Like any other marketing executive who manages a company that is effected by current economy, you most probably feel a lot of pressure, as your marketing budget shrinks and need in increased sales performance is stronger than ever. Your CEO is probably all over you, keeps pointing at sales reports and trying to find an underperforming sales rep to fire.

The truth is, now you need to look for new avenues for lead generation, vehicle that can deliver better quality leads at lower cost.

What if I will tell you that you can perform your lead gen absolutely at no cost. If I say to you "Have you tried running an affiliate program?" you will probably answer "Nothing new here. We though about it a century ago, but we are a business to business operation, and majority of advertising networks are weak at B2B."

From first glance, you are absolutely right. Take any network - Affiliate.com, CPA Empire - none of them do B2B, unless you sell very inexpensive product on-line. But what if you don't close deals on-line, what if you deal with multinational corporations and your average order is over $10,000 per customer?

There is no ad network that will run your offer for few reasons. First of all, you program is a niche offer. Moreover, since you don't close your sale on-line there is no way to track it, as there is no conversion page to place a tracking code on.

Right? Wrong!

It blew my mind when I saw what guys at IdeaMama Ad Network are doing. See ([http://IdeaMamaAdNetwork.com]). Fascinating!

They focus specifically on needs of companies that market business services or products to Fortune 1000 companies. All you need is to get their Elite account; basic one is mostly for consumer offers that have typical tracking system designed for e-commerce transactions. This network completely redefined B2B marketing and you gotta try it.

The process on IdeaMamaAdNetwork.com is very similar to the way other networks run their offers - they broadcast your advertising properties (banners, videos, podcasts, webcasts, white papers, case studies, articles - whatever you've got) via top business publishers, and the system enables affiliates to see how leads that they have generated for you are moving through your sales pipeline. You can have thousands of affiliates caring your offer, generate millions of impressions, thousands of leads and the beauty is that you pay nothing, zero dollars, unless you close the sale.

I have found no other network that would run CPS (pay per sale) program for business to business companies with a long sales cycle (3-6 months) and no on-line payment processing. If you find any, please let me know. I have spent months on-line trying to find new ways to generate business leads for B2B clients and ended up with nothing, until I've found these guys.

Well, not guys, really. The network is run by a young lady from Eastern Europe (being from Poland myself I am so proud for my people). I couldn't help but called her to ask how they are doing. Olga (Olga Kostrova, CEO of IdeaMama Ad Network) sounded very excited by interest this new approach generates. Initially she has founded the network as an extension of earlier founded virtual invention incubator IdeaMamaClub.com (http://www.IdeaMamaClub.com), the purpose of the network was to become a promotional vehicle that helps the community members to mass market their inventions. Later the concept and technology was refined to also solve her own struggle in finding suitable sales lead generation programs for her B2B clients whose marketing budgets started shrinking. Olga's main interest is in promoting clean technologies, services of socially responsible enterprises or companies that solve some important social, economical and environmental issues.

From what I understand the IdeaMama's technology and a network of affiliates can save to any B2B company hundreds of thousands dollars for both, business CRM solution (customer relationship management software) and lead generation programs.

Let's do a math. If you buy a CRM system to manage 1,000 of resellers (affiliates) it will easily cost you at least $100,000 a year, since you will pay for each user even at discounted price. Now imagine, each of 1,000 publishers generates 10 leads a month for you. In this case you would have to pay about $100,000 for leads (even if a price per lead is only $10, but often it can go as high as $1,000 a lead, all depends on quality of the lead source). Now let's imagine that your leads have somewhat low conversion and you close 1 deal per each 200 leads. So, you would have to spend at least $200,000 to close decent number of deals.

The beauty of working with a CPA network is that CPS campaigns require no upfront investment. The challenge is that networks who can successfully can run your B2B offer don't exist... well, at least they didn't existed till now. No other avenue of lead gen can be as effective as a "virtual commissioned sales rep". No telemarketing, no email marketing, no PPC - nothing can be compared with performance marketing.

If you have a better idea than setting up the campaign once and watching sales knocking at your door whole year long for 10-20% commission, let me know. I will be first who will use it and blog about it.