The Most Comprehensive Guide to Lead Management
Gary Wellington
October 30, 2019
Every business needs to acquire, manage, and nurture as many quality leads as possible, in order to convert them into paying customers. This process is known as lead management. It’s a delicate science, so your approach could really make or break your business. Here’s a comprehensive guide to lead management that will help you get the best results possible.
What Is Lead Management?
Lead management refers to any activities related to the acquisition, organization, qualification, and nurturing of the prospects that a business generates. Companies execute these activities with the ultimate goal of transforming leads into paying customers.
Lead management is very important because businesses have to pay for each lead they generate. These businesses must make the most of their investments and give each lead the appropriate level of attention that he or she deserves.
But when companies generate a large volume of leads, it’s easier said than done. Therefore, businesses must generate a deliberate, effective approach to lead management. This approach gives businesses the power to properly assess each lead and boost their bottom lines.
Each business will shape its own approach to lead management, according to factors such as the product or service it offers and the industry it operates within.
Generally, the lead management process is divided into a range of deliberate steps. We’ll take a closer look at the lead management process later in the article. Before we do, let’s take a look at why an active approach to lead management is so important.
Why Should You Actively Manage Your Leads?
Every business has to understand its customers and know where its revenue will come from. Therefore, lead management is critical to the success of any business. Here’s a closer look at the main reasons you should actively manage your leads:
Make accurate predictions.
Do you know how many leads are in your pipeline? Do you know how many new leads you generate each day? Active lead management can give you those answers. This rich information can give you the insights you’ll need to create accurate forecasts and make strategic decisions, such as whether to hire a lead generation specialist.
Shape your sales process.
Effective lead management makes it easier for you to differentiate between your leads. If you use the right processes, you can identify their viability, potential value, and much more. This process will help you prioritize certain leads, add structure to your sales process, and create a lead generation funnel that actually works.
Improve your buyer experience.
If you engage in deliberate lead management, you’ll know how and when to contact your leads because you’ll have already gathered the appropriate information, which includes key firmographic and demographic data. This information will help you make the buyer experience smoother and more targeted.
Enhance your marketing.
Great marketing is all about optimization. The best marketers use rich data to make small adjustments that bring in a greater quantity of high-quality leads. If you engage in lead management and pay attention to the sources of your leads, your marketers will be able to effectively optimize their marketing.
What Does the Lead Management Process Look Like?
There are lots of different approaches to lead management. These approaches vary from one business to the next, according to a range of factors. Here’s a closer look at the appearance of a general lead management process.
1. Lead generation
The first step in lead management involves acquiring leads. Marketing teams fuel their sales funnel with leads from three key sources:
- Paid leads generated through channels such as PPC and advertising campaigns.
- Earned leads generated through referrals, reviews, and recommendations.
- Owned leads generated by social media, content, and search engine marketing.
The majority of marketing teams will try to secure a steady ratio among the sources of their leads. Therefore, some businesses might find that some leads are more prominent than others.
2. Lead pre-qualification
Marketing departments often hoover up a range of leads during the lead generation process. It’s inevitable that marketers will find a mixture of leads, in terms of quality, viability, and applicability.
So you should have a pre-qualification stage, which will act as a quality control filter that allows you to automatically remove any low-quality or inappropriate leads.
3. Lead nurturing
Now that you’ve filtered out inappropriate leads, it’s time for you to focus on ways to move approved leads through your lead generation funnel.
You should try to engage leads in a way that maintains their interest and moves them toward a decision.
4. Lead scoring
It’s difficult to know when to move your leads through your lead generation funnel. If you do it manually, it can take a lot of time. So businesses automate the process with lead scoring.
5. Lead qualification
In the second step of your lead management process, you’ll already have pre-qualified leads. It’s important to qualify leads again before passing them to sales.
6. Lead distribution
Now that your leads are qualified, you have to distribute them to your salespeople. You should assess which salesperson has the best chance of closing a particular type of lead.
7 Lead Management Best Practices
#1 Harmonize sales and marketing.
The modern business landscape demands that you create strong links between your sales and marketing departments.
#2 Use buyer personas.
You’ll get the best lead management results when you properly understand your leads. To close a deal, you need to have a clear idea of their expectations, preferences, and ways to engage with them.
#3 Plan your lead generation funnel carefully.
Your lead generation funnel provides the skeleton for your entire lead management process.
#4 Manage your data.
You have to make sure your data is clean and accurate. You can’t afford to have outdated or inaccurate data in your systems.
#5 Make the most of your content marketing.
There will be lots of opportunities for you to share and use your content to its fullest effect.
#6 Revise and review your lead management system.
Your system shouldn’t be rigid and inflexible. Instead, you should make sure to regularly review its performance and accuracy.
#7 Draw feedback from the entire team.
Your lead management process will shape how your sales and marketing teams work together. You should make sure you listen to both teams and speak with your managers.
Best Lead Management Software
SalesRipe
SalesRipe is a simple platform that helps businesses quickly identify and connect with new customers.
Salesforce
Salesforce is the world’s leading CRM.
HubSpot
HubSpot is software for marketing, sales, and service.
Zoho CRM
Zoho CRM is online CRM software.
Pipedrive
Pipedrive is another CRM system that aims at making life as simple as possible for sales teams.
Conclusion
We hope this piece has helped you see lead management in a new way. As you can see, it’s a complicated task, so you have to use the right tools to give yourself the best chance of success.