Are you thinking about putting lead management in your company on a completely new footing, but don’t yet know for sure whether the effort is actually worth it? Here are some food for thought that should help you in your deliberations:
Process leads better: it’s the number that counts
How many leads do you have? Since lead management is always about quickly evaluating many leads and thus working more efficiently, the number of your leads is crucial. If there are only a few, sales can actually evaluate and select them “by hand”. If, on the other hand, you have many leads that are also not easy to evaluate, it makes sense to introduce a lead management process. A reasonable ROI calculation can be made if at least 10,000 addresses are stored in the database. For smaller companies, there are “out-of-the-box” solutions that also provide good indications of which leads are ready to buy, but do not require individual evaluation.
Simplify complex sales processes
Do you have complex sales processes in your company? Lead routing only makes sense if it simplifies sales processes. For example, if you offer products that are bought spontaneously and only once, then it is not necessary to evaluate and develop leads. However, if the products require explanation and the sales processes are correspondingly complex and long, then good lead management is worth a lot. This is the only way to prevent sales from “touching” every single lead and investing too much time in leads with low sales opportunities.
Use marketing automation efficiently
Do you already have a marketing automation system in place? If you have a CRM system but no marketing automation system, it will be difficult to consistently progress leads from one stage of the sales funnel to the next. The CRM captures the facts that are known about a lead, but not the extent to which the lead actually responds to the information that the company offers them. For lead management to really pay off, the buying process should go on for several weeks and months – or it is about products that need to be bought regularly and for which special nurture programmes are suitable to stimulate the purchase at the right time (e.g. toner for printers) or which offer a high cross-selling potential (e.g. the office supply retailer who also has office furniture in his range and wants to reach customers with products of both product groups). The renewal of maintenance contracts can also be automated quickly and easily via a marketing automation system.
Bringing marketing and sales together
Are marketing and sales ready to work together? If in your company sales says “The leads we get from marketing are all no good!” and marketing responds by shrugging its shoulders and saying “You’ll just have to keep at it better!”, then this is a sign that lead management would be useful and sensible – because it objectively and measurably proves whether a lead is good or bad. However, actually implementing lead management only succeeds when marketing and sales come together around a table and jointly develop criteria for evaluating leads.
Read Also: Understanding the Advantages of Local SEO – Things You Can Expect
Experts enrich marketing and sales
Do you have experienced and expert support? Especially if the relationship between marketing and sales is in need of optimisation in your company, it makes a lot of sense to engage experts to moderate workshops. A model for lead management must be developed, tested and introduced. Likewise, staff must be trained accordingly. Later, it is a matter of keeping the system up to date and adapting it to changing conditions. This should be done by experts who know how to do it.
