How to buy MCA leads: a step by step guide for brokers

Start with the deal you want to fund

Before you buy a single lead, write down the merchant you actually close. Most shops already know this from their funded file: monthly revenue range, time in business, industries your funders like, states you can work, and the advance sizes that get approved.

That profile becomes your buy box. Every lead you buy should fit it. Leads outside the box are not cheaper, they are just slower to lose money.

• Monthly revenue floor your funders accept
• Minimum time in business
• Industries you can place, and the ones you skip
• States you work
• The amount range you usually fund

Know the lead types

MCA leads come in a few shapes, and the price usually tracks how fresh and how intent driven the lead is.

Live or real time leads

A merchant fills out a funding form and the lead reaches buyers within moments. These cost the most per lead and convert the best, because the owner is still thinking about money when your call comes in.

Aged leads

Leads that are days or weeks old. The merchant asked about funding, but other shops may have called already, and the need may have passed. They are cheap per lead and work best for dialing teams with a tight script and a long follow up cadence.

Data lists and UCC lists

Lists built from public filings or databases. These merchants did not ask to hear from you, so contact rules are stricter and conversion is much lower. Treat them as a different business from inbound leads.

Check the source before you pay

The single best predictor of lead quality is where the lead came from. Ask every provider the same questions:

1. 1Where do the leads come from: your own ads and forms, or resold from someone else?
2. 2Did the merchant agree to be contacted, and is that consent recorded?
3. 3What fields come with each lead, and which of them are verified?
4. 4How fast does a lead reach me after the merchant submits?
5. 5What happens when a lead is bad?

On BrokerSeat, leads come from our own ads and forms. Merchants ask about funding and agree to be contacted. Revenue and time in business are what the merchant told us, and our AI looks the business up online so you can see what it found before you unlock.

Understand pricing by age

A lead is worth the most in its first hour. After that, every hour lowers the chance the owner picks up, because they are taking other calls or moving on with their day.

Pricing that drops as a lead ages lets you choose: pay more for the freshest leads, or pay less and work older ones with more follow up. On BrokerSeat, a lead costs 8 credits in its first hour, then 7, 6, 4 and 2 as it gets older. After 7 days it moves to the Aged Feed, where 3 leads cost 1 credit.

Set up delivery before your first lead

Leads that sit in an inbox die. Before you buy, decide where every lead lands and who calls it.

• Send leads by webhook straight into your CRM so they trigger your own workflows
• Assign an owner per lead the moment it lands
• Turn on alerts so new leads that match your buy box reach you right away
• Keep a CSV export for your records

See the conversion playbook for what to do in the first five minutes.

Start small, then measure

Buy a test batch that fits your buy box, work every lead the same way, and track it through to funding. The numbers that matter:

• Contact rate: how many owners you actually spoke with
• Submission rate: how many sent bank statements
• Funded rate and average commission
• Cost per funded deal, which is what you really pay for leads

When cost per funded deal is lower than your average commission with room to spare, scale up. When it is not, change one thing at a time: lead age, buy box, speed to call or script.

Use returns the right way

Good providers let you return leads that are clearly bad. On BrokerSeat you can return up to 2 leads a month within 24 hours of unlocking for a clear reason: bad phone, duplicate, not the owner, or revenue or time in business far off. Approved returns come back as credits. A lead that simply did not close is not a bad lead, so build that into your math.