Lead Pilot Orders

What a pilot order is for

A pilot is the first order between two parties who have not worked together: a seller and a new buyer, or a broker and a new vendor. It answers three questions before either side commits more.

• Do the leads work? Does the buyer reach and close enough of them to make the price worth paying?
• Does the other side perform? Does the buyer pay and follow up fast? Does the vendor deliver on time and to the criteria?
• What is the real price? A first price is often a guess. The pilot shows what each lead is actually worth to this buyer, worked back from their close rate and the value of a closed sale.

The same rules apply whichever side you are on. When you sell, the pilot protects you from buyers who take leads and do not pay. When you buy from a vendor, it protects you from vendors who take money and do not deliver. Brokers sit on both sides at once, as covered in how to broker leads.

How lead companies start new buyers

We read the websites, terms and FAQs of every company in our pay-per-lead directory. 395 of the 440 say something about how a new buyer gets started. The table counts what they describe.

Three things in this table matter for a pilot. First, most companies talk to a buyer before selling. A pilot is a sales conversation, and the terms get set there. Second, 81 companies advertise no minimum or no commitment while 69 set one, and a few do both for different products. So a buyer can always find a seller with no minimum, and a pilot has to earn its size by being useful, not by being required. Third, free starts are rare. Paying first is the norm.

Sellers qualify buyers too

A pilot tests the buyer as much as the leads, and many sellers screen before they sell. 75 companies run an application or approval step, 42 check whether the buyer's territory is open, and 17 require a license or registration. Several go further and state a capacity bar: a buyer must be able to take a set monthly volume, have an intake team of a set size, run a CRM, or have closed a set number of deals recently. One offers a free test only to buyers large enough to process high daily volume, and another turns down small tests outright. Ask the same questions before a pilot: can this buyer answer every lead quickly, and can they take the volume that would follow a good result?

How to run a pilot order

1. Size it by leads or by spend

   Agree a set number of leads or a set spend, not an open-ended trial period. A lead count is easier to judge, because every lead in the pilot can be traced. A spend is easier to fund. Either way, make it large enough to show a pattern in the buyer's results and small enough that neither side is badly hurt if it fails.

2. Take payment before the first lead

   Collect the full pilot amount upfront. Do not accept half now and half later, and do not invoice. When you are the one buying from a new vendor, pay in stages instead, and release each stage only after the last batch has arrived and been reviewed.

3. Write the criteria and return terms first

   Before anything is sent, put in writing what counts as a valid lead, the area and fields it must carry, how it is delivered, what can be returned, by when, and how returns are credited. Disputes after a pilot almost always trace back to terms that were never written down.

4. Cap delivery at the pilot amount

   Set a cap that stops delivery once the agreed number of leads or spend is reached, plus a daily cap if the buyer needs leads spread out. A pilot without a cap tends to run over, and the extra leads are the ones nobody agreed to pay for.

5. Test the delivery before going live

   Send a test lead into the buyer's CRM or inbox and confirm it lands with every field mapped. A pilot that fails because a webhook was wrong tells you nothing about the leads.

6. Set expectations on the first call

   Tell the buyer how fast leads will arrive, that the first leads may be slow while the campaign settles, and what they need to do to get results, such as calling every lead quickly. Buyers will blame the leads, so agree up front what a fair test looks like.

7. Measure, then decide

   When the pilot ends, compare the results with the measures you agreed at the start. If they are met, offer a larger funded order. If they are not, find out whether the problem was the leads, the follow-up or the price before you run another test.

Why no free samples

Free sample leads look like a cheap way to win a buyer. The directory shows how few sellers use them. Of the 41 companies that mention a test, pilot, trial or sample, 15 offer something free, such as a first lead, a free test batch or a share of free leads on a first order, and several of those limit it to new or qualifying buyers. 5 say the reverse in writing: the first order is a prepaid test, a paid trial, or a partly prepaid batch, and one states it offers no free trials at all.

Free leads cost the seller twice: once for the media, and again because a buyer who paid nothing has little reason to work them properly.

• A buyer who will not fund a small paid test is unlikely to fund a large order later.
• Free leads are worked last, if at all, so the results understate what the leads are worth.
• A free sample sets the expectation that the next batch will be cheap or free too.
• Every free lead is a lead you could have sold to a buyer who pays.

A small funded order does the same job without these problems. If a buyer wants proof first, make the pilot smaller rather than free.

When you are the buyer: piloting a new vendor

Brokers run pilots in both directions. When you buy from a vendor you have not used, the pilot is your chance to check what their site promises against what arrives.

• Read the agreement, not the homepage. In our research, several companies' marketing pages call their leads exclusive while their terms say leads are non-exclusive, and 18 companies' return terms disagree between pages. Get the version that applies to your order in writing.
• Ask for the records they say they keep. 64 companies mention consent certificates and 71 describe consent records they keep or provide, such as timestamps, IP addresses or screenshots. During a pilot, ask for them on a sample of leads and check they arrive. The rules themselves are published by the FCC and FTC.
• Check the return terms before you pay. Only 151 of the 440 companies publish the reasons they accept. If a vendor has no written terms, write your own into the pilot order. The lead return policy guide covers what is normal.
• Pay in stages. Fund the first stage only, and release the next after the leads have arrived and been reviewed. No leads, no more money.

Our guide to questions to ask a lead vendor lists what to settle before the first payment.

What to measure

Agree the measures before the pilot starts, and who reports which ones. The seller sees delivery and returns. Only the buyer sees what happened after delivery, so ask for their contact and closing results in writing.

The last row matters most. Work the price back from it: the value of a closed sale times the share of leads the buyer closed gives the gross value of a lead; take off their cost to serve and margin (see the lead price calculator) to get the most they can pay. If that is above your price, the pilot worked. If the buyer will not share closing results, judge the pilot on whether they fund a second order.

When to scale

Grow the order when the results meet what you agreed, the buyer paid without friction, and returns stayed within the written terms. The companies that describe it scale the same way: several start new accounts on conservative caps or a controlled ramp and raise volume as results come in, and several state plainly that lead volume is not guaranteed. Do the same. Scale in steps, with a new funded balance and a new cap each time, and commit to delivering against the funded balance rather than to volume by a date.

Generate or buy only where a funded buyer is waiting, and keep overflow ready, such as other buyers or a marketplace, for leads a buyer at its cap cannot take. Unsold leads are the biggest avoidable cost of a pilot that goes well.

Here is a template to agree before any pilot. Fill in the brackets with your own terms and send it to the other side in writing.

This template is a starting point for a business conversation, not a contract.

Running pilots in Juiced

Juiced handles the mechanics of a pilot so the terms you wrote are the terms the software enforces.

• Prepaid wallets. Buyers fund a wallet before leads arrive, are charged at delivery, and get approved returns credited back. Wallet balance and limits are checked when a bid becomes a sale.
• Caps by lead count or spend. Limits can be lead counts, spend or both, over daily, weekly or monthly periods. You set account-level limits and buyers can only tighten them. An account at its cap stops matching, and pausing an account stops all delivery.
• Test deliveries. Send test deliveries before going live. Each delivery attempt keeps its response code and timing.
• Overflow. Leads a capped buyer cannot take follow your routing to other buyers, and leads that miss their first route move to your private marketplace.
• Vendor pilots. Each vendor gets its own source with quotas, duplicate rules run at submission, and revenue and payouts by source appear on one report. See how to manage lead vendors.

Frequently asked