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Tips to Improve Your Lead Management Strategy

Companies that have an effective lead management process in place can generate more
revenue from their lead acquisition activities, with higher close rates on marketing generated
leads. The lead management process simply increases the likelihood that a contact will convert
to a qualified opportunity and then a new, satisfied customer, maximizing your investment in
lead generation. Obviously, improving your lead management process can improve your
results. So how does your company go about doing this?

Let’s review the core components of this multistage process. The diagram below outlines the
stages and flow of a general lead management strategy.

Does the chart to the right resemble the process in your


Contact
enterprise, or does your process emphasize only one or
two of these components? Does your organization
understand your entire lead lifecycle? If each of the
individual components in your lead management system Lead Lead Lead Customer
Qualification Assignment
works efficiently, then the overall process should Generation
function effectively with measurable results. The first Closed Loop
step in improving your lead management strategy is to: Tracking &
Reporting
Metrics

1. Understand, clarify and refine your Lead


enterprise’s lead management method Nurturing
Lead Management Process

To implement an effective lead management


process, all stakeholders must be involved in the
formation of each of the steps in the strategy and
help determine the qualifications for moving through
each stage. Enterprises should ideally consider and embrace a comprehensive approach to
lead management − one with a focus on the relevance and timing of the information that is
delivered to all parties.

What does your company’s lead management process look like and who has been involved
in determining its strategy? Is it too complex, or is it ineffective with dropped leads and low
conversions? What are its strengths and weaknesses? Consider:

A. Who has ownership of each stage of the process? Get agreement with all the
stakeholders as to what is expected entering and exiting each stage. Marketing
needs to collaborate with the sales team throughout this process so the leads
generated ultimately are the leads that your sales team needs.
"Less than 25% of all
B. Is there a defined lead management workflow? It may be that your company needs inquiries are followed up
a thorough examination and re-engineering of your enterprise’s lead management
processes and activities.
and closed out by sales-
people, which leaves both
C. What essential performance indicators or ROI measures are associated at key
points throughout the process? Without effective measurement tools it is marketing people and the
impossible to calculate how marketing contributes to sales success or how the inquirer frustrated.”
combined effort contributes to the bottom line.
James W. Obermayer, executive
Adopting a strategy that quickly and efficiently captures, nurtures, distributes and analyzes director of the Sales Lead
leads though all of the stages of Inquiry, Prospect and Opportunity Management is crucial. Management Association
(Jan 29, 2008 2:11pm EST).
Once you’ve established what your optimal process should look like, then the next step is to
make sure the each of the distinctive stages is a solid contributor to the overall function.

2. Improve each of the underlying components

A. Lead Generation or Acquisition

Whether your lead generation strategies are predominately composed of on-line campaign
marketing programs, traditional marketing techniques, or a combination of the two, the

© Copyright 2008 Marketbright, Inc. All Rights Reserved


following elements are necessary to provide quality leads for your company.

Identify quality leads. Have you agreed with your sales team what a qualified lead looks like? Start
by sitting down with sales to decide on your enterprises’ definition of a “good” lead (ready to
purchase, meets demographics, etc).
Clearly define and know your market niche or target. An effective lead generation process always
begins and ends with knowing the audience. Once this is established, then you can segment your
lists to capture, retain, entice, and get more information to and from your target audience.
Use effective lead generation automation tools. This will help you decrease resource use when
implementing and enhancing list management needs. Manual list management requires
considerable manpower to perform basic tasks such as de-duping or handling opt outs, bounces,
and previous respondents. Use of automation systems should manage all of these tasks, as well as
increase your lead generation sophistication with such features as incremental profile building and
data field memorization for email marketing campaigns.
Optimize your landing pages and forms. Don’t underestimate the importance of your landing pages
as a tool of lead management. Content, layout and graphics should all be evaluated and optimized
to assure the best possible results. Be clear on the action you want your audience to take and focus
the content on just that action. Make sure your surveys and registration forms lend themselves to
easy capture of info and match the amount of info capture with the value of the offer. Keep in mind
that crafting just a few focused questions can lead to an increase in response rates.
Use accurate and reliable campaign metrics for tracking, reporting and testing. Automate your
analytics as much as possible to:
• Tailor prospect conversations based on the areas of your site they visited
• Know what information the lead already downloaded to prevent duplication
• See where sales leads come from and what keywords they use

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B Lead Qualification and Lead Scoring

For today’s multi-touch, B2B sales cycles, companies that have implemented lead scoring
and nurturing practices gain better visibility into the lead qualification process. This is also
where the synergy between marketing and sales is crucial. Establishing a lead qualification
process really starts with the lead generation process. Once this process is set up then
marketing can build and refine the lead qualification method to validate, score, and classify
all leads.

Your enterprise should have a lead ranking or scoring system in place, either using your sales
CRM or SFA systems, or other automation process. A lead ranking or grading system helps to
determine what leads to forward as opportunities to sales and what leads to continue
nurturing in marketing. Again, with input and agreement from sales, streamline your
qualification questions and ranking criteria, determine specific definitions of high, middle
and low-quality leads to prioritize lead follow-up. You can customize your lead capture and
scoring in a myriad of ways to provide flexibility to reflect your market, geography and
business conditions. Consider ranking your leads based on data accuracy, survey responses,
web interactions, profile database, company demographics, etc. – it’s all about knowing your
customers’ needs. Don’t forget to consider how to manage atypical or out-of-profile leads.

Implementing an automated lead qualification system allows you the bandwidth to target a
larger number of prospect categories at the same time, to automate manual distribution
tasks and forward the leads to sales in a timely fashion. It also removes the ambiguity in
prospect classifications so that your sales team can follow shared lead consumption best
practices and shorten their sales cycles.

C. Lead Nurturing, Drip or Dialogue Marketing

After marketing has generated quality leads and the few “good” ones are distributed into
your sales CRM or SFA system for your sales team, it needs a process for managing other
prospects that are not ready to buy or are non-responsive. The nurturing and cultivating of
leads, or pipeline management, is one of the most critical components of the sales

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conversion equation. The secret with any lead management system is to maximize the
efficiency (with technology) but not lose the impact of a personal customer experience.
Finding this equilibrium will optimize your return on marketing investments and provide the
five to seven interactions or ‘touches’ we all know it takes to turn a lead into a qualified
prospect.

Consider:

Who is responsible for nurturing – is it marketing or sales? Determine when, how and by whom the
lead is contacted (followed up). If marketing is predominately responsible for lead nurturing, then
make sure that sales has been given the means to hand unsuccessful leads back for further work or
nurturing on their behalf.
Implementing a lead ranking or grading system. Effective lead scoring techniques help improve
response rates for nurture marketing programs by focusing efforts on the most responsive
customers and prospects. Customers usually provide clues to when they may be willing, qualified,
or able to buy. An effective lead scoring process will identify these clues and allow you to insert
them into the nurturing workflow.
Incorporating other non-traditional ways to drip or dialogue market to your segmented leads – opt-
in video, viral marketing, virtual events, blogs etc.
The importance of automation to track prospect response to your drip campaigns marketing,
moderate frequency of reach outs (minimizing burnout) and improve efficiency.
What lead nurturing “contact triggers” work best for your target market? The three main
categories generally include; Constant Triggers (typically data driven – special occasion or elapsed
time period reminders), Active Triggers (status tracking of prospect interactions such as for in-
bound non-purchase events – webinars, whitepaper download, etc.) and Existing Client Triggers
(customers do provide direct cues, but these require sophisticated notation or tagging systems and
support for customer community outreach like blogs, discussion groups, social networks, etc.).

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D. Lead Assignment, Distribution or Routing

Marketing’s goal is to get the “good” leads to the right sales people at the right time to
maximize both marketing ROI and sales productivity. Lead distribution can be a bit tricky if
you’re not sure who should get lead notification and who should handle the lead follow up.
Generally, enterprises use such properties as company size, region, or other factors to
determine the correct sales person to hand off the lead to via email. Work with your sales
management to predefine lead distribution rules for routing to sales. This will minimize lead
follow-up times while increasing your company’s lead follow-up rate − increasing total sales
volume and revenue.

Most enterprises rely on some type of automated system for lead distribution to improve
lead routing precision, efficiency and flexibility. It’s important to make sure whatever system
you use integrates with your sales CRM/SFA applications for both the assignment and
notification process. And even though you employ such a system, it alone won’t ensure
cooperation among marketing and sales. Both groups have to agree to work cooperatively
for each other’s benefit. Jointly defined reporting from the lead management system will
foster cooperation and understanding.

The real-time distribution of leads, along with marketing driven sales outreach campaigns,
both increase the perceived value of marketing by sales. In case your SFA tool doesn’t do
lead routing, invest in a system with the ability to automate rule and score based real-time
lead routing to your sales team, along with the ability to create and push outreach
campaigns into SFA and call center applications.

D. Tracking and Reporting

The value of lead management is critically dependent upon regular updates about each open
lead. Tracking and reporting allows you to stay on top of who is responding to what and
whether they are closer to a purchase. Marketers need to be confident that their lead
management data is complete and accurate. A best practice is to first define key milestone
points for the lead nurturing process, then to determine qualifiers that leads must achieve to

© Copyright 2008 Marketbright, Inc. All Rights Reserved


pass each milestone. Once these milestones and qualifiers are established, defining
benchmark metrics for the lead nurturing process can be accomplished. Tracking these
metrics will allow you to understand your prospects’ needs to the point that you can
anticipate them and provide the right message at the right time, whether in your demand
generation or nurture marketing campaigns.

Many marketers are now using Engagement Metrics 1 to track lead activity and interest
across a much broader universe (web browsers, web applications such as widgets, RSS
readers and destinations including websites, walled social networks and services like Twitter)
to enhance their lead scoring process. These measurements can provide insight into every
step that your prospect takes to better segment your web audience and allow for
sophisticated customer profiling. These new behavioral analytics help mitigate the concerns
that marketing can’t effectively measure ROI when adopting new media strategies. By
maximizing your learning about each lead, you will develop your own benchmarks with
defined metrics that directly identify marketing's contribution to the sales pipeline and
closed deals.

About Marketbright

Marketbright provides an on-demand marketing automation solution which allows companies to


implement campaign execution and demand generation, automate lead scoring and nurturing, and to
gain visibility into closed-loop campaign-to-cash metrics via real-time dashboards. The integrated
marketing platform results in a full 360-degree view of your customer’s interactions, and this information
is used to route only valuable, qualified leads into your sales CRM. Marketbright is headquartered in San
Bruno, CA. For more information, visit the company’s Web site at www.marketbright.com.

About absatzkraft

Absatzkraft provides demand generation and lead management services to its European customers,
creating and running lead generation campaigns. Absatzkraft is also the exclusive reselling, service and
training partner for Marketbright in Europe, headquartered in Munich, Germany. For more information,
visit the company’s Web site at www.absatzkraft.de.

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