Lead Don’t Follow!
7 Dec 2011
A lot of our customers are keen users of the Leads module in their CRM solution. Leads are where you store details of possible business opportunities. CRM offers you great tools to capitalise on these and ensure that the lead follow-up process is managed in an effective way.
There are many different ways in which leads can be generated – whether at a conference, through a form on your website, email enquiries, word of mouth connections, the list goes on. Inputting these names and details into your CRM solution is the first step towards making lead management easy. The lead record will typically hold all the data that you have captured such as name, email address, industry, interests and the source of that lead.
This source can provide an indicator as to how someone prefers to be contacted and gives you the opportunity to avoid making an unwanted cold call, or sending an email that won’t get read, this can be managed simply by using the preferred contact method on the lead record.
Your CRM solution adds a date stamp to the lead record, which is a good tool for your follow-up process. It means you can view lists of records as they have come in, enabling a fast follow-up action, or at least ensuring that leads are reacted to within a certain response time.
Your response can also be determined by the means and data you have captured. A submitted response to an web form or email questionnaire provides information that allows you can make very targeted offers, whereas more tentative leads such as addresses collected at a conference or trade show mean you might want to start the lead management process with some more general information.
Again with the date stamps and documentation of follow-up activity giving you information on the different stages of the lead management process (did the lead respond to your enquiry? Have you since contacted the lead, etc.), you can use this information in a marketing campaign to enhance the possibility of turning the lead into a customer.
Maybe you find you are losing potential business due to not capturing lead data correctly, or not using this information effectively. Or perhaps you are losing track of where each lead is in the nurturing process, then it might be time you looked into how using a hosted CRM solution can be a massive help to your business lead management.
Before I got my start in the tech industry as part of Apple’s UK Mac launch team, I was a professional drummer (notice I didn’t say musician). But once I got in, I was hooked and I’ve been involved in the tech industry, primarily software development, for over 35 years. I founded this company and I now have the enviable title of System Architect (as well as Managing Director) here at OpenCRM.