Lead management is a set of best practices designed to generate new potential clients, generally through a variety campaigns and programs. These three lead management tips will help you create and operate a lead management program that grows your business.
Ultimately lead management is a framework for your business to setup and follow in order to properly manage leads, taking each through the beginning stages of your sales pipeline.
Lead management gives you the ability to:
- Capture leads
- Nurture leads that aren’t ready
- Score leads so you know which ones are ready for sales
- Distribute leads to the right sales person at the right time
- Test and Evaluate leads for quality
Let’s examine these three important lead management tips now:
TIP #1: Nurture Leads
- Build a relationship with your prospects.
- Create a common understanding and establish needs.
- Implement lead scoring so you can tell which leads are ready to be distributed to your sales team.
TIP #2: Communicate with Your Sales Team
Part of the lead management process is working with your sales team so they know when a lead is “sales-ready.”
Build a set of criteria for your sales team to follow that allows them to know when each lead is ready for a sales call.
You can call this step building your “perfect lead.” Your set of criteria for the “perfect lead” should define the following:
- Demographic information – including geographic location, size, etc.
- Lead source information – such as ad source, search terms, browsing info, etc.
- Behavioral information – including web page visits, downloads, clicks, etc.
In addition to the above criteria, your company could decide to add other information to describe your “perfect lead.” It is up to you and your sales team to define when a lead is ready for your sales cycle.
TIP #3: Track and Report on all Marketing Activity
Google Analytics is a great (and free!) tool to use for tracking your key metrics. But, relying only on Google Analytics can present problems. Other, paid, analytics programs provide another level of insight and reliability that can be difficult to match in the Google version. Further, you can find many programs that combine tracking with automation and other functionality. And finally, tying all your information to one program leaves you at the mercy of that program – if Google Analytics were to go away tomorrow, what would you do?
Using Software to Implement Lead Management Tips
Finding a lead management software program that works for you and your business is crucial.
There is no reason to perform every marketing task manually anymore. Your lead management system should provide a level of automation that makes life easier.
You can save yourself and your sales team a lot of time and money by investing in a lead management software program. You want to find a program that, at minimum, includes the following:
- email marketing Automation
- Form Builders
- Importing and exporting of leads (website, inbound call, importing via spreadsheet, lead vendor integration and HTTP posting)
- Assigns and distributes leads using automations
- Lead nurturing automations
- High level filtering system to sort, distribute and assign leads
- Customizable analytics with a robust reporting system