Tools to catch a lead in mid-air, by @rwang0 and @jowyang

From Altimeter Group's report Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management:

Rapid adoption of social networking enables users to connect with individuals and communities who share mutual interests, increasingly leaving organizations out of the conversation. Simply hiring more people to keep up with social marketing, sales, and support will not be sufficient, as consumers and their new channels will always outnumber employees. As a result, companies need an organized approach using enterprise software that connects business units to the social web – giving them the opportunity to respond in near-real time, and in a coordinated fashion.

In a previous post, I stated that hiring a Conversation Manager to keep up with social marketing and support is not enough - in 2010, businesses need to focus on social sales. Altimeter's report is already beyond the companies should: it offers a reference guide to real-world entry points for Social CRM projects. The problem is, however, that Altimeter proposes different vendors for the 5 M's (Measurement, Middleware, Management, Mapping and Monitoring) in the process. That's going to be a very expensive and complex ecosystem. And isn't the whole idea to optimise and improve the way businesses are making money?

I was particularly interested in the part about Proactive Social Lead Generation (monitoring key channels for sales opportunities). The report mentions "a sales representative at a medical technology company" who intercepted a conversation in a chat group about a prospect’s concern. She jumped in and shared best practices with the prospect. How this story ends? "Impressed by her professionalism, the prospect awarded a multimillion dollar deal to a company they had never even shortlisted."
I'd like to find (or create?) a more specific and documented example of this Conversations to Conversions mechanic. Can you help?

Also interesting: according to the report, Vendors to watch in this space are Sales 2.0 appInsideView, Social Business Software vendor Jive Software, Social CRM and Community Solutions company Lithium Technologies, and enterprise online collaboration and community software vendor Telligent. Anyone worked with any of these before? Does the software force consumers to use it, or is it used to improve existing business processes?