I would like to add something to the conversation because I think this is an extremely interesting thread and I have experience in it as well, the local lead generation was my first money making method that worked from me, it was in those days when an Exact Match Domain was enough to rank for the term, then I bought like 20 domains (they were A LOT for me in those days) and I started renting them to several local businesses and I learned a few things:
a) It is easier to sell leads to a business that already know what is a lead and how to handle it example: anything in the financial vertical (payday loans, insurance, mortgages, etc...)
b) The people who do not know how to treat a lead or they will want to pay you per sale (but you won't be able to know when the sales are done) or they will say your methods won't work and refuse to pay because they will expect every contact to be a sale.
c) Most people do not have a CRM or a follow up process so there is another money opportunity.
From my perspective the difference between
@BassTrackerBoats and
@OmegaRank systems/method is not really a lead generation or seo difference it is a business acumen difference what do I mean by that?
@BassTrackerBoats is creating a real asset besides the simple Google Business Local spot, he gets the call, gets the guys information, set up the appointment and then he not only has a registry of the leads he have generated BUT he can follow up with them and re sell them, IF he ever gets the Business Listing banned, he can easily start a lead generation business for the entire vertical, he knows what are the most common problems (he can bid on those keywords and create landing pages specially for these problems) he can identify who are the local guys who work better, he can even follow up with a "satisfaction call", he has CONTROL over the business, not just a simple spot in the Google results, and you can expand the operation even further how?
1.- By creating an online calendar and sharing it to the client who is getting the leads (most of them have no idea how this works)
2.- He can create a follow up system to re sell the lead to other local guys and pice the leads differently for exclusive leads than for shared leads.
3.- He can make a diagnosis of the problem BEFORE sending them to the client so once the client gets the lead/problem he is ready to make a quote or a solution.
All these are assets that he can create to the point to even license the entire local lead generation system.