Lead Management Process: Everything You Need to Know

Are your marketing and sales teams pursuing the right leads and successfully converting them into paying customers? Or are they just getting in touch with every consumer who shows a bit of interest in your product and service to make a purchase? If your marketing and sales efforts sound like the latter, it’s probably time to establish a lead management process. It will serve as their guide on how to manage leads better.

The lead management process involves several steps. But it does not have to be overwhelming. Take advantage of tools like Podium to manage leads easier. Podium has lead management and lead management automation solutions specifically designed for growing businesses like yours.

Speed to lead is critical in today’s fast-paced market, and Podium offers an unparalleled advantage by ensuring businesses engage with leads within a couple of minutes—guaranteed. Podium’s conversational AI is outcome-driven – it doesn’t just respond to inbound leads it guides conversations toward a specific goal, such as a sale or booking. Unlike other AI systems that focus on providing correct responses, Podium aims to drive specific customer actions to grow your business.

With an effective lead management process, your team can identify which prospects and leads are worth nurturing. Therefore, your sales teams can focus their time, effort, and resources on leads that are most likely to pay for your services or products.

What is lead management?

Managing leads is all about guiding interested consumers who have come across your products or services to becoming paying customers. Imagine you run a jewelry store. Your business has become popular on social media, and suddenly your shop is getting a lot more email inquiries and foot traffic.

Getting more customers is great, right? The problem is that not everyone who visits your shop is ready to make a big purchase. Some just want to see your products in person, while others may merely be interested in your business. Some may even be looking for accessories you don’t offer. Meanwhile, people who want to buy gifts or are looking for engagement rings end up waiting too long to talk to a sales rep and end up visiting another store.

How do you identify these people who are ready to make a purchase? And what should you do with consumers who are just showing little interest in your product?

The answer is lead management. Having an effective lead management process in place will help you determine which customers are ready to make a purchase and where other leads are in the sales funnel. It can help prevent opportunities from falling through the cracks while saving you money and other valuable resources.

What is the lead management process?

The lead management process flow often starts with lead generation and ends with the sales handoff. Your team performs outbound and inbound marketing strategies on various platforms, like social media, to attract leads. People who encounter your business or marketing materials and take an action that shows interest, like filling out a form, are considered leads.

Lead generation is followed by lead tracking, a process that further identifies leads who are a good fit for the business. Lead tracking is a process of monitoring and analyzing the details of a prospect’s journey through a sales funnel.

Next comes lead qualification, where each lead is given a numerical score based on their interactions and behavior to indicate how ready they are to make a purchase. Qualified leads are distributed to sales agents who will get to know the lead and work to win a sale.

All these processes can be time-consuming and daunting if done manually, so businesses tend to use marketing automation software and tools. Some companies do lead scoring on a spreadsheet. This may still work for start-ups or small businesses, but the need to pull in all information about customers and analytics from different channels will make it impractical for growing businesses.

Why is a lead management process important?

1. Enhanced Lead Conversion and Sales Effectiveness

Sales and marketing teams should always aim to get more leads, but if these leads don’t become paying customers, you’ll be wasting money on lead generation efforts. For your business to make money or drive more revenue, your sales pipeline must be filled with leads that are most likely to pay for a product or service.

A lead management strategy can help your business know when a lead is ready to spend on your business. It can help significantly increase your conversion rate. With lead scoring and segmentation, you can focus your sales efforts on qualified leads. Your team won’t have to spend tons of time on tire kickers and consumers who will never convert.

2. Better Customer Experience and Relationship-Building

Not all your leads are ready to make a purchase, so you cannot send everyone discount offers and other similar marketing content and expect them to take immediate action. These strategies tend to work only for sales-qualified leads. Those who aren’t familiar with your product may appreciate an email that discusses how the product can solve their problem.

Leads at different stages of the sales funnel require different approaches. With an effective lead management process, you’ll be able to create individual strategies for each stage of the sales pipeline. You can be sure all marketing and sales content and products you send are relevant to every recipient. Therefore, consumers get a better experience and develop a strong relationship with your business.

3. Data-driven Decision Making and Optimization

Lead management solutions can easily collect and analyze valuable lead data at various touchpoints. Companies can use this data to make informed decisions about marketing strategies, product development, and resource allocation. This data-driven approach enhances efficiency, reduces costs, and eventually helps businesses make more money.

How to Create a Lead Management Process? 7 Steps

1. Define lead criteria and segmentation strategy.

Before your team starts identifying leads, make sure you establish criteria for qualifying leads and a segmentation strategy. When your team knows what to look for, they become more productive and are less likely to waste resources.

Aside from defining lead criteria, you’ll also need a segmentation strategy. Market segmentation refers to splitting up your leads into more focused groups based on certain criteria. Segmenting leads will help you better understand each prospect and design marketing content that resonates with them.

There are several ways to segment leads. You can segment them based on demographics, lifestyles, and preferences, among other factors.

2. Establish lead capture mechanisms.

After defining lead criteria and segmentation strategy, determine what method your team will use to collect phone numbers or any contact information from prospective leads.

There are many lead capture mechanisms out there. A great example is a lead magnet, a strategy where you offer a potential customer something of high perceived value in exchange for their contact information. You can give them an eBook, video training, a free trial, or even a free consultation session.

You can capture lead information by creating a lead-capture form. Make sure the form isn’t too long and includes a privacy policy. You can place the form on your site’s landing pages, a chatbot, and other pages that get high traffic. Make sure you test these forms to ensure their effectiveness.

3. Integrate CRM and marketing automation systems.

Lead management is a lot of work. You need to gather lead data from different sources and follow each lead throughout their engagement with your business. You also need to send them relevant marketing content that will encourage them to take action, like subscribe to your newsletter or buy a product.

CRM and marketing automation solutions make it easier to handle all those processes. Customer relationship management (CRM) platforms are designed to collect customer data and store it in an accessible, centralized location. On the other hand, marketing automation tools focus on automating, streamlining, and analyzing marketing workflows and tasks. You can use it for automating lead segmentation and nurturing. This way, your marketing and sales teams can focus on finding fresh leads for your business.

There are countless CRM and marketing automation platforms out there, but not everything is designed for businesses of all sizes. If you’re managing a growing business and searching for a system with CRM capabilities specifically for SMBs, Podium Contacts is for you.

 4. Create lead nurturing content and workflows.

Building trust with your leads can help push them to the next stage of your sales funnel. It is also what you’ll need to convert them into customers. To build trust and positive relationships with consumers, your team needs to provide high-quality content that meets consumers’ specific needs.

Many different types of content and tactics are effective in nurturing leads. You can send an email invite to a webinar for customers who have expressed interest in learning more about your product. A webinar is a great way to educate prospective customers without making them feel pressured to make a purchase. If you’re offering a free trial and want to encourage prospects to upgrade, you can share the benefits of getting a paid plan and some pricing information.

Whether the consumer is in the awareness stage or has just bought a product from you, keeping them engaged is important. One way to engage them is to educate them on something they care about. But make it funny and interesting so it can grab their attention. You can add unique images or funny, relatable stories to keep customers interested.

If you have sales-ready leads, consider sending them personalized FAQs, emails, or texts. Customers usually have questions before they buy a product or get a service. Sending FAQs with answers to their questions will show leads that your team takes initiative and cares about them.

5. Define lead scoring and qualification criteria.

Among all the leads your team generated, only a portion has the potential to become paying customers. A lead scoring and qualification criteria will help your team determine leads who are most likely to convert and weed out those who won’t. With lead scoring, your business is likely to make 138% more money than 78% of businesses that do not score leads.

Lead scoring is all about assigning numerical values to each lead based on the criteria you set. For example, a prospect who subscribes to your email list gets an additional 5 points. Those who cancel an appointment get a deduction of 5 points. To determine who is ready to make a purchase and who should be passed onto a sales team, you will need to set a lead-scoring threshold.

In terms of criteria for lead scoring, you can use your prospect’s demographic information and geographic location. This is also called explicit lead scoring. You can also consider behavioral qualifying attributes, like time spent on your website, which is also referred to as implicit scoring.

Lead scoring is just one way to know whether a lead is qualified or not. There are many other lead qualification strategies you can use, like creating an ideal customer profile (ICP). ICP is a description of the kind of consumer who buys your products or uses your services. You can also ask questions to determine the likelihood of a lead becoming a paying customer.

You can also go further and optimize lead distribution processes, though many businesses opt to automate them. Lead distribution ensures that you match leads with reps who have the sales style and expertise to meet the lead’s needs. You can establish lead distribution criteria that consider factors such as experience, seniority, and current commitments to other leads.

6. Implement sales handoff and follow-up processes.

What happens after your leads finally take an action, like signing up for a service or buying a product? Do you continue your relationship with them or just move on to the next customer?

A customer journey does not end with them purchasing a product or paying for a service. That is why businesses typically have a sales handoff processes in place.

A sales handoff is when your salespeople formally pass a customer account over to the customer service or customer success team. This process helps ensure that all vital customer information and needs are communicated between the sales and customer service teams so the latter can continue providing a positive customer experience.

When customers have great experience dealing with your business, they are more likely to make a repeat purchase. This means that implementing sales handoff can be useful in gaining loyal customers.

But what about those leads who did not take any action? What does your team do when the leads don’t buy when you want them to?

While not all leads will end up becoming paying clients, this does not mean you should easily give up. Chances are your business has spent money and time to acquire every lead. Not doing anything when they say no will likely lead to wasted resources.

That’s why you’ll need to make a follow-up strategy for every type of lead. If marketing qualified leads don’t take the next action, like upgrading to a paid subscription or booking a live demo, you’ll want to follow up using a marketing approach. For example, you can send some witty follow-up emails or retarget ads.

7. Monitor, analyze, and optimize the process.

Developing and implementing lead management strategies for your business is important. But your lead generation workflows should not end there. You should also monitor your efforts to know whether they are working. There are many useful data points you should track to measure the effectiveness of your workflows.

• Leads: A great backend funnel won’t matter unless it’s bringing customers to your door. So, measure the number of opportunities your team receives. Leads can be divided into different types, like marketing-qualified leads (MQL) and sales-qualified leads (SQL). MQLs are those interested in learning more about your offer, while SQLs are those interested in speaking with a sales rep.

•  Acquisition cost: How much does your business spend on attracting new potential customers? If the total lead acquisition costs more than your profit, it’s time to assess your lead generation strategies and make some changes.

• Conversion rate: You also need to examine your lead management workflows if your team is generating more leads but you don’t see an increase in sales. Assess the skills of your sales reps, your lead nurturing strategies, and other factors affecting your conversion rate.

• Customer lifetime value: How long does a customer stay loyal to your business? Retaining customers is much less costly and time-consuming than generating new leads.

Podium’s AI Employee guarantees your business engages with leads within a couple of minutes; during peak hours, off hours, and every hour in between.

Streamline Your Lead Management Process with Podium

Generating and managing leads do not have to be overwhelming. With Podium, your team can take advantage of automation to speed up lead management workflows.  Podium is an all-in-one solution that can help you generate, capture, and convert leads into customers. It can help streamline your lead management process and prevent leads from going to waste. With Podium’s Lead Drive solution, your team can make sure no potential sales fall through the cracks.

Lead Drive collects all customer inquiries from different channels and sends them to the Podium Inbox. With a unified view of conversations and messages, you can access whatever information you need to address customer concerns and needs and respond in real-time. The platform can even send a text to leads automatically. You can ensure faster responses, which help build engagement and trust.

Speed to lead wins; Podium’s AI Employee boosts lead conversion by 45%. Beat your competition faster than ever with Podium’s AI Employee. Watch a demo today.