Aaron Draper created an interactive website with engaging content when he started his business sometime back, ran adverts and eventually, some leads started pouring in. Sounds great! Initially, the leads were less in number so they could be tracked and managed manually and it seemed quite an easy job to Aaron! But the real big problem began when the lead volume grew and he started receiving more inquiries from different channels. Unlike before he couldn’t handle all the leads and devote an equal amount of time to each one of them, this ultimately resulted in lead leakage, no lead engagement and missed follow-ups. Aaron was distressed. That is when Aaron felt the need for Lead Management Software is his business. Then, there was no looking back.

Have you ever felt like Aaron?  Not being efficient enough to justify all your leads and their needs!

To put it in simple words, “Lead management is basically the process to manage the leads equally and constantly.” However, the modern-day lead management automation is not just limited to managing the leads; it directly impacts the end-to-end sales and marketing opportunities of any business.

Today, many B2B enterprises leverage the lead management automation to boost sales, minimize sale cycles, maximize lead conversions and increase revenue. Now, let’s discuss few ways in which the lead management software can improve the marketing or sales productivity of businesses:

• Lead Capture Automation

As businesses utilize various marketing channels to create awareness and identify their potential prospects, the lead volume tends to remain high. It is not feasible to manage each lead manually; the lead management software enables automated capturing. It collects the information from multiple campaign respondents. This saves a lot of time as well as prevents any sort of lead leakage.

• Routing of Leads

There are different criteria for any business to assign leads to its reps. Some assign it on the basis of sales, reps’ geography while others distribute the leads to those who have proven specialization in specific products or industry. However, lead management software ensures that all the leads are automatically allocated and sent to the appropriate sales person’s inbox on the basis of predetermined characteristics. This, in turn, expedites the follow-up process as leads are distributed instantly to the appropriate reps.

• Lead Generation & Tracking

Needless to say, identifying leads is a tough and time-consuming task but owing to the lead tracking function the sales reps can track the activities of the prospects. It can give useful insights about the activities and behavior of a particular lead such as forms they are filling or web-pages they are visiting. Most of the latest lead management software even track the chat or phone conversations.

• Lead Qualification

In order to prioritize tasks and approach the most relevant prospects first, the sales team identifies the qualified leads, which are also termed as ‘sales-ready leads’. Most of the lead management systems provide a quality score to each lead depending on their chances to get converted into sales. This lead scoring enables the sales reps to measure the lead qualification and their interest level.

• Lead Nurturing

In B2B marketing, there is no such term as a dead lead. There are leads that won’t buy at the moment but have high chances of getting converted into ‘sales-ready leads’ in the future. Then, there are leads that might never come to you, but once you know why they are not interested you can make efforts in that direction to make them interested. Such kinds of leads are transferred to the nurturing cycle where they are kept engaged through various channels such as blogs, videos, newsletters, email campaigns, SMSes and drip emails.

• Email Campaigns

Automated lead management system allows users to create numerous emails simultaneously and schedules their delivery throughout particular time duration. It helps the sales rep to follow-up only with those prospects that have performed some kind of activity on the email. Businesses can effectively improve the return on email campaigns using this powerful feature.

• Reporting & Analysis

Besides lead capturing and tracking, lead management software also allows the B2B enterprises to leverage the reporting and analysis features to keep a check of acquisition rates, conversions, close sale ratios and various other metrics. All this data gives them the insight to assess the success of different marketing and sales parameters including promotional efforts, quality of leads generated, return on sales, improvement in management and performance measurement.

Further, the lead management automation allows the organizations to identify the trends and patterns that positively affect the sales leads. This, in turn, helps them to implement changes in their sales and marketing processes and thereby improves effectiveness.

An intuitive application, lead management software streamlines the overall process of lead management by utilizing a full spectrum of automated tools. With a robust lead management automation solution in place, businesses can maximize close rates and generate more revenue by making the best use of every opportunity they encounter with.