Don't take our word for it, see the metrics.
A survey of 1000 sales people who have leads provided to them by employers yielded the following results:
- The majority of the 1,000 respondents admitted to stealing, but many do not perceive their actions as 'wrong'
- 37% of men believe it is acceptable to take database information and sales leads
- 49% of 16-24 year-olds do not think that workplace theft is 'stealing'
- 73% of graduate trainees admit to office theft
- 56% believe that companies expect things 'to go walk-about'
- Companies are especially vulnerable to internal data theft, according to the report, because 78 percent of the workforce owns devices capable of downloading and storing data, such as USB memory sticks or media players
"Clearly, many employees do not see company theft as stealing and do not apply any 'moral brakes' to such activities," said Graeme Pitts-Drake, chief executive at Prefix. "Naïve employers who continue to trust their staff blindly without relying on robust security measures are asking for trouble."
Small firms in particular were shown to be at most risk of 'disappearing data'. The majority of the 1,000 respondents admitted to stealing, but many do not perceive their actions as 'wrong'.
Read what real customers are saying about LeadGuardian
"Although we don't want to believe that any of our employees are capable of stealing company leads, it's a reality. We don't have time to constantly monitor all of the calls made by our loan officers to make sure they're following up with leads on behalf of the company, and not their own personal side business. Leads360 gave us a quick and effective solution to prevent the loss of thousands of dollars in closed leads."
—Bill Connors, President of Home Lenders America
Although Home Lenders America*, a leading mortgage lending company, supports their former loan officers who start their own companies, the company wanted to make sure none of their employees were starting lending businesses by stealing leads acquired by Home Lenders. The company was already using Leads360's LeadManager software application to distribute and track their company's leads. Because they had been so pleased with the system, the company again looked to Leads360 for a solution.
"Reviewing the comprehensive reports generated by Leads360, we noticed that one of our loan officers wasn't closing as many large leads as he was in previous months. We didn't want to think that this individual could be stealing leads, but his notes and results were very inconsistent," said Bill C onnors, President of Home Lenders America. "We needed a fool-proof way of knowing if he was stealing leads, without impacting our entire staff."
Connors contacted Leads360 about their concern, and was pleased to learn about Leads360's LeadGuardian product. LeadGuardian is a module of Leads360's LeadManager lead management software application, and operates seamlessly with Home Lenders' lead database. The software randomly places "check" leads within the company's database that are integrated with a voicemail system that records messages and the caller's information. The recordings are emailed as mp3 files to Connors and other company management who can hear if their employees are contacting leads legitimately or if lead theft is occurring.
"When anyone leaves a voicemail, the law recognizes that the person understands they are being recorded," said Bill Connors*, President of Home Lenders America. "LeadGuardian is a legal and reliable way for us to protect our leads and ultimately the success of our mortgage lending business. In just minutes every day, I know that everyone on our team is working toward the same goal, and not their own agenda."
Since implementing LeadGuardian, Home Lenders received confirmation that their worries were legitimate and they terminated the employee. During the two months that the employee was stealing leads, Home Lenders had lost four million-dollar loans.
"If we hadn't adopted LeadGuardian, we would have continued to lose thousands and thousands of dollars to employee theft. It literally has saved our business," added Connors. "Having LeadGuardian allows us to quickly eliminate any threats we have to the integrity of our leads."
*Names have been changed for confidentiality.
