Lead Management is a term used in general business practice to describe methodologies, systems, and practices designed to generate new potential business clientele, generally operated through a variety of marketing techniques. Lead management facilitates a business's connection between its outgoing consumer advertising and the responses to that advertising. These processes are designed for business-to-business and direct-to-consumer strategies. Lead management is in many cases a precursor to sales management andcustomer relationship management. This critical connectivity facilitates business profitability through the acquisition of new customers, selling to existing customers, and creating a market brand. This process has also accurately been referred to as customer acquisition management. The general principles of lead management create an ordered structure for managing volumes of business inquiries, frequently termed leads. The process creates an architecture for organization of data, distributed across the various stages of a sales process, and across a distributed sales force. With the advent of the Internet and other information systems technologies, this process has rapidly become technology-centric, as businesses practicing lead management techniques have shifted much of the prior manual workload to automation systems, though personal interaction with lead inquiries is still vital to success. Along with its other related business practices--marketing, brand development, advertising, and sales--the goal of an effective lead management initiative is to generate new business revenue, increase visibility, and improve the general attitudes of potential clients and the public at large for future business development. A typical outline of a lead management process might follow the following steps:
1. Business engages in a range of advertising media (Lead generation). 2. Recipients of advertising respond, creating a Customer inquiry, or lead. 3. Respondent's information is captured (Inquiry Capture). 4. Captured information is then filtered to determine validity (Inquiry filtering) 5. The filtered leads are then graded and prioritized for potential (Lead grading) 6. Leads are then distributed to marketing and/or sales personnel (Lead distribution). 7. Leads are contacted for prospecting (Sales contact). 8. Contacted and uncontacted leads are entered into personal and automated follow-up processes (Lead nurturing). 9. End result is a new business sale (Sales result). While simple in scope, lead (or inquiry) flow process can become complex as clients, prospective clients, and sales professionals interact. Interactions and subsequent actions create a variety of potential outcomes, both productive and counter-productive to business development. This ever-increasing number of scenarios creates functional disconnects, in other words, critical opportunities to mishandle an inquiry that reduces or destroys its potential value. Appropriate management of these scenarios is the function of lead management.
Contents
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1 Lead Management Architecture
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1.1 Lead Generation 1.2 Lead acquisition and distribution 1.3 Marketing & Sales Process Operations 1.4 Communications 1.5 Analytics
2 Optimizing Lead Management 3 Technical Functionality
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3.1 Lead Acquisition 3.2 Lead Filtering and Assessment
4 References 5 External links
[edit]Lead [edit]Lead
Management Architecture
Generation
Generating a lead, or lead generation can relate to a myriad of marketing technologies and methodologies. Regardless of how it is achieved, however, from an architectural perspective lead generation is simply the ability to attract the interest of a consumer and capture enough data to validate and prioritize their interest, then contact them. A few examples: 1. Mortgage Lead Generation LendingTree runs TV advertising that touts that "when banks compete, you win" and directs you to visit lendingtree.com. After watching this advertisement, and being depressed that you rent a 300-square-foot (28 m2) studio apartment, you flip on your computer and go to their website. Upon reaching the website, you surf around a bit and read some information about buying a house, and how the mortgage process works with LendingTree. This convinces you to give it a shot. You click a link to request information, and fill out a form on their Web site to provide information about you: name, address, telephone number, estimated home price, and so on. Once finished, you submit the information to LendingTree, and your information is immediately compiled into an electronic lead. 2. White Paper Lead Generation
You are surfing the Internet and you decide there has to be a good way to make a lot of money on the Internet. So, you go to Google and search for "make money on the Internet." This search reveals an interesting link that says, "10 steps to becoming a millionaire using the Web." Sounds good to you, so you click the link and arrive at a page with a brief sales pitch for making money on the Web and a brief web form asking for you name and email in order to download the sacred PDF white paper with the 10 steps. Once you have filled out the form, submitted, and received your PDF²again, you are a lead. 3. Infomercial You're at home, awake late at night due to insomnia, and while watching TV you see a paid advertisement for the "Sleep Number Bed" by Select Comfort. Thinking that your old mattress is falling apart, and one of the likely causes for your insomnia, your call the toll-free phone number listed in the infomercial to receive more information about the product being offered. An agent captures your information in a computer system, and agrees to mail you a brochure discussing the features and benefits of the Sleep Number Bed. You are now a lead in the system. [edit]Lead
acquisition and distribution
Lead acquisition is the first, and possibly the most critical potential disconnect in the lead management process. With billions being spent on advertising expenditures,[1] in many cases the value of those expenditures is reduced because relevant information from responses is not collected or distributed. The value of this process is tightly linked to a variety of consumer response theories that highlight the relevance and responsiveness of the customer experience as being key ingredients in turning potential customers into actual customers. Once acquired, the speed, accuracy, and relevance of response can greatly influence a potential consumer's decision to buy, or not buy, a product or service. One extremely relevant example of this process is the use of the Internet, online marketing, and Web analytics for high-level lead generation. A consumer generally uses the Internet and makes Internet inquiries for products and services out of a desire for convenience and efficiency of their time. Consequently, they expect a timely, relevant response to inquiries made. If the acquisition and distribution of data collected during their inquiry is not effective, the consumer experience will be negative. No response, poor response, too-early or too late response equals negative impact on consumer attitudes and behavior. For this particular medium, the lead acquisition architecture generally consists of a Web form to collect consumer data, a database to temporarily or persistently store that information for subsequent distribution, and a software application to distribute the data at appropriate levels. The distribution architecture will vary widely depending upon the objective of the lead generation. Generation for the purpose of selling the inquiry itself to another organization would typically include a methodology for selecting one or more buyers and then transmitting the lead via a variety of potential means, like: XML, named-value pairs, fax, email,
telephone. In the case of leads generated for an organization's own use it may simply consist of a web page to render the contents of the lead database or a simple email action from the Web form itself. [edit]Marketing
& Sales Process Operations
Once the lead information is collected and distributed, it is then transferred to a marketing and/or sales management department, who will continue to implement lead management practices in pursuit of completion of a sale. Established lead management practices should provide the needed connectivity and accountability between those two operational units, and when managed properly, enhances the effectiveness of both operations. The architectural relationship is much akin to the order carousel in a short order diner. This carousel is the communication and accountability between the waiter and the cook. Without this simple coordination orders would be lost, prepared incorrectly, or prepared in random order missing the expectations of the customer. For management teams with a solid foundation in lead management principles, the process should create increased efficiency and accountability between marketing and sales activities. As stated previously, the increasing technological foundation of lead and sales management practices provides a number of "closed loop" data circuits, tracking the overall effectiveness of everything from lead generation, to prioritization, to distribution, to final disposition, and then back again to re-calibrate the process. For marketing, this portion of the architecture primarily manages the analytics of the lead generation, distribution, and disposition. For sales, the architecture provides a fast, accurate method of distribution, in addition to improved management and accountability processes for sales activity. [edit]Communications The central hub of the lead management process once the prior architectures are in place is communication. Effective lead management principles requires intensive and accurate high-level communication, both internally within organizations, and externally to the lead inquiries. Communications functions should include intelligent sourcing of inquiry information, and provide appropriate vehicles for overt contacting methods such as phone, email, or other communication forms. In addition to overt communication methods, technologies now also now provide marketing systems the ability to do extensive lead nurturing activities through automation systems, which often include opt-in email listings, automated telephone dialing systems, or hard copy mailing lists to increase visibility, touch on customer need, and increase brand visibility. In many cases, especially where inquiries may not be ready to work with businesses immediately, it is crucial to maintain ongoing nurturing communications that cultivate a lead into a future sales, and effective lead management practices include these methods. [edit]Analytics
The analytics architecture is the last, and once the other architectures are in place, the most critical piece of an effective lead management system. This portion of the architecture allows for the dynamic review and analysis of lead actions, marketing channels, and sales performance. For many organizations this information can be vital in assisting management teams make decisions that improve production, return on investment, and the overall performance and cost benefits of their marketing and sales strategies. [edit]Optimizing
Lead Management
As larger vendors work with partner organizations such as distributors (see distribution (business)), resellers, brokers and other channel partners, those vendors often distribute leads to their respective partners to provide a local contact to those prospects and also 'feed' partners with new business opportunities. Today there are two major methods for distributing sales leads to partners: Push or Pull. PUSH The push method sends leads to specific partners assuming that those partners will follow up and work on those leads. The challenge with 'push' is the fact that often the local sales people may not be able to react immediately for various reasons: not available, busy, on vacation... Many large vendors report disappointment when asked about their lead follow-up rate through partners after the leads where pushed out to those partners. Pull The pull method was invented and patented by a German Engineer, Axel Schultze, who was frustrated with the lead follow up results of the push method and decided to let the available and motivated sales people 'pull' leads from an online available system. Patent was granted by the US Patent Office in May 2006. The pull method became widely accepted in the high tech industry where thousands of resellers from companies including Avaya, Nortel, Juniper and others distributed leads that way. The PULL Method became superior over the PUSH method, and lead closure rates grew on average by 300% as white papers from BlueRoads indicate. [edit]Technical [edit]Lead
Functionality
Acquisition
The lead acquisition functionality should allow for the simple and efficient acquisition of lead data into the lead management system. The acquisition functions must be able to support a variety of marketing channels and methods of capturing data. Some examples include:
Electronic Data Transfer
This acquisition function may include the transfer of discrete lead data via technologies like name-value pairs, XML, RSS, HTTP POST, and FTP. These technologies can be used in conjunction with an organization's own website or third party lead provider. Often lead providers will deliver leads via a standard email. These leads can be electronically captured byparsing the email and then submitting the lead using one of the methods described above.
Batch Imports
This acquisition function may include imports of multiple leads' data via technologies like Microsoft Excel, CSV, or other formatted batch data values. These technologies can be used to acquire leads that have been stored in other systems, assembled from lists, or other volume sources.
Quick Apply Web Forms
This acquisition function may include Web landing pages or sales interfaces. This technology can be used to acquire discrete lead data via manual input into an application-type form. [edit]Lead
Filtering and Assessment
Most lead management systems will have some intelligent methodology for filtering and assessing lead data into useful categorizations. There are a myriad of ways to accomplish this process and some of them may be specific to industries. The following is a suggested list of possible functions:
Data verification (i.e., telephone numbers, zip codes, address scrubbing) Device Intelligence (i.e., device fingerprint, botnet proxy detection, true geo location[2], true ip detection) Fraud screening Data appending (e.g., appending third-party data such as credit, preferences, purchase history) Grading/Lead Scoring Prioritization
Why Contact Management Systems are So Important Contact management systems have become increasingly popular today, and when you look at what all these systems provide, it is easy to see why so many businesses are turning to them. You see, it is so important that you are able to get the edge over your competitors in the competitive market today. If you want to have this edge, then you need to use a good contact management system to help you stay on top. You see, when you use a contact management system, you'll find that your business becomes a whole lot more efficient. It's important that you work on managing your contacts and leads, since effective management can definitely empower your company. So, let's take a closer look at contact management systems, a few indicators you need one, some great benefits, and one of the best options to try when it comes to a contact management system. Several Indications You Need a Contact Management System If you still don't have a good contact management system working for your company, more than likely you really need one. If you're not sure you need to begin using one for your business, here are a few indications that you are in desperate need of a contact management system to help you streamline your work processes and make your company more efficient and productive. - You Have Many Customers - If you happen to have a variety of different customers and you have many rows of them on spreadsheets that are disorganized and hard to sort through, then it may be a huge indicator that you need to get a great contact management system. - Information That's Duplicated - Dealing with customer information that somehow ended up being duplicated and you just don't have the time to go through and fix it all up? Well, if this is the case, you'll find that a contact management system may be what you need to get it all organized and fixed up the way it should be. - Various Users - If your company has a variety of different users who need to have access to the same information, then this is yet another indicator you need to go with a good contact management system for your company. This way your sales people can access the same information at the same time when they need to. - You Need to Be Able to Run Searches - Do you need to run searches to find various types of data? If this is the case, then it's a great idea to implement a contact management system into your company.
- You Have a Stack of Spreadsheets - One of the biggest indicators that you may need a great contact management system is that you have a huge stack of spreadsheets sitting somewhere full of contact information. This is a disaster waiting to happen and you need to get a contact management system installed as soon as possible. How You'll Benefit From a Good Contact Management System - Benefit #1 - Easily Keep Track of Data - One way that you can benefit from having a great contact management system is that it will allow you to easily keep track of data. Instead of having spreadsheets filled with data or data on a variety of computers, you'll be able to keep track of all of it with the one program. - Benefit #2 - Generate Great Reports - You'll also benefit from the ability to generate great reports when you use a great contact management system. This can be so handy, especially when you suddenly need reports and you don't have the time to do all the calculations yourself. - Benefit #3 - It's Easy to Use - Another benefit of a good contact management system is that they are so easy to use. You'll find that you can easily implement them into your company, and most of the time it will take little time for everyone to be able to use it properly
Following on from the e-guide on buying and implementing CRM software, I wanted to spend some time on the why, rather than how, of CRM implementing technology. So, over the next month or two, I¶m planning on writing a series of posts aimed at picking out some of the key benefit areas, which will then form the basis of another e-guide in due course. As a starting point, this post will cover the benefits of basic contact and activity management. In other words recording information about the people we deal with and tracking the interactions (phone calls, meetings, emails etc.) that we have with them. This is by no means the most sophisticated or exotic use of CRM technology, but doing it well can have significant benefits. So, as a starter, ten ways simple contact and activity management can benefit your organisation:
Better coordination of activity ± if your organisation has more than one staff member interacting with a given customer, prospect, stakeholder etc, then there¶s often scope to trip over one another. The bigger the organisation, and the larger the number of internal touch-points, the greater the potential for problems. One of my clients told me the story of their MD being shown out of meeting by a clearly amused customer, to find three of his senior colleagues awaiting their turn to see the same client. Other typical scenarios include telemarketing people unintentionally contacting customers, and salespeople getting ambushed by a major service issue when they were expecting to walk away with an order. Effective contact and activity management allows staff members to see at a glance who is in communication with a given person or company and interact knowledgably, effectively, and without duplication of effort. Defending your reputation ± it never looks good if you contact someone and get their details wrong. Perhaps they got married and changed their name, or changed their job title, address, left the organisation, or asked not to receive further correspondence. Each time it happens it damages the reputation of your organisation, and that can add up to a significant impact on brand image and customer loyalty. In the absence of CRM these changes are often recorded by someone, somewhere, but don¶t ripple through the rest of the organisation. If the details of a key contact reside on ten Outlook Contact lists, then a change might take months to meander its way through all of them ± if at all. Good contact management means there¶s only one instance of a record to maintain, so changes are immediately available and everyone¶s working with the most up to date information. Harvesting insight ± over the course of your many interactions with customers and prospects you¶ll gather useful information about them and the organisations they work for. That information can be critical in helping develop the relationship and promote your products and services. The fact that a potential customer has a
problem you can help them address might only be derived from snippets of information pieced together from multiple interactions. These insights, while potentially highly valuable, can quickly be lost if they aren¶t documented and shared with those that need them. Typically they reside in people¶s heads, notebooks, and other personal filing systems. By recording them within the CRM system, each hard won nugget of information becomes accessible to all customer-facing staff, allowing its value to be maximised and harvested over time. Sharing the value of relationships ± strong relationships have value, but that value is limited if those relationships are not understood throughout the organisation. By making them visible through the CRM system, their potential can be maximised. As an example, a client, who recently implemented a CRM system across their organisation, won a substantial piece of new business because it suddenly became apparent that colleagues in a different business unit had a strong existing business relationship with a key target prospect with whom they had been struggling to get any traction. Getting new staff up to speed quicker ± when employees leave there can often be a significant lag between their replacement joining and becoming effective in the new role. This can be a particular issue with new sales staff because of the impact it has on revenues. Using CRM to retain more information that might previously left with the departing salesperson, means that new joiners can get up to speed quicker, minimising the disruption of personnel changes, and helping maintain sales momentum. Improving the quality of interactions ± in the absence of effective systems, relations with key contacts are often owned by a single individual. If that employee happens to be travelling, ill, or on holiday, there¶s generally little scope for anyone else to take appropriate action in their absence. Strong contact management improves responsiveness and means that any staff member can handle queries and issues in an informed and effective way: Spotting the gaps ± in the same way that understanding who we have relationships with is important, so too is understanding where we don¶t have relationships, but probably should. One of the problems that many organisations experience is that assumptions get made as to who is managing the relationship with a potentially key contact, and the reality may be that it¶s slipped below everyone¶s radar. Good contact management allows the gaps to be spotted and addressed, and facilitates much more effective µman to man marking¶ of key contacts. It also helps identify where organisational relationships are too reliant on a single point of contact who might move on in due course. Improved productivity ± one of the most common impacts on productivity I come across in companies not using CRM technology effectively is the time it takes preparing for key meetings. Invariably this results in µall company¶ emails asking µwhat¶s the latest on customer x?¶. Everyone then gets to read and respond to the email which is unnecessarily time-consuming and disruptive. Other issues include the time involved in maintaining data held in multiple independent systems, spreadsheets, and databases, handling customer queries and questions, or generating reporting information. While there¶s a time overhead involved in updating the CRM system, this is generally more than offset by the gains in productivity that result. Getting the timing right ± the main reason I bought my first CRM application (way back in the mists of time of course) was that when you were dealing with a lot of people, trying to remember when you should be calling them back and what you previously has discussed was pretty much impossible without a system. Contact management and CRM technology has been a boon, particularly for salespeople, in terms of improving effectiveness in managing their prospects and customers. The system can also help identify contacts that are not being contacted as frequently as you would like them to be, and also contacts with whom you are over communicating, which can often happen when you have key individuals who may be important to several different parts of your organisation.
Improving marketing effectiveness ± the more contacts that are tracked in the system, the greater the scope for marketing to create targeted and relevant communications designed to help your organisation influence thinking, generate leads, and increase sales. A well designed contact database can also provide a wealth of analytical data including better insight into the people and companies exhibiting interest in your products and services. As I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, it may not be the most sophisticated use of CRM, but basic contact and activity management can have a significant beneficial impact. It also forms the foundation for more powerful applications of CRM technology which will be covered in later posts.
Benefits of Lead Management 1.Follow up on Each Lead ± Keeping tabs on each lead enables the sales team to be in the know . Multiple contacts with potential customers can be avoided, and the leads can be managed in an organized manner. 2.Focus on Sales ± lead management reduces the time that is wasted in futile efforts like cold calling. It also provides a good opportunity for the sales team to focus their efforts on leads that are sales-ready. 3.Categorizing Leads ± Segmenting leads by locations, occupations, etc., can help in assessing the needs of each segment and selling accordingly. You can also decide which leads need to be pursued and which need to be nurtured with the help of lead scoring. 4.Future Reference ± Statistics garnered via lead management can be used as reference for future augmentation and for ensuring absolute customer satisfaction. 5.Enhancing Team Efforts ± With Lead management, every team member can track their individual progress as well as the progress of others on the team. This provides them with an opportunity to improve their efforts and rectify their errors. 6.Individual Attention ± Lead management techniques, like lead nurturing, give personal attention to potential customers, thereby creating a strong bond that doesn¶t happen with cold calling. 7.Adaptability ± As every business has various needs, lead management programs can be personalized according to business requirements. 8.Complete Information ± Lead management facilitates a business in gathering beneficial information about the leads. It provides a good idea as to what the best channels are and what messages would be most appropriate