These days, businesses must actively work on customer relations and leads to get the most out of their selling effort. The sales team needs effective tools that help them manage prospects better from lead generation to sales.
No two customers are alike. The sales team cannot pitch the same selling technique to everyone and expect the same results. Lead management software makes it easier to identify customer preferences. It allows sales personnel to tailor their selling methods to each individual customer and get the best results.
The Lead Management Process
The process of lead management is different for each industry and business. However, there are 5 stages of lead management that you will find in almost every type of organization.
- Lead Generation: This is where the lead gets created in the database. Most businesses are starting to automate the process where the lead is created when a customer submits an online form, makes a purchase, clicks on an online ad or calls the company for the first time.
- Lead Tracking: The activity and preferences of the lead is recorded into the database. Activity tracking involves collecting information about the pages visited by the lead, products purchased and other insights about their interests.
- Lead Assignment: Based on the customer preferences, the lead is assigned to the most appropriate sales team member who has the skills and attributes suited to make the sale.
- Lead Categorization: At this stage, the lead is ranked for priority and a sales strategy is formulated for matching client needs with organizational offering. Salesforce Lead Management software allows users to give a score to leads based on their maturity likelihood.
- Lead Nurturing: Leads that are not interested in purchasing the organization’s products or services are put in a pool where they are nurtured over a period. There can be many reasons for leads not being interested. Perhaps, they don’t have the budget for it or need more consulting on product features. The majority of business leads usually end up in the nurturing cycle and sales personnel work on developing them.
Lead Management in Salesforce
The Salesforce platform can be used to get the most from prospects through your lead management process. Five effective strategies you can use for Salesforce lead management include the following.
- You can start or upgrade your lead management process by building a profile of what ideal prospects look like. The ideal customer profile will help your sales team know when they have a potential customer that can be converted.
- Highlight and focus on leads that are already spending money on products similar to the ones you sell. Lead tracking can help you build information in this area.
- Reach out to customers and set reminders on when you should follow up. Sometimes a call or message to your customer is all you need to convert a lead into a customer.
- Rank your leads on the basis of priority and likelihood of closing. Your sales team can produce much better results if they know which clients are close to ordering and which ones will need some work before they make a purchase.
- Most customers won’t buy from you the first time you reach out to them. Many won’t buy even if you reach out a second or third time. You should try to nurture a good relationship with them instead of focusing on closing sales with prospects all the time. If they trust you enough and know you provide good products or services, they will call you next time their existing supplier makes a blunder.
