Difficulties with lead management pre-date marketing automation – think of Alec Baldwin taunting his sales team with a stack of leads on index cards in the movie Glengarry Glenross. But in order to put that technology to work, sales staff will have to work closely with marketing staff to tackle some long-standing issues. Getting the Jump on Lead Management SoftwareĪ Proven Approach to Implementing Lead Management SystemsĪ new generation of technology is aimed at increasing the volume of qualified sales leads to be distributed to the sales force. Read more about marketing software systems » Similarly, lead nurturing often takes a back seat to lead generation and fails to receive the attention it needs to succeed. Leads passed to sales, but not believed qualified by sales, are often simply ignored and not passed back to marketing for continued nurturing. A remarkable percentage, perhaps near half, of sales leads received by the sales team are not acted upon timely or at all. Several of these nurture programs may be performed simultaneously, using the lead data to determine what messaging and content is best received for each type of lead.īut these processes can easily break down. Qualified leads are forwarded to sales, while the rest are either disqualified or inserted into lead nurturing programs. They start with basic lead generation and are then followed by gauging the readiness to buy based on a weighted scoring system that attributes values to rank and qualify prospects. Marketing practices are well known and laborious.
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However, while sales people have gained automation and information from SFA systems, CRM software and other sales tools, marketing staff have largely been forced to accelerate the manual business processes that have yielded mixed performance results. Acquiring those sales-ready leads is marketing's responsibility – and they too have to do more with less resources. Studies by Gartner and Aberdeen illustrate that sales staff actually now need more leads than in the past just to achieve flat revenue production. Sales people have more pressure to sell, and to do that they need to receive qualified sales leads at the time buyers are ready to buy. The challenging economic climate has resulted in staff and budget cuts to many sales and marketing departments.
Selecting the right marketing software system can be relatively simple, if you understand what to look for.
These marketing software systems also automate the lead scoring and nurturing processes, thereby automatically maturing leads until they are sales-ready. A new breed of marketing software systems which use prospect behaviors and lead management best practices empower marketers to acquire more leads, but more significantly allow marketers to include more intelligence with those leads, and thus better qualify them for the sales force. The marketing mantra hasn't changed, but the software tools at marketing's disposal have. This hit or miss performance casts doubt on the strategic value of the function and marketing can quickly come to be seen as a discretionary expense, particularly when companies are downsizing. When marketers deliver highly qualified leads, they are celebrated but when they don't they are dismissed or put on the spot to explain themselves. However, that subjective work behavior is difficult to methodically improve, scale and often results in performance inconsistencies. Historically, marketing processes have been more art than science marketers often worked more by feel and intuition than by facts. Marketing has always been charged with reaching out to new prospects and existing customers and then forwarding leads to the sales team.
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How to Select The Right Marketing Software SystemĪ Systemic Approach to Evaluating Lead Management Systems In this blog I share my experiences, lessons and learning about Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software, Marketing & Lead Management Systems, and other related business software systems.