: Financial advisors and aggregators should work together because they believe that the partnership makes sense for both of their businesses. Not because the vendor applied undue pressure to close the deal.
While transparency is vital, lead aggregators have competitive reasons to keep some details of their process private.
They should share some of the things they do to prevent fraud, but they likely won’t disclose the inner workings of proprietary fraud detection algorithms.
They should give you clear answers on pricing, but they might need some time to assess realistic ranges based on the criteria you present.
They should have performance benchmarks, but they will probably caveat that an average is unlikely to be representative for specific lead criteria.
When delivered in good faith, these sorts of answers shouldn’t land a vendor on your no-go list.
After the demo there will likely be follow-ups on both sides. If you’ve asked for performance benchmarks or pricing for certain lead criteria combinations, your provider will spend some time generating those and potentially writing up a contract. Your firm may be evaluating several vendors or you might need to think through your own goals and capacity before going any further.
Treat the call as an informal interview – there is no obligation to make a decision immediately. Both the financial advisor and the lead aggregator should feel comfortable working with one another and be confident in the other’s ability to follow through.
A few more email exchanges or additional calls may be helpful in building that rapport before you decide whether or not to move forward with a contract.
If you would like to see how Advisor.com puts the content of this post into action, book a demo with us today.
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