Remember the fundamentals of learning? Reading, 'Riting, and 'Rithmetic. Well, lead management has a similar 3 R foundation for success: Receipt, Retrieval, and Record. These 3 Rs tie to the critical function of an effective lead management system--automating the sales pipeline. Most sales teams spend an inordinate amount of time entering, sorting, and tracking leads. All the while, critical time is lost from building relationships and making sales calls.
Lead receipt, retrieval, and recording are critical sales process points. Automation and optimization of these processes can increase your sales velocity. Efficiency at these points in the sales funnel also lessens the frustration of your sales force and increases production.
Lead Receipt
The days of manually enter leads should be gone. Lead receipt can be reduced to push button imports of Outlook, GMail, Yahoo!, LinkedIN, or Plaxo and real time distribution from your lead provider or your own website.
If your sales team is manually entering lead data you are losing valuable sales production. You are also sacrificing the opportunity for real time follow-up on leads. If you are generating or buying leads this efficiency is critical. It can be the difference between you getting the deal or losing it to the competitor.
Lead receipt is also important to accountability. Your leads are valuable. They are earnest customer inquiries or prospects. Regardless of whether the leads are purchased or self-generated they have significant value. Make sure you handle each contact as carefully as you would a fist full of money.
Lead Retrieval
Sales professionals are notorious for their database skills. Most can manipulate and segment a database better than any technical guy. Yet, it should be simpler. Leads can be segmented and feed to your team based on performance, qualifications, and allocations. Contact is the objective, conversations are the goal, segmenting and sorting databases should be technology feature, not a sales skill.
Lead retrieval should be a measurement of sales capacity, performance, and velocity. It should be a compelled event. A process that enforces follow-up. Don't leave retrieval and follow-up to chance. Create an active process within your lead management system that drives lead retrieval.
Moving lead retrieval beyond the typical scanning and working of a call list will quickly accelerate your sales.
Lead Tracking (Recording)
Accountability for leads through the entire lead life cycle will not close deals, but will optimize your opportunities. Lead management is precisely that, the management of a complex process. Lead tracking gives you insights into opportunities. This tracking helps you maximize successful lead sources and sales process, while minimizing poor performance in both marketing and sales.
Ideal tracking is simple an observation of marketing sources and sales actions. The manual annotation of accounts and leads create errors that lead to bad decisions. Instead frame your sales actions into discrete, well defined processes and actions. Use your lead management system to track and note each lead as it transition in and out of these statuses.
Make Your Lead Management Work
Get your sales team out of the lead management business and back into sales. Make your sales system automate and actively track key process points and watch your sales accelerate. The best lead management system is designed to make your lead receipt, retrieval, and tracking seamless and simple for your sales force.
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