In today’s highly competitive market, generating leads is not enough. Lead management or nurturing at every stage of a customer lifecycle is equally important. Did you know, according to a report published in Marketing Sherpa 79% of leads do not get converted due to the lack of a lead management system? No wonder that ‘Lead management is an integral part of any CRM software. 2020 saw an exponential growth in usage of CRM software on mobiles, and businesses making a shift towards ‘cloud-based CRM software’. Let’s delve into better understanding “lead management” and “lead management system”.

What is Lead Management?

Lead management is a systematic process of capturing leads, tracking all customer touchpoints (email, SMS, website visit, social media page visit), qualifying, analyzing and nurturing them, and using a targeted sales and marketing strategy to convert them into purchasing your product or service.

Lead Management System

Any individual or company interested in your product or service is a “lead”. For a business to grow it is important to convert these leads into customers. Lead management starts with capturing data of an individual from their first point of interaction (could be visiting a company website, watching a product video, etc.) with your company. The sales team then tracks the leads and engages with a targeted sales and marketing strategy for conversion.
More and more companies are managing their leads with the help of a lead management CRM software such as LeadzHUB by Easyrewardz that enables them to streamline and automate the process.

Understanding the Lead Management Process

• Lead capturing:

  A company reaches out to potential buyers through multiple channels such as emails, social media, paid ads, etc. A lead management software ensures that all the leads are automatically fed into the CRM system via forms, webchats, etc.

• Lead tracking and enrichment:

  A smart lead management software automatically populates a lead’s captured information with their publicly available profile and tracks the activity and engagement level with your business across all channels. This information enables the sales team to engage with the lead with a relevant strategy.

• Lead qualification:

  Today’s AI-enabled lead management CRM can identify lead behavior patterns, traits and mark them as qualified or non-qualified leads. This helps the sales and marketing teams better prioritize and engage with leads.

• Lead distribution:

  A quick response time goes a long way in better conversion of leads. However, manually assigning large volumes of leads to sales reps is cumbersome and time-consuming, resulting in a delayed response time. A good lead management software automates the tasks by assigning leads to salespeople with complete contact information and past history of the lead. This ensures quick response time and a high conversion rate.

• Lead nurturing:

  Educating and demonstrating the value-add your product or service has to offer is “lead nurturing.” Lead management software automates the system of running these “nurture campaigns” by sending emails, messages, and promotional offers based on the ‘customer behaviors and interest.’

The challenges that enterprises usually face due to a lack of a proper lead management system can be identified as:

• Lack of visibility and insight about the lead

• Challenging to convert leads due to a highly competitive market

• Duplication when lead capturing is done manually

• Lack of ‘lead nurturing’

Why should a business migrate to a Lead Management Software or System?

• Accurate capturing of leads: It is only human to miss out on leads or mix up information when manually capturing leads switching between multiple sources. A lead management software automatically captures leads in a systematic manner using forms/chatbots from all sources.

• Automated lead generation and assignment: A lead management software automatically captures data across different sources such as chats, emails, websites, social media, etc in your CRM. Some advanced systems also enable your representatives to respond to chats and make calls directly from the CRM. The lead management systems post-tracking leads can automatically assign leads to the sales executive’s basis the lead-routing rules.

• Artificial intelligence aids in higher productivity: The modern and sophisticated AI-powered lead management software populates the leads captured in your CRM with their social media profiles and public information available on the web. These systems are also capable of identifying duplicate records in the CRM and automatically deleting them, avoiding any duplicates in the system. This in turn helps the sales and marketing teams save a lot of time, focus on planning an engagement strategy around the prospect’s interest level and activity resulting in higher productivity.

• Proper segmentation and lead nurturing: A lead management software classifies leads into segments based on their behavior pattern, interest in the product/service, demography, and location. This enables the sales and marketing teams to prioritize leads, target the most relevant leads and engage with marketing campaigns relevant to each segment.

• Lead life cycle history and activity monitoring for relevant engagement: A lead management software helps a business better understand its leads across the different stages in its customer lifecycle and identify their preferred mode of engagement. This in turn helps the sales team identify patterns and seamlessly communicate with them through CRM via their preferred communication channel.

• Real-time reports and actionable insights: Your lead management system generates reports and helps you identify channels from where you are getting the most relevant and quality leads. Based on these reports you can invest and focus on that channel. A fast-fashion apparel brand targeting college students may be advertising across multiple platforms such as websites, social media (Instagram, Facebook), fashion magazines, etc. When they realize that the maximum number of leads get converted from social media it will make sense to invest more in advertising on social media platforms.