What is lead management?

Lead management refers to capturing potential customers from multiple sources, tracking, nurturing, and converting leads into sales from initial contact to final conversion to understand customers’ pain points and serve their needs.

Effective lead management requires strong collaboration between the sales and marketing teams. Close alignment ensures that leads seamlessly transition from marketing to sales, with a shared understanding of lead profiles, preferences, and interactions.

Over half of a hundred per cent of your company sales come from buyers who are satisfied with your marketing and sales team collaboration support. That’s why lead management is crucial in “leading business growth”

Let’s go into NINE detailed stages to learn more!

Lead Generation

Lead generation is the first step of the “Lead management process” to generate a pool of leads to nurture and convert into customers.

The stage refers to attracting and capturing potential leads or prospects interested in a product, service, or brand. So, it’s time to focus on marketing methods. For example, we have some popular ones: content marketing, social media marketing, SEO, Referrals and Word-of-Mouth, etc. Collect their information through various channels to be ready to change to the next step of further engagement.

Lead Capturing

The heading says it all, “Lead capturing” is the process that information needs to be captured and stored in a centralized database or CRM system. It involves various strategies and techniques that allow businesses to initiate and maintain communication with individuals or organizations who pass the “lead generation” round.

Some well-known methods include landing pages, forms and pop-ups, CTA buttons, webinars or even leads capturing at events.

Remember, capturing enough information for effective follow-up and respecting privacy concerns. This stage is the second step of “lead management”, and its captured lead information serves as the foundation for “lead qualification” - the third step of the process.

Lead Qualification

Before focusing on converting leads, it's important to qualify them to ensure they are a good fit for your product or service.

It involves evaluating their Budget, internal influence/Ability to buy, Need for the product, and purchase Timeline (BANT). The stage is to ensure they have a high chance of converting into customers.

Here are some key elements:

• Demographic Fit: location, industry, company size, job title
• Budget and Financial Capacity
• Buying Intent: Attend webinars, request pricing details
• Engagement Level
• Fit with Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), etc.

For example, the lead management system automatically assigns a lead score to Tony based on his information. His high lead score indicates he's a qualified lead with a high potential to convert.

So, by qualifying leads effectively, businesses can improve the overall efficiency of the sales process. Lead qualification is typically performed by the sales department, either manually or with the help of automation and lead scoring systems.

Lead Scoring

Lead scoring is a method used to assess and prioritize leads based on their perceived value or likelihood of conversion. We assign a numerical score based on each lead's specific criteria, behaviours, demographics, engagement level, etc.

Lead scoring helps businesses streamline their lead management processes by focusing resources on potential converted leads. It enables sales and marketing teams to prioritize their goal based on their score to drive better overall sales and marketing outcomes.

Lead Distribution

Once leads are qualified and scored, they must be distributed among sales representatives or teams for further follow-up.

Qualifying leads are assigned to the marketing and sales personnel of the company, often with specific instructions and information.

Same with lead scoring, once you define criteria in your CRM or marketing and sales automation tool, it does the automation distribution for you.

Lead Nurturing

The sixth stage - Lead nurturing - plays the role of building relationships with potential leads through personalised communication, education and providing value-added content.

The process can include the following strategies:

• Understand the Buyer’s journey
• Segmentation and Personalization (based on their characteristics, interests, behaviours, or engagement level)
• Sending targeted emails
• Conducting webinars
• Social Media Engagement, etc.

Effective lead nurturing builds trust, credibility, and engagement with potential customers leading to successful conversions and long-term customer relationships.

Sales Conversion

When a lead shows a high level of interest and is ready to make a purchase, they are handed over to the sales team for conversion. Sales conversion, also known as the conversion rate or sales closing rate, measures the sales process's effectiveness in turning potential customers into paying customers.

E.g. If a sales team had 100 leads and closed 29 of them as paying customers, the sales conversion rate would be (29/100) x 100% = 29%

A high sales conversion rate indicates a strong ability to convert leads into customers and generate revenue. Improving sales conversion rates requires a combination of the above stages.

Analyzing and optimizing the sales process based on data and feedback can help identify areas for improvement and increase the sales conversion rate over time.

Lead Tracking and Reporting

Sales conversion is one of the key metrics included in the “Lead Tracking and Reporting” stage. Others are sales pipeline velocity, ROI, and customer acquisition cost.

This stage is an iterative process. It helps with clear metrics about the success of turning a lead into a sale to classify where improvements can be made. By incorporating input from the sales team, you can refine your lead management processes gradually.

Nowadays, many CRMs can help with your “lead tracking” process with incredible features. Save your time by choosing helpful assistance tools at work.

How to choose a suitable Lead Management Automation

Many companies utilise lead management automation in their business. But, not everyone knows how to choose a suitable one. The following tips can help you make an informed decision:

• Assess your business needs: Volume of leads, The complexity of your sales process, The level of automation you desire, etc.
• Identify features needed.
• Easy to use.
• Evaluate data security and privacy.
• Check for analytics and reporting capabilities.
• Consider pricing and value, and take full advantage of product trials and demos.

With the SIX above tips, you can choose a suitable lead management automation solution that aligns with your business goals. Welcome you to take the time to search for our CRM - NutSales where you can find the best solution for your lead management process.

Nutsales will help your team a lot in the lead distribution and lead nurturing phase to make your customers feel happy and sacrificed. This is a huge hit for any department in any company. If you can do that, nearly all customers will return to you or decide to make a deal with you. How Nutsales will make your team never sleep to nurture your customer - Let's check out this article next week.