You will be able to compare lead sources by fit, cost and how warm the lead is when you first contact them.
Every few weeks someone offers you a shortcut. A networking breakfast with "two hundred business owners". A spreadsheet of ten thousand company contacts for less than the price of a dinner. A paid ad that promises enquiries while you sleep. Some of these work and some waste a month, and from the outside they all look about the same.
This lesson gives you a way to tell them apart before you spend the month. You will judge each source on three things: how well its leads fit your profile, what it costs you, and how warm the lead is when you first make contact.
Fit asks how many of the people from this source match the profile from lesson 1.4. A source full of the wrong people is slow however cheap it is.
Cost covers money and time. A free event that eats a whole Saturday is not free. A list you can download in a minute but have to clean for days is not quick.
Warmth asks how the person feels about hearing from you. A lead who filled in your enquiry form is warm. A lead introduced by a friend is warm. A name on a purchased list has never heard of you and did not ask to, which makes it the coldest lead there is.
Score each from one to five, with five always being good: five for fit means nearly everyone fits, five for cost means cheap in money and time, five for warmth means they asked to hear from you.
Events work when the people in your profile attend them. An industry meetup, a trade show for your buyers' sector, an alumni night for a school your profile went to: these put you in a room where a high share of people fit. A general networking evening, where everyone is a seller looking for buyers, usually does not.
Before you sign up, ask the organiser or a past attendee who actually comes. If Mei, the bookkeeper, goes to a food and beverage trade event, she meets founders and operations managers. If she goes to a general business mixer, she meets other freelancers selling to the same founders.
Events are medium on warmth. You met them, which helps, but a two-minute chat over coffee is a thin connection. Follow up within a couple of days while they still remember your face, and be careful what you do with the business cards you collect. Lesson 5.2 explains why a card is not consent to add someone to everything you send.
An enquiry through your website, a social media message or a call to your office is the warmest cold lead you will get. The person came to you. That warmth fades fast, though, so reply quickly, ideally the same working day. A reply three days later reaches someone who has already spoken to two of your competitors.
Inbound leads are also uneven. Some fit perfectly. Others want something you do not do, or want it for a price you will not match. Before you book a long meeting, ask two or three short questions that check fit against your profile. Darren, the adviser, asks enquirers about their family situation and what made them get in touch now. A twenty-five-year-old who wants a quote for the cheapest policy available may be better served by a comparison website than a ninety-minute meeting.
Lists you buy, or scrape from directories and websites, look like the fastest way to fill a pipeline. In practice they score low on almost everything. They are cold, because nobody on them asked to hear from you. They are often out of date: people change jobs, numbers change hands, companies close. And they raise questions under Singapore's Personal Data Protection Act about where the data came from and whether you may use it for marketing, plus checks against the Do Not Call Registry for Singapore phone numbers. Module 5 covers both.
That does not mean every list is useless. A list of companies with no personal details can be a starting point for research. But treat it as a set of names to look up, not a set of people to message.
The most underused source is public information you can read for free. Company websites, job ads, news coverage and social media posts tell you what a business is doing right now. In Singapore, ACRA's Bizfile service lets you buy a business profile showing a company's registered details, which is useful when you need to check that a business is real and still trading.
Public sources rarely give you a lead on their own. What they give you is context for a first message: the new outlet, the job ad, the founder's recent post. That context is what lesson 3.2 and lesson 4.3 build on.
Here is how Mei rated four sources for the next quarter, with example scores:
Food and beverage trade event: fit 4, cost 2, warmth 3, total 9 Website enquiries: fit 3, cost 4, warmth 5, total 12 A bought list of company contacts: fit 2, cost 3, warmth 1, total 6 Researching job ads and company websites for her profile: fit 5, cost 4, warmth 2, total 11
Her top two are website enquiries and public research. The trade event is not rejected forever; she may come back to it when it is cheaper to attend or when she has time to follow up properly.
The scores are rough on purpose. You are making a decision about where to spend the next three months, and a fair guess beats waiting for perfect data. In the activity below you will rate four sources you could use this quarter and pick the two with the highest total.
Rate four lead sources you could use this quarter from one to five on fit, cost and warmth, and pick the two with the highest total.
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