I completely agree that companies who handle different stages need to be working together. Since there are multiple hand-offs between companies and stages — publishers handing off to advertisers, who then handoff to lead buyers — transparency and collaboration are essential to driving the best results for lead buyers.

As Joe says, there can’t be magic, it has to be based on numbers and algorithms.

Look forward to catching up at Leadscon.

Murthy

Abracadabra, Alakazoo, need to buy a house? well here’s a loan for you..

Thank you for your reply. I have heard very nice things about you and look forward to meeting with you in the near future. These topics seem to be the precursor to the discussions that I’m sure will be in full bloom at LeadsCon. What’s very interesting is that we clearly see that changes in this space are afoot, and I for one think it’s a positive sign that there is some harmony to our collective thought no matter which lead management system you personally endorse.

Sometimes we have to be willing to erase everything that is currently on the whiteboard and create a whole new 1.0 because 2.0 can imply that we are just adding 1 to the original 1.0, which may have been built on a false premise in the first place.

I like both of your posts. There is no doubt that we are at an inflection point in the evolution of our industry. It is reminiscent of the state of the search engine industry 5 years ago. At the time Google’s strategy was to invent and employ the most scientifically elegant approach possible to enable consumers to discover and organize information online. Yahoo!, on the other hand, followed a less scientific and more qualitative approach to driving consumer demand for their product. We all know how that battle has played out since then.

Similarly, in my opinion, the Lead Generators and Lead Management Solutions that emerge as “Lead 2.0” leaders will undoubtedly be those that have the most rigorous, robust and scientifically sophisticated approach to quantifying both lead quality and which behaviors drive customer profitability.

At the moment the jury is out about who the “Google’s” of the lead industry will be since the techniques each company are using are necessarily highly proprietary (I have a strong opinion as to which company it will be in the Lead Management Solution space, of course). However, at the end of the day it isn’t rhetoric that will determine this; it will be the lead buyers who vote with their feet when Lead 2.0 products begin to emerge… I give it less than six months before this really starts to happen in a serious and transformative way.

I won’t question your claim that science and mathematics may improve the quality of the lead. I will even accept that there are some secret formulas being mixed in the adchemy laboratory that are going to change the “quality” of the lead. However you have to admit that every lead generation company is going to stake claim to a secret sauce to make the sale, and financial institutions will necessarily diversify their lead buys so they do not put all their eggs in one basket in the event one lead provider’s secret sauce is left out of the fridge for too long and spoils.

I’m quite impressed that your team is made up of intelligent individuals who will use their education and business experiences to improve lead generation practices, but at the end of the day, no matter how good your lead happens to be, if there is no one to address the lead in the expected timeframe once it’s delivered to the point of sale, the “quality” of that lead will certainly suffer.

My segue is obvious. This is where lead management comes in. If implemented correctly lead management systems should not only give the lead buyer insight into how the lead is converting based on the claimed quality and the scientific processes implemented by the lead provider, but also the other contributing factors that affect the quality of that lead i.e. the efficiency of the production staff that actually responds to that lead once it is delivered to the point of sale. Additionally and ideally, lead management systems should also be working more closely with you, the lead generator, to help you better understand those production level factors, post delivery of the lead, that are affecting the quality of the lead.

You state that we have to set up rigorous experimental structure that yields the most accurate data and create software that can dissect massive amounts of this data and effectively “learn” over time so that better processes can be put in place. Well, improving these processes is not only important in lead generation, but equally as important in lead management. Looking at all the pieces of this puzzle will be the only way we get a holistic understanding of the ever elusive “LEAD QUALITY”.

This ultimately requires us to work more closely together, and this means we have to do more than just refer business to each other. We have to find a way to build collaborative systems.

Great post.. I look forward to meeting you at LeadsCon.