One of the fastest growing departments within LeadPoint is our United Kingdom division. One of the benefits that our UK cousins have is the fact that lead generation is still in its infancy in the UK compared with the US. This can be both a benefit and an obstacle.

As in the United States, the lead generation pitch makes a lot of sense – reach prospective customers, buy the results of somebody else’s marketing spend, and speak to prospective customers within moments of their requesting to be contacted.

Our UK office felt marketing such a concept to a new market would be a slam dunk and that prospective partners would be lining up around the corner to buy leads.

As evidenced by their 300% growth in 2008, the reception of lead gen in the UK has been strong. However, as is generally the case, success does not come without challenges. Despite our UK team’s best efforts, they were not always able to communicate the value of how lead generation and technology are interlinked.

In the US where work shuts down if the Internet should happen to go down and many of us cannot fathom life without a Blackberry, it appears that the need for technology in the UK (at least in some business sectors) is not as pervasive as in the US.

In one instance our UK office was contacted by a prospective buyer who read in the press about the merits of lead generation and was excited at the prospect of buying them. Unfortunately, the gentleman did not have an email address to receive leads, nor a computer for that matter.

When trying to explain how online lead generation and owning a computer go together like the British summer and rain, he promptly told our sales person that he didn’t like typing so he would not be changing his working practices any time soon.

Our UK office assumed that this was just an isolated incident. Apparently this wasn’t the case. Not long afterwards, another prospective customer contacted them who also did not have a computer. However, this gentleman did not see the lack of a computer as an obstruction to buying Internet generated leads. Instead, he came up with the solution that our UK office should just call him every time he received a lead and read him the lead detail over the phone. He could then just copy the information down himself.

Despite such setbacks, lead generation is continuing to grow in popularity in the UK as it has in the US as word of its value spreads. We congratulate our UK office for their 2008 success and look forward to a successful 2009.