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Comment by SethMurphy | Hacker News Reader

How is this different from affiliate marketing? Does this involve offline sales too? Is this just a sales rep jobs board or a hand holding affiliate marketing site (at a flat fee)? The use of the word virtual is a bit confusing here and I am not really sure what it means. Honestly in reading the article all I saw were a bunch of buzzwords.

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OK, I think I understand what they do now. From the FAQ: "LeadGenius is a service from MobileWorks" Then to the source (https://www.mobileworks.com): "We recruit workers, run interviews, and ensure projects are done with the highest quality – automatically."

So, basically Lead Genius is an inbound marketing channel for Mobile Works for the sales customer segment.

yup that sounds about right. looks like they're allowing to you hire partial FTEs for sales support.

This takes the definition of the word 'crowdsourcing' to a new level.

This is actually classic crowdsourcing. We find different sales experts in the crowd and place them in small and medium organization to help them do more sales.

Actually, it sounds more like outsourcing unless my 20hrs is coming from 20 different people in the crowd. Is it?

It's actually just outsourcing - but I see that crowdsourcing is the buzzword of the year so I understand why you'd use it. I'd prefer the outsourcing approach with one or 2 good guys who know my product over a factory style team any day!

The difference is that people who work with us are actually contractors who pick their own hours and work from home. They can come and go as they please but we still ensure quality using our technology and processes.

that sounds great - but it still doesnt make it crowdsourcing in the truest sense of the word. I dont care where the guys are sitting - I care that they produce good leads!

Well yeah, as he says, he uses his own services. This is a sales pitch and making it simple to understand makes it easy to pick out flaws and have potential customers actually think about it in terms they understand. He doesn't want that: by throwing in all these buzzwords he's trying to get potential customers to stop thinking so hard and just 'give it a try'. It's a good tactic, one of the most used in selling financial and IT infrastructure products.

I really don't understand what he is doing wrong. The reporter asked him about the service and he gave him the whole spiel. This is exactly what that question was for so they can dig deeper in later questions.

This is simply a way to add a virtual sales staffers to your sales efforts. Different staffers are specialists in different aspect of the sales pipeline including leads finding, targeted outreach and sales calls. You can hire these staffers by the hour (minimum 20hours/week) and they will help you run the entire sales process.

I hope this explains what leadgenius does.

So are you outsourcing to these individuals or are they on your staff? Is there a technology behind the management of it or are you simply providing the human resource much like a temp agency would? I if you had to fill in the blank(as much as I hate this it helps understand) what would it be: "We are the ____ of sales"

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