Lead generation has been the fuel for revenue-generating activities for a long time. What used to be exclusively known as cold calling has transformed into a multi-channel, multi-touch, and hyper-personalized approach to generate high-quality leads for companies around the world. 

So what industry transformations are going to take place in the coming year?  It's time to look forward to a new year and what better way to kick off 2018 than to make a few predictions (and maybe even a few wild guesses) about what to expect in the next year. Below you'll find 5 predictions from our team about what to expect in lead generation in 2018.

The transition from sales representative to sales leader is a step that most young sales professionals aspire to take. It's a progression that our own Operations Manager, Caleb Welch, advanced through quite quickly. 

Caleb started at Incept as an Account Growth Specialist in 2016, but brought with him more than 11 years of sales experience. He quickly gained success on several different client programs and jumped to the head of the pack in terms of delivering results and client satisfaction. In early 2017, Caleb began transitioning to a client support role where he helped strategize with clients and improve program results. His success led to a third promotion - Operations Manager - within a year and a half of joining Incept. 

Caleb credits this quick advancement to a commitment to results and continuous improvement, themes that are very apparent in Caleb's favorite leadership quotes. 

There is no shortage of content out there proclaiming that COLD CALLING IS DEAD. They're all right. We have too many tools at our disposal for that not to be true. Instead, sales professionals must drop the cold call mentality and instead turn to warm calls.

A warm call is when there is some previous connection established between the salesperson or company and the prospect being called. The stronger the connection between yourself and the prospect, the warmer the call is. 

On October 11th and 12th, we brought together a group manufacturers who were interested in obtaining more quality leads using digital and inbound marketing and sales tactics in order to grow their businesses. Between the two days, more than 70 local manufacturers came together to learn and network with industry experts.

We're headed to Milwaukee this week for the Manufacturing Sales & Marketing Summit! The Precision Metalforming Association (PMA) is hosting a conference dedicated to sales and marketing for manufacturers in order to help their organizations grow.  This popular event attracts more than 100 sales and marketing leaders each year. 

Facebook and Hubspot are partnering up this week to bring users live stream video content about the changing landscape of social media and how businesses should react to it. We attended the first session which included a panel of experts talking about major trends in social media and how you can adapt your marketing strategy to take advantage of them.

Did you know that every month over 2 billion messages are exchanged between people and businesses on Facebook? It's becoming a more natural, and maybe even preferred, way of communicating with businesses for many people. This statistic lead to one of the most popular talking points of the panel discussion - Facebook Lead Ads and their growing impact on businesses, especially in the B2B space.  

Flight is an annual event presented by Launch League that gathers more than 200 founders, investors, and startup enthusiasts in Akron. Local start-ups are invited to showcase their work, connect with investors & co-founders, and boost their success rate through educational speaker tracks.

Will you be there?

In my last post, I talked about how Fitbit inspired our sales team to launch a new badge program. It's helped motivate our Account Growth Specialist team and to create competition on a daily basis, thus improving our team comradery, competition, culture, and results!

Since that post, we've received a few questions about what the program looks like and specifically, what types of badges we use. Below you'll find an image of each badge and a description of how it's earned. 

I love my Fitbit. The live movement tracking on my wrist, the competition with my friends, and the ability to earn badges along the way keep me motivated to move more and pursue a healthier lifestyle. In fact, adding a Fitbit to my life helped me lose 25 pounds last year!

We took that idea and translated it to our Account Growth Specialist team. First, what kinds badges would help intrinsically motivate them or create competition within the team on a daily basis? Second, what kinds of badges will our clients care about?