What is lead generation 2.0?

By Al Davidson, President, SSM

The future stretches out before us like an un-drawn map of opportunity. Those who make it there first, and stake their claim, will succeed. And the remaining “me-too’s” will tag along after and barely break even. So, let’s talk about the future of lead generation services and see how we can be the forerunners in this evolution.

Lead generation 2.0 is heavily influenced by web 2.0. So let’s start there. Web 1.0 was all about information – creating it and putting it out there for people to see. Companies created sites that were essentially electronic brochures of their goods and services. Today, web 2.0 allows us to interface with the information by commenting on it, restructuring it, using it, sharing, building on it, and interacting with other people. Think: blogs and wikis and Facebook. The name of the game in web 2.0 is collaboration and interaction.

So, how does that change lead generation into lead generation 2.0? Once, lead generation was all about pushing information to the client. But today, lead generation 2.0, built on the foundation of web 2.0, enables prospects and customers to become partners in the process. In other words, they become part of the discussion.

Lead generation 2.0 leverages the fact that sales teams and clients are willing to offer help by lending a hand to their dispersed or outsourced lead generation team. And in the context of a team of sales people that are all part of a community that’s associated with a particular product, they can be pulled in to the front end of the sales process in an effort to help positively change the outcome of new business conversations that are taking place at early stages. And then what happens, the sales team is bolstered and clients take on collaborative roles.

Some of them become the information givers and some of them become the go-to people to enhance conversations with decision makers and buying influences that will be key to advancing opportunities deep in to the sales cycle.

Here’s where the changes are starting to happen to introduce this revolution:

·      We are beginning to see that sales teams are now benefiting by this much more personalized experience, and that translates into how they interact and collaborate with lead generation companies. 

·      Next, we’re seeing changes in interaction: The lead generator has traditionally pushed information to the client. In lead generation 2.0, the two-way conversation is the x factor that creates significant enhancements in the quality and quantity of sales leads. Clients are posting information and content.

The good news is that we know that sales teams are willing to interact through web 2.0 collaborative tools. They’re providing opinions; they’re rating early stage opportunities; they’re providing mission critical solutions that lead generators can deliver to prospects…this is enhancing outcomes and creating pathways to new customers. The more advanced level sales teams are mining lead generation information. And from that, these advanced teams are gathering a lot more information about what their customers are looking for or they are better able to classify different types of customers – in terms of expertise, familiarity and motivation to solve their internal issues. By mining this information, these advance sales teams are doing a better job of directing their lead generation 2.0 team to the sweet spots in their marketplace.

How can you anticipate these changes and prepare your business for them? And, what does lead generation 3.0 look like?

It’s not enough just to be able to spot trends and see what the hot topics are. Our next direction will be advanced analytics directed towards the type of conversation. What was the content? What was the tone of the conversation? And so on. One of the challenges we face right now is figuring out: what are the factors that we should be capturing? What is it that we need to know about different conversations? These are really new areas for us. How do we take that collective information and piece it together and come up with something meaningful?

And that is going to be the next wave of analytics – looking at conversations. Not just at the content of the conversations, but also the tone, and meta-information about the conversations.