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European Scientific Journal, ESJ ISSN: 1857-7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857-7431
December 2020 edition Vol.16, No.34
Di Vittorio A. & Di Alessandro G.V.,(2020). How lead generation can be the link between marketing and sales
through the customer experience? A case study of Talentia Software Italy. European Scientific Journal, ESJ, 16(34),
45. https://doi.org/10.19044/esj.2020.v16n34p45 45
ESJ Social Sciences
Arianna Di Vittorio
Department of Economics, Management and
Business Law, University of Bari “Aldo Moro”
Bari, Italy
Di Gioia Vito Alessandro
Department of Economics, Management and
Business Law, University of Bari “Aldo Moro”
Bari, Italy
Submitted: 16 November 2020
Accepted: 11 December 2020
Published: 31 December 2020
Corresponding author:
Arianna Di Vittorio
DOI: 10.19044/esj.2020.v16n34p45
Copyright 2020 Di Vittorio A. & Di Alessandro G.V.
Distributed under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0
OPEN ACCESS
How lead generation can be the
link between marketing and sales
through the customer
experience? A case study of
Talentia Software Italy
Abstract
Digitalization is the use of digital
technology to adapt and grow a business
model. Businesses use digitalization to
create value-producing opportunities
through the information they collect from
customer interactions by optimizing their
marketing and selling processes. Potential
customers have changed the way that they
research and select products and services,
so companies must respond and adapt.
Competition has increased so creating
win-win customer relationships is even
more important today than ever before.
Due to the uniqueness of the
contemporary digital economy, brands
may need to redefine what profit means
for both company and consumer. The
Customer Lifetime Value Analysis is the
potential value of all future profit that an
individual customer will generate over the
life of potential customer compared with
the benefit expected for both parties. First
of all, the premise of the paper considers
the process of scouting for new and
potential customers value for money and
value for time are highly relevant for
brands. The most important recommended
methods are Advertising (it helps to offer
a message that not only hits on brands
target customers, but also showcases the
value brands can offer them); Networking
and referral (to pick up customers with the
highest retention rates; what is more,
referral customers tend to purchase more
over time and in turn become a source of
additional referrals); Create an agreement
with “host beneficiary” (another business
with the same target customer will use
their database to promote another one
business); Strategic alliances (while a host
beneficiary relationship is generally a one-
time or short-term commitment, strategic
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alliances can sometimes last for many
years). Then, the aim of the paper is to
demonstrate the relevance of the role of
the Business Developer through Lead
generation. It is more profitable if brands
take the approach of using live chat
services, direct help options with customer
representatives present to solve any
incoming query. This works by increasing
engagement on the customer level and
increases brand word of mouth promotion
for more leads and better business
development. Moreover, the paper
analyses the roles of the Demand
Generation Manager, Inside Sales
Representative and more are at the core of
Business Development. The methodology
used in the paper is a descriptive empirical
analysis. After a view on the important
variables about business development
analysis, lead generation and customers
experience, the Authors describe the
strategies adopted in the case history
(Talentia Software Italy). This empirical
analysis aims to confirm the validity of the
concept that confirms a really and strong
relation between lead generation attitudes
and marketing sales.
Keywords: Lead generation, Marketing
Sales, Business Development, Customer
Experience
Introduction
1. Business Development and Lead Generation
Scott Pollack (2018) sought to define the different types of business
development in one comprehensive framework, and at the end of his work he
said: “Business development is the creation of long-term value for an
organization from customers, markets, and relationships”.
Steve Martin (2018), professor of Sales Strategy at the University of
Southern California, thought about sales and marketing: “They are able to
create a transactional engagement and the focus is on opening opportunities.
They require analysis and strategy as much as research and data control.”
About the definitions, there is elegance in simplicity, but perhaps there
is something more considering that relationship and opening opportunity have
a great deal in common.
So, the questions are: Are contemporary marketing and sales processes
closer than before? If the answer is yes, then what about Lead Generation?
Salesforce.com define “lead generation” as the process of being able
to build relationships with prospects, to earn their trust, and be by their side
until they are ready to make a purchase. In detail, lead generation is about
finding quality leads and nurturing them into relationships. The B.A.N.T.
Analysis (AA.VV., 2017) is one of the sales qualification frameworks used to
identify and pursue the most qualified prospects based on their budget,
authority, needs, and timeline.
The lead generation process can be managed remotely although the
Business Development Team must be close to a potential customer. This is
because sellers will feel competitive pressure to cut costs and increase revenue
and buyers are more comfortable collaborating remotely through web-
conferences, phone calls, webinars, emails, and or social media.
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The first step in structuring a lead generation campaign is to
understand how to organize the customer acquisition strategy, which in turn
depends on understanding how the consumer behaves.
This understanding derives from the study of the purchasing process,
summarized in this scheme:
1. Perception of need.
2. Search for information.
3. Purchase.
4. Post-purchase behaviour.
Lead generation focuses on the first point: the perception of need.
From the perception of need comes the type of demand that the
company can satisfy by offering its product or service.
The perception of need can be configured in two different ways, each
of which generates a specific type of question:
1. Perception need as "Discovery": The consumer discovers a
product or service for the first time.
2. Perception need as "Problem": The consumer has a problem that
he wants to solve.
The first case concerns a latent question: the consumer does not
directly look for a product or service but may need it.
This means that the lead generation campaign must have as its first
objective to stimulate the potential customer and bring him to the knowledge
that he has a need.
The classic example is advertising on TV, which on the web
translates into sponsored campaigns on Facebook Ads.
The second case concerns a conscious question: does the consumer
know exactly what his problem or need is, and he is looking for a solution.
The acquisition channels here are different, and brands prefer to take
advantage of SEO (placing site among the top positions in search engines
organically) or paid ads in search engines (which allow you to appear among
the first search results for an investment).
Only by analyzing the type of question it is possible deduce which
customer acquisition strategy is best suited for the lead generation system
to implement (and in case below it is possible see how this is sometimes not
so obvious).
Intercepted the question, the next step in a lead generation campaign
is to convert traffic to customers.
So, how do brands generate affiliate marketing leads? Here are three
smart ways to generate new leads for Brands Affiliate Website:
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1.Offer”'new customer bonuses” to brands affiliates, by changing their
commission settings; they can offer bonuses to their affiliates for each
new customer they recruit.
2.Expand brand reach by writing guest posts.
3.Create (or optimize) brands social media campaigns.
Heidi Cohen (2014), Chief Content Officer at Actionable Marketing
Guide, said about lead generation that: “Today’s customers are social media
and content marketing savvy. Whether they are making a purchase for their
business or themselves, they have at least started their research before they
even contact you”.
Considering all these opinions, why has lead generation become an
added value activity for marketing and sales nowadays?
The answer comes down to one-to-one relationships. Marketing isn’t
about a product; it is about the people who use them. Understanding these
people will ensure the marketing has an impact. It is direct marketing where
its purpose is anticipating the needs and motivating a response such as a
telephone call, email, on-line click, or meeting, etc. Starting from this
assumption the analytical approach of the customer journey is useful to
calculate the propensity to buy. Sometimes lead generation is called
telemarketing, but not only calls are useful for generating leads. According to
customer omni-channel approach there are many other potential touchpoints
with customers, such as telephone, press releases, websites, and events. The
most important part of lead generation is the human being connected to all
these tools and mediums. Focusing too heavily on said tools and mediums runs
the risk of losing the attention of the potential customer that brands were trying
toreach in the first place.
If the risk is real, then the next question is: is the main task of the
business development team to create more than a relationship?
2. Customized Experience
According to experience marketing theory, the new customer is
everywhere (digitalization approach) and everyone’s needs vary depending on
time, context, relationship and emotions. Using audience profiling to
understand the target in as much detail as possible becomes more important
than before.
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The experiential marketing
1
uses the experiences lived by consumer as
marketing tool to make the consumer perceive a higher added value, thanks to
the involvement of the senses and emotions. Also, within the software sector,
the need to cope with the new needs of consumer led the companies on the
road to experiential differentiation. Today, consumption is no longer a private
and personal act, but a real “social event” in the sense that a product is
purchased not so much for its functional value, as for the meaning it assumes
for those who use it or consume it and for its own social relationships. The
consumer experience therefore generates a noticeable involvement for
consumer and for its own social relations: the individual seeks, for this reason,
products and services with a symbolic value, that allow him to fully manifest
his personality. “To consume means to satisfy one’s own needs, but also to
create and maintain social relationships” (Douglas & Isherwood, 1989).
Therefore, the experiential marketing is based on a type of consumption,
different that in the past, because it does not aim to the mere satisfaction of
consumer’s needs, but it has as goals his involvement, his satisfaction, the
reinforcement of links with other individuals, thanks to the indispensable use
of emotions. Rationality leaves place to a whole set of emotional factors that
characterize the experiential purchase and impact on individual’s perceptions,
giving life to an experience with a high emotive content.
All this is the reason why today personalization can be the key driver.
Personalized marketing is a strategy of its own that can integrate into
brands different types of marketing mediums, such as email, social media, and
blogs, to generate better results.
Personalized marketing involves collecting data related to the
customers and crafting marketing experiences that target specific types of
customers through brand’s content.
In the personalize marketing, email data are very useful. The success
of campaigns will depend on how well brands collect and measure data.
Whether it’s email list segments or surveys, brands can collect different data
to learn more about their users. It is the only way to offer more personalized
experiences through your marketing campaigns.
Once brand have enough data and they start to paint a picture of their
typical customer, they can begin to properly personalize their marketing
campaigns.
The main benefit of personalized marketing is the ability it gives to the
brands to reach specific audiences. By collecting user data from list segments,
1
Writing about experiential marketing means the particular sector of marketing that
concentrates its own attention on the perceived and proved experience by consumer during
the choice process and following purchase. The goal is to concentrate itself about the
consumer’s perception, to act directly on the leverage points that allow a greater conversion
of intentions for sale.
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surveys, or studies brands can create more effective email campaigns targeting
audiences based on their interests or buying habits.
Perhaps the buzzword for 2021 should be 'hyper-personalization' - the
harnessing of all forms of data being used in unison across all marketing
channels and customer journey stages. Embracing this approach is going to
move customers from top of funnel awareness to post-purchase happiness in
record time through higher and more effective engagement at every stage. So,
what's the recipe that B2B or B2C digital marketers need to follow to enable
hyper-personalization?
There are three main ingredients to consider:
1. Engagement - Engaging customers with hyper-personalized
campaigns which customize their experience with your brand or
organization. According to recent findings by the Epsilon Group, 80%
of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when the brand offers
a personalized experience. In this qualitative study, one of the
respondents reported hyper-personalized campaigns drove 3-4x more
engagement with the brand. A B2B respondent reported that full-
funnel personalization has doubled its webinar and event registrations.
The key here lies in collecting and analysing consumer data at every
turn and investing the time and effort to understand the key trends.
2. Relevance - This is the ingredient that B2B and B2C marketers need
to borrow from Netflix and Amazon - it requires truly getting the right
message to the right person at the right time, all the time. Many have
spoken about this in the past, but brands finally have the tools and
knowledge available to do it properly, by using richer behavioral data
and intent data to create messaging that hits everyone’s personal needs
and pain points.
3. Trust - If the first two ingredients are added correctly, the third will
naturally follow- trust. With so much competition in the online space,
customers are going to choose the one that they trust the most - which
is why reviews are now so important in every aspect of our process.
Aside from customer reviews, good educational content is a
prerequisite - companies need to invest in an education team that puts
out instructionals and thought-leadership content, especially in video
form. This type of content needs to be delivered to the customer based
on their specific needs, intent, and funnel stage.
The key to making this recipe work is taking a data-driven approach
that is personalized for each account and each person at every touchpoint along
the buyer’s journey.
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If executed properly, it will result in higher engagement, more
customers, a larger pipeline, and larger account wins.
Basically, the more you know, the more tailored and engaging your
approach will be because nowadays there is no such archetypical customer. In
this scenario, the nurturing process becomes strategic and customising the
right touch points with personalized messages could be a key driver that stands
out. It is another reason why segmentation analysis could be changed as
well, but this topic requires a whole new article entirely.
3. Introduction to Talentia Software
Talentia Software is a leading international software group that
develops and implements business management software for Human Capital
Management (HCM), Finance and Corporate Performance Management
(CPM).
Talentia Software has been delivering strategic HCM, Finance and
CPM solutions for more than 30 years.
Talentia Software currently has offices in 9 countries around the world:
France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Switzerland, Germany, United
Kingdom and Canada. The group employs 430 people, has more than 3600
clients in its portfolio and 900.000 users in all industries in over 50 countries.
For all businesses today, it is all about growth.
The specific knowledge of each industry allows Talentia Software to
support clients through a variety of different stages of complex and innovative
programs. To grow, companies carry out several strategic options like mergers
& acquisitions, international expansion, LBO, IPO or diversification. Talentia
Software interviewed CFOs & CHROs, of which 80% say their job is
continuously getting much more complex.
Talentia Software understands the huge benefit that a total solution can offer
an organisation. It digitalizes and makes HR and Finance complexity easier.
In detail the solutions developed by Talentia Software are
2
:
1. Talentia HR Suite (Fig.1): an HRIS, HRMS and HCM software that
allows to optimise and simplify your HR processes. It is a complete
HR Solution to simplify and optimise your HR management from
payroll to employee administration to career development. The
software provides all the tools you need to help streamline the
administrative side of HR as well as the strategic, such as performance
evaluation, succession planning, compensation review and continuous
talent development.
2
https://www.talentia-software.com
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Fig.1 – HR Suite
Fonte: https://www.talentia-software.com
Strengths of the Talentia HR Suite: a complete and integrated HR
platform covering HR Management, Talent Management, Payroll and
T&A, a powerful solution automating processes, offering a single
source of truth with real-time business intelligence, an HRIS that
adapts to changing regulatory and social constraints, an SaaS solution
including recurring à la carte services, an HRIS including employee,
manager and HR portals accessible on the move and simple, intuitive
applications.
Benefits of the Talentia HR Suite: your organisation becomes agile,
your HR processes are simplified, and your HRIS is optimised.
2. Financial Suite (Fig.2): a single platform for financial management,
performance management, consolidation and closing. Thanks to this
unique software suite, financial directions benefit from digital
continuity and can free up cumbersome and time-consuming tasks like
controls, reprocessing, reconciliation, and regulatory management.
Secured and with lot of automated processes and collaborative
functionalities, Talentia Financial software solution constantly evolves
and provides turnkey and adaptable business solutions.
Strengths of Talentia Financial Suite: functional completeness, parallel
core models, powerful and reviewable analytics, real time solution,
integrable platform, integrated automation, reporting and analysis with
adaptable granularity, instant access to detail, adaptability of the
processes according to the organization, shared multi-source and
multi-process piloting, simulations, and adaptable models.
Benefits of the Talentia Financial Suite: optimizing accounting and
financial operations, simplifying financial information management,
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automating reporting, forecasting & simulations, facilitating
communication, allowing real time financial performance
management, Obtaining precise global and/or detailed financial
performance information.
Fig.2 – Financial Suite
Fonte: https://www.talentia-software.com
4. Market demand analysis, segmentation and positioning
Analyzing the lead generation process means to deepen three key
elements of business development and marketing: market demand analysis,
segmentation and positioning.
In accordance with the privacy policy of the company, this paragraph
considers the logical approach (modus operandi) to give the reader some food
for thought.
The business development activities need to estimate the size of the
markets. The market demand for a product
3
is the total volume that would be
bought by a particular customer group, in a particular time, in a particular
marketing environment, under a particular marketing program.
Due to the market demand the marketing expenditures will increase the
market demand. However, it is important to recognize three constraints in the
relationship (Fig.3):
1. Market minimum, labeled in Q1 in the figure that would take without
any marketing expenditure.
2. Market potential, labeled in Q2 in the figure, it is dependent on a given
external marketing environment and it would occur when marketing
expenditure becomes ineffective at incrementing demand.
3. Marketing forecast, labeled in Qf in the figure, it corresponds to a
certain level of marketing expenditures, it shows the expected demand
not the maximum demand.
3
In this case the term product refers also to service.
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The distance between the market minimum and market potential
indicates whether the market demand (company’s target) is sensitive or
insensitive to marketing expenditures.
Fig.3 – Market demand as a function of Industry Marketing Expenditure
Fonte: Kotler P., Keller K. (2016). Marketing Management: Pearson (15th Ed).
Now the question is: How big are the markets for Service A and
Service B? It sounds almost impossible to answer, it is possible, however, to
decompose the question into sub-questions and then combine the results.
Market Build-up Methods
number of buyers in the market x
annual quantity purchased by an average buyer x
the average price paid per unit =
Market demand
On the assumption that Service A is more profitable than Service B the
next question is: what is the probability that a potential client will purchase
the Service?
The answer comes down to considering the statistical modeling related
to descriptive analysis such as ratio indicators: mode, median, mean, variance,
standard deviation, regression analysis, etc.
According to statistic definition the regression analysis is a set of
statistical processes for estimating the relationships between a dependent
variable and one or more independent variables. Essentially, it is the “best
guess” at using a set of data to make prediction. It is the “go-to method in
analytics”, and smart companies use it to make decisions about all sorts of
business issues (Gallo, 2015).
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Multiple (linear) regression model
yi = β0 + β1X1i +…+ βkXki + εi
yi = dependent variable with i = 1,2, … n
X1i, … Xki = independent variables
β0 = intercept
β1… βk = regression coefficients
εi = statistic error
After the marketing analysis, the next stage involves market
segmentation and positioning.
Segmentation is a way of organizing clients (potential clients) into
groups with similar needs, product preferences (expectations), traits, etc.
Furthermore, the more successful segmentation has been constructed on the
right basis. It is the reason why the segmentation could change from traditional
criteria to non-traditional criteria. The assumption is that the segments are
sufficiently different from one other. The key is understanding the
differentiation in relations with the competitive environment.
In summary, segmentation requires the following steps:
Understanding the benefits that the customer seeks;
4
Segmenting the market and developing prototypical customer profiles
based on the customer benefits.
Finding the observable variables most likely to discriminate among the
benefit segment to identify membership in specific segments.
Once segments are identified the cluster analysis is the statistical
technique useful to identify units of observations (customers, companies, etc.)
based on data on relevant classifications variables. Customers who belong to
the same cluster are like each other. They are dissimilar to customers outside
the cluster, particularly customers in other clusters. The primary input for
cluster analysis is a measure of similarity between customers, such as:
correlation coefficients, distance measure and association coefficients.
The following are the basic steps involved in cluster analysis:
Formulate the problem and select the variables to use as the basis for
clustering.
Compute the distance between customers along the variables.
Decide on the number of clusters.
Map and interpret the clusters.
Apply the clustering procedure to the distance measures.
4
In this case the term customer refers to potential client (prospect).
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The distance between two individuals is obtained through a measure
called Euclidean distance.
Euclidean distance = √ (Xservice, 1 – Xservice, 2)2 +…+ (Xservice, n –
Xservice, n)2
Xservice 1 = represents the value of Service along variable 1.
Xservice 2 = represents the value of Service along variable 2.
All steps described remain at the core of segmentation. Even if
nowadays, the segmentation analysis becomes more dynamic in three ways:
economics are fluctuating frequently, customer’s needs and behavior can
change quickly, and emerging niche and new technologies are evolving more
rapidly than ever.
Trying to put together all the various elements of the marketing mix
without reference to a positioning strategy is rather like trying to make sense
of a 100-piece jigsaw puzzle without the benefit of the picture on the box.
Positioning is the process of distinguishing the company from
competitors. It refers to the target market segment and describes the
advantages that a company would like to provide its customers.
The four possible elements at the core of the positioning process are:
Target market: the product position in the mind of customers’
company.
Frame of difference: the product category in relation to customer need.
Point of difference: the product value that is meaningful to the target
customer.
Reason to believe: the company ability to deliver the promised point
of difference.
Considering these thoughts, positioning is not an advertising strategy.
It is a process that comes from a depth analysis of the company, the
competitors, products, and customers.
5. The Lead Generation Process of Talentia Software Italy
In the last few years, Talentia Software Italy has been reorganizing its
lead generation activity going beyond to a telemarketing approach.
The new approach does not put purchased contact information lists at
the centre of its strategy. It finds the right prospect through searches and
analysis oriented to qualifying and targeting the potential clients.
Paying attention to all details of the potential client (work experiences,
background, behavior, interests, relations, etc.) become more important than
ever.
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The goal is to target the right prospect in order to create a quality
experience from the very first contact to build business relationships and
increase new market opportunities.
The related activities are:
Acquiring information related to prospects as well as potential clients
using online and off-line resources.
Developing one-to-one relationships with suspects as well as prospects
using all mediums and means in line with their behaviours to anticipate
the need and provide real-time experiences that reach the potential
clients just as they want them.
Examining the HR scenario and Finance scenario of the company
targeted in order to position the offer of Talentia Software Italy.
For this purpose, a specific plan has been formulated to optimize all
operations. Specifically, these operations include:
Improving scouting techniques: acquiring the know-how to better
qualify the potential client step by step from suspect to prospect,
customizing scripts, documents and reports.
Standardizing activities: setting up procedures and methodologies to
better manage the flow of information in order to monitor all feedback
conversations and share the opportunities with Management.
Updating the tools that are useful to the activities of customer
relationship management.
In this scenario the activities deal with the “Lead Generation Process
related to the Business Development Activities” and are organized in relation
to the company mission, timeline and deadlines.
In the short-term, the activities include:
Qualification: activity in relationship with the question “who is the
target?”, it looks for information useful to qualify the company in line
with the target and people who have authority inside the company.
Updating data on CRM.
In the medium and long-term:
Scouting: first step with suspects potentially interested in Talentia
Software services in line with the “customer engagement strategies”
concept.
Nurturing: second step of pursuing the suspect and/or prospects
providing customized information in the right time, considering all the
information useful to better position the Talentia Software services in
the mind of the potential client.
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The goal of the lead generation process is quite clear: to transform the
prospect into a potential client, thus creating a business opportunity. For this
reason, the lead generation process, in some cases, can go on for several
months. Moreover, this point is crucial, considering that:
Competition has increased, so creating win-win customer relationships
is even more important today then even before.
There is no such archetypical customer, making the nurturing process
more strategic.
Conclusion
The work experience and academic background allows a deep analysis
about Lead Generation. Some case studies allow for the consideration that
Lead Generation can be a link between Marketing and Sales.
It suggests that Lead Generation can be updated day by day in relation
to the marketplace development and customer's behavior changes.
The idea is that Lead Generation refers to a Process. Concretizing the
idea of Lead Generation as a process would allow for us to increases to the
company’s revenues.
The competitive value generated by the new process will be effective
at a time when there is a homogeneity about the process approach
methodology. In this way it is possible to avoid the risk of assembling
individual plans that correspond more to a tactical rather than a strategic
approach
5
.
In short, Lead Generation in digital marketing is the initiation of
consumer interest or inquiry into products or services of a business.
The digital era has transformed the way brands do business. Gone are
the days where promoting business means taking out a newspaper
advertisement or launching a flyer campaign and knocking door to door.
These days, brands can focus on their target audience and research their
habits using various analytics softwares. A bit like using an x-ray machine on
brands data. So, brands can choose who to hit, when and how – and execute
campaigns with extreme precision. This allows brands to reverse engineer
their campaigns with their starting point being the end goal, the user.
Businesses must keep up and continuously adapt to develop their
digital marketing strategies. Social media and Search Engine Marketing are
synonymous with Lead Generation. Both play a huge and vital role in getting
brands noticed and heard and set the stage for many marketing campaigns
online today.
5
Tactic is an option that the company might use that is comparatively easy and inexpensive
to deploy, it differs by a strategy that is the plan according to a set of activities used to create
a valuable position in the market.
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Paying attention to an omni-channel approach where there are different
touch points to get in touch with the potential customer means optimize
customer journeys, not just touchpoints. For this reason, the questions to ask
are: Why has lead generation become an added value for marketing? How does
lead generation support sales activity?
Often lead generation process focuses on relationship.
«According to the most common interpretation» (Addis, 2007), the
customer experience is divided into two principal components. The first is
about the attribution of the sense of the individual to the lived interaction; the
second is about interaction between the individual and the bidding system. To
talk about consumer experience, it is necessary that a beneficial relationship
between consumer and company is created, in such a way that the individual
can be involved and is able to interpret the interaction that takes place during
the consumer experience. The nature of consumer experience is complex
because the consumer and his choices regarding what to consume are
influenced by emotional factors connected to the experiential vision.
A good experience, to be considered as such, must be “unforgettable”
(Pine & Gilmore, 1999) that is able to stir up emotions, involve all the
consumer’s senses and produce important transformations. This is possible
through the staging of “personal” and “memorable” events that can charm
consumers and entice them to come back. The more emotions that are linked
to consumption, the more value that experience will be able to create, thanks
to the interaction between the consumer and the product.
According to experience marketing the next questions are: can lead
generation create more than a relationship? Is the lead generation process a
way of creating a personalized message with the potential customer?
Answering these questions means understanding Lead Generation as a
Process where the focus will be first on opening opportunities through
listening and communication skills, as well as analysis and synthesis skills.
Marketers know that the marketplace has changed, and the competition
is strong. For this reason, it is important to recognise that mindset and tactics
can shift.
The process to capture leads and then convert them to sales is useful
but not enough. Today’s mantra could be to integrate data (statistical
approach), nurture leads (human approach), and then expand them as an
orchestrated team. The lead generation process could be an approach that
focuses not on delivering standalone campaigns, but instead on optimizing a
set of related cross-channel interactions and analysing data that when
combined generates revenues.
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