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LeadCon is now over and what a great event it was. I want to recap the Lead Management session that I moderated on Friday. It turned out to be just what I expected and that was a highly energized discussion of features, analytics and transparency. The members of the panel included Raj Parekh of LeadROI, Jeff Solomon of Leads360, Rick Doyle of Lead Mailbox and Bill Rice of Kaliedico. It was bound to be exciting with these four highly competitive companies. They are all nice to each other in person, but behind closed doors its another story.
I started off the session by asking Bill Rice what the difference between CRM and LMS was. Bill came back with the answer by saying that there was a fundamental difference and it was the lack of a customer. Meaning that a lead is not yet a customer, it is only a lead. This is a common misconception that you can attach any CRM to a lead management scenario and it will work and that is usually not the case. However, not to say that it can’t be done, LMS’ have lead specific processes in place that allow the users to convert a lead at the highest rate.
Throughout the conference the topics of lead quality, analytics and transparency came up in just about every session. eBureau, who is also an advertiser here on the blog, had a strong showing at the conference and discussed lead scoring in a number of the panel discussions. Another company, Sparkroom was discussed for its innovating analytics platform. Transparency was also discussed a number times with regards to retrieving success and failure data from the end lead buyers. Lead generation companies need the feedback and without it simply cannot fully optimize there marketing.
Are LMS’ Missing the Boat?
The lead management panel covered each one of these topics because they are involved in each of them in one way or another. I asked the panel if they missed the boat with fact that 3rd party providers were introducing features that could have easily already been implemented into their own systems. Currently in most of LMS platforms are pipeline reports not marketing analytics. Many of them will only report how many leads are in a current pipeline and do not give an opportunity to analyze the performance of different segments of leads, which is what Sparkroom offers. A little tougher case could be made that LMS platforms could also score leads as they come in similar to what eBureau performs for its clients. Each of the panel members claimed that they had not missed the boat and one even questioned if the mentioned companies would actually perform and that he would have to wait and see. I truly believe they have missed the boat, but that is just my opinion. The one thing going for them is the fact that they each have a solid user base and could implement the updated analytics and possible lead scoring and regain any lost users.
Transparency
We discussed transparency and the sharing of data with the lead generator. This was interesting topic for a number of reasons. First, because it was a big topic throughout the conference and the true holders of this data are the LMS companies which many of them have already implemented ability to transfer action data in accordance with the lead ID back to the lead-gen companies. Rick Doyle of Lead Mailbox invited each lead company to give him a call Monday morning to create the real time post of information. With that said though, there was a little push back from Leads360 on the willingness to implement idea. I think the crowd was taken back a bit by the resistance and after the show came up to me asking if Leads360 was going to try and monetize the data. I of course have no clue, but I believe that Jeff simply did not want to commit to something he was not completely familiar with or ready too, which is reasonable. I think because of the heat of the moment and the intense drilling of the question it came off slightly defensive and gave the members of the audience reason for question.
LMS of Tomorrow?
Bill Rice announced a new product on the panel, SalesTwit. This new product is a mashup of Icosales and Twitter. It give user the ability to incorporate Twitter into there own lead management by receiving and dispositioning leads inside the social platform. Rice concluded that it was conceived to bring simplicity back the lead management.
The panel also discussed data standardization and the current feature race between each of them. It was an interesting session to say the least. Amongst the major topics little stabs were shot back and fourth at each other. One in particular occurred during the discussion of standardizing the data in the Lead Management Systems. Jeff Solomon brought up Kaleidico’s Lead MarketWatch Widget and its inaccuracies by saying “the widget, or what ever it is called” as if he didn’t know and Bill Rice responded by answering “it called the Lead MarketWatch widget…you know what it is…you go to the website every day…I see your IP” to the crowds amusement. Jeff responded by pointing out that it has been around for about a year and that no improvements had been made. Jeff concluded that the widget and all if its issues should have been improved by now.
It was a fun panel and could have easily lasted another 30 minutes and trust me I had some additional questions that would have definitely stirred the pot even more. Maybe we will save them for next year.
If I missed anything, which I know I did, I will touch back on the subject later this week.
Overall, LeadsCon was a great event and I want to thank Jay for putting in the massive amount of time and effort that LeadsCon required. GREAT JOB JAY!
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4 Comments
Thanks for leading a great panel Mike; I too heard it was one of the best from the show. I wanted to reiterate my comments regarding metrics reporting to lead providers. As I said at the show, my stance is this. We will not simply open the floodgates and share raw data with our partners. There are questions of confidentiality, data integrity and value creation. We are far along in our analysis of what and how to share data with our partners, but I am committed to doing it right.
Incidentally the reaction that I heard was that of respect for sound business thinking. Sharing customer data with lead providers can be a great thing; everyone could benefit. But it is not something that should be taken frivolously. Doing it right requires some strategic thought, not to mention buy-in from our clients.
The bottom line is we are completely focused on making our customers more successful and we believe that providing accurate data back to lead providers can play significantly in this goal; but only if done correctly.
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LC great to finally meet you at Leadscon. Your session was the best of the conference. It would have been great if it was 2 or so hours as the gloves may have really come off. It was clear that these companies are passionate about what they do and that is a great thing for the industry.
I agree that the LMS companies missed the boat on the analytics piece. Sparkroom (contrary to the overriding opinion of the LMS companies) has a great product. The LMS’s should consider becoming partners with Ebureau and Sparkroom as it would sure provide added functionality for their user bases. As a large lead buyer who uses one of the solution on the panel for a small portion of our business it would make whichever solution went this route much more attractive as an enterprise solution.
Jeff as for your comments about data…As a buyer I agree that my system providers need my permission to share data but during the conference you seemed to suggest that you wanted to monetize the deliver of the data back to the lead aggregator/provider/exchange Did I misunderstand what you said? Assuming I am not misquoting you I think that this is short sighted. Providing data to the providers will only improve the quality and therefore my efficiency as a buyer. I can only see this as a benefit you as you are here to facilitate my sales process so I don’t see the hesitation or concern other than the need to get client approval. Yes you need to make sure that your data is good (as you mentioned at the conference numerous times) but if its not I think it suggests a bigger problem with the solution.
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I think Jeff makes a good point, but I thought the spirit of the panel discussion was to show the willingness to work with lead providers and third party analytics services providers to help improve ‘lead quality’. We all realize there is a lot of strategic discussions yet to be had about how the data is to be utilized and what specific data we can share.
I am just looking forward to having these discussions with our partners toward a goal that I believe benefits the entire industry. I think will continue to demonstrate the significance of Lead Management in the entire lead life-cycle.
I really enjoyed the panel. I think it was well established that lead management is the hub for understanding how best practices affect conversions and behavior at the point of sale. The reality is that currently the lead management systems are better positioned than the lead exchanges to understand the factors that influence the quality of the lead. What’s great is that we can immediately start making an impact by working more closely with the lead generation side of the fence, and to that extent I think it behooves us all to work together.
Thanks again Jay W. for all your hard work. You threw a smashing show. Michael, thank you for your moderation of the panel and general involvement in this space.
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I agree with ‘A lead buyer’ about the fact that we will also need to work with our clients to make sure we have the proper permissions to use that data we have on our systems. I pretty sure I caveated my statements about this issue with a similar statement.
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