Sempre con riferimento al significato dei termini usati nel processo di acquisizione di nuovi clienti, di cui ho parlato nei due post precedenti, oggi vi voglio segnalare qual è stato il risultato di un’altra domanda che ho formulato a un altro gruppo di LinkedIn, “B2B Lead Generation Roundtable”:

 

Which is the difference between lead generation and lead management?

 

Questa volta non ho preso in considerazione il termine “Demand generation”. Ho ricevuto questi sei commenti:

 

Elaine O’Gorman

Chief Marketing Officer, The Receivables Exchange

“As someone who was previously in the business of selling lead management software, I’ve run into this discussion a lot. The evolving direction the terminology seems to be taking is that lead generation equates to acquisition, and lead management is post-lead handling processes like lead scoring, warming, grooming and reactivation. However, opinions vary widely and terms like lead generation, lead management and demand management are often used interchangeably”.

 

Susan Fantle

Direct Marketing Best Practices | Compelling B2B Marketing Copywriting | 20+ Years Expertise | President, The Copy Works

“Elaine is right about the actual difference. One is getting the lead. The other is the long process of nurturing and converting the lead into a sale. But bringing this up is good, because it reminds those of us in marketing and business communication to be aware that when we use these terms, what we think we are saying is not always the same as what others are hearing or reading. It forces us to be clearer in our communication”.

 

Robin Richardson

Director, Demand Generation at InsideView – Sales 2.0, Sales Intelligence, Social CRM

“I like to think of Demand Generation as the umbrella term, with both lead generation and lead management as components with Demand Generation. My take“.

 

Robert Drew

Online Marketing Manager at emedia Lead Generation

“I tend to agree with Robin. At emedia our parlance is to differentiate “lead acquisition” and “lead management”, for purposes of discussion with clients and others. The former is our contribution. The latter includes scoring, further nurturing, the handoff to Sales, the feedback loop, etc.”.  

 

Ankit Chandra

Software Engineer at SunGard

“As a person who was involved in creating a software for managing leads, I feel that Lead generation is gathering as many prospective clients through different media channels as possible like email marketing, advertising, conferences, telemarketing etc. Once a chunk of them has been accrued its funneled into a lead management system that scrubs them, cleans them, scores, grooms and nurture them. Technically both “Lead Generation” and “Lead Management” in my view are two different domains and markets. Lead generation’s output is Lead Management’s input and a successful Lead Management’s output is Salesforce’s input”.

 

Carlos Hidalgo

President – The Annuitas Group – Marketing Strategist and Lead Management Expert

“Great question and one we get asked a lot. Lead generation is in essence is filling the top of the funnel a.k.a acquiring the response/lead. Lead management is about managing that lead through the stages of the buying cycle. We just ran a series about the Lead Management Framework and you will be able to see the differences between lead management and lead generation”.

 

Come si può notare, c’è concordia sul fatto che Lead generation e Lead management, anche se spesso sono utilizzati in modo equivalente, sono due processi diversi e la Lead generation si occupa dell’acquisizione dei lead e il Lead management della loro gestione per ottenere dei lead che siano pronti per essere trattati dalla forza vendita.

 

Robin Richardson, in particolare, chiarisce anche che lui considera la Demad generation come composta dalla Lead generation e dal Lead management, che è quanto sostengo.