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CRM: Power tool for Lead Gen, Lead Management, and Lead Nurturing

10.13.2009 · Posted in Business News Article

Lead Generation, Lead Management, Lead Nurturing: three crucial steps in the life of a lead!nnThe 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.?nnOnce 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.nnCRMs have lead response management tools built right into them. These allow newly imported leads to be routed to a sales representative immediately. Imagine, with such technology web leads can be contacted within minutes of when the visitor submits their contact information online! With an integrated CRM-dialer system, no longer will fresh leads be left uncalled for days.nn(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.)nnAs 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 contactsnnBut even with such awesome personalizing of the sales process not every lead will convert into a sale immediately. Some inside sales companies would abandon those leads. Lead nurturing is an alternative to simply abandoning leads that did not convert. Lead nurturing is the process of keeping in contact with non-converted leads and providing quality interaction with them so they will become a customer in the future. Email, phone calls, mailers, and faxes are all used in lead nurturing.nnLead Management and Lead Nurturing are just as important to successful inside sales as Lead Generation. A CRM is a powerful tool in accomplishing all three of these tasks.

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