What is Lead Management?

The process of obtaining and maintaining leads (possible consumers) until they complete a purchase is known as lead management. This is a more extensive procedure than traditional advertising and is best suited for eCommerce shops that cultivate personalized connections with consumers. Lead management is not to be confused with lead nurturing, which is a subset of lead management that occurs at the conclusion of the process. The practice of tracking and managing prospective consumers is known as lead management. It is sometimes known as client acquisition management or contact management, and it often includes the following processes:

Lead generation:

A variety of marketing methods are used by businesses to generate customer interest and inquiry in their products or services. Blog postings, ads, white papers, social media, events, and public relations initiatives are common examples.

Customer inquiry and data collection:

Marketing consumers respond with curiosity, and their information is captured. This results in a sales lead.

Filtering, grading, distribution, and contact:

Leads are filtered based on the veracity of the request, prioritized based on the chance of becoming a client, and then sent to sales representatives to be contacted. Depending on the scale of your marketing program, identifying how to effectively categorize and filter individual leads might take a significant amount of time.

If the process concludes with a sale, the lead has progressed through the sales funnel and become a customer. However, the task does not stop there. As a company grows in size, lead management gets more complicated - handling 200 leads is very different from managing 2,000, 20,000, or even 200,000. When those leads become clients, firms must maintain those ties. In summary, following up is essential for sustaining high levels of client satisfaction and sales efficiency.

Why You Need Lead Management

The process of managing leads assists organizations in determining which strategies are generating the most leads, allowing you to improve your sales approach to be both successful and efficient. Furthermore, because lead management records a person's whole history of contacts and experiences with your firm, you can examine how a person progressed from a prospect to a lead to a client. Automated databases are becoming increasingly popular for successfully managing these sales funnels. The sales process should be completely integrated with lead management, which is why more and more CRM software is including these functions. When you automate the sales process, calls, demos, and meetings — and even income — don't fall through the gaps. A great sales organization is built on lead handling. Without effective leads, there is no need for a CRM or even a sales crew. This notion addresses the initial phase in the sales cycle, which is to generate qualified leads and, eventually, delighted customers.

Let's take a closer look at the many steps of the lead management process:

1. Automation of lead capture

Lead capture automation entails automatically capturing leads in your system. In today's world, there are endless sources of lead generation, and when the lead volume is big, manually entering each lead into the system is impractical (as you saw in the infographic above). Lead capture automation guarantees that each lead is supplied into the system at the point of origin, preventing any kind of lead leakage. Another benefit of lead collection automation is the ability to automatically determine which sources are delivering the most leads and money for you. Both the high profit and the money-draining lead creation sources are easily identified. This information is critical for marketing and business intelligence teams because it allows them to reimagine their budget.

2. Follow-up on leads

When a lead is collected, the lead management or lead monitoring software begins following that lead's activities and behavior - the sites they visit, the forms they fill out, the time they spend on your blog, and so on. Essentially, it provides you with crucial information about your leads that you would not have otherwise. Conversations over the phone or via chat are also tracked by modern lead management tools.

3. Lead distribution

After obtaining the leads, you must forward them to the appropriate salespeople. Again, doing everything manually will take a very long time. A lead distribution system will automatically allocate leads based on whatever logic you establish. In most companies, if a corporation can contact the lead before their competitors, they will gain a significant advantage. (Because if a lead fills out your inquiry form, they have most likely done the same for 5 other services comparable to yours.) With lead distribution, you can drastically cut response time and ensure that the lead is pursued by the most appropriate salesperson, ensuring that the lead has a consistent experience as soon as they make an inquiry (enter your lead management system).

4. Lead qualification

At this point, the leads are evaluated to see whether they are worth following upon. This type of qualified lead is also known as a sales-ready lead. Jim's quality score is greater than Lana's and Marshall's because, according to the criteria, the CEO as a job title is given more weightage than Sales Head and, without a doubt, Intern. The high-quality score indicates that Jim should be pursued first. This allows the sales development team to prioritize their activities and contact the most relevant leads first. Although quality and lead score might assist a user to comprehend the sincerity and purpose of the customer, they will never completely replace human connection. That being said, if properly configured, it saves a significant amount of time and energy.

5. Lead nurturing Lead nurturing is the practice of sorting leads based on whether they have been contacted or not and scheduling them for follow-up activities. They may be included in drip marketing programs or contacted by a corporate representative over the phone. If the process concludes with a sale, the lead has progressed through the sales funnel and become a customer. However, the task does not stop there. As a company grows in size, lead management gets more complicated - handling 200 leads is very different from managing 2,000, 20,000, or even 200,000. When those leads become clients, firms must maintain those ties. In summary, following up is essential for sustaining high levels of client satisfaction and sales efficiency.

There is no such thing as a dead lead. Some leads may not be ready to buy right now, but that might quickly change in the future. Some of them may never buy, but if you provide them with a positive experience in whatever they requested from you – perhaps an e-book, a blog post, or some freebies – you will have a brand champion for life.