Lead generation is the most crucial aspect of the sales cycle for any organization. If you want to strengthen your sales team, you need to train them on how to generate leads and organize them. It is a simple process that you cannot convert a customer without pitching the products and services.

But how will you pitch the products and services if you do not have a prospect, and how will you have a higher conversion with limited prospects.  The top CRM software will help manage the prospects and pitch the products and services based on their requirements.   will help manage the prospects and pitch the products and services based on their requirements.   

Generating leads is one of the most difficult tasks even for the big companies with a huge workforce. Even if your gather leads, if you do not have the right sales CRM tools to manage; the leads all your efforts will go in vain.    

What is a sales lead, and how to manage them?    

A sales lead is a contact card of a person or a business that has the potential to become your client or a customer. Most organizations have a presales team that designs marketing strategies and execute them to generate leads as per business needs. These marketing strategies may include print or social media advertisements, purchase data for cold calling, or any other campaigns.  The CRM software will gather leads from all the platforms and unite them on a single platform for the sales team.   

The sales team can use the sales management tools to contact the lead and ask relevant questions to identify the customer’s interest. Additionally, the best CRM software will help to set algorithms that help to find the lead quality automatically based on business requirements.  

The sales team can create a pipeline of the interested customers with the sales tools and contact them to pitch the products and services. Furthermore, the fewer potential leads can be marked as not interested to contact them later to check if they have any perception change.  But before managing the leads, your sales team should understand the difference between a prospect and a sales lead.    

What is the difference between a sales lead and a prospect?

Many business leaders might get confused between the sales lead or a prospect thinking that they are the same. But the truth is there is a difference between a prospect and a sales lead. Sales lead is a contact card with no work done on it to understand whether; it is a saleable contact or no. The right sales management tools help to find the real-time status of the leads which helps the sales team; to take necessary actions.   

A prospect is a contact card on which the sales team has spoken, and they have shown interest in the products or services. The CRM software will help manage the sales pipeline and distinguish between a sales lead and a prospect.    

How to manage your sales lead in2021?   

Categorize your leads:   

Any organization must categorize the leads based on their quality. Because; organizations gather a large number of leads through various platforms without knowing the quality. It is a great opportunity to have a higher number of leads because it is proportional to the conversion rate as well. The most efficient way to categorize leads is to have a targeted approach.   

The organization which has higher efficiency in targeting will have a higher ROI. Additionally, businesses must maintain their brand image and ensure they use their resources on the right leads. The best CRM software will help you manage sales leads with efficient lead management, which helps to know more about your customers. Furthermore, this software will help to analyze the customer preferences and likes to provide personalized customer service.   

The definition of a good sales lead depends from company to company based on their needs and will evolve with time. The first step to categorize your leads is to understand your target audience demographics in depth. The CRM system will help spot the customers that engage with your; content a lot to find out the ideal customers. Additionally, your sales or marketing team can have a conversation with them to analyze the set of characteristics.   

Lead management strategies:   

Once you have understood the ideal customer leads then your business needs to segment the leads furthermore. The sales management tools of the CRM software help to segment the customer based on their demographics. It is a proven strategy that personalized email campaigns for each customer segmentation will help organizations; to make 760% more revenue.    

There are many approaches that organizations can implement at their workplace for email list segmentation based on their email marketing strategies. Additionally, each customer response to your email marketing campaign can also differ. For instance, a few of them will just click to explore the offers while; others will make a purchase.    

Steps involved in lead management:    

  • First step:  
    Following are the ways you can segment your leads based on their interest:   
    1.) cold: No interaction with the customer whatsoever.   
    2.) Lukewarm: marketing qualified leads (MQLs).   
    3.) Warm: Sales qualified leads (SQLs).    

What is a marketing qualified lead (MQL)?   

MQL are those customer types who have positively interacted with your marketing campaigns. This lead segment has the potential to become your customer, but it depends on you nurture these leads.  The best CRM software helps identify the marketing qualified leads and nurture them to have a positive brand image.    

What is a sales qualified lead (SQL)?   

SQL are those leads that have a positive interaction throughout the MQL stage and have become sales-ready. The sales management tools help spot these leads so that your sales team can contact them to increase the conversion rate.    

  • Second step:  
    Organizations must set the best parameters to disqualify the leads that are not useful.  Businesses can customize the CRM software to spot such leads and disqualify them on the initial stage itself. It does not mean that you delete those contact but, it is crucial to segregate them to have different strategies.    
  • Third step:  
    After the elimination of the disqualified leads, you are left with only SQLs and MQLs. The sales team can use CRM tools to interact with the customer to make the lead sales-ready. Organizations can set the best practices to determine the lead quality after every interaction with the customer. The business leaders can interact with the sales team to spot the phase where most of the sales happen.    
  • Fourth step:  
    When the leads are at the MQL stage, they need good nourishment to ensure they become sales-ready. Implementation of this strategy will help to approach the customer with more relevant information. This step will help to change your approach based on:  
    -Customer preference
    -Customer purchasing power
    -Job role
    -Company size
    -What is the client looking for?    

Nurture your leads:    

Once you are done with customer segmentation it is now the right time to start approaching your customers. Many experts suggest that personalized email campaigns will give your business six times more revenue than the other strategies. Consumers today do not want to feel like they are interacting; with a robot instead of a business or an individual. Email personalization helps to add the human touch and remove the monotonous tone.    

How to create a lead nurturing campaign?    

  • Design a customized email for each segment:   
    It is crucial for business owners to design a personalized email campaign that caters to each segment’s needs. The CRM Sofware will help to segment the customer base and design an email campaign for each segment and execute it.    
  • Add value to customers life:   
    The consumer today is looking for products and services to add value to their life. The CRM system will identify the market and consumer demands to evolve your products and services to adapt them. The organization should create content that makes the customer feel; that their product and services are adding; value to their life.   
  • Personalize the interactions:   
    It is curial for organizations to keep track of how they interact with their customers because this interaction will attract your customers. The CRM solution will keep track of every customer interaction for future references.    
  • Analyze your process:   
    Your strategies don’t have to work efficiently all the time; which is why it is crucial to track and analyze the process. The best CRM software will help to analyze your process so that they can make strategic data-driven decisions.    

Conclusion:    

Efficient lead management is crucial for any organization to make more revenue and have a positive customer base. Additionally, managing your lead effectively will ensure all the resources are used wisely. Even you can visit a website to explore, analyze & choose the right CRM vendor for you business as per your need at Technology Counter that fits your budget.