How to Manage Leads

Understanding sales lead management

Most business owners today are well aware of the importance of generating sales leads and managing them properly. This has always been a “necessary evil” so to speak, especially with the economic downturn of recent years and how unstable the US economy is. As a result of the current situation, this has caused marketing and sales professionals to focus on the generation of viable leads as well as how to manage leads more effectively. Their focus has also turned to better prospecting strategies that will have a better impact on their sales.

According to Harry Watkins (the Aberdeen Group’s Senior Analyst) in his April, 2003 article published at btbonline.com, “Eighty percent of marketing efforts to generate leads are wasted and ignored by sales. This combination is costly and derails efforts on both sides.” Further research regarding how to manage leads has revealed that a majority of the sales leads that are generated through a company’s advertising and marketing efforts are wasted literally every day of the week.

Additionally, this research has also revealed that nearly 70% of all sales leads never receive any follow-up calls after the initial contact. Spending all that energy, money, and time on advertising and marketing efforts to generate sales leads and then wasting them is not how to manage leads properly. That is obvious. Many companies today pay a lot of money for qualified sales leads and then just send the prospect a brochure or cover letter. They may call the lead, but it could be weeks later before they do.

At that time, if the salesperson doesn’t feel that a sale will be generated with that first contact, the lead is oftentimes dropped and put into a “closed” or “dead” file. They won’t even place the lead in a follow-up file. What characteristically happens is that the sales force will say that the ad or marketing campaign failed to do its job. In reality, it is the sales people who failed that campaign.

Managing your sales leads effectively

One of the best ways that you can generate qualified leads, while increasing your sales and profitability at the same time, is to manage your leads as effectively as possible. You need to remember that sales prospects can come from a number of different sources. However, there is really only one way for how to manage leads effectively and retain them in the process. It takes the right sales lead management software application to do this.

The primary purpose of a sales lead management software application is to define a lead and understand if there is a potential for that lead to turn into a sale. As was mentioned above, 80% of the leads generated through advertising and marketing efforts are either discarded or just ignored because it is not handled and managed properly. To optimize the effectiveness of your sales force, you need the right sales lead management tools that capture all of the information regarding every interaction with your sales prospects.

Lead management software that works your leads for you

If you want to understand how to manage leads properly, it takes using the right sales lead management software and training your sales force how to use the system. Aim CRM offers the top quality lead management software that can help your sales force turn those leads into sales and profits while helping retain your current clients or customers as well. For more information regarding Aim CRM and our assortment of CRM products, please contact us today at the toll-free phone number listed above in the upper right of this page.