What Goes into Lead Management?
Lead management would not be possible without first lead generation. Without
leads, you would have nothing to manage. Lead generation comes about either
from outboard sources (cold calls, advertising, email schemes) or inbound sources (social media, PPC, referrals).
Once you’ve started compiling your list from lead generation, it
turns into lead management. But remember not every potential
customer is created equal. Some customers will be considered sales qualified and ready to buy or
sign up for your service. Others are still in the research phase.
Lead management allows you to know where each person is and how to nurture
them into becoming a
bonafide customer.
How to Get Started with Lead Management?
Once you've established (or captured) your leads, you move into cleansing
your list. You want to make sure you only put time and effort into leads
where the likelihood of them qualifying as a customer is high. For those
that need very little nurturing because they are ready to buy, they go
straight to the sales team. Others who need more resources or information,
but still qualify as a good lead will go into the lead nurturing stage
to receive follow-ups.
Start with a well-laid out
marketing plan to build your brand presence and
gain leads. Remember leads can come from many avenues, including referrals,
email capture,
social media engagement, and outbound efforts.
As your list
grows, consider a software service such as Zoho or Salesforce to help manage
your list on an analytical level. Marketing experts such as
Scorpion can also maintain lead management if you prefer external support.
Tips to Help with Lead Management
Lead management can help your business grow by understanding better where
your leads are coming from and how to
connect more with them. Some things you should consider with lead management.
Speed:
You should try to
connect with the customers that fill out a form or try to call you within 15 minutes
of that submission. Having speed be a part of your lead management goals
will add credibility and trust to incoming customers and existing customers.
Friendliness:
Training your staff to be friendly with your customers and actively try to help their needs
will improve your lead management and improve the amount of leads that
turn into customers. You can provide training, record calls for training,
give awards for customer service, or find other ways to make sure it's a part of your
culture in the service business.
Lead management:
Having a lead management dashboard to see where everything is coming in
and how it ties to your
marketing efforts can help you make sure you aren’t wasting your money.
