7 Steps for Using Lead Management to
Improve Sales Results
Generating leads and converting them to sales is a top challenge for many companies. Sometimes, there are many inquiries or qualified leads but the business lacks a process to convert them to sales. The key is to simply define, measure and optimize each step.
This process is called lead management and is put in place to enable you to generate and convert leads as efficiently as possible. If you are building a lead management strategy from scratch or renewing your team’s comment, Pivotal Arc has over 25+ years of experience in both marketing and sales. Here’s is a beginner’s guide to start the discussion.
1. Outline the Steps
Examine your successful sales. What has been the pattern of progression from getting the leads to making the sales? Defining the steps you have taken, and will take, to acquire leads, educate prospects, build interest, advance discussions and close the sale is the starting point for a good lead management process.
2. Set Up a Lead Scoring Criteria Based on a Typical Purchase Process
You have limited time and resources, so you need to prioritize the leads on which to focus your marketing and sales efforts. With lead scoring, you assign value to your leads based on various attributes, allowing you to rank your leads. It sounds simple, but you need to think carefully about your evaluation criteria.
Start by creating opportunity profiles or personas that describe your ideal buyers, company size and industry. Also, evaluate how people have engaged with your company, including emails, phone calls and meetings. Next, think about the conversations that you need to have to move a buyer through the buying cycle to ensures that the lead will not drop out of your pipeline.
3. Define a Marketing Qualified Lead
There are two different types of qualified leads: marketing qualified leads and sales qualified leads. Marketing qualified leads need to be developed until they are advanced sufficiently for attention by the sales leader or team. Sometimes an inside sales person (or tele-marketing rep) may need to make phone calls to ask some questions to determine if the prospect is sales qualified.
4. Define a Sales Qualified Lead
Many marketing leads are not qualified. Often there are many inquiries or leads but the marketing team isn’t sales savvy or has never been on the sales side of the business. If the leads passed to sales are not sales qualified, two problems result. First, salespeople waste valuable time sifting through long lists. Second, and more likely, sales representatives won’t trust a long list leads and may ignore qualified leads when on the same list as those unqualified. Improving qualification at this point results in a substantial increase in lead conversion rates.
So, a shared definition of a qualified lead is critical. The qualification definition may include whether a prospect has the budget, authority to buy, a need for your offering, and the urgency to make buying a decision. This qualification definition helps define a minimum lead score before the lead is passed to sales.
5. Determine Data to Include with Qualified Leads
What information do your salespeople need to advance a lead successfully? You likely want to include contact information, such as title, company name, industry, phone numbers, website and links to social media profiles. Other useful information includes the prospect’s budget, authority to make a purchasing decision, other individuals who might influence the decision, how your solution fits the company’s needs and when they plan to make a purchase decision. Including this information will make the sales leader or team more effective and efficient.
6. Outline a Lead Nurturing Process
For many companies, most of your leads will not be ready to buy at the outset. Those prospects will, however, buy someday from you or your competition. To improve the chances that you convert those leads, you need to have a defined process for nurturing them. Tailored email campaigns are effective, especially those that are based on a prospect’s actions or specific needs. Organized in this manner, you ensure that you send relevant content. During the on-going communication, you can address common questions, overcome objections and include additional offers that accelerate the prospect through the buying cycle.
7. Measure, Report and Optimize
As the saying goes, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth measuring. Decide what metrics you need to evaluate the value of your sales lead and to improve your success in managing them. Ensure that you are tracking leads and the chosen metrics within your marketing system. These measurements will also give you a snapshot of what’s working and what’s not, so you can change your process as necessary to increase success.
Ultimately, marketing is in place to accelerate sales results –- not to generate activity. Begin or re-commit to taking these Lead Management steps today to advance your leads and improve your sales conversion rates.
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