Your First Week With a New Lead Vendor: A Playbook

You signed up with a new lead vendor. Your credit card has been charged. Leads are about to start flowing in. What you do in the next seven days will determine whether you give this vendor a fair evaluation or waste money through poor execution. Most agents who quit a vendor after one week did not have a bad vendor — they had no plan. Here is the plan. Not sure if you picked the right vendor? Read our guide on what to look for in a lead vendor first.

Day 1: Set Up Everything Before the First Lead Arrives

Do not order leads until your infrastructure is ready. This sounds obvious, but agents do it constantly — they start their lead flow and then spend the first day fumbling with CRM settings while leads go cold in their inbox.

Before you activate your first order:

• Set up your CRM or dashboard — If the vendor provides a CRM, learn how it works. If you use your own CRM, configure the integration. Test it with a sample record to make sure fields map correctly.
• Test webhook and email delivery — Have a test lead sent to you. Verify it arrives in your CRM, your email, and your phone (text notification) within 60 seconds. If any of these channels are broken, fix them before going live.
• Prepare your script— You need a specific opening for leads from this source. “Hi, this is [name] — you just requested information about [product] a few minutes ago. I am calling to help you with that.” Simple, direct, references their action. Do not wing it.
• Set up your tracking spreadsheet — You need to track every lead. Create columns for: lead ID, date received, time to first call, contact result, number of attempts, disposition, and notes. This data is what you will use to evaluate the vendor.

Days 2 and 3: Call Every Lead Within 5 Minutes

This is the most important part of the test. When a lead comes in, call it immediately. Not in 30 minutes. Not after lunch. Within 5 minutes. If you cannot commit to this during your test period, you are not giving the vendor a fair evaluation.

The data is clear: calling within 5 minutes makes you 21 times more likely to qualify the lead compared to calling at 30 minutes. After an hour, the odds plummet. Every lead vendor in the industry will tell you their leads work best when called immediately. They are not wrong. If you wait two hours and then complain about contact rates, the problem is not the vendor.

During these first two days, focus on:

• Contact rate — What percentage of leads pick up the phone on the first call? For exclusive real-time leads, you should see 40 to 60 percent on first-attempt contact.
• Lead quality — When you do make contact, does the person know why you are calling? Did they actually fill out a form? Are they in the market for what they requested? These are quality signals.
• Data accuracy — Are the names, phone numbers, and other details correct? Wrong numbers and disconnected phones should be flagged for dispute.

Do not make judgments yet. Two days is not enough data. You are collecting information, not drawing conclusions.

Days 4 and 5: Follow Up Relentlessly

The leads you did not reach on the first call are not dead. They are unanswered. There is a difference. Most agents give up after one or two attempts. The agents who make leads work call a minimum of seven times across different days and times.

Your follow-up cadence should look like this:

1. Attempt 1: Immediately upon receiving the lead
2. Attempt 2: 30 minutes later if no answer
3. Attempt 3: 3 hours later
4. Attempt 4: Next morning, different time of day
5. Attempt 5: Next afternoon
6. Attempt 6: Two days later
7. Attempt 7: Four days later, with a voicemail and text

Between calls, send a text. Something short: “Hi [name], this is [your name]. You requested information about [product]. I would love to help — is now a good time to chat?” Text messages have a 98 percent open rate. Many prospects who screen calls will respond to a text.

By day 5, you should have a clear picture of which leads are genuinely unreachable and which just needed persistence.

Days 6 and 7: Dispute Bad Leads and Run the Numbers

Now it is time to separate the data from the noise. Go through your tracking spreadsheet and identify every lead that qualifies for a dispute under the vendor’s replacement policy. Common dispute categories:

• Disconnected or wrong phone number
• Duplicate lead (you received the same person twice)
• Person denies filling out a form
• Outside your requested geography or demographics
• Fake or clearly fraudulent information

File your disputes promptly. Most vendors have a 48- to 72-hour window for submitting claims. If you wait until the end of the month, you may lose your ability to dispute.

Then run your week-one numbers:

• Contact rate — Leads reached / total leads received
• Conversation rate — Meaningful conversations / leads reached
• Dispute rate — Bad leads / total leads received
• Hours spent — Total time working these leads
• Appointments set or applications started — Even if nothing has closed yet, pipeline activity is a leading indicator

After Week 1: The Three-Week Rule

Here is the most important advice in this entire guide: do not quit after one week.

One week is enough to spot catastrophic problems — a 90 percent bad-data rate, zero contact on any lead, a vendor who will not respond to support requests. If you see those, cut your losses. But one week is not enough to evaluate a vendor fairly under normal conditions.

Insurance sales cycles are not instant. A lead you spoke with on day 3 might not close until week 3. A prospect who said “call me next week” is not a failed lead — they are a pending opportunity. If you quit after one week, you are abandoning pipeline that has not had time to mature.

The rule of thumb: give any vendor at least three weeks and at least 30 leads before you make a final judgment. That gives you enough data to calculate meaningful conversion rates and enough time for the sales cycle to play out.

After three weeks, compare your numbers to the vendor’s claims. If they promised a 50 percent contact rate and you are seeing 25 percent despite calling within 5 minutes, that is a real problem. If they promised exclusive leads and you are hearing “I already talked to three agents today,” that is a real problem. But if your contact rate is 45 percent and you have closed 2 deals from 30 leads, that might be a vendor worth scaling.

The agents who succeed with leads are the ones who measure methodically, follow up persistently, and make decisions based on data — not frustration. Your first week is not a verdict. It is a baseline. To understand what your leads really cost you, use the formula in our true cost per lead guide.