In my experience lead generation on the Internet can be summed up in one word, that word being garbage. Now before my meaning is mistaken let me be clear. Without validation in place on either the producer or the recipient’s side online leads tend to include way too much fake or incorrect information. Though it might seem unfair to apply such a label as “garbage” consider the amount of fraud activity these days and the sheer number of bogus responses an online lead form generates even without the bad guys trying to scam a lead generation advertiser.
I worked in sales for other lead generation companies before trying my hand at running my company so I’ve seen more than one side of the bad lead problem. The lead buyers’ concerns are pretty obvious. They just don’t want to pay for bogus leads or waste their sales team’s time with chasing after leads that seem real but have obvious shortcomings. The conversion on leads statistics rarely lie. Meanwhile though the publishers have legitimate concerns of their own and without them a small lead generation company is unlikely to grow its business. If publishers feel that they will not be treated fairly then there’s no chance of ever getting them to commit their valuable traffic to a lead generation site.
I’ve seen some pretty great examples of what a lead generation site untethered from lead validation can do. I’m proud to say that without lead validation and its stuffy air of corporate America many famous people visited my sites and took the time to express interest in a variety of services and products. Why even Charlie Sheen took the time to give me his home number (I’m guessing Maryland is where he has his hideaway home) and Gmail address. Obvious sarcasm aside, I learned the hard way two years ago that without real-time validation my leads were time bombs just waiting to destroy my fragile and valuable lead buyer relationships.
If you work in lead generation and are considering ways to validate your leads in real-time I would strongly recommend you talk with Service Objects. Though I now use in-house validation my early validation needs were more than satisfied by Service Objects and the company took very good care of me without regard to how small a client I was at that time. Depending on the volume of leads you process each month your cost to validate each time someone submits one of your lead forms might be a bit steep but it still could prove to be much, much cheaper than losing your clients.
