It’s no doubt that generating leads for any business is a top priority. Sales and marketing teams work endlessly at acquiring prospects with the hopes of converting them into paying customers. But how does this process actually happen? How do those that haven’t yet made a purchase decision become those that have raised their hand saying “Yes, I am interested”?
By staying in front of our already-existing leads instead of spending our marketing budget to acquire new contacts, it becomes possible to get even more out of our current assets. No doubt – more leads are always good, but an existing database is already a goldmine, and the next most important thing after generating leads (if not equally as important) is managing them.
From website activities and asset downloads, we need to apply various marketing tactics to push leads through the sales funnel and nurture the leads we already have. According to SmartInsights, companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost. Let’s look at 5 ways to manage your leads in order to stay on top of and in front of your prospects.
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Align your Sales and marketing teams
Sales and marketing are the yin and yang of any business. Without this synergy, we can’t get too far. Top organisations succeed in aligning sales and marketing and are consequently defining each lead as it corresponds to its appropriate place in the sales cycle. In fact, according to MarketingCharts, only 1 in 2 companies say sales and marketing have a formal definition of a qualified lead. Once sales and marketing are united, they are able to agree on what constitutes a lead at each stage of the funnel and can better manage their prospects.
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Gathering lead intelligence
The more we know about our customers, the better we are able to tailor messages according to their needs. Effective profiling is key to lead management. From landing pages to forms, to webinars and web site visits, we can learn more about our buyers. When we gather information like company size, industry and the role of the contact within their respective company, it becomes easier to manage the already-existing leads in our pipeline.
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Keeping tabs on the customer journey
Direct Marketing News found that 84% of companies that have a CRM, have a lead scoring process in place to determine the quality of leads. The quality of leads is ever-changing, which makes keeping tabs on the customer journey a critical part of lead management. Leads can only be transferred to sales when they pass through the marketing stages until they become sales-ready. And when we work on managing these leads by nurturing them and assigning scores to them, we can achieve success in converting prospects into customers.
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Using targeted content
In order to manage the leads in your database you have to ensure that each prospect receives the right offer. Showcasing the leadership in your respective industry influences the buying decisions of the average consumer. And using targeted content to measure where buyers are in their customer journey means having the ability to better manage already-existing leads.
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Enhancing lead management through automation
By getting rid of the tedious, repetitive tasks of lead management, you can keep leads from leaking out of your pipelines. Marketing automation enables top performers to manage their contacts by reconnecting with inactive leads and gaining the opportunity to create the kind of marketing activities that can better engage with consumers.
You’ll sometimes close leads, but sometimes you’ll lose them. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you are done. By having an effective lead management strategy in place, you can better learn what caused this to happen, and from your observations you can be better prepared next time. What was the contact concerned about? What features played a role in closing the deal? How many times is best to contact the customer? The answers to these questions will be part of an overall lead management strategy.
What are your tips for successfully managing leads in your already existing database?
If you’re looking for further advice on lead generation and lead management, why not check out this guide we wrote about our own IP tracking software?