Patent ID: 7305364

Claim:
A method for generating customer leads for use by dealers attempting to sell a product to a plurality of customers using a computer coupled to a database, the customer leads provided to the dealers through an auction process by a business entity engaged in a business of providing financing, said method comprising the steps of: storing customer information within the database including age, gender, income and payment history for each of the plurality of customers including inactive customers, wherein an inactive customer is a customer that purchased a product from at least one of the dealers and is currently not a party to a loan for financing the purchased product; applying propensity models using the computer to one or more customers stored within the database, the propensity models including an early termination model and a cross-selling model, the early termination model for predicting a probability of early termination of a loan by the one or more customers wherein early termination includes a likelihood a customer will terminate a loan provided by the dealer before a contract life of the loan expires by prepaying the loan, the cross-selling model for predicting a probability of cross-selling to a predicted early termination customer wherein cross-selling includes a likelihood a customer will purchase another product from the dealer to retain the early termination customer as an active customer of the dealer; applying an activation model and a timing model using the computer to one or more customers stored within the database, the activation model for predicting a probability of activating the one or more customers stored within the database including a likelihood that an inactive customer will accept an offer to sell a product from the dealer and become an active customer, the timing model for predicting when the customers will accept the offer, wherein an active customer is a customer that is currently a party to a loan used for purchasing a product from at least one of the dealers; generating for the business entity a customer lead list including customers satisfying the early termination model and the cross-selling model, or satisfying the activation model, wherein an early termination customer satisfying the cross-selling model is an early termination customer predicted to purchase another product from the dealer, and a customer satisfying the activation model is an inactive customer predicted to accept an offer to sell a product from the dealer; auctioning the customer lead list to one or more dealers; and providing financing for the one or more dealers to a customer from the customer lead list that purchases a product from the one or more dealers, the financing provided by the business entity.