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. Quitting a vendor after one week without a plan tells you very little about the vendor. 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 it happens a lot: agents 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.

Speed matters. A 2011 Harvard Business Review study of online sales leads found that most companies were not responding nearly fast enough to web inquiries. Lead vendors will tell you their leads work best when called right away, and 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 share of leads pick up on the first call? Write it down. Ask the vendor what first-call contact rate they expect, in writing, so you have something to compare against.
• 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. Giving up after one or two attempts leaves reachable people on the table. Plan on several attempts across different days and times. The cadence below is one example, not a rule.

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?” Some prospects who screen calls from unknown numbers will answer 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. Reporting windows can be short. For example, Goat Leads’ replacement policy gives you 72 hours from when the order fills (checked September 27, 2026). Check your vendor’s window before the first lead arrives. 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: most of the numbers are bad, you reach nobody at all, 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.

Our suggestion: give a vendor a few weeks and enough leads to see a pattern before you make a final judgment. How many is enough is your call; small samples swing a lot, so the more leads, the more you can trust the numbers.

Then compare your numbers to what the vendor promised in writing. If they promised a contact rate and you are far below it despite calling within 5 minutes, that is a real problem. If they promised exclusive leads and prospects keep telling you they already talked to other agents today, that is a real problem. If your cost per policy written is one you can live with, that might be a vendor worth scaling.

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.