Lead Management
A lead is any person who indicates interest in a company's product or service in some way, shape, or form.
Leads typically hear from a business or organization after opening communication (by submitting personal information for an offer, trial, or subscription) … instead of getting a random cold call from someone who purchased their contact information.
A lead is a person who has displayed interest in your business product/ service in some form. Instead of randomly cold-calling people from purchased contact information, you can open communication filled with trust using a CRM.
Even with the best CRM lead management software, you will need to know how to qualify sales leads. Rather than clogging the sales funnel, concentrate on good-quality leads by approaching CRM and analytics holistically.
Qualifying sales leads
To quantify sales leads into prospects, the most common methodology commonly used is the BANT. BANT translates to Budget, Authority, Need, and Timescale. You can ask the following questions such as:
The question details if it is possible to convert a lead into a customer. If they do not have the budget, you can learn more about what their budget is and when they are likely to have the set budget.
Examine whether you are speaking to the person who is the person responsible for making a purchase. Assess how long the buying process is going to take.
When you understand the expectations of the client, you will be able to provide products/ services to address their challenges.
Prospect's timeline is important as you will need to understand when they want the product implemented.
Other lead qualification methodologies used by sales managers are:
If your leads fit the criteria stated above, you have a good prospect that is willing to purchase from you.
Importance of lead generation
Sales and lead management software allow businesses to initiate a more natural relationship with a lead. Falling into the second stage of inbound marketing methodology, lead generation is necessary for every business as it brings new customers. Customer retention is essential but profits can be built with the help of new and old customers.
Ways to generate leads with higher buying intent
Cold outreach for outbound sales
Cold emailing or calling potential leads can tap into gaining new leads for the sales pipeline.
Social selling
Leveraging social media to find and nurture leads is an extremely popular way to generate leads. Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram are some of the most popular platforms among businesses.
Content marketing
Creating engaging content with blogs, whitepapers, ebooks, and templates moves the leads down the sales funnel by providing them with invaluable content.
Customer referrals
Coming from the recommendations of your existing customers, these leads are already likely to trust you. You will be able to create powerful brand advocates for your business. You can offer incentives to your customers for referrals.
Email Marketing
CRM lead management software enables you to run email sequences for lead generation. By building a relationship with the customers to convert them into leads, you will be able to form a bond with them and cultivate brand advocates. Send high-value content, product announcements, newsletters, ebooks, promotional offers etc to generate trust and set up follow-up campaigns for nurturing sequences.
Also Read: Stats You Must Know About Sales Automation in 2022
Digital Marketing and Brand awareness campaigns
Creating campaigns for digital channels such as social media and search engines can attract new leads. These campaigns can even familiarise the audience with your brand to get their interest and persuade them to look for more details.
These targeted marketing campaigns can detail the customer pain points and highlight that your business understands the challenges that they face and how they can identify with the brand.
Other methods include warming up the cold leads, resisting lost opportunities, networking at webinars and conferences, and conducting targeted marketing campaigns.
Optimiser's Lead Management Suite
Track the leads through the sales funnel to increase productivity and boost conversions. Offering a holistic approach to both sales and marketing, sales managers can target leads with a higher buying intent. Coming with an intuitive lead ranking system that gathers intelligence using customer data and dishes out detailed reports. Automate the sales funnel to make the life of the sales team more organised and save time on lead nurturing as well with the active workflow automation.
Summary
By now you have gained a picture of what is lead generation, why it is important and ways to generate leads. To nurture these leads, you can employ the use of CRM software. You are moving at the customer's pace and offering promotions that will persuade them to purchase from you.
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