The method
How we build demand.
Three things are decided before anyone picks up a phone: where the opportunity came from, what the person actually wants, and whether both sides can agree afterwards on what happened. They are not the whole of what makes a lead good. They are the parts that are ours to build.
What we build deliberately.
The demand and the request are built together.
Meansmith builds its own acquisition and its own request experiences rather than buying interest someone else collected. The marketing, the page a person arrives on and the questions they answer are all ours.
That is what makes the origin of an opportunity a fact rather than a chain you have to trust. A list bought from a broker can only tell you what the broker was told. A request that arrives through an experience we built carries where it came from because we were there when it started.
The questions are built backward from what a buyer wants to see.
A Meansmith relationship starts with one question: what does your team want to see? Everything downstream is built from that answer — down to the smallest set of questions a person can answer honestly in one sitting.
The alternative is a form that inherited its fields from whoever built it last, and a filter run across the results afterwards. Filtering after the fact can only remove opportunities. Asking the right question while the person is still paying attention is what produces one worth working.
Every opportunity can be traced back to where it came from.
What was asked, what was answered, what the person agreed to and when — carried with the opportunity, so both sides can look at one record afterwards and agree on what happened.
This is unglamorous and it is the part that decides whether a commercial relationship survives its first disagreement. A supplier who cannot reconstruct an opportunity is asking to be taken on faith every month.
What a Business Financing request contains.
The worked case of all of the above, and the smallest set that supports a real evaluation. The request does not ask for a Social Security number, a date of birth, bank credentials, tax returns or document uploads, and it does not pull a credit file. Collecting more would make the form look thorough and would cost the person the patience they need to finish it.
What the business is trying to fund, and the amount they have in mind.
Where the business is based, its industry, and how long it has operated.
Approximate monthly revenue, and the owner’s own estimate of their credit range.
Occupancy and borrower type where a property is involved.
How to reach them, and the authorization they read and confirmed before sending.