Every industry has its misnomers – lead generation’s no exception. “The more, the better” – sounds good, right?

Maybe, maybe not.

Let’s take a look at some of the common lies you might hear, and the truth you’re looking for behind them.

Lie #1. “The more, the better.” 

Let’s start with this one right away. In every aspect of society, we think of having more as being a better thing.

With leads, you have to be careful when you hear this. Your lead quality matters moreso than anything else.

Would you want a big bucket of 200 irrelevant, low-paying, and dead-end leads? Or would you rather have 50, knowing you can close 5 of those and make $50,000 this year on them?

Lie #2. “Stop following up after 1-2 phone calls.”

Generally,  you get the most response from you leads in those first couple of phone calls. But in many cases, persistence pays off.

This post at Business Insider, for example, says it takes anywhere between 1 (for the impulse buyer) to 12 touches to close a sale.

How many should you use?

That’s up to you, but it should probably be more than 1-2.

Lie #3. “This is going to work…” 

The truth is, you never know if anything is going to work until you try it.

Isn’t that one of the top rules of business?

Lead generation through e-mail works perfectly for many businesses at different times. And then when you try it, in some cases it doesn’t work.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use it, though. After all, it may work very well for your business.

You should consider it a risk.

And the sales person you’re talking to should make that very clear. If they do that, that means their honest – and you always want an honest person providing you with a service.

Lie #4. “Don’t leave voicemails – you’ll waste your time.” 

Correction: leaving the wrong kinds of voicemails is a waste of your time. Leave good ones, and you won’t be wasting your time at all.

We wrote a more detailed blog post on this that gives you specific examples of voicemails that work.

Lie #5. “Your website contact forms should have the fewest fields possible.” 

This one depends. You hear this advice, but it’s taken out of context. If you want a lot of contacts, then you should have as few form fields as possible.

But here’s the thing: everyone does what’s easy. So you get lots of leads, but they’re not qualified.

Fewer fields works well if you want to sign up more people for something like an e-mail newsletter so they can access a download.

More form fields work well when you want to sell a costly product or service. 3 fields is a small form, while 7-10 is long.

Watch out for those lies! If you work with a lead gen company that tells you the truth, they’ll always do the right thing that works for you if the process doesn’t go as planned.