What happens when no one wants your leads?

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I can't think of more highly qualified leads - they spend an average of over 4 minutes filling out a survey about exactly what kind of rental they want and how much they want to pay. I'm going to do my best to really shepherd the first customers through the process so that a) I start to build positive brand equity/reputation for excellent customer service with vacationers, and b) the rental companies see the value in the leads. That's going to be my USP with the rental companies - my leads convert.

 

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Update:
1) Made appointment for the end of the week to visit one of the top 3 rental companies in the area I am working in, and got another top 5 company very interested over the phone.
2) Learned an important lesson with regard to why I'm doing all of this in the first place. It happens to be my wife's birthday at the end of the week, and I made the mistake of thinking that I could travel down to the vacation spot and meet with businesses on her birthday. We had a discussion and I realized how wrong it was to start down this path of deferred family time. One of the primary motivating factors behind why I'm starting a business is to achieve financial - and thus temporal - freedom. When I envision what I'd do with this freedom, I picture doing what my dad could never do with me and my brother, which is spending quality, 1 on 1 time with family without the constant distraction of work/employment and being one injury or illness away from financial ruin. It sort of scared me at how easily I was willing to throw important family time away in pursuit of business, when the whole point of the business is to buy me time with my family. So, I'm going to spend my wife's birthday with her (espcially since she just gave me my first kid! ), and respectfully request from the rental company that I reschedule my meeting with them.
3) I realized after having a long conversation with one of the rental companies that travel websites must have experienced exactly the same roadblocks that I'm having with convincing rental companies that this is in their best interest. Think of the first travel websites (Expedia, Priceline, etc.) and airlines - some guy calls and says that he wants access to their reservation system so that he can incorporate their flights into his database. The airline is thinking "why don't you just send them to our website - we've spent 80 years building a brand, and plus we have a really nice site that we spend millions of dollars on so that customers can just book there." The initial pitch to the first airlines must have been really tough, because that's exactly the kind of reaction I'm getting now. I'm finding ways to overcome it - in fact I convinced one that my concept was the future, and my evidence was my awesome test run with vacationers.
4) I still hate cold calling. I'm getting better at it, to the point where I've developed a mini-script that gets me past the gatekeepers every time, but I still hate it. I can't wait until I don't need to do it anymore - which I'm sure someone on here is going to tell me is never

Mods - any way I can convert this to a progress thread? Thanks!

 

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Update: I went down to the vacation spot (10 hours of total driving today) and met with vacation rental company owners and marketing managers. I managed to pitch my concept successfully - I'm one additional contact from having the entire stretch of beach covered by at least 1 rental company through the pilot phase. I also learned that some rental companies were very excited about the prospect of me moving rentals that hadn't sold, and that they were willing to (in some cases) pay me over $1,000+ to do so!!!

This is enough of a validation that I'm going to move out of pre-pilot idea validation and into a full-fledged pilot. My goals will be to establish/improve communication and lead systems between me and rental companies, split test my website/offers/ads, and follow up with customers to see how I can make their experience more valuable. I'm hoping this phase will take between 2-4 weeks, afterwhich I'll reevaluate and start charging rental companies for these leads.

A few lessons I learned/relearned this trip:
-Face time and establishing relationships is important. I went from a nameless/faceless guys randomly calliing about some lead system to a real person with a real product. I think it also showed that I was serious and that I was genuine in my intention of making sure it was a true win-win for customers AND rental companies (something a lot of the current lead gen providers don't care about)
-Face to face pitching allows for opportunities to fully listen, and "adjust fire". In every instance, I walked into the meeting, gave a little minipitch, and was immediately told why the rental company wouldn't be interested. Instead of saying "oh well - thanks for your time" I interviewed them a little bit - I got a sense of what their pain points were, and what they would be willing to pay for. In the end I crafted deals and proposals by the end of the conversation that moved the rentals from "no" to "let's start the pilot" and "you have a really great idea here!"
-All plans fail first contact with the enemy (or customer/client). I came into the pitch with an ipad loaded with a slide deck I had put together, plus preloaded webpages with my content. In the first meeting I never even had the opportunity to open the ipad - I had to pitch from memory, know my numbers off the top of my head (which is no problem for me, but can me for some), and I had to be able to listen and debate. In another meeting, pulling out the ipad and illustrating what I was talking about was key to moving the rental company to a "yes" for starting the pilot.
-Be honest. I didn't walk into the meetings as if I had some huge company - instead I talked about my entreprenurial journey, the fact that I have a day job as a speechwriter, and that I was there because I had failed enough to know what a decent validation test looks like. I think this honesty helped to establish the right kinds of relationships off the bat.
-Get angry and keep pushing. After my first successful meeting, I thought "great! I'll just email the other rental companies - I don't need to meet with them in person." Which of course is crazy thinking! But let's be honest, pitching is uncomfortable enough, and I had only one scheduled meeting. Instead of being content with that, I said to myself "I drove all the way down here and I'm just going to meet with one company? F that - grow some balls and go cold call a rental that you'd contacted before, and get them signed up." So, I randomly showed up to a rental company that had turned me down, went in the lobby, and said I wanted to speak to the marketing director. A very skeptical gatekeeper-type called the director and told me that they were very busy, but that they would come down and meet me quickly. Let's just say that an hour+ later of conversation and I had the company signed up.

 

[Clayton]

I have to admit, I always thought of marketing vacation homes as a crowded market ever since HomeAway did it's superbowl ad and IPO'd, TripAdvisor started Flipkey, and a million copycats sprung up. I'm actually really excited to see you're having so much initial success. Every day I learn more and more about the dynamics of markets. Thanks.

 

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The only reason I'm doing well is because they are so onerous for rental companies to manage. Literally every time I talk to one they tell me about how much they suck for rental companies. Their sucktatude is my business opportunity!

Plus, the market clearly (as demonstrated through my validation testing) wants to shift the paradigm. The current paradigm is "vacationers, come to my site and spend time finding what you want." I've shifted the paradigm to "vacation rental companies - here is what I want and how much money I want to pay - you tell me what you have and how much you're willing to discount for me".