System for implementing automated open market auctioning of leads

• US 20060041500A1
• Filed: 08/19/2005
• Published: 02/23/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 08/19/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: LeadPoint Incorporated
• Original Assignee: LeadPoint Incorporated
• Inventors: Diana, Marc, Pettersen, Per
• Granted Patent: US 7,970,690 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/37
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/08 Auctions
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/04 Trading; Exchange, e.g. stocks, commodities, derivatives or currency exchange

Abstract

In an automated leads-and-bids exchange system, bid profiles are defined to describe desires of lead buyers. Received leads are matched to active ones of the bid profiles whose specifications the leads substantially match. An auctioning subsystem finds the highest one or group of bids for each given lead. A quality rating database rates the quality of leads provided by different sellers. A price discounting engine discounts the amount paid to sellers who are rated as inferior sources of leads.

Claims

1. A method for indicating desires of lead bidders comprising:

(a) specifying for association with, or storage in, a first profile data structure two or more of informational data representing;

(a.1) a product, product type or range of products for which leads are sought by way of said first profile data structure, where said product can be one or more of various goods and/or services;

(a.2) a price or price range at which the specified product(s) are to be offered for vending;

(a.3) an identification of the bidder;

(a.4) locations of one or more prospective consumers;

(a.5) exclusivity or shared nature of the lead acquisition;

(a.6) a bid amount for each substantially matching lead; and

(a.7) product-specific other attributes of one or both of the product and prospective consumer; and

(b) causing said two or more specified informational data to be stored as part of, and/or otherwise logically associated with the first profile data structure for matching against supplied leads.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the other attributes include a credit rating range indicator for the prospective consumer.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the other attributes include a conversion probability range band indicator indicating an approximate probability for converting the associated lead based on identity of one or both of the prospective consumer and associated lead source.

4. A method for indicating ratings by bidders for leads, the ratings being of leads obtained by the bidders from a leads-and-bids exchange system, the method comprising:

(a) specifying for transmittal to a quality rating database, in association with a lead identifying signal, at least one of;

(a.1) a lead quality rating indicator, and

(a.2) an indicator of whether the identified lead converted into a closed deal or not.

5. A method for indicating to a given seller, a quality assigned to leads offered by the seller, as rated by buyers of such leads, the method comprising:

(a) receiving an indication of how much a winning bid price was discounted due to a less than stellar rating having been assigned to the given seller by all or a subset of buyers who bought and evaluated leads from the given seller.

6. A manufactured signal that is transmittable to a leads-and-bids exchange system for specifying to the exchange system two or more of informational data representing:

(a.1) a product, product type or range of products for which leads are sought in response to said manufactured signal, where said product can be one or more of various goods and/or services;

(a.2) a money value or money value range associated with the specified product(s) that are to be offered for vending;

(a.3) an identification of the bidder;

(a.4) locations of one or more prospective consumers;

(a.5) exclusivity or shared nature of the lead acquisition;

(a.6) a bid amount for each substantially matching lead; and

(a.7) product-specific other attributes of one or both of the product and prospective consumer.

7. A manufactured signal that is transmittable to a leads-and-bids exchange system for specifying to the exchange system a quality rating given to one or more leads obtained from the exchange system.

8. The manufactured signal of claim 7 wherein said quality rating indicates at least one of the following qualities for one or a set of obtained leads:

(a.1) it/they did lead to a making of contact with prospective consumer(s);

(a.2) it/they did lead to a making of contact with prospective consumer(s) and consumer(s) indicated initial interest in offered product;

(a.3) it/they did lead to a making of contact with prospective consumer(s) but consumer(s) indicated change of mind and no further interest in offered product;

(a.4) it/they did lead to a making of contact with prospective consumer(s) and lead successfully converted at least into initiated business transaction(s) (i.e., refinance application(s) was/were filed);

(a.5) it/they did not lead to a making of contact with prospective consumer(s) because of wrong phone number given;

(a.6) it/they did not lead to a making of contact with prospective consumer(s) because of phone number given was to disconnected line or to a facsimile machine;

(a.7) it/they did not lead to a making of contact with prospective consumer(s) because invalid contact data was given;

(a.8) it/they led to making of contact with party who had requested a do not call status;

(a.9) it/they was/were stale (i.e., 3+ days old); and

(a.

     10) it/they was/were duplicates of earlier acquired lead(s).

9. A manufactured signal that is transmitted from a leads-and-bids exchange system to a lead seller interface device for specifying via the seller interface device that the exchange system had assigned a less than stellar quality rating to one or more leads associated with the lead seller interface device.

10. The manufactured signal of claim 9 wherein the less than stellar quality rating is indicated as a discount factor applied to highest bids prices made for the one or more leads that are associated with the lead seller interface device.

11. A lead buyer interface device for use by a bidder wishing to bid on one or more leads offered through a leads receiving system, the interface device comprising:

(a) an identifier of the bidder and/or an account held for the bidder;

(b) one or more price identifiers of one or more price ranges of products for which leads are desired; and

(c) one or more bid specifiers for specifying a corresponding one or more bid amounts which the bidder wishes to bid for a corresponding one or more leads identified at least by said one or more price identifiers.

12. The lead buyer interface device of claim 11 and further comprising:

(d) one or more indicators of consumer segmentation within context of one or more products that are to be offered to lead-identified, prospective consumers.

13. The lead buyer interface device of claim 11 and further comprising:

(d) one or more indicators of consumer geographic location.

14. The lead buyer interface device of claim 11 and further comprising:

(d) one or more indicators of an exclusive nonsharing or nonexclusive sharing attribute of the bid-on lead.

15. The lead buyer interface device of claim 11 and further comprising:

(d) one or more indicators of how many leads maximum are to be acquired during a predefined first time period and/or how much in total expenditures maximum is to be spent for qualifying leads during a predefined second time period.

16. The lead buyer interface device of claim 11 and further comprising:

(d) one or more indicators of acceptable and/or nonacceptable probabilities of lead closure in leads that are to be bid on.

17. A leads-and-bids exchange system comprising:

(a) a leads receiver for receiving classifiable lead descriptors from identified lead sellers;

(b) a bids receiver for receiving specifications for class-creating bid descriptors from identified bidders; and

(c) a leads classifier for classifying received ones of the classifiable lead descriptors in accordance with bidder desire classes defined by the class-creating bid descriptors.

18. The leads-and-bids exchange system of claim 17 wherein:

(a.1) said leads receiver is operatively coupled to at least one source of leads in the group consisting of;

an internet portal site, a search engine site, and a specialized web content site, or a telemarketing center

19. The leads-and-bids exchange system of claim 17 wherein:

(a.1) said leads receiver is operatively coupled to at least one communications channel in the group consisting of;

a TCP/IP compliant channel, an HTTP compliant channel, a SMTP compliant channel, an FTP compliant channel, a web services compliant channel, and a webservices compliant channel.

20. The leads-and-bids exchange system of claim 17 wherein:

(b.1) said bids receiver is operatively coupled to at least one communications channel in the group consisting of;

a TCP/IP compliant channel, an HTTP compliant channel, a SMTP compliant channel, an FTP compliant channel, a web services compliant channel, and a webservices compliant channel.

21. The leads-and-bids exchange system of claim 17 and further comprising:

(d) a leads validator interposed between said leads receiver and leads classifier, the validator operating to verify that received lead descriptors appear to be valid ones from validly identified lead sellers.

22. The leads-and-bids exchange system of claim 21 wherein:

(d.1) said leads validator includes an automated section for automatically validating received lead descriptors.

23. The leads-and-bids exchange system of claim 17 and further comprising:

(d) a bids matcher for matching offered leads with activated and substantially matching ones of the class-creating bid descriptors.

24. The leads-and-bids exchange system of claim 23 and further comprising:

(e) a first bids maximizer for finding a highest bidding one of activated and substantially matching class-creating bid descriptors bidding exclusively for a given lead.

25. The leads-and-bids exchange system of claim 24 and further comprising:

(f) a second bids maximizer for finding a highest bidding group of activated and substantially matching class-creating bid descriptors bidding non-exclusively for a given lead where the number of members in the highest bidding group is limited in accordance with a predefined limiting algorithm.

26. The leads-and-bids exchange system of claim 25 wherein:

(f.1) the limiting algorithm limits the number of members to four.

27. The leads-and-bids exchange system of claim 26 and further comprising:

(g) a revenue maximizer operatively coupled to said first and second bids maximizers for finding a highest bidding one of the bids founds by said first and second bids maximizers.

28. A method of obtaining or providing one or more bids for corresponding one or more leads comprising using a leads-and-bids exchange system where the used system comprises:

(a) a leads receiver for receiving classifiable lead descriptors from identified lead sellers;

(b) a bids holder for storing bid specifications of class-creating bid descriptors of respective bidders; and

(c) a leads classifier operatively coupled to the leads receiver and to the bids holder for classifying received ones of the classifiable lead descriptors in accordance with bidder desire-defining classes defined by the class-creating bid descriptors.

29. The method of claim 28 wherein at least one of said corresponding leads is a hot lead for a substantially on-going communication with a prospective consumer and wherein said used system further comprises:

(d) a winning bids picker operatively coupled to the leads classifier for picking as winners for a given lead descriptor, one or more bidders of corresponding ones of the stored bid specifications that are substantially matched by the given lead descriptor; and

(e) a delivery engine operatively coupled to the winning bids picker and to a hot communication continuing means for directing the hot communication continuing means to direct a first substantially on-going communication logically associated with said given lead descriptor to at least one of the picked winners or to at least one of designated agents of the picked winners.

30. The use method of claim 28 wherein said first substantially on-going communication includes a substantially on-going telephone communication and wherein said hot communication continuing means includes an automated telephone call forwarding unit.

31. The use method of claim 28 wherein prior to said picking of the one or more winners of the logically associated lead descriptor, said first substantially on-going communication is processed by an interactive voice recognition system.

32. The use method of claim 28 wherein some of said corresponding lead descriptors can contain questionable or invalid lead data and wherein said used system further comprises:

(d) at least one of a lead descriptor validater and acceptability rater, coupled to the leads receiver, for respectively determining the validity of one or more data items in each received lead descriptor and for generating an acceptability rating for the corresponding lead descriptor before the lead descriptor can be bid for by one or more of said stored bid specifications.

33. The use method of claim 32 wherein said acceptability rater within the used system generates relative acceptability ratings for received lead descriptors based on stored historical data indicating the quality of at least one the corresponding seller of the lead descriptor and the prospective consumer identified by the lead descriptor.

34. A method for feeding back to respective ones of plural sellers, ratings of respective leads offered and/or sold by the respective sellers, the leads being those submitted to at least one leads-and-bids exchange system, the method comprising:

(a) indicating on an interface device of at least a respective first seller a quality rating assigned to at least one leads selling account of the respective first seller by said at least one leads-and-bids exchange system.

35. The feedback method of claim 34 and further comprising:

(b) indicating on said interface device of the respective first seller an invalidity rate assigned to at least one leads selling account of the respective first seller by said at least one leads-and-bids exchange system.

36. The feedback method of claim 34 and further comprising:

(b) indicating on said interface device of the respective first seller at least one of a real and hypothesized revenue amount awarded to at least one leads selling account of the respective first seller by said at least one leads-and-bids exchange system, where real revenues are binding if not disputed within a predefined dispute resolution period and hypothesized revenue amounts are nonbinding.

37. An apparatus for feeding back to a respective first of plural sellers, one or more ratings for respective leads offered and/or sold by the first seller, the leads being those submitted to at least one leads-and-bids exchange system, the apparatus comprising:

(a) an indicator for indicating a quality rating assigned to at least one leads selling account of the first seller by said at least one leads-and-bids exchange system.

38. The apparatus of claim 37 and further wherein:

(a.1) said indicator indicates an invalidity rate assigned to at least one leads selling account of the first seller by said at least one leads-and-bids exchange system.

39. The apparatus of claim 37 and further wherein:

(a.2) said indicator indicates a real or hypothesized revenue amount awarded to at least one leads selling account of the first seller by said at least one leads-and-bids exchange system.

40. A manufactured signal that is electromagnetically transmitted from a leads-and-bids exchange system for specifying to a seller of leads, two or more of informational data representing:

(a.

     1) a product, product type or range of products for which leads were offered by the seller, where said product can be one or more of various goods and/or services;

(a.2) an identification of the seller;

(a.3) a revenue amount awarded by the leads-and-bids exchange system in response to bids made for one or more bid-matching leads offered by the seller;

(a.4) an indicator of a quality rating assigned to at least one leads selling account of the first seller by said leads-and-bids exchange system;

(a.5) an indicator of an invalidity rate assigned to at least one leads selling account of the first seller by said leads-and-bids exchange system; and

(a.6) an indicator of how many offered leads were queued for rigorous internal testing and thereafter rigorously internally tested within the leads-and-bids exchange system for quality assurance purposes before being released for bidding thereon, where rigorous testing imposes a greater delay on lead release than does non-rigorous automated testing.

41. The manufactured signal of claim 40 and further specifying to the seller of leads, one or more of informational data representing:

(a.7) if and/or how many leads did not match bid profiles present in the leads-and-bids exchange system;

(a.8) if and/or how many leads were deemed invalid or suspiciously unacceptable by the leads-and-bids exchange system; and

(a.9) if and/or how many leads were returned as duplicates by the system and/or by buyers using the leads-and-bids exchange system.