Lead Management, Giving Your Customer A Great Experience

Typically, we think of lead management and CRM only as a tool to benefit our sales number, but is there anything in it for customers?

Lead management can help you deliver the mythical WOW customer experience. Delivering speed and urgency that often brings the deal. Why is lead management critical to Customer Experience Management (CEM)? You can make lead management social and that is the key to real experiences.

Responsive First Contact

Customers have been severely abused on the Internet. Consumers have been conditioned to expect little or no response from Internet inquiries--that presents and opportunity for your sales team.

Lead management can ensure that your sales is immediately responding to every sales inquiry. Not only are you guaranteed to be more responsive, you are certain to be first. This is a very important distinction when every competitor is only a click away on the Internet.

Consistent Follow-Up

Making initial contact is only one step in the process of closing a deal. In most cases sales are not made on a single sales call. It is the process of building trust and a relationship that gets the first deal and hopefully future deals.

The only way to get that trust and relationship evolved into a sale is to follow-up. Unfortunately, this is the number one cause of losses. Simply not making that second and third call is the difference between winning and losing.

Lead management allows you to automate the follow-up process. This makes your customer feel like they are the only one in your sales pipeline--after all, "you seem so on top of things."

Trust Building Follow-Through

Good contact management processes also reinforces your trust-building. Relationships are built on little promises made and kept along the way.

Knowing where you are in a sales cycle and what you told the customer at the last meeting is the key. Your sales process should have a lock-tight approach to notes and ticklers. Your customer should not have to contact you to remind you of anything.

The more proactive you appear the stronger that trust becomes and the more profitable the customer becomes, now and in the future.

After Sale Relationships

The sense of urgency to make contact, follow-up, and keep promises are the keys to landing the deal. However, if you want to create an enormously profitable sales practice you need to shake hands with the customer after the sale. Your sales process should have a thank-you after each sale and a regular: "How are things going--what can I do to make you more successful?" conversation.

Lead management not only keeps you top of mind with all of your customers and clients, it also makes your customers' lives a snap in doing business with you.

Delivering an "on the ball" customer experience is the core value proposition of a lead management system. Make sure you have one and enjoy a more profitable sales pipeline.