Talking about the pricing model:
Not only do they provide the usual lead generation model of pay-per-lead, they figured a total of four different lead generations models would fit most services providers:
* Flat fee pay-per-lead
* Percent based
* Consulting based
* Hourly rate
That should fit most people. Chris went on to explain a little bit more for me. 1) eMazeMe handles the transactions and 2) it’s all done with reservations and on in a pre-paid sort of way (think escrow).
This got me thinking and eventually lead to a long conversation about liability. Chris, having passed the bar exam and is thus now technically lawyer material (even though he’s not a lawyer), said it’s not an issue. They thought through it all. When a consumer requests a service, eMazeMe will arbitrate it should something go wrong and all money (for the most part) has to go through eMazeMe.
For example, let’s say you need a plumber. You could jump on the site as a consumer, put your job ad up and then many providers will reverse bid. What is reverse bid? It’s when they basically negotiate with you and big against other service providers (usually going down in price for you). You then select the winner (after some possible contract negotiation) and send what they call a “Reservation.” In-order to send a reservation though, you have to pre-pay (in full) for the service.
But you’re not paying the service provider, you’re paying eMazeMe (which then pays the service provider). They will hold the money, essentially, in escrow until the work is completed and you sign off on the job being done. This is done via a code that you can give to the service provider, in this case the plumber after he’s done fixing your pipes, that he enters on the site to release the funds.
If they plumber didn’t plumb well, you can hold of on the funds until the job is done right! Great security for consumers. From the service provider side, if the client doesn’t want to pay they (the plumber) can contact eMazeMe to step in and release the funds. Should something else happen and all hell broke loose with the plumber and the client both yelling at each other, then as Chris put it, “[we] put measures in place to take care of that.”
This brought us back to the payment model. Why four? How does it all work? Chris explained that one of the things he saw wrong was just the simple pricing model for lead generation. “It simply didn’t fit everyone,” and he is right!
A flat fee and percent fee per lead doesn’t work well for services providers who require to see what needs to be worked on before they can bid! This would include people like our plumber friend, construction companies, architects and others like that where they really have to talk to the client first; where general pricing doesn’t always work.
But for those, said Chris, that don’t require any real consultations and have a set pricing model for things pay-per-lead (flat fee or percent based) works very well for them. Chris went on to explain that even service provides who can only charge by the hour are covered to. They simply list the hourly rate, hours worked and *poof* like magic everything is handled nicely and fairly. Of course though, the work has to be done and the client has to accept it.
