How leads are generated, managed, and nurtured are crucial elements in a successful sales process.

Lead Generation (which is often shortened to the quicker ?lead gen?) is when new consumers are found that have an interest in a particular product or service that is being sold. There are numerous ways of gathering new leads. Both purchasing leads generated by third party businesses and capturing contact information from completed web forms on a company website are popular methods. The more recently generated these leads are the more valuable they are and more likely to convert into a sale. Leads are very time sensitive.

Lead response management is just as important as lead generation. A customer relationship manager (CRM) is designed to help sales reps with lead management. Any leads that have been saved in a typical CSV file can be uploaded into the CRM, while leads captured from web forms can be uploaded automatically.

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.

The Customer Relationship Manager manages all of the interactions a company has with their leads and customers. They are powerful tools in tracking and analyzing sales data, and also host the telephony tools that help sales representatives progress on every call.

As calls and leads progress towards sales, the CRM allows companies to organize contacts into three groups or “Buckets.” These are leads, prospects, and customers. Each of these buckets can be separated into even smaller group ? and each of these groups can have emails, faxes, and mailers customized just for them. Sales reps can adapt their scripts specifically for each group. This organization allows each lead to have the best user experience possible.

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.

Most people in business know that without lead management, you can’t survive. Joined with dialer software, you’ve got a plan that is essential for your future survival as a company.

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