I remember the first time I went to my Dad’s laboratory at the University of Kentucky and he showed me the magic of looking very closely at common everyday objects. You see, he had a scanning electron microscope and things you would think as simple as a common housefly’s eye are amazingly complex and interesting.
That was my experience at LeadsCon.
The business of generating leads on the Internet and turning them into paying customers is at first glance simple. But, the Internet is far more confusing and vast than your local retail big box store. And, the consumer is amazingly complex and confusing within their own right. The way our industry pulls and funnels interest, into intent, into inquiry, into sales is an amazing labyrinth.
LeadsCon Recap
I am always amazed and surprised at what and who I miss. For instance, I am incredibly interested in the (almost underground) affiliate component of our business. The closer I look the more intrigued and impressed I become. Here are a few pointer to their perspective:
As for a comprehensive recap, I won’t attempt. Fortunately, smart folks like Sean Fenlon of DoublePositive and LeadCritic have done an excellent job of capturing the essence of each of these session:
What Happened in the Hallway?
What I will try to capture is some of the hallway conversation. In my opinion, some of the best value.
The two major themes swirling around in my hallway conversations included quality and value. More specifically, how to make a higher quality lead and a more valuable lead company.
Lead Quality
The big winners in the first conversation were certainly eBureau, Sparkroom, and TargusInfo. I won’t try to differentiate or value their products (I am sure their sales teams would be happy to help you there), but they are using mountains of data and models to bead in on the perfect lead–in real-time. I see the value of attacking the lead quality problem from this angle. However, I see another factor in the lead quality problem set, which may even be bigger–customer intent to buyer product match.
Far to often, I see clients withdrawing an enormous amount of leads because they simply can not help the clients. It is incredibly difficult to determine the difference between consumer questions like these:
- How much is my house worth?
- Am I qualified for an FHASecure?
- Could I get a lower rate?
- My ARM is adjusting I have to refinance!
- Should I protect my equity by buying a second home?
- and more…
They all create refinance leads, but in the current market one or more of those I may not have the licensing or the product to help. The net result? If I don’t have an effective way to discern and match I end up with leads no better, and no less frustrating to sales, than a bogus lead.
Another aspect of lead quality and from my perspective the key to lead generation campaign optimization, scoring, and matching is closed-loop feedback between sales and marketing. The differing perspective and attitudes on this issue were evident in our lead management panel:
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…
The ability to make adjustments to marketing inputs, from sales outputs, is proven and consistently a process for success. Why wouldn’t we give clients every advantage at being successful with our products?
By the way, Rick’s offer stands from Kaleidico (my lead management company) too.
Investment Opportunities
Several recent announcement of investment in the lead generation space has put VC and investment bank associates on the hunt for honey pots. LeadsCon was fertile grounds with a lot of great talent and companies.
The investment themes seemed to track the conference themes: lead quality and analytics/data.
I talked to most of the money in the room, so to speak, and I came away with two pearls.
The first, a clearer understanding of what makes a typically volatile and often indefensible, non-differentiating lead generation company valuable. Sandy Kory (Media Venture Partners) put it most succinctly:
- A defensible, differentiating efficiency in media acquisition and lead production
- A “stickiness,” driven by value within your clients (lead buyers) business
The second, was personal to my corner of the lead market–lead management. I was, and have been over the last six months, asked if lead management is an attractive investment theme. My answer six months ago was, “no.” The lead management market (corner is still a better description) violates a fundamental premise of capital investment: large markets.
And, based on the current state of this space my answer is the same, but since about 95% of my net worth is tied up in that very investment I needed to change that answer.
So, leading up to LeadsCon Kaleidico made that move. We are no longer talking about mortgage lead management. We are talking about extending the icoSales platform and open API to manage, nurture, and provide real-time feedback on any online customer inquiry. Think of the sales back-end of Google and lead generation and the front-end of Salesforce.com or CRM. But, that is just the tip of getting a piece of the $9 billion CRM market. Now imagine, as we will with SalesTwit, activating your electronic address book and social network. How much more profitable would your relationships and businesses be if you actually had a tool that helped you proactively and routinely talk to all of the people you already know. And better yet do it with No More CRM.
The lead management market just got a whole lot bigger!
LeadsCon a Profitable Experience
As you can imagine, I found LeadsCon very exciting and rewarding. Jay Weintraub did a fabulous job launching a new and important venue for our industry. See everyone next year.
By the way, I am beta testing SalesTwit now. So, you might be hearing a lot more often from me!
If you liked this post please sign-up for the RSS feed or get updates via email.
If you Twitter: Follow me @billrice.
Want more information about Kaleidico's lead management software or services call 866.667.5253 or visit www.kaleidico.com.
