Technologies such as Webcasts, blogs, Webinars and podcasts have ushered in an era of high-tech tracking and accountability, one that precludes excuses on not delivering a high ROI on lead generation. And let's face it: ROI is king. Salespeople will inherently gravitate toward the hot leads in anticipation of a quick close and quick compensation. Many times warm leads are left to languish or—worse yet—fall off the radar altogether, squandering business opportunities that may turn out to be viable customers with a little more effort. But with clear responsibility delineation via electronic lead generation systems, sales cannot point fingers at marketing for not providing enough qualified leads, and marketing can't fire back at sales for not following through on the less-than-hot leads. The big winner is the company's profit margin.

A white paper recently released by Ascend2 Consulting and Solutions, "Web-Centric Lead Generation Best Practices for B2B," identifies four methods that drive highly qualified leads:

1) Search Engine Optimization (SEO);
2) Cost-per-click (CPC) search engine marketing;
3) Public relations programs that use specific keywords and phrases with anchor links back to your landing page; and
4) Offline marketing tools with URLs not just for the company's home page, but to the specific information highlighted in that campaign.

As the report states, "While the Internet offers endless lead generation potential, it is also wrought with unproven strategies, unproductive marketing practices and overwhelming spam abuse. To effectively target, attract and acquire a steady stream of new leads in today's Web-centric business world, savvy marketers have learned to focus their limited resources on a few of the most productive best practices." (For a free copy of the report, visit www.MyAscend2.com/l/leadgeneration/.)

Differentiate by value.

Electronic lead generation also simplifies segmentation of accounts into categories that determine their value in the company's customer base. Segmentation, experts say, provides better cost-effectiveness.

Segmentation is a key attribute of the SmartPipe solution offered by Florida-based PRC. "With the high cost of sending salespeople into the field, we're seeing more and more companies handing over hot leads to field salespeople and warm leads to telesales," says Lori Sprague, PRC's executive vice president of business-to-business solutions. In a survey done by Cahners and Gartner, 15% of customers are typically in a buy cycle (hot prospects), 43% will move into the buy cycle within 18 months, and 15% are not interested.

Those warm leads in the middle category, according to Sprague, are what SmartPipe keeps and nurtures into hot leads and gives them back to the company or pursues them, depending on the client's preference. "Many companies' sales forces lack the discipline to optimize their data," she says. "PRC combines the 'science with the discipline' to maximize leads and increase business."

Understanding data, according to Sprague, is a critical component of a successful sales organization. "We're a very analytically driven company," she explains. "Our performance engineering department slices and dices company data so we really understand their business. The more we know, the more we can help them. As a company, we live in the data."

Long-term, Sprague says, PRC starts to learn how the data performs and is able to create predictable models for their clients. These models allow better forecasting.

San Francisco's ON24 bases its lead generation system on Webcasting and "rich media"—basically, anything not in paper format. "Webcasting is one of the most effective vehicles for producing cost-effective leads," says Kim Ryden, director of lead generation for ON24. "You can get your message across while maintaining your company's brand and generating leads and information that can be archived through our Insight24 system."

Live Webcasting involves streaming audio and/or video content over the Internet on a specific day and time right to an individual's computer. Ryden says it is especially well-suited for larger groups.

ON24 assigns an "event manager" who stays with the account from brainstorming through Webcast. "Once the data is collected," Ryden says, "it is up to the client what they wish to do with it … we do have additional services, such as scoring the data, if they need help in interpreting it.

"Also," Ryden adds, "the Insight24 program extends the shelf life of the Webcast by archiving the data collected so that it's available anytime to anyone who may have missed the Webcast."

ON24 provides a unique URL for each media buy. "Our application service provider platform is hosted on our servers, and is so powerful we can customize the information any way the client would like it," Ryden says. "This is also powerful because we maintain the company's brand. ON24 stays in the background."

Companies can extend their spend by taking advantage of Insight24, an archiving system of ON24's clients as well as non-clients involved in technology. It is a free syndication network of prominent technology and business Web sites for professionals involved in the buying process for technical products and services.

Lisa McGuire, director of Insight24, says leads are free to companies for a period of six to eight weeks. "After that, companies only pay for the leads they want."

Cross Media of Dallas offers a proprietary system of automated lead management, one that CEO Mike Tobias says is a combination of an "ASP [application service provider] system and some glue."

As Tobias explains, "Automated lead generation systems act as an understudy for a company's sales and marketing teams. We ask our clients how they'd like to be followed."

Tobias says Cross Media's system recognizes that every company is different. "Some transactions take a day to close, others two years, with all types of things in between," he notes. "It's very important to understand that the return on sales with low value but repeat business can be way higher than a one-time purchase. Some companies want to try indirect channels but don't know what to expect. They are able to reallocate their budgets on an ongoing basis to reflect changes in the market."

Todd Murphy, vice president of sales and marketing services at Cross Media, says a big misconception about automated lead management is that it's expensive. He says of the four buckets that leads fall into (qualified and interested; interested but not qualified; not qualified and not interested; and qualified but not interested at this time), leads that fall into the fourth category usually end up in a "dark hole."

"Let's face it," he says, "salespeople don't like prospecting. This means 75% of leads may dry up and blow away. The goal is to make these types of leads hot. We nurture them and squeeze every available lead we can to convert them and are able to close the loop because of how we prospect."