Imagine how nice it would be if every person you talked to, were an ideal one that required your product or service! A world where only interested customers are coming to you, and you know exactly what they want, how they got here and what exactly you need to say to win them over, it would be a dream come true! That would just be perfect, isn’t that right? Well, to be honest, such kind of sales utopia is not really a dream anymore. Modern technology is already helping businesses streamline their sales experience. Under such circumstances, lead management is one of the most important features that is assisting different business organizations to optimize the overall sales process. For a beginner, a lead management system might not be a familiar concept. But, not to worry, this article will explain an overall lead management system, how it works and why it is vital for your business. Before we get into the detailed steps for implementing a great lead management system, let us share what precisely a lead management system is.

What is a Lead Management System?

In the simplest terms, a lead management system is a process of managing and tracking prospective customers. This is sometimes also referred to as customer acquisition or contact management as well. Within the scope of a lead management system, there are the following processes:

Lead Generation

The objective of any business is to create consumer interest and inquiry within the products or services by implementing a varied range of marketing tactics. These marketing tactics include creating blog posts, advertisements, engaging in different social media platforms, creating white papers, events, and the PR campaigns as well.

Customer Inquiry and Capture

Customer inquiry and capture includes assessing and getting to know how the consumers of a specific market are responding, getting to know their interests and recording the data. This is what creates a potential sales lead when a business can relate to the interests of the customer, and they have got something to offer to the lead.

Filtering, Grading, Distributing and Contacting

As we mentioned above, the sorting of potential sales leads is done depending on the requirements of the customers and the services offered by a business organization. The leads are also sorted depending on the validity of the request and prioritized according to the likelihood of becoming a customer. Now the leads are dispersed to the sales rep for contacting. The size of a marketing program is also another critical factor to take into account. The reason is, the size of a marketing program will define how to categorize the leads and sort them accordingly.

Lead Nurturing

Sort leads according to the individuals who could or couldn’t be contacted. The potential leads who couldn’t be contacted are separated as “scheduled for follow-up” process. The follow up can be done either on a call or met personally by a company representative. If the overall process ends with a sale, this means the lead has traveled successfully through the sales funnel. Now the potential lead has turned out to be a customer. But the work is still not done yet.

Lead management systems become more complicated as a company expands. Managing 200 leads is easy but managing 200,000 leads is not that simple. Apart from that, when those leads turn into customers, it is imperative for the business organization to nurture those relationships. Now, why do you need a lead management system?

Importance of an Effective Lead Management System

The process of a proper lead management system is one of the most beneficial aspects of any business organization. The reason is, it helps a business to figure out the best tactics that are essential to generate more and more leads and convert them into customers. It is a great way to optimize the sales strategy most effectively and efficiently.

With a proper lead management system, it becomes easier to get the complete details and history of the steps of how a lead was sorted and then converted into a long-term customer. A lead management system documents the full history of an individual regarding the interactions and experiences with the company. Thus, it is a great tool to analyze exactly how the person was converted from a prospect to a lead and then a customer. Along with the marketing benefits, a lead management system has a significant impact on the bottom line of an organization.

For successfully managing the sales funnel, it is important to opt for the automated databases. Automated databases are becoming more and more popular these days. The sales process needs to be integrated with lead management seamlessly. This is precisely why more and more CRM software is offering these features. Automated sales processes include calls, meetings, demos and even revenues are not going to fall through the cracks.

A good lead management system is the backbone of any company, especially its sales operation. Without useful leads, there is no requirement of a CRM. Now that we have discussed the details of how an effective lead management system works let us focus on the best factors of implementing a proper lead management system.

Factors to Establish an Effective Lead Management System

One of the most critical aspects of effective lead management is looking to understand the requirements of your prospect continuously. In today’s business climate, sales are equal to building relationships and trust with your audience. As we all know, while cultivating a relationship, it is only long lasting when you want to know your prospect. This will reveal more and more about their requirements and interests.

Keeping track of all the interactions is essential. The reason is, as we already mentioned above, it will help you in knowing exactly which efforts helped you in converting a potential lead into a customer and which efforts went in vain. It is not always enough to do your best to close the deals. You need to have detailed knowledge and information about what worked previously. This will guide you which efforts should be implemented more often.

Keeping tabs on anonymous visitors is also important. Once they opt in, pull up their history. This is not at all a difficult task. All you need to do is implement a simple line on your website to keep track of your prospects who are both anonymous and marked. When a new lead opts in, you need to have a process to attribute all the previous visits to this lead. Why? Because you need to have information on the interaction that already happened. Knowing your prospect will give you an upper hand in the overall lead management process.

Be strict with dirty data. It has become almost effortless for any business organization to collect data. Analyzing leads is the key to a sales process. With the ease of data collection and management, there is no excuse for keeping information organized. But there should be vigilance for duplication of data. Opt for the auto-complete feature and keep records. This won’t let anyone or any software mess up the relevant data.

Set up a lead scoring system. An effective lead management system establishes a lead scoring system that will prioritize the efforts by analyzing which leads are close to getting converted. A lead scoring system will ensure that every member of the sales and marketing team is on the same page while dealing with a potential lead.

Always remember that flexibility is the key. In sales and marketing, never rely on a cheat sheet; because there is NO cheat sheet for sales and marketing. Marketing is constantly evolving, and so are the perspectives and thought processes of people. Evaluate your business organization, take the harder route, do as much research as possible. It will bring you closer to converting your potential leads into customers. If you are on the quest for good quality leads, then get in touch with Leadrop, the most trustworthy lead generating platform.