Lead Generation, Lead Management, and Lead Nurturing are all important parts of the sales process.
The first of these steps is lead generation. This is the process of finding those parties who already have an interest in what is being sold. There are several ways of generating new leads; including purchasing leads from a third party organization or having web visitors submit their contact information. These leads are more valuable to a remote sales company if they have been newly generated, because these leads are more likely to convert into a sale. No lead can be ignored in a data base somewhere and still be considered a ?hot lead.?
Once these leads are generated the next step is lead response management. This is just as important as lead generation. CRMs have been designed to help sales reps with lead management. CRMs act as a working database where leads can be uploaded from any standard CSV file or downloaded automatically by the CRM when web leads are captured.
The lead response management tools built into the CRM allows sales representatives to contact newly imported leads immediately and efficiently. Within minutes of a web generated lead being imported into the CRM that lead is called and the call is routed to an available sales representative. Newly imported lists of leads are also dialed as soon as possible. Often new lead are left uncalled for 24 to 48 hours, lead response management stops this unacceptable practice from happening.
(These CRMs manage all the interactions that these leads will continue to have with the company. They are powerful tools for tracking and analyzing sales data. Definitely worth the investment.)
As leads progress, customer relationship management programs organize contacts in three groups: leads, prospects, and customers. Each contact group can be marketed to and supported separately with the emails, faxes, and mailers. Each of these groups can also be designated as the contact list for a power dialer or voice broadcasting system. Sales representatives can adapt their scripts to address the needs of each group of contacts
Even with these lead generation and lead response management tools, sales reps cannot be expected to convert 100% of their leads into sales, at least not at first. While some sales companies would abandon those leads, lead nurturing provides the strategies needed to keep those leads progressing. Lead nurturing is the keeping in quality contact with leads that did not convert so they will convert in the future. Email, phone calls, mailers, and faxes are all used in lead nurturing.
While lead generation is a critical aspect of inside sales, a CRM allows sales reps to manage and nurture those leads until they become converted customers.
All business professionals can agree that without lead management, there is no business. Together with dialer software, you've got a plan that is essential for your future survival as a company.
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