Leads360 is attending the eduWEB conference in Chicago this week. The conference has been a great opportunity to learn about some of the challenges facing schools in terms of making the most out of their enrollment opportunities.

We’ve been able to share information about how Leads360 Lead Management Software is helping all kinds of schools improve their enrollment. As people stop by the table we’re getting the opportunity to address the challenges facing admissions managers form both proprietary and traditional schools. These challenges include:

• “We have no way of tracking lead and admission counselor performance”
• “We use many systems for following up on prospective student inquiries. i.e., Different departments use different programs”
• “We use a legacy system that has been cobbled together over time with no plan”
• “We don’t know which lead providers sell the best leads”

It’s great to see people perk up when we tell them we offer our solution for these concerns.

Jeff Solomon, Founder and Senior VP, hosted a Topic Table called “E-Recruiting in Good Times and Bad: Strategies to Avoid Costly Pitfalls and Yield Measurable Results in Uncertain Times”. It was a good opportunity to speak to some of these and other common issues facing schools who struggle to manage their admission process with a failing set of tools.

Another common concern among schools is that they may start to struggle keeping their enrollment numbers up as the economy begins to improve. Leads360 provides admissions counselors with a best practice enforceable workflow to make sure that no lead falls through the cracks. At the same time it provides managers with analytics that display in real time the performance of enrollment counselors and lead sources. Leads360 has been helping companies maximize ROI through all kinds of economic conditions.

The other day I was perusing the Internets looking for an insurance quote when half way through the form I was distracted and wasn’t able to finish entering all my information. I really wanted the quote, but had something more pressing I had to take care of. I figured that I would come back to the page when I was done with my errand and finish the quote.  It’s now two days later, and I still haven’t finished getting that insurance quote. The browser has long been closed, and to tell you the truth, I don’t even remember which insurance company I was interested in. Today, I am still without the insurance I want, and a company is out of a sale. How did this potential opportunity for both parties become a missed opportunity?

It seems today that many companies are failing to see the big picture when it comes to properly preparing and responding to internet inquires. Looking over various “major player” websites I have noticed a particularly troubling commonality. Most of these websites seem unwilling or incapable of follow-up with qualified, interested, consumer leads. On nearly every insurance website I visited, a phone number and or email was not required for a quote. Worse yet, I had trouble easily finding a way to submit my contact information at all. I was literally trying to give them a qualified lead and they had no way of dealing with it. Now don’t get me wrong– I am not really a fan of pay walls, contact walls, or any other type of “wall” that makes you input information to find what you are looking for, but to not even make the opportunity available for a consumer when they may want to, is downright unintelligent. Without collecting this information, any justified follow-up is impossible. I went to the website for something specific that I want to purchase that sooner or later will require me disclosing my contact information anyway, so why not sooner?

Today there is an overwhelming generalization made by corporations when it comes to consumers and how they utilize the necessary tools of communication to inquire about a product or service. The Internet is the least understood of these tools. Most companies seem to generalize consumers into two categories, those who want to be walked hand in hand through the sales process (telephone inquiry) and those who want to do everything by themselves. (The Internet) These are the type of people who will research, fill out their information, and purchase a policy—all without ever speaking to a human being. The truth is, there is a third category of consumers that need a separate kind of attention. These consumers (like me) are people who may research on my own, but then want and sometimes require follow-up. I am a busy person who sometimes fails in the multitasking department. A subtle nudge by an actual person or by even an automated email, can make me turn from a lead into a conversion. If that insurance company had given me the opportunity to enter my contact information quickly and easily for a follow-up I would have, and they would have had a sale.

There is a real difference between spammy contact attempts whether made via phone or email, and a genuine contact attempt made by a company. Consumers want and respond well to genuine contact attempts and very poorly to the spam.  I think companies either think that consumers are completely turned off by any contact whatsoever or they simply don’t have the capabilities to respond and follow-up properly. Regardless they are losing out on a major segment of the consumer pie.  Understanding the differences between the two and acquiring the infrastructure to respond and follow-up are the first steps to addressing this.

Here is a blog article that touches on some of the difficulties a small business owner faces when buying software. The man’s business is making conference tables. So admittedly, his business may not have much in common with the type of business that has the need for lead management software. But there is one area where his small business faces questions that are faced by any small business. That area is dealing with IT questions.

He points out that as a furniture maker, he bought tools 25 years ago that are still working, like his hammer. He anticipates that the hammer will work perfectly until the end of time. He has a hard time dealing with how quickly computers and software become obsolete. Moreover, he’s not quite sure what he needs to buy in terms of technology. This puts him in a position of possibly having to hire an IT consultant. But, rightly, he worries that the consultant may work on commissions and could introduce solutions that are not the perfect fit for his business, but cost a lot of money, and make him a lot of commission.

The solution to this problem is what Software as a Service is all about. I’ve posted recently about how the total cost of ownership of SaaS is lower than the cost of packaged software. And the situation that the above described small business owner finds himself in is a perfect example of why.

For example, Leads360 Software as a Service is software that runs in on any computer with an internet connection. There is never a need to upgrade the software, as it is continually being improved. You’ll never spend a dollar or another minute wondering, “Should I buy the new version of Leads360 or just make this outdated version work?” You’ll never need to buy servers to host software, because it’s hosted remotely. Leads360 software helps thousands of businesses manage upwards of 25 million leads. As such, it is an example of how Software as a Service companies are able to constantly upgrade their product in response to customer needs. Buying Leads360 Software as a Service is buying a solution that, like a hammer, will never be obsolete.

And perhaps best of all, you’ll never have to pay an IT consultant, take his recommendations and wonder if you were taken for a ride. All that is worth the price of admission, but Leads360 Software as a Service even goes one step further. The built in templates have pre-configured best practice workflows that are proven strategies for contacting more leads quickly and staying in contact to ultimately close more deals. These templates are the customizable, but having them as a starting place is equivalent to a hiring a business consultant with a proven track record to help set up your workflow.

Software as a Service delivers a much bigger package than packaged software.

Leads360 founder Jeff Solomon was recently “twitterviewed” by Shelley Wetzel, the Conference Director of eduWEB for their conference website. Leads360 is currently preparing for the eduWeb conference in Chicago and we are excited to showcase our education enrollment solution!

To read the full interview, click here.

For more information about eduWEB, check out their site here. See in you in Chicago, July 26th-28th!

The interesting thing about this article in the New York Times called, “What Economists Can Teach World Cup Coaches” is the following sentence: “…evolutionary finance regards financial markets as a competition not so much among individuals as among strategies.” It goes on to describe how distinct soccer strategies enjoy periods of dominance during which they appear to be unbeatable. It reminds us however that in soccer, as in financial markets, winning strategies cannot remain winning for long. It is the nature of the competitive landscape that the castle of victory is elusive, and one cannot hope to walk the same path to its doors more than a few times.
In soccer, as in business, strategies that are foolproof, and cannot be defeated do not exist. Everyone who competes is vulnerable to loss. In a certain respect the reigning winner is most vulnerable to loss. It is their strategy that is the most imitated, improved upon, scrutinized, and analyzed for weakness.

Whatever your business is, a winning strategy is likely to include getting more customers and cultivating relationships with customers before your competitors do. There are a few basics that any winning strategy is likely to include. To name a few:

• Finding qualified customers
• Successfully initiating a relationship with customers before your competitors do
• Maintaining contact with customers who are slow to close
• Rewarding agents who produce

So this raises the question, how does a business strategy get created and refined? The unfortunate reality is that too often, business strategies are created un-strategically. It is not uncommon for companies to create their strategies based on:

• Hunches
• Egos
• The ability of a given decision maker to state his case persuasively
• Indecision and randomness

On the other hand there are companies using Lead Management Software. One example of Lead Management Software, Leads360, ships with built-in best practices templates that are effectively out-of-the-box winning workflows. These strategic workflows are developed by industry experts based on the analysis of over 20 million leads. And every component of the out-of-the-box business strategy is customizable.

Lead Management Software provides companies with simple, powerful tools to collect and analyze data generated by their work. Not only does LMS help agents work leads; improving speed to contact, qualification rates, and close rates, LMS equips decision makers with tools to course correct and make quick changes any part of their business strategy that is underperforming. From lead sources, to internal lead routing, to team and individual agent performance; LMS gives business owners and managers all the hard data they need to refine their strategy and workflow.

Lead Management Software is a strategy in a box that can be continually refined based on real data. World Cup coaches would be lucky to have such a resource.

Leads360 is proud to announce that we have been selected as a winner for the 2010 Red Herring Top 100 award.  Red Herring is a well respected organization that chooses 100 of North America’s most promising private companies and evaluates them on both qualitative and quantitative criteria, such as technology innovation, quality of management, financial performance, execution of strategy, and more.

Yesterday we made the trip down to beautiful San Diego to accept the award and were humbled to be surrounded by companies that shared Leads360’s ambition and vision.  The old mantra, “competition breeds innovation” has never been truer and it was great to see American based companies living up to the entrepreneurial hype that we are so well known for.

About Red Herring

Red Herring is a global media company uniting the world’s best high technology innovators, venture investors and business decision makers in a variety of forums: a leading innovation magazine; an online daily technology news service; technology newsletters, and major events for technology leaders around the globe. Red Herring provides an insider’s access to the global innovation economy, featuring unparalleled insights on the emerging technologies driving the economy.

Price is a critical factor in any business expense and sometimes the deciding factor. One case where some distortion occurs in assessing the price difference between two options is when it comes to choosing between packaged software and Software as a Service(SaaS). But it’s not uncommon for business to take a shorter view and look at the initial investment required for a software solution and not at the total cost of ownership (TCO).

The tendency to focus on initial investment rather than TCO is encouraged by providers of packaged software solutions because analysis from that point of view seems to favor them. In reality total cost of ownership is lower for Leads360 SaaS.  What follows is a breakdown of what the ‘service’ in SaaS is, and how it makes SaaS a cheaper solution.

When you use Leads360 Lead Management Software as a Service instead of a packaged solution virtually all expenses you might expect to pay are included in your subscription cost. This is not the case with a packaged solution. Here are some examples.

1. 1. Servers and Server Rooms: These are not necessary expenses for Leads360 SaaS.
2. 2. Supporting Software: Leads360 is an end-to-end lead management solution that enables users to manage leads through the entire sales cycle. Using a packaged solution that has less a smaller feature set forces business to buy supporting software. Licenses, training, and server space are all costs associated with this.
3. 3. Analytics: Businesses are increasingly valuing and making use of the data they generate.  Being able to make use of data for analytics can require a complex solution for packaged software, particularly if the data set is complex. This is included in Leads360 SaaS.
4. 4. Minor Version Update: These require time and effort on the part of IT staff or consultants. This is included in Leads360 SaaS.
5. 5. Major Version Update: These occur roughly every two to seven years in packaged software. They often require additional investment, training and implementation costs. Since Leads360 SaaS is updated roughly every two months, major changes that cause users to have to re-learn the software do not occur.

Using Leads360 Software as a Service is a smoother experience than using packaged software. Updates happen regularly instead of being sprung on users in the form of version updates. Maintenance and support contracts which are sold separately as part of packaged business software are included in Leads360 SaaS. This makes for a user experience that is seamless in terms of gradual product enhancement and uninterrupted usability.

In a whitepaper called “Surviving and Thriving in the Customer-Driven Age” released by the CRM project, Michael Betzer astutely points out two facts that are changing the way companies do business. First: There is more competition than ever before. And Second: Consumers are more informed than ever before.

He roughly sketches an older way of doing business, where competition was local, media and advertising was not as pervasive as it is today, and companies had more information about the products they were selling than the consumers buying them.  These facts no longer hold true.  Buyers frequently begin conversations with sellers having already done research and looking for a level of insight into the product that goes beyond what is available through some web searching.  Having sales agents who cannot begin the conversation from that informed baseline will lead to a customer look elsewhere.

There’s never been a business without competition, so it’s nothing new, but what has changed is the sheer volume of companies competing from every corner of the world and the ease with which they can reach consumers, or be reached by them. When a company fails to deliver the kind of service that a customer wants, many alternatives are just one search away. And increasingly, these searches are carried out on a smart phone that the consumer has with him at all times. Consumers are smart and they are equipped. There are plenty of companies providing an alternative to companies that just don’t have it right.

So how do you succeed in such an environment? Customer-centricity. It’s long been an axiom of business that “the customer is always right.” But it may be more prudent in today’s competitive landscape to keep in mind that “the customer is always right about to get a better offer.” Any company that isn’t equipped to provide superlative service simply won’t survive. Providing the best possible service is only possible by creating an “organization that (is) agile and adaptable as market, competitive or regulatory conditions change.”

Agility and speed are core concepts to survival in modern business. Being the first to contact a lead is critical in turning that lead into a customer. Being able to engage the customer in an ongoing way with relevant content is critical in maintaining a meaningful customer relationship. Know as much about your customers as they know about your product. And know more about your product than they do. With a lead management software and CRM, it’s possible to transform your organization into one that can thrive with empowered consumers in today’s super competitive marketplace.

The insurance industry is changing more and more every day, and, in this day and age, any sales manager who is serious about keeping up with the changing nature of the industry and maximizing the ROI on his marketing spend will be ready to invest in a Lead Management System.  Lead Management Systems like Leads360 provide sales teams with a metrics driven, analytical approach to their leads that will helps them with everything from speed to contact to properly following up on every lead.  However, some sales managers continue to drag their feet on embracing the inevitable and refuse to invest in Lead Management.  To illustrate this problem, lets take a look at two sales managers working in insurance who we’ll call Larry and Ted.

Larry is “old school” and prefers to rely on his gut.  He likes playing his hunches when it comes to leads and he doesn’t abide by relying too heavily on data.  He pays extra for high quality leads and then distributes them based on his own hunches about who will work them the best.  He believes in his instincts and relies on them to make his decisions.  While he’s struggling to meet the bottom line, Larry insists this is an offshoot of the bad economy and there’s nothing to be done about it.  After all, if Larry and his hunches are failing to close leads, there must be something wrong, right?  The only smart approach is to increase their marketing buy to get higher quality leads because, after all, the more you pay the more you get.  Larry has a lot of friends and he gets along well with them, but he’s decidedly less popular with the CMO of his company, who wishes Larry’s process were much more transparent.

Ted, meanwhile, is more objective and prefers to remain results driven in his thought process.  As a result, he invests in a Lead Management System from Leads360 to keep track of the leads he’s investing in and collect data on who is working what leads and how effective they are.  Ted is flexible in his approach, willing to accept what the data tells him and working hard to maximize his ROI and get the best results.  He doesn’t like relying solely on his personal conclusions about his staff and instead allows the Lead Management System to manage his lead distribution so that they can get to every hot lead as quickly as possible and allow other leads to be nurtured until they’re ready to be closed.  All of this is facilitated by his Lead Management System which allows him to automatically track leads, distribute them, and follow up in the most efficient way all while keeping detail metrics on what, precisely, is and isn’t working for him.  Ted is not as popular at the local watering hole as Larry is, but his CMO beams with pride every time you mention Ted’s name, thanking the heavens that he has such a competent sales manager.

Larry and Ted are each confronted with similar problems.  Internet leads are both expensive and necessary.  They have little choice but to fork out the money to buy these high quality leads, but it means that they need to make sure that they’re getting the most out of each lead.  For Larry, this means a frenetic approach to his sales staff.  As soon as he gets a lead, he immediately routes it to the sales person that he thinks is best fit to handle them.  Larry has a general sense of why he does this the way he does.  Some sales people seem to do a better job at closing leads from certain regions, while others are stronger at closing hot leads.  Sometimes this means giving a lead to a sales person who is already working on another lead, which means that they don’t get to it right away.  Other times, he gives too many leads to certain sales people, meaning that some of their leads aren’t being worked and never get follow up calls.  Larry, though, knows that he’s a veteran sales manager who knows the business and relies on his good sense of which member of his staff will be most effective at working the lead.  If some of his leads don’t get enough follow up calls or don’t get contacted in the first twenty minutes, so be it.  Some of the leads are bound to slip through the cracks, Larry assures himself while sipping coffee from his “#1 Boss” mug, thumbing his suspenders and firing quotes from Glengarry Glen Ross.  This is sales and it requires a gutsy manager who is willing to play his hunches to find success.

Things are different at Ted’s firm.  Ted prefers to rely on hard data rather than hunches, and his Leads360 software proves invaluable in this regard.  When Ted gets a lead, he puts it into the system and it immediately and automatically gets routed to the next available sales person as soon as possible.  Instead of playing hunches, Ted has honed his Lead Distribution System to route leads to the appropriate sales person based on a variety of customized factors, including availability, closing rates, region and lead scoring.  Because Ted uses a Lead Management System, he knows which sales people are going to be able to immediately call their leads, making contact during the critical first five minutes and closing immediately those leads that are already interested in buying.  What’s more, sales people are given reminders to make follow up calls to leads at the appropriate time, ensuring that no lead goes to waste.  Those leads that aren’t ready to close are carefully nurtured until they’re ready and then routed back to the sales staff so that they can spend more time closing leads that are ready and less time working leads that are dead ends.  On the whole, Ted knows that every valuable lead that he’s paid for is getting contacted as quickly as possible, getting followed up on and getting nurtured until it’s either closed or can be qualified as dead without a shadow of a doubt.  What’s more, the details of every lead are carefully recorded so that Ted can go back and refine the approach of his staff based on the data they collect.  At the core of this is Ted’s Lead Management System from Leads360.  It’s precisely and specifically calibrated to Ted’s business, it’s automated and makes routing and following up leads an easy and efficient process and it ensures that he’s working as hard and as smart as he possible.  Ted drinks green tea for its antioxidants, he prefers to wear a belt and while he has seen Glengarry Glen Ross and enjoys a timely reference, he doesn’t overdo it.

What are the results of the two approaches?  While their choice of beverages, method of keeping their pants up and frequency of quoting Glengarry Glen Ross are entirely irrelevant, Ted’s use of a Lead Management System makes all the difference in the world to his business.  Ted has ensured that he’s getting the most out his staff and his leads by taking a quantifiable approach to things and incorporating the right software to track and score leads while maximizing his ROI.  While Larry is going to his CMO and insisting that they need to increase their marketing buy and purchase more expensive leads, Ted has impressed his CMO by discovering that some of their less expensive leads are actually yielding a higher ROI.  Larry’s approach prevents his sales people from responding quickly enough or following up enough to get these kinds of results, and, even if they did, Larry wouldn’t be able to identify the trend because he doesn’t have access to the same metrics that allowed Ted to make his discovery.  Ted’s staff respects him because there’s transparency in their sales pipeline and they know what to expect.  What’s more, the results are undeniable.  Larry’s staff enjoys his company, but they’re growing frustrated with his leadership style while it fails to produce results.  They’ve talked to the members of Ted’s staff and they’re jealous of the systematic approach offered by a Lead Management System.

In the end, investing in Lead Management is just good business sense.  No one, no matter how good their instincts, can handle the speed of business on the internet without a clear, methodical approach that is transparent enough to change in response to inefficiencies.  A Lead Management System will improve every element of a sales staff’s approach and ensure that a firm can squeeze every ounce of value out of every lead they purchase.  In the end, Larry doesn’t stand a chance when going up against Ted because Larry’s instincts, no matter how good, will never be able to compete with an automated, metrics driven approach like the one provided by a Lead Management System.

Last week Leads360 made the short trip to Las Vegas for the Career College Association’s Annual Conference & Exposition. Jeff Solomon lead a great session entitled A “New School” Approach to Successful Enrollment. The point of this session was to discuss the ever changing landscape of the higher education area, and how utilizing new school best practices can allow institutions not merely survive and maintain but to compete and thrive.

One of the key talking points was the comparisons between the standard tired enrollment process model, and the newer more sophisticated approaches. Jeff also outlined a checklist for “re-inventing the recruiting and enrollment management process” which can help your institution make the switch from “old” to “new school.” Check out Jeff’s presentation slides here.