Avoid at all costs! Offer refunds as part of their contracts, and do not refund!
Wow... what I can say... what a poor, poor experience I've had with Prospectiv.
Initial communication I had with Arun in their business development team was great. I met with Arun on a few occasions (I run a lead generation agency, I know, ironic using another lead gen company to generate leads for lead gen, but as with any agency, your own marketing always comes last when you put your customers first (hold on to that thought)).
We agreed on a campaign for 3 months where they guaranteed a certain number of leads each month, and if not then they offer a refund on the money invested in the campaign. Now, having run lead generation campaigns for the last 15 years, and never giving a guarantee on the number of leads generated, I was sceptical, however, comforted by the fact that if it didn't work then we would get a refund.
Well, what can I say. I had some communication with Elizma our Account Manager, and meetings every two weeks. After two months and no leads, I said to Elizma, why don't we stop here, it's clearly not working, why pay for another month, when you're only going to have to refund it anyway. At this point, I asked to speak with Prospectiv's Managing Director David Sinclair-Black, and was told that he does not speak to customers... Wait... what!? He doesn't care about his customers and their success... well, you can only imagine what alarm bells that set off.
Anyway, I was told by Elizma that we have to honour our side of the agreement - fair, I signed an agreement, and was told that at the end of the agreement, should they not generate the leads for that month, and the previous two, then I would get a refund on the leads (minus any that they do generate). I reluctantly agreed, although did say to Elizma that I was confident that we would still be in this position.
Surprise, surprise, at the end of the third month, guess what... still no leads! As such, I asked Elizma for the full refund, to which Elizma came back with a counter offer as they we're having cashflow problems... sorry? I declined the counter offer, and finally managed to speak with David via email (he won't jump on a phone call). He explained the cashflow issues and that they simply could not afford to give the refund in full at that point (not my problem, but what could I do?)
We initially agreed on a 50% payment in November, and 50% in December. David also explained why he felt the campaign didn't work... an exact copy from his email:
"David from Prospectiv here. I'm out regarding your due refund. I'm very grateful you put forward a 50/50 split between November and December.
However, I must ask (as we're in a very tricky spot) if we have one more chance to not only fulfil our contractual obligations to the number of leads we generate for LGS—but more to make up for this mistake of mine.
Unfortunately, having been solely provided inboxes by Microsoft, in May of this year, recent sending policy changes meant that your emails (along with our own) weren't seen. This is my bad and something I will never overlook again.
Fortunately, we have fixed this issue. We've learned that switching to Google—and only reaching Google accounts—allows us to average a 6% reply rate and a 1% lead rate (see screenshots attached of our current campaigns). These are campaigns we're running for ourselves (as you can see, this week, too).
If we were to contact 30,000 prospective businesses this month for you, it would mean we generate circa 300 pre-qualified leads in a few short weeks.
I promise to make this up for you and some more.
Can we give this one more shot?"
I declined the offer having lost all confidence in their ability to generate leads, not only this, but their route to market is email marketing... how can you overlook delivery rates??
When I declined the offer, David then asked to split the payment over three months. I won't bore you with all the details, but eventually agreed on a payment plan. To date I've only had 50% of the 1st instalment of the refund, and the last two payment dates have been and gone. No word from David, no response, no money, no anything.
So, my advice, avoid this company at all costs, not only can they not generate leads, but if and when they don't they won't give you the refund even though it is in their agreement! Absolute con artists! (Without Prejudice :-) )








