Lead Management System, Supercharging Your Sales

Looking for the magic to turning more of your leads into sales? The answer is simpler than you think--It's lead management. Our counterparts in marketing discovered it long ago--marketing automation. If you stay top of mine and you continually reinforce your emotional value message customers will respond. Lead management is your tool to produce the same effect. Let's explore how it works.

Lead Management

The key to any lead management software or system is centralizing the management of you leads and automating sales activities when possible. This process is often termed sales force automation and can be broken down into six basic parts: lead capture, lead priority, lead distribution, lead nurturing, lead tracking, and lead analysis.

Lead Capture

The excitement is often so great around generating a lead that we forget about capturing the lead. Lead capture is a perilous time in a lead's life cycle. The ability to capture from Web forms, import from spreadsheets, or simply enter data can be the difference between a deal and a non-descript piece of paper (with a name and number on it) ending up in the trash can.

Lead Priority

Centralize your lead and sales activity data will reveal trends and leading indicators. These tips to success can begin to be leveraged in your lead management software as prioritization and lead scoring characteristics. Determining what leads are most likely to close becomes a key competitive advantage in any lead management system.

Lead Distribution

Getting leads to the right person as quick as possible will shorten sales times. Again, using a lead management system gives you a simple way to manage who closes what leads the best, and automate the routing to those sales people. Having this type of visibility can also clue you into the right way to deliver leads; in the lead console, alerts to email, or maybe even a text message.

Lead Nurturing

Not all customers buy on the first day or even week they enter into your sales pipeline. And, unfortunately, a lot of sales are lost assuming that means they will never buy. Most likely the objection is timing related, not intent to buy. If you have a opt-in, direct inquiry, or referral lead the customer had some level of interest. Their failure to buy may be short-term challenges (i.e., budget, buy-in, influence, priority), not motivation.

A lead management system is a simple way to design a lead nurturing program. This longer outlook sales and marketing program can turn cold or non-responsive leads into a future sales pipeline. Lead nurturing's objective is to stay top of mind and create an existing database that will periodically generate new leads.

Lead Tracking

Any sales or marketing effort needs a feedback loop to be efficient. Lead tracking and reporting is the dashboard for that feedback. Optimizing lead capture, lead priority, lead distribution, and lead nurturing is critical to sustained success. Simple flagging or tagging of leads with discrete status, which most lead management software can facilitate, will allow you to follow leads through their complete life cycle.

Lead Analysis

Lead analysis is the culmination of all your lead management systems features and advantages. This analysis phase will highlight best practices and prevent lost opportunities. Evaluating your various lead sources, ranking lead providers, and looking to maximize good performance are keys to business success.

A good lead management system is the easiest way to streamline, grow, and maximize your sales opportunities.