Lead management system and why is it more important than you think

Importance of Lead Management System – A Real life scenario

Lead management System is a set of methodologies, systems, and practices designed to generate new potential business clientele, generally operated through a variety of marketing campaigns or programs.

In every business, customers are the single most important entity. Whether you have an individual as a customer or a corporate customer, it is really important to treat them right. And in order to treat to them right, you need to have proper system on what the customer wants and what you offer, to earn their trust for your product.

But, customer do not come directly to buy from business. They know what they want and they gather information on who can provide the best service in a cost efficient manner. This is where customer contact business to learn the product or services provided so that they can make an informed decision. And this is where business identifies their potential customers.

Inquiries gained by businesses from potential customers are termed as “leads”. Businesses all know about MQL (Marketing Qualified Leads) and SQL (Sales Qualified Leads), they have a definite plan and structure to convert leads to customers, but it is really important to digitize the process.

Lead management system is a software (either SaaS based or personal), where business enter all their lead information to track lead activities until they made a purchase from the business.

For e.g. there will be stages — where a lead actually converts to a customer. The stages may be “Contact made”, “Contact received”, “Features and benefits explained”, “Deals offered”, “Deals accepted” and “Deal finalized/closed”. All these stages defines how well the products/services offered by business are received by the potential customers. These are business indicators.

If leads disappears as soon as Features and Benefits explained, then lead did not find the products offered, good enough or competitive enough that is worth chasing. This indicated business actually may have to provide more or may be offer more benefits from their products to leads.

If leads disappears as soon as Deals are offered, then the product did met their requirement and expectation, but the deal was not tempting enough. If this happens a lot,it is an indicator — either customer do not find the deal tempting even though the product met their demand or the customer is getting better deals elsewhere.

Each and every stages have their own indications. This helps the business make informed decision on the process of converting their MQL & SQL to customers. Every lead is valuable since they are costly to acquire. It is really important to have system in place so that you have valuable information of your leads. There is what a lead management system does.

A lead management system should also be able to determine which channels are more effective in generating leads. Businesses are spending more and more on offline and online media to promote their services, & are getting more and more leads. But some channels to generate leads with higher proportion of conversion are more efficient in terms of cost and time than other channels. Determining those channels are crucial for business to determine their next business. It is of utmost important to focus time and money on those channels.

A lead management system also tracks the effectiveness of your own employee. Every business has a dedicated team assigned to convert leads to customers. If every information of leads are digitized, it is easier for business to assign leads to employee who are better suited to serve specific leads, especially in case of business offering multiple products. A lead management system is used to determine who is best suited to serve specific leads so that the conversion rate is higher. A lead management also provides easier reminder feature so that you are well aware of the best time to contact your lead. The most important things is to be aware of best possible time to contact lead with the best possible deals, for higher proportion of lead conversion to customer.

And the most important feature, REPORTING. Business cannot make informed decision unless they are well informed. So, a lead management system should easily generate and record all the leads, stages, channels or campaigns that are generating leads with higher conversion rate and various information. Getting these reports on hand provides business to make decision on their next marketing campaigns, efficiency of their employees, easier reminder facility and sales pipe lining.

In short, the single most important entity of business — customer information, is never neglected if business are using lead management system. So, lead management system is one of the most important piece of business architecture.