Lead Acquisition and Distribution

Lead acquisition is the first, and possibly the most critical potential disconnect in the lead management process. With billions being spent on advertising expenditures, in many cases the value of those expenditures is reduced because relevant information from responses is not collected or distributed. The value of this process is tightly linked to a variety of consumer response theories that highlight the relevance and responsiveness of the customer experience as being key ingredients in turning potential customers into actual customers. Once acquired, the speed, accuracy, and relevance of response can greatly influence a potential consumer's decision to buy, or not buy a product or service. I talked with the owner of blinds company who are selling vertical blinds, roman shades and faux wood blinds online. He says that lead management and lead management tools are most important part of their marketing budget.

One extremely relevant example of this process is the use of the Internet, online marketing, and Web analytics for high-level lead generation. A consumer generally uses the Internet and makes Internet inquiries for products and services out of a desire for convenience and efficiency of their time. Consequently, they expect a timely, relevant response to inquiries made. An alternative to the time consuming research involved in cultivating a good lead, unique resources such as Sales-Fax News have taken this burden upon themselves to find and report on leads for advertising sales.

Ref: wikipedia

Optimizing Lead Management

As larger vendors work with partner organizations such as distributors (see distribution (business)), resellers, brokers and other channel partners, those vendors often distribute leads to their respective partners to provide a local contact to those prospects and also 'feed' partners with new business opportunities. Today there are two major methods for distributing sales leads to partners: Push or Pull.

PUSH The push method sends leads to specific partners assuming that those partners will follow up and work on those leads. The challenge with 'push' is the fact that often the local sales people may not be able to react immediately for various reasons: not available, busy, on vacation... Many large vendors report disappointment when asked about their lead follow-up rate through partners after the leads where pushed out to those partners.

Pull The pull method was invented and patented by a German Engineer, Axel Schultze, who was frustrated with the lead follow up results of the push method and decided to let the available and motivated sales people 'pull' leads from an online available system. Patent was granted by the US Patent Office in May 2006. The pull method became widely accepted in the high tech industry where thousands of resellers from companies including Avaya, Nortel, Juniper and others distributed leads that way. The PULL Method became superior over the PUSH method, and lead closure rates grew on average by 300% as white papers from BlueRoads indicate.

Ref: Wikipedia