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Knowbits Lead Generation People seem to be confused about “lead generation”. Lots of people talk about it. And invariably end up quoting other people. But if you’re in charge of lead generation, you surely have to stop talking and DO something. That means finding audiences for your product or service, creating messages they want to hear, and then getting the message to them so they can ‘raise their hand’ (as we sometimes quaintly say) to receive more information or make a purchase. That’s lead generation. (Note: Many of the following names and definitions provided courtesy of William Strauss and Neil Howe, co-authors of Generations, tying together history, politics, business and marketing.) Let’s think about the generations Not everyone agrees on definitions. Two perspectives on the Lost Generation, one broad and one more narrowly confined to literary giants like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, show how the variables doom most assumptions. Usually even the name is not clearly defined: Are those who served in WWII part of the G.I. or Greatest Generation? Being part of the largest named bubble, the infamous Baby Boom, I’m tired of hearing about it. Then came Gen X– and they appear to be having an identity crisis. Now we have a group identified as the Millennials, or are they Gen Y? Oh…THAT kind. Search online and you’ll find many sites promising to multiply and propagate new-business leads. Each one uses buzz words such as “targeted”, “timely”, “detailed”. Targeted to whom? One site – Buyer’s Zone – says they can target by geographic area and by “Matching your product/service offering”. That’s probably a good start, but what about price? Or scope? Are you selling mainframes or mousepads? Really what they are doing is similar to pay-per-click advertising, where ads appear based on keyword searches, supposedly raising the relevance of the ad to the searcher and creating more qualified “leads”. I don’t think these automated services are sophisticated enough to really be called lead generation. Definitions again. That brings us back to definitions: What’s a lead anyway? Is it a click on your site? Is it someone’s email address? Is it a form filled out at a tradeshow or online? A phone number? A request for more info? I’ve heard all of those things called leads. If you turned them over to a salesperson to follow up and close – what percentage do you think would convert? You can see that this is a big discussion. Lead generation, aka “prospecting”. Lead qualification. Conversion to prospect. Conversion to customer. To be meaningful, these terms require definition in the unique context of your business. They also require lots of work: email, calls, meetings, to push your leads from one stage to the next. Fish or fowl? Depending on what you call a lead, and how you deal with it, lead generation sits somewhere in a gray area between marketing and sales. If for your business a lead means clicking on a banner ad, your lead generation process looks a lot like marketing (high-volume, anonymous marketing at that.) If your idea of a lead means a face-to-face meeting to scope a big contract, then I’d call it a sales. For most businesses, the truth is somewhere in the middle – which means your marketing and sales people have to work well together. (For more on this, see Knowbits.) Shotgun approach… Example: You are going to exhibit at a tradeshow, and want to make the most of your time there by getting lots of leads. So how do you get people to come talk to you? Give away something really COOL. Your company sells B2B services for knowledge management. So naturally, you decide to give away a CAR. (No kidding, I once witnessed this.) Everyone attending the tradeshow stops by to put their name in the hat. Why not? But do they care about what you do? And now you have to manage all their data. Hold the drawing. Notify everyone. Time. Money. Pay for the car. More money. Maybe you’ll get some PR. A month later, what do you do with all those thousands of names? Divvy them up and start dialing for dollars? Then try to track them going forward, and purge the dead ones? I’d call this “Lost Generation”: You generated a lot of something, but not leads. And you probably lost a lot of money. …or laser-targeting? Instead, what if you give away something that’s only cool for people who buy knowledge management tools – such as a free trip to a relevant conference (KM World}, or a document imaging machine, or maybe free services from your company. The likelihood that the people who respond are potential buyers is now pretty high. You could probably consider these entrants to be leads, or suspects. And if you give away your own service, you create a new customer – albeit a temporarily non-paying one. (For more specific examples of lead generation tactics, see Knowbits: The Tradeshow Circus). Know what you need Both examples represent extremes of quantity vs. quality. There’s no “right” way to generate leads, because no two business are the same. So make sure to think about what you’re really looking for before you start. How many leads do you realistically need or want? Who will follow up on them, and how many can they handle? Can you use automated methods for contact and qualification, or telesales qualifiers? Only you and your sales organization can determine what you want. Lead generation is a lot like the other generations: There are many definitions,
and they can be grouped by a set of relevant demographics. You need to take
the time to define exactly what that will be. (You just KNEW I’d do that, didn’t you?) If you have a question or topic you would like to see in Knowbits, write to Donna Lehman.
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August 2004