Creating an effective process to monitor and manage new sales leads is an essential part of any marketing plan. It is important to set up a fundamental lead management process that will allow you to keep track of where your leads are coming from and help you precisely determine the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. Although there is a certain level of complexity to managing leads, there are also some simple ways that will build the optimal response strategy that will ensure success.

How to get started with the lead management process

Tracking the source of the sales leads can aid the overall efficacy of your online and offline advertising efforts because you’ll have a clear idea about which marketing tactics are successful in terms of getting the maximum customers for your business. There are various ways to do so. You can use analytics software on your website to monitor the sources of online leads or simply ask the prospects how they heard about your company once they contact you. Using a call tracking solution or a tracking URL can also be helpful. You can use the information to direct your marketing investment toward the types of efforts that bring you the most customers.

The lead management process should include monitoring social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus as they have become great new sources of potential leads for business. It is important to follow up with prospects that are showing interest in your offerings by leaving comments on your page, posting tweets regularly or sending you direct messages. Ask your prospects to contact you through email or phone so that you can gather more knowledge about them like their demographics, interests, and expectations from your business. This will help you in target marketing.

Technology in lead management process

What would be interesting and helpful is that you set up a real-time lead notification system that will send an email or SMS alert every time you receive a new lead from a form submission, email, voicemail, etc. Notifications will allow you to respond to the leads promptly and engage with them to close the sale. The next best thing that you can do to improve lead management process is use an efficient call recording technology to track and store incoming sales leads. You can monitor every call to check if your team is handling the calls effectively and additionally gain insight into what the consumers are demanding, their issues and feedbacks about products or services. And accordingly you can plan your business strategy to meet success.

Organizing database to streamline lead management process

Whether you are feeding data into CRM system or managing leads in your own spreadsheet, it is important to keep your database organized. Perform data cleansing and de-duplication to keep you database complete and up-to-date. Also keep track of all communications with the prospect so that you can strategize how often you want to reach out again to existing customers and active leads you’ve already contacted.

Conclusion

Sales lead management process is quite complex. But following few important rules you can make it simpler and more successful.

Author's Bio: 

Celena Watson - Passionate writer and blogger. I have written on many different topics which include inbound sales, lead management, lead nurturing, IT services, inside sales , demand generation and many more. For more info visit sales & marketing consulting