Monday, April 23, 2007
Notes to Laura Ramos @ Forrester on Improving B2B Lead Management
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.
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.
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.
- Agree on the definition of a quality lead
- Build or refine processes to capture lead quality information
- Validate, score and classify leads
- Improve lead routing and efficiency
- Nurture leads that don’t yet warrant sales attention
- 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.
# posted by Jeff Solomon @ 12:39 PM 
