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Lead generation is an industry topic that everyone has an opinion about but no-one really understands. This is the fault of lead providers themselves, who need to educate advisers about exactly what lead generation involves.

This includes everything from how to work the leads once you receive them all the way to how to measure the success or not of a lead buying campaign.

One of the issues that is often overlooked is probably the most important one and goes right back to the fundamental question of what is a lead?

Put simply, a lead is a piece of information about a consumer who has stated they are interested in a service that you provide. It is not a gift-wrapped, guaranteed customer ready to sign on the dotted line. However, the person has responded to some form of marketing precisely because they are looking for a service. Your job is to grab that consumer, build a relationship and sell them your company and your ability to provide the service they want. In other words, by buying leads you are buying the results of marketing without having to speculate large sums trying to get those sought after responses.

There is an important distinction to be made between the type of lead just described and a more traditional definition of a lead. Often companies talk about leads when what they are really talking about is data. For example, your local council will sell your details on to third parties who will then sell this information on again. If you do not opt out of this database then you could very well find yourself with a number of different companies calling you up trying to sell you something. The consumers on this list are not really leads. They are merely contact details of people who exist but have never expressed any interest to be contacted about anything. More often than not they have probably just forgot to tick the opt-out box.

When we talk about leads we are talking about much more than just a name and contact number. In addition to contact details a lead should have a whole range of relevant information about the product or service that the consumer wants. This information will help the adviser sell to the consumer more easily because they will already know what the consumer wants before they speak to them. Also, the more information that a consumer leaves the better the leads can be filtered, which will enable advisers to get straight to their target customers.

For a remortgage lead this might include things such as property style, employment status, time to apply and so on. For the purposes of segmenting your customers you should be able to filter by things such as loan amount, credit grade, loan-to-value and postal area. So the lead should not just be any customer, it should be your ideal one.

Further to this there is also the issue of the time a lead was generated. A name on a database might be months or years old. The person's contact details may not even be the same. With lead generation, you can buy leads generated in real-time. When a consumer has identified they have a need, for example perhaps they are about to come off a fixed rate mortgage and want to find out what their next step should be.

When they go online they are in the research stage of the buying process. They want to find out information about what their options are before making a purchasing decision. A consumer may go to Google and search for remortgage. They will be presented with a series of adverts from companies trying to entice them to visit their websites. When the consumer clicks on one of these advertisements and visits a website they may read some content about what is on offer and then might be presented with a form that will ask them to leave their details to be contacted by an adviser about their requirements.

A lead provider that sells real-time leads will pass this information through their system within seconds of the consumer submitting their details. They should have a technological validation system in place to check that all the information is genuine and then the lead is sold to an adviser if the consumer matches their chosen filters.

If you are an adviser buying real-time leads, the consumer will often still be sitting at their computer when you receive their information. So if you follow best practice and call them immediately you will often get an amazed response from the consumer who will usually be pleasantly surprised by the speed at which you have contacted them. Now all you have to do is sell them a mortgage.

Justin Rees is head of marketing for LeadPoint UK