Marketing would then hand raw leads (inquiries) straight to sales, distributed either by post or faxed to the relevant sales office, with little chance of feedback. As sales had the direct connection between buyer and vendor they would play the prominent role in educating and emphasising the marketing benefits, qualifying the leads, and recontacting those needing further nurturing.

As the technology advanced, we began distributing leads in excel, by email and eventually by purpose built in-house databases. It took a while but eventually as we became more comfortable with on-demand and cloud computing, the process of managing leads became the realm of web based lead management and crm tools.

The evolution of the Lead Management process

What is evident over this period, apart from the obvious changes in technology, was the gradual shift in responsibility for lead management from sales towards marketing.

Buyers now spend a lot more time online researching, engaging with colleagues, and evaluating offerings themselves via the Web. This all happens before any person to person sales contact occurs. By the time sales actually speaks to prospects, they think they understand your products, your solutions as well as the competition’s.

The way we market has also changed dramatically in this time. It’s not that the goals have changed, it will always be about increasing revenue, producing good quality “sales ready” leads, what is changing is the options to execute these goals and the channels available.

The effect on the Lead management process

Buyers are harder to contact and less receptive to intrusive sales calls - the average lead now takes between 5 and 6 attempts to contact. For many companies the website has now become the vital sales and marketing tool.

Changes in buyer behaviour and the control they now wield, lead management is no longer marketing generating leads then passing those raw leads to sales to qualify and close. The emergence of technology to automate lead management tasks – capturing unqualified, “raw” leads from inbound and outbound sources, then score, nurture, and prioritize these selling opportunities before handing off to sales, has left sales free to focus on converting “sales qualified” leads, managing their opportunity pipeline.

Sales is becoming a more strategic discipline, they need to be prepared, knowledgeable and able to provide solutions to each customer need. Marketing must ensure sales has the right information, at the right time to enable meaningful conversations with prospects.

Marketing is undergoing significant transformation and the support of sales through lead nurturing and with better qualified leads is central to their goals.

Components of the Lead Management Process

Filling the funnel – Lead generation: Inbound and outbound campaigns designed to get prospects to opt-in for an offer. Offers can be white papers, webinars, e-books, demos, trials, etc.

Lead Nurturing: A major component of your lead management strategy. The use of content and re-targeting tactics (email, phone, direct mail, adwords) to engage known prospects over time until they are deemed ready to engage with sales.

Lead Qualification: To determine when the lead is ready may include scoring, based on the prospect’s previous behavior or potential value. It is about identifying those leads ready to speak with sales.

Lead Routing: Ensuring when the lead is ready, that it is sent to the correct sales person, quickly and with all the information that sales may require.

Lead Tracking: By recording the source of leads then tracking through to closure and the reasons for success or failure allows a complete close loop picture.

Metrics: By measuring your lead management efforts, you begin to understand what’s working and what’s not. You can set goals and optimize your lead management process.

Some problems remain the same

80% of leads that are poorly managed often end up ignored, lost, or discarded. What has remained constant throughout, regardless of technology or changes in responsibility are some of the familiar problems that companies face.

• Difficulties in capturing leads, complicated by multiple sources
• Having no Lead tracking in place – recording leads in excel or on emails is not managing leads efficiently.
• The need to act fast when the buyer is ready to engage – 78% of prospects convert with the company that call first.
• Salespeople developing their own individual systems, eventually the process of managing leads gets lost in the shuffle when managing relationships and other sales concerns.
• Sales cherry picking – there is no process to ensure all leads are tracked.
• Sales and Marketing are not aligned – no agreement on the definition of a “Sales ready” leads.

The steps to successful lead management

What you need to focus on to ensure your sales and marketing efforts result in successful lead management has remained true.

Act on every lead – Getting systems in place to organize leads helps sales know who has been contacted and who has not. This guarantees that leads do not fall through the cracks and potential leads are not annoyed by multiple attempts to contact.

Let Sales Sell – With everyone online, information is readily accessible, marketing supports the buyer process and time is left for reps to do what they do best—sell.

Assign leads to the best person - Different salespeople have different skills and experience. With a lead management tool in place, you are able to route leads to the salesperson who best fits and knows the needs.

Analyze and forecast – Keep a history of the entire lead process, from initial contact to closing the sale, including sales history. Use the data to forecast and set goals.

Teamwork - With lead management tools, sales are able to see how they are doing, as well as colleagues. It brings a competitive element and different reps and sales teams performance can be compared.

One to one contact – With the focus back on selling and not on cold calls or nurturing, reps have time to connect personally with prospects.

Uniform and comprehensive Lead information - The right tool will allow you to collect information about your leads and keep everything organised, so you always know how to approach them.

We have come a long way in the last 10 years , however the need for sales and marketing to work closely together has never been more important. With the advance in technology Lead management tools are now available to automate and facilitate this.