Leads360: Lead Management, Tracking & Distribution Software

First, let me define what I mean by “electronic format”. When someone calls in from a direct mail piece or from some other form of advertising, the sales person who picks up the phone doesn’t immediately know who the customer is, and should enter their information into a database or lead management software. As simple as it sounds, it’s all too common that sales people won’t do data entry.

Receiving leads in electronic format is becoming increasingly more common, and more important. In the Mortgage or Automotive space, this is pretty typical; other industries have not fully adopted this model.

We believe that a successful lead management strategy requires that leads are delivered and managed in electronic format. This may seem pretty obvious, but clients that don’t get leads this way, typically don’t see the value of our software. If you’re generating leads from direct mail, call-ins, trade shows, or any other method that doesn’t typically deliver leads in electronic format, you will have a more difficult time developing process around how to convert those leads (another reason why I believe traditional marketing methods are seeing increasingly lower conversion rates vs. the internet for example).

How do you get leads delivered electronically? Some methods are more obvious than others; of course if you are buying leads from LowerMyBills.com, they’ll send them to you in a number of electronic formats. But if you’re doing print advertising, direct mail, telemarketing, etc… you may not be so lucky. We’ve got some experience with this; contact us to discuss ways we can help.

Dear Laura:

I recently read your paper entitled Improving B2B lead Management from October 2006. As the CEO of Leads360, a leading provider of enterprise on-demand lead management solutions, I felt compelled to connect with you in hopes we could discuss our respective thoughts on the subject.

From your document it seems you have six (6) key steps to successful lead management.

1. Agree on the definition of a quality lead


2. Build or refine processes to capture lead quality information


3. Validate, score and classify leads


4. Improve lead routing and efficiency


5. Nurture leads that don’t yet warrant sales attention


6. Define and analyze closed-loop performance metrics

I love the simplicity of your model and believe it is consistent with the approach we take to lead management. One important distinction that I believe is often under-scrutinized when looking at technology providers in this space is specialization. Many of the companies you mention in your research (Unica, Aprimo, Eloqua and Vtrenz) do provide some lead management functions very well, but also address many other aspects of sales and marketing. Leads360 is focused on providing software for managing the above mentioned six steps. We start when leads are generated and end when they are converted.

I think there are a few reasons why received significant attention in this space thus far. First, while our 10,000+ subscriber base is heavily Mortgage focused, I believe our product extends far beyond the needs of the financial sector. Additionally, we are a young organization and small relative to companies like Aprimo and Eloqua. Finally, I believe lead management has traditionally been considered a component of other business services, in particular CRM, and therefore has not been given independent attention. Recently, as demonstrated by your research on the subject, the business community is recognizing lead management as a core aspect of successful sales and marketing.

As a software company we have always positioned ourselves as offering a highly configurable technology that can be easily customized to the unique business demands of any sales and marketing organization. We enable clients to configure, test and analyze the core aspects of lead management: qualification, distribution, workflow, nurturing; then we help them and re-configure these processes to improve effectiveness.

We are a budding company in this space with strong revenues and growth; surely we have further to go in taking market share from companies like Aprimo or even SalesForce. However, our beeline focus on lead management best practices is unique and proving to be effective for our 500+ clients.

While we all tend to imagine that innovation happens organically (think Ben Franklin), it often requires strict constraints. Intel develops a faster and more energy efficient chip because notebooks need to run powerful software on cross country flights. Starbucks develops packaging to store & transport ground coffee so it can serve the same latte in San Francisco and Shanghai. Leads360 develops its software to meet the demands of customers and exceed their expectations in performance and usability.

The X Prize Foundation succeeds by providing strict constraints and incentives for innovation.

From Autoblog Green
Neal Anderson: You bet. The X-Prize Foundation started back in '96 and Peter Diamandis, the founder and chairman of the X-Prize Foundation had a vision of opening up the space industry and breaking it out of the government's hold on it and opening up private space flight. So he launched the Ansari X-Prize back in '96. That prize was awarded in 2004 to Burt Rutan and Paul Allen who won the Ansari X-Prize, a $10 million prize, which had a tremendous impact on the industry. Richard Branson of Virgin, now Galactic bought the winning technology and you can get tickets as a space for a couple hundred thousand dollars a pop. And you're starting to see more than six or seven companies that are vying to the first to space with the technology that he was inspired by that prize. Plus lots of media attention too and one of the great things about the prizes is that you really offer a lot of leverage to investors. So for a $10 million prize there were twenty-six teams from seven countries that invested quite a bit of money. I believe it was $100 million to try to win the prize and then we had Branson spending $120 million afterwards to buy the winning technology. A little bit of money can really spur a lot of investment. The idea for the X-Prize Foundation was spawned by Charles Lindbergh and his pursuit of the Orteig Prize, which a lot of people don't know that Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic to try to win a $25,000.00 prize and that really – after he did that that opened up the aviation industry tremendously. That's a little background on the, on the X-Prize Foundation. In the wake of the success of the Ansari X-Prize, lots of individuals challenged Peter to broaden the scope of the X-Prize model to focus beyond space and kind of bring this X-Prize model up to areas of energy, education, healthcare and things of that nature. So the Automotive X-Prize is the third X-Prize that's focused on energy, we launched a prize that's focused on healthcare in the genomics field late last year. So the Automotive X-Prize is really – our focus is to to inspire a new generation of super efficient vehicles that help break our addiction to oil and stem the effects of climate change. So we're using the same model to help break open the bottleneck of innovation that's happening in the automotive industry, to try see a whole new generation of viable, production capable super efficient vehicles come out of this competition.

David Armano of Business Week has an interesting story about how people now interact with products in ways far beyond consumption. This multi-dimensional understanding of consumer-product relationship is beginning to take hold in the business world. However, we are curious about it's implications in the business to business landscape. How are businesses changing the way they consume products and services from other businesses? Leads360 relies on many great companies to get our work done just as hundreds of our clients rely on us to help them be successful. How will our B2B relationships change in the coming years? We strive to be increasingly responsive to our clients and we greatly benefit from their input and experience with our products.

Many subprime lenders are feeling the pressure of a collapsing market; however some are weathering the storm better than others. Enter Leads360, the #1 provider of sales lead management and tracking software to the mortgage industry.

For subprime lenders to stay afloat they need to capitalize on their leads, every one of them. Unfortunately many of these lenders the volume and profitability of subprime customers offset the need to effectively manage leads. In many ways subprime lenders have been printing money; what’s a few poorly worked leads in the grand scheme?

Well times are changing, subprime lenders, just as the entire mortgage market is recognizing, need tools to do proper follow-up and follow-through on their leads. Leads360 is helping over 450 mortgage clients manage their leads every step of the way; from generation to initial contact to application and funding. The key is that the successful mortgage companies, and those that want to be around for the long haul, recognize that competing in a compacting market requires discipline and process. Leads360 is the company they seek to gain a competitive advantage and to contact and convert a higher percentage of leads.