CRM and lead management…

One of the big benefits of deploying CRM technology can be systemising the handling of leads and enquiries. In his book ‘Lead Generation for the Complex Sale’ Brian Carroll notes that ‘as many as 80 percent of leads are typically lost, ignored or discarded’. Some leads simply don’t get followed up at all, which is rather mystifying but seems to be a fact of life. The bigger problem is when leads get passed to salespeople when the buying decision is not immediate. Salespeople are often poor at managing longer term leads in my experience, being rather more focussed on the here and now. Without effective systems these leads tend not to be recycled, and as I suspect the majority of purchase decisions are not immediate, this can be a big waste.

We’ve had a number of CRM systems go live lately where we are trying to increase revenues through managing leads more effectively. The key has been to define a sales process that ensures that all leads are captured and tracked through the system. This involves defining what constitutes a lead, when the lead should be passed to a salesperson, and, importantly, when they should be passed back for example to a telemarketing team should the opportunity prove longer term. By improving the visibility of the lead within the system, the organisations can ensure that opportunities are followed up effectively, and that the shelf-life of the lead is considerably extended by effective management over the long term.

One of my favourite gripes is that few companies make the most of their CRM systems by failing to invest in the supporting reporting capabilities – a theme I’ll warm to on another occasion. We’ve ensured that the lead management capabilities are supported by powerful business intelligence reports to allow the management team measure progress, and help the marketing team allocate their budgets into the most productive areas. There have already been a few surprises with different types of leads providing very different conversion ratios.

In principle this over time will translate into a big lift in sales. Brian Carroll cites an increase in qualified leads through these lead nurturing programmes between 15 and 200%. It’s early days to provide any meaningful statistics so far, but I’m certain the impact is going to be significant. I’ll report back as things progress…

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