In the mortgage business, you need to always have a steady stream of new potential clients. Since the average person does not need a new mortgage all that frequently, repeat business is just not as frequent. Fortunately, there are many good companies out there that will trade mortgage leads. Figuring out which ones are the best will require research on your part, but that being said, you can't really know what kind of mortgage leads you're getting until you start to buy them.

Buying leads in bulk, fresh and with a live transfer can work, but it might result in a case of working hard, rather than smart. For example, if you make it a habit to regularly buy 50 leads at $2 per lead, you may close one mortgage loan out of all those leads. Sometimes it will work, and sometimes it won't. That can add up to a lot of frustration (and extra cost) very quickly.

Buying fresh (real time) leads can work more cost-effectively. You could take the same $100 you would have spent in the above scenario, and instead get about three to five fresh leads consisting of purchase leads and refinance leads. You'll probably want to set up a filter beforehand: specific to state, type of loan, credit, Loan to Value, loan amount, and so on. When a lead comes in and matches the filter, it is automatically streamlined straight to your email account, and is only about ten minutes old. Talk about a fresh lead!

Another approach to try is the live transfer lead. This is an alternative to getting fresh leads through email. This might sound better than it actually is in reality however. Picture it: you sit at your desk, and wait for the lead company to transmit customers to you via telephone. However, what if you step away from your phone? If that should happen, the call will end up going into your voicemail, or worse, the potential customer will hang up without leaving a message. This could also amount to working harder instead of smarter. You really don't want to be held hostage at your desk by the phone.

Before investing with companies to find the best mortgage leads, perform proper due diligence. Ask about and understand the companies' terms of service, and find out what their return policy is. Call the company and speak with a sales representative, and don't be afraid to ask for a free trial of their services. Does their service at least include a free lead or a credit towards your first deposit? If the company is truly confident of the quality of their leads, then they should not have any problem accommodating you at all.

Many loan officers have been successful with all the different lead types mentioned above. Some may work fantastically for you, while others may wind up being a dud. If you find that making a particular type of lead work for you is too much of a struggle, just pick a different kind of lead!

Kathy Hildebrand is a professional writer who is easily bored with her "day job" assignments. So, she researches anything and everything of interest and starts writing. Writing about an extremely wide variety of subjects keeps her skills sharp, and gives her food for thought on future paid writing assignments.

More of her research and articles can be found at www.lasertargeted.com/leads and other sites around the internet.