What is Lead Management? Meaning and 9 Steps

In simple terms, lead management is understood as the process that revolves around generating leads, tracking their inclinations, analyzing activities, and managing them to get converted for favorable actions.

In today’s time, lead management is essential for productively impacting the sales and marketing procedures that widen the reach of the business, increases the customer base and boost the revenues. In this post, we will dive deep into the world of lead management and understand how it helps businesses in connecting, convincing and converting more audiences. So, without any further ado, let us get started here and now-

Introduction to the Lead Management

Any business, whether big or small has its soul in leads. Leads refer to the audience which has yet not purchased anything but are potential customers.

These people show interest in your business when you start a new venture. They are among a handful of those leads who have faith in your investment. As the business grows, the team gets leads in an increasing number which becomes difficult for them to manage, and things start to get lost in an outright flood.

At this stage, lead management enters the picture. It focuses on managing potential customers to a point where they buy something.

The process of lead management is a more included process than standard advertising and is most pertinent to online business stores that produce singular relationships with customers.

The process of lead management includes different stages that play a crucial role in finding the leads and converting them in your favor. Steps incorporated in the process of lead management include-

• Capturing of leads
• Enrichment and tracking of leads
• Qualification of leads
• Distribution of leads
• Nurturing of leads

We will go through all these stages of lead management later to understand their importance and how they should be done, but before that, let us have a look upon the purposes that the lead management strategy will server for you-

What is the purpose of Lead Management?

The creation of leads for the businesses is done with the help of different sources and channels, for instance, websites, emails, online ads, offline ads, cold pitches and events and so forth. At the point when the process of lead generation comprises multiple methods and channels, it’s inevitable to have a viable system to oversee leads. Lead Management serves this purpose for the businesses.

On the off chance that you are thinking that just having a spreadsheet or simple contact database will help you manage the lead generation and its management; you are not able to find out the gauge the significance of the process.

Numerous businesses find it quite tricky in changing over leads to customers because they can’t discern the hot leads from the cold leads because of their inefficiency in lead management. This lets them miss out on some essential opportunities for converting a lead into a loyal customer.

So, all in all, with the help of an efficient lead management process, you will be able to oversee lead data along with score leads, keeping up a correspondence and even nurturing the lades ceaselessly to get them converted for the favourable actions.

Providing customers with the data, so they must proceed through the channel is the essential target of the lead management strategy.

At the point when various parts of a business advertising association are not synchronized adeptly, or the prospects in lead generation are not appropriately qualified than the chances that customers getting the information which are of no use and the whole process that otherwise would have moved towards conversion will not be offering any productive outcome for your business.

In the time, when online presence is significant for businesses, online businesses must manage leads efficiently to reduce manual work and enhance the experience of a customer.

Lead automation is one important strategy that should be part of your lead management system, as this will help in channelizing leads as per your favorable outcomes in an automated fashion.

Role of Lead Automation in Lead Management Strategy

When you incorporate lead automation in your lead management strategy, you comprise different touchpoints through which a lead can enter into your sales funnel.

It is the most critical factor of lead management for online businesses, as it will put your leads at the right places at the perfect time, so they get converted in an automated manner. Lead Automation helps you manage leads from different touchpoints of online businesses such as

• PPC Campaigns
• Landing Pages
• Websites
• Phone Calls
• Social Media, etc

Lead Automation comprised under Lead Management will help you with

• Collecting leads automatically
• Pairing the correct leads with the best-suited salesperson
• Paying heed upon prioritizing leads that are more likely to convert

Some of the best lead automation tools that will help you in the process of lead management are Zoho, Drumup, GetResponse, InfusionSoft, Socedo, and so on.

9 Steps of Lead Management

1. Generation of Leads

This is the very first step of the lead management process. In this, businesses use advertising and other strategies that can help them in procuring leads.

For making any business model successful, the businesses must meet with their target audiences in a conversion-oriented manner.

Generation of leads is done through multiple means that incorporate online as well as offline mediums such as webinars, trade shows, PPC ads, inbound marketing, email marketing, and so forth.

Lead automation comes in play here, as it lets the leads to automatically fall into the sales funnel from the subscription forms, chats, etc.

2. Inquiry performed by Leads

The administration process of lead management system begins when customers respond in your lead generation efforts.

By responding, your leads will offer some sorts of signaling that they are interested in the products or services that you are offering to them.

As a general rule, you will reach to this step when one of your prospects clicks upon your links, or perform Google search for the keywords you are targeting your online campaigns or browsing through your or your competitors’ site.

So, in this step, you are supposed to find out those prospects that are looking forward to someone like you to help them in ending their quest. Your lead management needs to be proficient enough to gauge such customers that are making inquiries related to your brand.

3. Identification of Leads

The following piece of the lead management process is finding out who your ideal customer can be from the people who are making inquiries related to your products and services.

Different analytics tools help businesses in performing such tasks. Some of this sort of analytical data is accessible through Google Analytics sorts of tools.

You can find out other relevant information by getting the customer to send it to you by using different online or offline means that you had to incorporate in your lead management system to get the information of your leads.

4. Filtering of Leads

When you have found out the identities of your leads, and you are clear who amongst the leads can be your customers, you should filter your leads to find out the ideal leads that will for sure move forward in your sales funnel.

This step of lead management will help you in finding out if the signs and details that you have received in earlier stages are right and in your favor or not.

5. Grading of the Leads

Once you find out the particular personality of your leads, you need to do their screening based upon the value they are going to offer to you.

As per their chances of being converted for your products and services, you should perform their grading, so you or your team know about the leads that should be given the top priorities in the process.

We all know that leads are finally going to get converted into customers to boost your sales and increase your revenues, so you need to know about the leads that should be given priority and targeted most immediately.

Being aware of specific inclinations of the leads also plays an essential role in helping businesses in running more customized campaigns that have more chances in converting the leads.

6. Distribution of Leads

Now, when you have the qualified leads, then those leaders must be distributed to the responsible members such as marketing and sales teams.

You are also supposed to distribute leads with your team together with specific instructions and data associated with particular details of the leads.

When all said is done, leads that comprise the highest chances of being converted should be given to the sales personnel who are handy in incorporating strategies that can turn such leads with absolute accuracy and effectiveness.

7. Contacting the Leads

Now, in this step, the salesperson will genuinely get in touch with the most qualified leads to convert them into customers.

The whole processes of contacting leads need to channelize in a manner that encourages the leads to give some favorable responses from them.

Contacting leads should be based upon the behavioral traits of leads towards your efforts.

8. Nurturing the Leads

In this lead nurturing process, you are supposed to convince those leads who have inclinations towards your products and services that how you will add more values to their lives.

The leads that give positive or favorable responses to the sales contact team should be targeted through the lead nurturing process.

In the lead nurturing, lead automation tools along with manual follow-ups, both play a significant role in convincing the leads to opt for your products and services.

Leads that are not interested at the moment, or having no budget at the moment, or want to consult with the team before making their purchase are destined to go through your lead nurturing step.

9. Converting the Leads

At long last, the last step of the lead management process ensures the leads to make a purchase.

You need to provide a convenient and user-friendly interface that can alleviate the process of purchasing your leads.

After completing this process, your leads will get converted into your customers, and hence their journey from being potential customers to the customers will get completed. Now, you need to incorporate strategies that can transform your customers into loyal customers.

Benefits of Lead Management

• With the help of Lead Management, you will get an effective technique that will adeptly categorize and keep leads safe in a conversion-oriented manner. You can sort out leads in different ways such as demographics, locations, inclinations, engagements, browsing and so on.
• Without the right kind of lead management strategy, it would be impossible for you to find out the leads, distribute them with the sales team and convince them to opt for your products and services.
• In today’s time, consumers want an immediate response, and lead management ensures this for you. By using lead management, you will be able to automate your responses just when a leader wants to interact with you. In the different steps of lead management, I had mentioned how you could automate your reactions as per the inquiries of your leads.
• Businesses that deal with vast sales territories, lead management system offers them a sorted out progression of leads for the sales funnel. Lead management helps in advancing the sales staff by distributing leads to the most right salespeople for optimizing conversions.

Lead Management Wrap Up!

With Lead Management, a business becomes capable of finding leads, deciding their positions in sales funnel and convincing them to purchase from you.

So, incorporating the lead management strategies in your business management plan will empower your business to widen its reach by penetrating the most profitable customer bases that are ready to get converted into loyal customers.

What are your views about the inclusion of lead management in your business management and marketing strategies? Update us with your perspectives in the comments below.