Lead management software helps businesses manage their leads to track and monitor the progress of their leads, track the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns, which can be helpful in improving the efficiency of the sales process.
There are many different ways that prospects progress from lead to customer. To effectively manage your leads, leaders in sales and marketing must develop a set of best practices. Look through these principles to help streamline your efforts and boost your conversion rates, with or without the need for lead management software.
Technique 1: Be Mindful of Lead Sources
Leads come from various sources and enter the pipeline at different points. A source is an original point when a customer first hears about you. These sources vary based on industry and organization, but let’s use some examples from PR 20/20 for reference:
- Website
- Blogs
- Referrals
- Events
- Email marketing
- Direct marketing
- Digital advertising
- Social media
- Digital advertising
Technique 2: Ranking Your Lead Sources
If a company engages in lead scoring, it assigns values to each lead, usually in the form of numerical points. This lets sales teams know which leads are more urgent to follow up leads, which are more likely to yield a sale, which need a bit more nurturing, etc. Lead rankings vary from company to company, but there are some basic best practices organizations can use.
- Demographic Information
- Company Information
- Online Behavior
- Email Engagement
- Social Engagement
- Spam Detection
Technique 3: Focus on Good Data
Technique 4: Practice Lead Nurturing
Technique 5: Lead Management Assessment