‘’53% of marketers spend at least half of their budget on lead generation.’’
Are you one of those marketers as well?
We must say, this clearly shows how dedicated you are to capture quality leads for your business.
But if you’re here reading this article, it could be for two things, one being your lead management is not walking towards the right route, or second, your lead management process in itself is creating chaos in your business life.
Whatever may be the reason, continue reading this article without any hesitation because this piece of content can solve your problem and also give you the only solution you require to ace your lead management game.
Leads are important in fact losing out on one lead can crumble your sales and conversion numbers hence pushing you back while your competitors stand on top.
We can let all that lead negative thoughts present in your mind at the moment fade away, all you need to do is acknowledge, understand, and follow the content that this article provides you.
Let’s get you going.
Let’s understand this better with an example:
We want you to visualize this scenario.
There is an empty bottle in front of you.
You have over 20 balls and you fill them all in. But not all the balls are fitting in.
You’re trying your level best but still some of the balls are falling out and from 20 you have just 13 balls in.
It then strikes you that if you align these balls well, you can fit it the right way and that is exactly what happened. By placing it well, you managed to fit in all the balls without even one falling.
This is the same situation with your lead management except the last part is minus.
On a scale of 1 to 10, how well can you rate your lead management process?
Do you think it’s great? Do you think that it can be better?
If you still happen to find your leads being missed or not falling through, you have to do something quickly.
This is exactly what this article will continue to help you in as you read further.
You are aware that lead management is the process of taking care of leads but in 2021 this definition has a newer meaning.
In 2021, lead management is the process of making your leads ready to purchase from you. It is the entire process from capturing them, guiding them further down, to nurturing them, and finally convincing them to make that sale.
On the other hand, the lead management process is what justifies the above process.
The process is what will help you follow the right track and let you generate leads efficiently especially in the right direction.
Why don’t we understand better about the lead management process to help you understand better about why this matters?
The whole agenda of making use of lead management processes is to ensure that all your leads are being catered to well. You could be spending tons of money on exhibiting your brand online and on other platforms, it is then understood that you can expect a good number of leads coming to your website.
In such cases, maybe at least a few of those leads will be your potential prospect hence you need to understand that catering to all of them will help you identify it well which is exactly the purpose of a lead management process.
Lead management process ensures not all your leads are being missed. Do you remember the empty bottle example mentioned in the article in the beginning, only when you can align your leads well that is when you can cater to them better?
With the lead management process, this is the same case. What happens is when you capture all your prospects from the right sources automatically, there is no room for missing out on potential leads.
Another great reason for the lead management process to be used or rather created is that it teaches you well on how lead management can be done. It is not easy to manage the number of leads that come your way. You cannot afford to miss out on such leads because they can prove to be an essential sales lead.
Lead management processes ensure that you are managing it well.
You are capturing your leads and also nurturing the lead in the right manner. With the process, you are categorizing your leads well and are nurturing your leads according to the lead score you conduct. You could have cold leads and warm leads and each of them would be catered to differently.
For example, cold leads would require more nurturing, warm leads would require just minimal nurturing and they can be pushed further. This helps guide your actions to the right route when it comes to conducting effective and quicker lead generation processes.
Here the factor is that you receive detailed reports. With the reports, you can easily understand where your leads stand in your sales pipeline. You will have a clearer understanding of how your lead generation functions and what you can do to make it better.
Now that we have this understood, let’s move ahead to understand better the stages which a lead management process holds.
Also Read : Win 3x more qualified leads with cold calling tricks that work in 2021
You will have multiple channels right in front of you from where you capture leads. The sources are going to have a double-digit because you’re expanding and exhibiting your brand to a wider audience. In such cases, your lead capture too will increase in number. From one source you could get 10 potential prospects, from another 5, and from another nothing.
In such cases, what will you do?
It is better that you do not conduct this work manually because it will waste your time and make you miss out on leads so instead you can work on capturing your leads in an automated manner.
‘’Our tip would be to use lead automation software (especially since there are many great free options on the market) to automate as much as possible. You can not really take lead prospecting and management to the next level if you have to do everything yourself manually.’’- Dmitry Davydov, Chief Marketing Officer at Bitrix24
With this, you will have the ability to capture all your leads from all the sources that you have and store them in one place to avoid any lead confusion.
Once you have your leads in place, the next step would be to track their activities. When your leads have found you, their next step would be to learn more and explore your brand. This is when they start to view your multiple website pages, your blogs, case studies, and all are seen and also your communications channels are being used for engagement.
All of these actions are useful in helping you to understand about your leads. Another piece of information you can understand from these tracking details is whether your leads are interested or not. These are observations that you will have that can help give you an idea on which leads are most likely to continue further on exploring your brand more.
In this stage, here is when your team comes to play. When you are aware that a lead is reading your blogs for long or some lead has requested for a call that is when you understand that your leads need to be guided or rather distributed to the right person. Again this isn’t manual work which is why making use of an auto-assign guide leads to the right person in your team.
Let’s understand this better with an example:
You can assign your leads to the right team members according to their actions.
Say that Adam is a warm lead and is showing interest in your brand, you can distribute such leads to Molly who is a good sales rep and has the ability to convince the lead to move forward in the sales pipeline.
You also have Andrew who is a hot lead and wants to engage with your team members directly, in such cases, you can direct such types of leads to Sally who is the ideal person to engage with such leads over a call.
This action is important because it helps guide the leads further down the sales pipeline whilst ensuring that you come closer to cracking a sale opportunity.
Lead qualification is the process of understanding which are your good and potential leads.
Let’s understand this with an example:
Now you have engaged with your leads, not all of them would have been a hot or a warm lead as mentioned in the examples, very few will be the potential leads your brand wants. To deal with those leads that are unsure that is when your previous category came to place.
So after an engagement with such leads, you will have the ability to score the leads you engaged with. If the leads are somewhere between 8- 10 that means these leads are interested and your focus should be more on converting them into a sales lead.
On the other hand, if the lead score was around 6- 7, such leads could require more nurturing to push them further and if the score is lesser than 6 such leads require even more nurturing but your focus shouldn’t be more on them.
This is the last stage of a lead management process which is a dedicated section for the content explained previously above.
You learned that you are not supposed to share your focus more on leads that fall below the score of 6 because they would require more nurturing, well this is the category they will fall into then.
In this category, you will be aware of why the leads have fallen here, for instance, maybe they weren’t ready to purchase or they still have their doubts or they want to conduct the investment later and more. Since you have given the score to such leads, it is understood that you know how these leads need to be nurtured.
Let’s understand this with an example:
Say that Bob has his doubts and for that reason, he couldn’t go further down the purchase stage in the sales pipeline so you understand that Bob needs to have that confidence to invest in your brand and the solution you’re offering, so what do you do?
When Bob gets convinced that yours is the brand to make the investment he will eventually have a good score which could be 8.
Now that we have this understanding as well, it is evident that having an efficient lead management process can work wonders for your lead generation process which is why we will show you how you can create a successful one.
Also Read : Capture 2x more Qualified Leads without breaking a muscle in 2021
The best way to make a difference in your lead generation is to first understand who you are dealing with. All the leads that come to your website are not the ones that will invest in your business or your solution, they might be just looking around. But there will be leads that are going to add value to your business only if you treat them right.
For you to get that action done, you need to first learn how to identify them, for this to happen you need to first understand how your ideal lead profile should like.
Let’s understand this with an example:
Say that you have two prospects at the moment, one is Mary and the other is Martha. Mary and Martha are on your website. Mary continues to read your blogs while Martha is scrolling through your website. You understand that Mary is reading your blogs one after the other while Martha is scrolling without any intent to do anything.
You check your list to identify who is the ideal profile your focus should be on:
You realize that Mary fits the second and the first option and so you continue to learn more about Mary, you understand who she is, which brand she is from, how she came to your website, what blogs is she reading, and more.
You realize that she is the head manager of a brand xxx that is looking for similar products that you offer. Understanding this, you then engage with Mary and focus on her.
To create the ideal lead profile you can identify:
Another great way to create the lead management process is to collect valuable information about your leads.
While contact details such as email addresses and phone numbers will do, other information such as how did the prospect reach your website, what are they exploring on your website the most, which blogs are they specifically reading and more can determine if the leads are the ideal ones for your business or not.
It is also great to monitor your lead’s actions via their online account so that you can have an understanding of what they are looking for. This will help you understand where your leads are finding out about you and what context they are reaching out to you for.
A lead score determines whether a prospect is worth the attention or not. A high lead score helps your brand and the team to understand that this is the lead that requires the focus. A low score determines that the lead still requires nurturing and will continue to do so until the lead’s score is improved.
The next step is to nurture your leads. Your leads have come to you because they have stumbled upon your ad, they haven’t come to you with a firm mind that they will invest in you, for that thought to appear in their mind, they require all the reasons to think of it in the first place.
For this reason, nurturing is one of the best things that can help push your prospects to consider this thought. With constant nurturing you can push your prospects down the sales funnel quicker.
Your nurturing actions could look like this:
When you have certain leads in hand, the ones which fit the below criteria:
That is when you know that they need to be pushed to your sales team to continue the engagement and get them to make that purchase. Always remember that the leads which you send to the sales team need to be the hot leads because the whole agenda of the sales team is to get them to talk to prospects who genuinely want your brand.
Don’t waste your time and the sales reps’ time to deal with leads that are not sure. Focus on your lead score to understand what type of leads needs to be pushed to the sales team.
Your job isn’t over here. While you have pushed your leads to the sales rep to get them to purchase, the sales cycle doesn’t end here. You need to continue assisting your prospects and nurture them further so that they continue to remain loyal to your brand. Continue to nurture them with your product information, updates, and more.
The whole agenda here is to help them be confident about their investment in your brand and be the word of mouth promoter for your business.
‘’68% of businesses report struggling with lead generation.’’
But now this number will drop because with the content shared above, lead management and its process are easy to conduct.
Continue to practice and understand the content shared above, prioritize your leads well and understand that catering to multiple leads isn’t the solution rather catering to the right leads is what your business is seeking at the moment.
So tell us, what did you think of this article? Was it helpful? What caught your attention? We would love to hear your opinions.
Share us your thoughts via a tweet.
, November 27, 2020, LimeCall Team
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