Lead management is just a game of red strings leading us to potential customers from a source. The question is– What is lead management? How do we organize these connections in order to close the deal? How do we value a lead’s quality and what automation tools are at our disposal?
TL;DR: Summary of lead management
- Lead management is the process of turning leads into paying customers.
- A good lead management process can close more sales, increase customer acquisition, and bring higher ROAS.
- A CRM software, like Leaf CRM, can help to capture leads and close sales faster.
What is lead management?
Lead management is the process to collect, qualify, nurture and manage leads so they turn from potential customers into paying ones through the sales team.
In the marketing world, leads are generally understood as individuals or organizations who interacted with your brand and can become potential customers. These leads are usually within your own market reach. That is why effective lead management is the key in a successful closing, so what is lead management?
Because of this, a company’s lead management can greatly impact its sales, and there are many hurdles a salesperson must face before they even get to close the deal.
Why lead management matters for a business?
The lead management process’ main goal is to provide a streamlined, effective method for lead captures. This way, the sales pipeline of a business is fully optimized. This ensures that every stage of the process is tracked. Without the right lead management, a company may face loss in its Return On Ad Spend (ROAS), wasting resources and customers.
A study by McKinsey & Company found that personalization improves customer outcomes and drives up to 40% of revenue.
Thus, an effective lead management system is vital for any brand, especially those that aim to reach the right people and close that deal. A common practice for successful lead management is using a customer relationship management (CRM) system.
Once a prospect becomes a customer, they will be handed over to different teams responsible for onboarding, account management, or customer support.
A CRM tool acts as a centralized record of the customer’s information and interaction history, giving teams a shared point of reference without relying on unorganized records or information passed between employees.
With a proper CRM, the entire company can ensure a smooth customer experience and increase customer retention.
How Does Lead Management Works?
After all, just understanding the theory doesn’t guarantee a successful lead — There are 7 stages of this process. In this process, you will generate leads and qualify leads before contacting them.
- Lead generation: The process of generating leads through inbound or outbound method. In other words, the stage that catches your leads. To do this, it utilizes the lead generation funnel. Read more about running lead generation campaigns here.
- Qualification and segmentation: The qualification process that decides the leads whether they are worth pursuing or not. If a lead is warm or hot, then it will continue through the rest of the stages.
- Nurturing: The process of building a relationship with leads through targeted content and by utilizing the sales funnel. The idea is to move your leads to the next stage by segmenting, nurturing, and profiling them.
- Lead scoring: The process of evaluating the value of a sales lead to compare between them. This helps in collaborating both the marketing and sales teams to be on the same page on what qualifies as a quality lead.
- Distribution: This is the stage of distributing the leads to the appropriate rep to reduce the duration of callbacks. It’s the process where your system decides to whom should it hand the lead to.
- Lead conversion: The process of converting the leads into prospects. And then, into paying customers based on the sales funnel. For example, you caught a lead, so one of the ways for you to convert them is to give them a trial!
- Tracking: The process of tracking the leads’ status from start to finish, up until the results. Leaf CRM utilizes a customizable sales pipeline for this, making it easier for you to keep track of your leads.
So... How can a CRM system help?
A CRM system helps by systematically processing the leads. It then immediately routes them to the right salesperson.
CRM tools have advanced throughout the years. Each of them provides different approaches towards lead management. For instance, Leaf CRM utilises a campaign-based classification system for the leads. The flexible customizations also ease the use of the software.
Not only useful for marketers...
CRM software can also be handy for salespeople, management teams, and digital marketing agencies across many industries.
With a centralized lead management (CRM), the sales team can actively work to improve their conversion rates. Not only that, a centralized data of lead information makes management for everyone a smooth experience, despite their different roles or positions.
What are the benefits of good lead management?
A strong lead management system has many benefits, some of them being:
1. Improve brand reputation
Besides the obvious where you’ll save time with a lead management, you can also improve your brand reputation. With a faster speed to lead , your rep will make a memorable first impression. Thus, affecting not only your rep’s reputation, but also your brand’s.
Picture this: you’ve just filled out a form on a touring agency’s website. 20 minutes later, you receive a phone call from them. The person on the phone is talking about an end-of-the-year tour package promotion, and is interested in collaborating with your brand.
You would definitely remember this agency’s name from now on. This is why efficient customer relationship management is vital in not only securing the lead, but also improve your brand reputation.
But, if you want to read more about building quality customer relationships, check out our blog about it.
2. Increase ROAS
A successful lead management is proven through a higher result in ROAS. Every dollar counts when it comes to tracking and managing these leads.
A good lead management not only helps in navigating the cost per lead (CPL), but it also tracks the revenue and progress of the process in real-time.
Higher ROAS means more profit; therefore, a brand’s CPL should always be maintained and taken into account to ensure that enough successful leads are gained.
3. Improves transparency & communication
A CRM tracks lead and salesperson activity with timestamps. So, the whole team can see the latest sales status without chasing individuals for updates.
Every status is recorded, synced and logged because of the systematic process integrated into the software.
A marketer can spend hours downloading and assigning leads to salesperson(s). But this does not guarantee a salesperson has followed up with their leads.
Imagine a whole company’s lead source process relying on a WhatsApp channel. If you were a salesperson, you would most probably miss the messages or only skim through it.
By using CRM software specialized for lead management, this issue can be solved in no time. Marketers and managers can always track sales performance to take necessary actions for leads with zero updates.
4. Eliminates manual admin task
A CRM software also implements transparency. With manual lead management, most marketers would have trouble in keeping track of the progress and status of each lead — plus, a salesperson could just lie about their current status.
CRM helps in ensuring that transparency is a built-in nature for everyone. Every status is recorded, synced and logged because of the systematic process integrated in the software.
5. Map sales workflow
CRM lead management softwares simplify the lengthy process of the stages. A sales pipeline can visualise the leads’ process in each stage. This helps salesperson(s) clearer view. And they can prioritise and put in more effort to follow up with hot leads.
Conclusions
Overall, CRM tools are here to help and ease the lead management process. Evidently, there are many benefits in getting one. If your company is facing loss due to poor management, a CRM software is sure to help in fixing this problem.
Leaf CRM provides a flexible interface and real-time tracking for your leads. Plus, if you’re a brand that focuses on marketing campaigns, then Leaf CRM might just be perfect for you!
Looking for more options? Check out this blog about the best CRM softwares to learn more about it.
Explore more about lead management, digital marketing, and effective administrative tasks with us at Leaf CRM!
