Sales Lead Management Software Solutions for Your Small Business

So, you’ve built a solid foundation of questions. But now that you have your leads, what are you supposed to do with them? Believe it or not, this is an issue that plagues many small business owners, time and time again. Getting leads is important to building your new customer list, but unless you know what to do with them, you’re doomed to fail. To make matters worse, you could have avoided it entirely with the right lead management system.

Tracking and managing leads It may sound complicated, but there are many solutions available to help your lead management responsibilities run as smoothly as possible. Lead management software is by far the most effective solution available and is easy to implement. And the lead management software options for your small business are amazing. Knowing what you want from your lead management software and knowing how to use the technology you buy will have a big impact on how the software system helps your business perform.

Hosted Lead Management Solutions

The software solutions are now available as hosted solutions and therefore there is no need to invest in server hardware and special software. These solutions are also known as subscription-based services or on-demand solutions. You can subscribe to lead management solutions, accessible via the Internet for as little as $50 per month. You can start using the software in a day or two, if not a few hours. The learning curve isn’t as steep as it used to be. Your admin and sales staff can centrally manage leads and access them anytime, anywhere. The price varies according to the number of users/sellers that access the system and the volume of their inquiries and drip/sequential emails sent for attention and follow-up.

key features

When choosing a software system to manage leads and prospects, there are some key features to look for: database management, charts, and customer management options. Database management will allow you and your employees to keep track of new leads, manage current leads, and maintain status reports for each follow-up. Charts will allow you to create graphical representations of your leads and show you what areas are succeeding and where your business may need improvement. Customer management can track individual leads, let you and your employees know if a customer has a pending question to answer, and track past orders and future interest.

These three aspects of software can boost the productivity of your business. You and your employees can easily track and manage many different streams of leads and break each lead into a single entity to focus on customer relationships. This is imperative for personal customer interaction, which encourages new customers to buy from your company and increases business from repeat customers.

Software Components

• Sales leads can be captured and aggregated from multiple sources such as web forms, third-party solutions via APIs, and emails using an email parser solution. Leads can also be entered manually so all leads can be managed in one place.
• The software can automatically distribute or route sales leads to your sales team based on various criteria such as geographic area, lead profile, etc.
• The lead admin can qualify the leads and rank them (for example, hot, warm, and cold) based on the likelihood of conversion. This would help your sales agents to focus on the highest priority leads first.
• Prospects can be nurtured through drip emails (or sequential emails or autoresponders) and future conversion. The latest lead management solutions incorporate email marketing solutions for this purpose.
• Leads can be tracked and tracked using the email management solution to give full visibility to all stakeholders.

Lead management software should also allow you to effortlessly import your existing data and data from external sources, and allow merging of other important data along with the information your software stores. Reports will be very easy to create with the right type of lead management software, reducing the time spent analyzing your information and allowing you to see in real time where your lead management skills need to be improved. This is an invaluable tool for your client management practices.

the human touch

When making the decision to venture into lead management software solutions, keep in mind that the software solution is in no way a replacement for your hard work. The solution is meant to help your business in lead management and allows you to handle more leads with the time you can save by using it. Your software system is only as valuable as the people who use it, so use it wisely. Remember that your prospects want to deal with a real person, not a program, and don’t let prospects slip away. Using subscription-based lead tracking and management systems wisely can help your business increase conversions and improve results.