Is your lead management process established and effective, or are you still using outdated methods? Why do you have a business? To generate sales leads, profits, and ROI (Return on Investment).
How do profits come in? Through leads! And how do you convert leads into customers successfully? Through lead management, right?
Lead generation can be done in many ways, but the most important ingredient in the recipe for making profits is lead management.
In this article, I will share five ways to better manage sales leads. But first, let’s briefly explore what sales leads are.
What are sales leads?
A sales leads is a contact, individual or organization who has the potential or interest to buy your services or products.
Businesses gain access to sales leads through advertising, trade shows, direct mailings, third parties, and other marketing efforts.
If you are thinking why does lead management matter? It matters because it brings in business.
Don’t Allow Your Leads to Go Cold
Gathering interesting qualified leads in large quantities is extremely exciting, and can signal a wave of growth for your company. However, just having a list of names will not further your business goals. Make sure you develop a CRM lead management nurturing sequence that keeps your leads engaged and interested without being bothersome or invasive.
As a general rule, leads tend to start cooling within 48 hours of contact, so it’s best to build in communication processes that require all CRM lead management to receive communication within 2 days of every action of interest they take. When you move to the individual communication phase, you should ideally try to tighten response times to 24 hours or less using CRM lead management.
Distribute your leads timely.
Determining which salesperson should be given which lead could be tough but if you will not work quickly, you are going sales.
Online sales lead go cold faster than you think.
Studies show that salespeople need to respond to leads within 48 hours of a prospect providing a means for contact for more chances of sealing the deal.
Think about your own experiences while buying a product, if the company did not respond on time, you lost interest, right?
So, for your leads to be interested in your product, your lead distribution should be quick and follow up should be quicker.
Nurture your leads properly.
salesperson nurturing leads to grow business”
Sales and marketing are like Tom and Jerry, they live together but do not always get along well.
Sales complain about the quality and quantity of leads received from marketing. This is one of the biggest issues that many organizations face.
There can be two reasons for the conflict: leads are not enough or leads are nor perceived properly.
The solution to this is the lead nurturing process that does its job well.
Developing prospects into sales-ready leads is a big challenge for many organizations and lead nurturing is key.
Depending on the products and services you offer, most people are probably not ready to buy based on their first interaction with you. Best practices call for nurturing your leads over time.
Moving prospects along the sales process by giving them value is the core of lead nurturing. Content, service and constant connection are major keys in this process. Sales enablement teams help bridge the gap between marketing and sales. They calibrate marketing collateral so the material provides value to the sales department in a selling situation.
Extract more information from prospects.
The team of best salespeople focus on detailed and qualified leads and so should the rest of the team.
More the information about the prospect, the more the excitement of your sales team would be for the lead.
Whoever’s collecting prospect information needs to extract additional information from every prospect with each interaction.
Information including “what interested you about our products” and “why is it important to you.”
If the leads are hot enough, have enough information, and are qualified enough to really close sales, the sales team will be motivated. The prospecting team has to do a great job making sure that enough information is present to actually make touch with the lead.
Hold regular sales review meetings with the marketing and sales teams.
Regular meetings with the team help you in tracking their progress, reviewing the lead quality, tracking the win/loss records and CRM systems.
Through meetings, you can also address the problems your team is facing and can find a solution to it.
Your staff should feel valued, comfortable and appreciated so that their motivation to work never goes down.
Summary
No sun means no photosynthesis and no photosynthesis means no food for plants. Same way sales lead brings in business for your organization.
But, when they are not managed well, they can prove to be fallout for your organization.
So, now you know why you need these 5 ways to manage sales leads
Now go and apply these ways in your organization and do some great business.
Do not forget to thank me later!!!