What is Real-Time Lead Generation? Here’s How To Do It

Ugljesa Djuric

Ugljesa is passionate about the content market, sales, and marketing. He's has been working for several SaaS companies on similar topics.

May 17, 2019
minutes to read

Lead generation is one of the most important but also the most time-consuming part of your B2B sales cycle. Generating high-quality and interesting leads is harder than ever before.

According to B2B Technology Marketing Community, 61% of B2B sales reps think that lead generation is their biggest challenge. By the same research, for 68% of B2B sales professionals, an increasing number of high-quality leads is a top priority.

Check our : Callback software for automotive business

If you found yourself going through the online business listings, databases and LinkedIn by your own – you’re probably struggling with high-quality lead generation.

We all do.

But, lead generation doesn’t necessarily need to be done by manually checking different websites and filling the spreadsheets with your lead’s data.

In this article, we’re going to explain how can you conduct real-time lead generation in five different ways.

Why should you consider using real-time lead generation in your B2B sales cycle?

  • It doesn’t require too much time – Usually, almost all processes are automatic or they require less time and effort
  • It generates high-quality leads – your leads are usually qualifying themselves for you.


In any case, using real-time lead generation, you will get rid of all unnecessary tasks and manual data entry.

Before we see five in-depth ways to use real-time lead generation in your sales process, let’s see what exactly lead generation is, and how it helps you with lead nurturing.

The importance of real-time lead generation

The two most important steps in the sales process are:

1.    Lead Generation

2.    Lead Nurturing

As we mentioned, generating your leads in traditional ways is tougher than ever before.

One of the biggest problems with traditional ways of lead generation is the lack of quality and valid leads.

By Convertr’s research, more than 38% of processed leads are invalid. The main reasons why you keep finding invalid leads are fake names and invalid emails and phone numbers.

That’s the reason why need to focus our efforts on more innovative and time-effective methodologies and processes.

One of those processes is a real-time lead generation.

Long story short, real-time lead generation is the process of generating high-quality leads on autopilot or by some sort of online activities.

We will talk more about these online activities and the best ways to generate your leads in real-time further in the text.

In any case, why we’re considering real-time lead generation more effective?

  • In most cases, it works almost completely on the autopilot. From that reason, a lot of the processes are automated and you can focus your time on nurturing leads or closing the deals
  • Usually, your potential customers are unleashing the interest in your service/product by themselves. That means that they’re providing you with their valid contact information

We know that there are two different types of leads:

  • Qualified Leads
  • Unqualified Leads

When you’re generating leads by yourself or by manually finding your desired prospects on the Internet, almost all of them know nothing about your product.

That’s the reason why you need to follow up with them constantly and “heat” them from time to time.

But with real-time lead generation, your targeted prospects are already familiar with your product/service, and they can be considered as “warm” leads from the moment when they give you their contact information.

The biggest difference between the qualified and unqualified leads is that qualified leads already have some interest in your product, or they have a tendency to become in the near future.

On another hand, unqualified leads don’t have any interest in your product at all.

This can happen for a lot of reasons, but most usual ones are:

  • Your product/service doesn’t offer them value or solve their problem
  • They are not your desired customers (i.e. they don’t have a budget for your service/product).

You can distinguish qualified and unqualified leads in two different ways:

  • Monitor their activity and interests (i.e – are they using the educational material you just sent them?)
  • Ask the right question to qualify them and optimize your sales process (i.e – ask them: “Do you have a budget for this project? If not, when do you expect that you will?)

In most cases, if you get a lead with some of the real-time lead generation ways we will mention below – you already accomplished two tasks:

  • You generated him
  • You qualified him

Even more, real-time lead generation also helps you with lead nurturing.

You will easily nurture leads that you got through real-time lead generation.

Why is nurturing leads so important?

Lead nurturing is reflected in making connections between you and your prospective or already existing customers through the sales funnel. Make a strategy that will include your leads and target them with customized sales, important or interesting messages, or lead magnets and other types of educational material.

  • contact your prospect on a regular basis: Determine when you will contact your customers and keep in touch with them. If they unsubscribe or ignore your emails, this means that they are not interested in buying.
  • provide useful information: Share important information like news, actions or reviews with your users.
  • analyse your prospect: Through the activity of your potential customers, see which are the best ways to contact them. Analyze how they have engaged or how they responded to your email and calls, at what time they were on your site, and so on.

Lead nurturing can bring a lot of benefits. In addition to active leads, do not neglect the potential customers who are following your work but have not yet made purchases. Some users need more time, which does not mean that they will not become your customers.

Learn how potential prospects behave on your website/blog or how they respond to your emails. Also, do not constantly overwhelm them with information and calls, but find balance. Limecall stresses that you should keep in mind that lead nurturing helps in 25-30% of conversions in a sales funnel.

There are many applications that can help you get in touch with your lead. Limecall gives you many opportunities to convert your leads online and can significantly make this process easier for you.

Now when we understand the importance of real-time lead generation, lead nurturing and why combining these two steps can have a great impact on your B2B sales cycle, let’s see what are the best ways to implement real-time lead generation.

Further, in the article, you will learn how and why you should implement the following things to evolve your lead generation on the next level:

  • Callback Software
  • Dedicated landing pages
  • Triggered pop-ups
  • Educational live webinars
  • Live Chats

1. Callback software

Callback software serves as a way of engaging with your website visitors and connecting them with your customer support to provide information that visitors seek and thus improve sales.

To make it clearer what the difference is between old ways of communication and a new way through callback software, let’s look at the following:

real-time lead generation and nurturing_comparison

Callback software makes communication between you and your leads faster and better. It automatically qualifies your leads for you 24/7 and provides you only with most interesting leads.

The average landing page conversions rates are 2-5%. Implementing callback software will increase your conversions and help you to close more deals.

How does the callback software such as Limecall work? They automatically qualify the most interesting visitors for your business and show them a callback widget:

real-time lead generation and nurturing_outreachplus

The visitor is immediately offered the opportunity to start a call with your customer support/sales reps and to get answers to his questions so that he does not wait for an email reply. He can also schedule an appointment for another time that suits him.

In this way, the visitor doesn’t get the opportunity to “cool down” to buy a service or product. With your availability every day, you show customers that you care about them and that you are there to solve their problems.

Callback software uses the human factor that keeps your leads and builds a connection between the seller and the buyer.

It’s true that chatbots can serve a lot more visitors, while for callback software, you need additional human resources.

But why not take the best of both options? Use chatbots for quick customer support with cold leads and later use callback software to strengthen connections with your leads and convert them into buyers.

Also, you can choose where you want to put your callback widgets depending on how your visitors behave. These calls will speed up the sales process with minimal effort.

You can use your callback widget:

  • in cold emails or follow-up emails
  • for support calls
  • with Google Ads
  • on high converting pages (especially on pricing page)

Implementing the callback software takes 2 to 20 minutes, but the most important thing is to prepare your sales team on how to use it in the most effective way. Sending personalized messages can further increase your conversion rates. Tools like Limecall have the ability to automatically follow up with your leads through SMS and save your time.

Do not overwhelm your visitors with widgets as soon as they enter the site, wait for them to see a certain portion of the page, warm them up and get interested in your product.

Without a doubt, implementing real-time lead generation with callback software, you will:

  • Save your team for lead generation and qualification
  • Provide better and high-touch customer/sales support
  • Have the opportunity to engage with your potential customers on more interesting ways.

2. Create dedicated landing pages to catch lead’s attention

The landing page is one of the most important parts of the 21st century’s sales process.

There is not some universal formula to create a perfect landing page. The most important thing is to be clear and functional. Your landing page should be designed to suit your brand in every sense.

The main goal of the landing page is to promote your product or service in the best way possible.

Selling does not have to be the only goal of a page – you can use it to subscribe to a newsletter, enrol in a course or for any other purpose that you need at that moment.

It is advisable to have one call to action on one landing page that will be clearly visible and concrete.

Well-organized landing pages allow you to attract prospects and convert them into leads. With landing pages, you can collect information about people who are visiting your website so you can understand their behaviour and use it for your business improvement.

If your landing page is convincing enough – it will generate you high-quality leads. Even more, you will receive valuable contact information about each of the leads who signed-up.

For example, Etsy made a clear, creative and intuitive landing page:

real-time lead generation and nurturing_etsy landing page

Their landing page is simple and provides only the most important information. It also has the CTA button in the bright colour that stimulates the action. Precisely in that sense, it is important to keep in mind that the landing page is in line with what you promote and want to achieve.

In order to make a good landing page as possible, check Unbounce.

3. Pop-ups

Pop-ups are another way to generate qualified leads. As already mentioned, your sales revenue will not be able to increase without leads to nurture into customers. Why wouldn’t you get those leads from people who have already been spending some time on your site and therefore have shown a particular interest in your business?

Some of the great tools that can help you make pop-ups for your site are Poptin or Wishpond. Use them to get more email subscribers, more leads and sales, reduce shopping cart exits and get more visitors’ engagement. You can choose when you want your pop-up to appear depending on the user’s behaviour on the site.

Like landing pages, pop-ups need to be well organized and designed to attract users’ attention and to make them decide to take the action you want to get from them. Also, do not overdo the number of pop-ups because they will act invasively and, therefore, distance users from your site. Use them to speed up the process of getting your potential prospect converted.

For example, when you try to exit the Wishpond website, the following pop-up appears:

real-time lead generation and nurturing_Wishpond

They have imaginatively made a pop-up window that keeps you from going away and makes you think for a moment if this is something that you may be needed, and, at the same time, they also showed in practice what kind of business they are dealing with. On the pop-up itself, the CTA button “Get started” in bright orange color against the white background is easily visible. The message below the button is also another trigger to consider and think before leaving the site itself.

There are different types of pop-ups, but most commonly used are:

  • Click Pop-Ups – they appear when a visitor clicks on a specific link, word or a picture
  • Timed Pop-Ups – they appear when a visitor have already spent some time on a site
  • Scroll Pop-Ups – they appear when a visitor has scrolled down a specific percentage of a page
  • Entry Pop-Ups – they appear as soon as a visitor enters the page and before he sees anything else on that same page
  • Exit Pop-Ups – they appear when a visitor starts exiting your site

It seems that the click pop-ups have the biggest impact on the conversion rates because they appear only when the visitors request them to open. Exit pop-ups are also great because they retain visitors’ attention before the reader definitely decides to exit the site.

Let’s take a look at this popup example from Campaign Monitor:

real-time lead generation and nurturing_Campaign Monitor

According to Unbounce, this particular exit pop-up helped Campaign Monitor to convert 10.8% of abandoning users. In other words, they generated more than 271 leads in one month.

Regardless of what kinds of pop-ups you use, it is important that you pay attention to their design and on the information that you provide.

If you still have doubts whether you need pop-ups for your business or whether you find them boring – statistics speak in favour of them not being ignored because they really work: Sumo users collected 23,645,948 email addresses with List Builder pop-ups in less than two years!

4. Live webinars

Live webinars are ideal for real-time lead generation. Neil Patel says more than 60% of marketers use live webinars as part of their marketing strategy.

Before you embark on making a webinar, your audience must be interested in what you have to say and present. Be careful, people do not spend their time lightly. A good organization is crucial when it comes to hosting webinars. Here is what you need to do if you want to achieve great results and generate more leads with live webinars:

  • Carefully define your audience
  • Design an entire lecture ahead: identify the topic and key points
  • Leave time for your audience questions
  • Distribute your webinar through various channels.

Show your audience that you appreciate their attention. For example, Marie Forleo, who promotes her business school through her live webinar, leaves ready free sheets for every webinar which helps her audience to follow the theme of the webinar itself and have more attention.

A webinar offer can be simple, but catchy:

real-time lead generation and nurturing_webinar offer

Live webinars are a great opportunity to convert your visitors into qualified leads.

By registering for a webinar, you can collect email addresses and other information about your leads.

Even more, this helps you to get valid information and data about your leads.

real-time lead generation and nurturing_webinar registration

With the help from a live webinar, you can establish a stronger relationship with potential customers and build trust.

Webinars can be a great option when you want to sell online courses, services or products. They can also be very useful for better education of your potential leads. You can also use them for the product promotion (i.e. books, or feature announcements) if you want to explain more closely what is your mission and to add a certain value to it.

Webinars allow you to find your customers from all over the world without spending any money on travelling or space renting. When you create an email list, you can nurture your leads through high-quality content, follow-ups and more.

There are many webinar platforms. Explore and choose the one that suits you the most. Some of the most popular are: Zoom, WebinarJam, Demio or GoToWebinar.

In any case, webinars are a great way to implement real-time lead generation into your B2B sales process.

5. Live Chats

One of the best ways to accelerate the real-time lead generation process is to use live chat.

Live chats are suitable for every business. They enable the companies to be available for the visitors 24/7. With the help of the live chat, you can easily and fast answer to all your potential customer’s questions. From those more general about the product function or services to those more concrete about the delivery and price.


Live Chat is suitable both for small and medium businesses, SaaS tools, e-commerce shops or large enterprises.

You can put live chat on your site so that those who visit it will be able to contact you and to ask any questions. Most importantly, it will enable them to get responses in real time.

People do not like to wait, and if your visitors want to use your service, then they do not need to be cooled down by additional waiting for an answer. Take advantage of the opportunity and convert them into the active buyers. Direct conversation is something that many will appreciate – customer service at its best!

Competition is huge in most activities, so give your potential customers the best treatment that is at your disposal.

Another benefit of live chat is that live chat software has analytical reports that will tell you a lot about the behaviour of visitors from your site and help you develop your business in the right direction based on these data.

Besides, Vtldesign summarizes statistics that more than anything else speak in  favour of the implementation of live chat:

  • 44% of online consumers say that one of the best features a site can offer is that they get an answer from a live person
  • 63% say that they would rather return to a site offering live chat
  • 38% say that they have made their purchase just thanks to live chat

Jeff Bezos has the point: “We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.”

Take the opportunity to create a special, personalized live chat that will gain the trust of your customers and save you time. Be creative and friendly.

You can see different examples on websites:        

real-time lead generation and nurturing_live chat
real-time lead generation and nurturing_live chat

At a time when everyone is online and information is spreading at incredible speed, it would not be wise to leave your potential customers waiting for your response, as they will quickly redirect their attention to someone else.

Some of the best live chat products are Intercom, Zendesk Chat ,ProProfs Chatand LiveChat.

The Bottom Line

After we’ve gone through these five ways that can help you to implement real-time lead generation in your B2B sales cycle, it’s time for you to consider which ones will you use or to make your own combination of several different approaches to fulfil your goal.

As far as we can see, real-time lead generation has many benefits over traditional types of generating leads.

It’s less time-consuming, plus, you will get qualified leads at your doorstep.

Keep in mind that you can’t scale without the customers, so it’s the right time to take care of them and to show them that your business is worth their trust.

The best time to start was yesterday, the next good moment is now. So Check our Callback Software Now! and Check Limecall Pricing .

, May 17, 2019, Ugljesa Djuric

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