For what reasons should companies spend money on lead management software? Can’t we just use an Excel spreadsheet? Three separate windows: one for contacts, one for businesses, and one for openings. If we need more tabs, we may add a few more. It used to be easy, didn’t it? Easily understood yet uselessly simplistic. You may speed up the growth of your firm by having your sales staff produce more leads and have more conversations with each prospect. Creating a huge list of potential customers over the internet is far simpler in today’s digital age than effectively maintaining them, requiring proper lead management solutions and the best lead management system.
Managing hundreds of connections and prospects in a spreadsheet might be difficult for firms that aim for rapid expansion. Here is when the use of a lead management system comes in handy. It allows businesses to boost revenue by streamlining their commercial procedures, improving customer service, and fostering stronger relationships with potential clients.
- What is Lead Management Software?
- Which is Better: CRM or Lead Management Software?
- Principal Functions of a Lead Management System
- Why is a Lead Management System Important?
- What to look for in Quality Lead Management Programs?
- How to Choose the Right Lead Management Software?
- The Value of Lead Management Software
- What We Think—The Guiding Principles of Office24by7
- Best Lead Management System in the Market
What is Lead Management Software?
Lead management software is a tool that aids a sales representative’s work by streamlining the management of routine daily tasks, such as keeping track of deals in progress, creating new opportunities, reminding the salesperson of the next actions to be taken (such as sending an email, making a phone call, following up with a cold prospect, or attending a customer meeting), and so on.
For the sake of increased productivity and neatness, salespeople might make use of a lead management software program. In addition, it should let the sales manager monitor the team’s progress and adapt to changing conditions.
Organizations shouldn’t just look for the best lead tracking software, but ensure it is the appropriate tool. Particularly if you’re a small to medium-sized business with a lean sales force, this is true. If you don’t, you’ll make things harder for your sales staff rather than giving them more time to focus on activities with a high return on investment. Large corporations may benefit from the sophistication and cost of enterprise-level sales software like Salesforce, SAP, or Microsoft Dynamics, but small businesses should go elsewhere.
Regarding customer relationship management (CRM), many CEOs and managers have expressed frustration that their systems are never up-to-date. Additionally, it is common practice for salespeople to update their CRM just before a sales meeting, becoming more of a reporting tool than a daily tool for use in the field.
Which is Better: CRM or Lead Management Software?
A common mistake is to conflate CRM (Customer Relationship Management) with lead management software. CRM software is significantly more comprehensive and includes support, marketing, and customer management, while lead management software is designed specifically for sales teams. Lead management software is similar to Prospect Management Software or “pre-CRM” in sales organizations. When a lead is won, it is sent to the CRM for further processing.
Principal Functions of a Lead Management System
Exactly what does a sales representative do? The goal is to increase the percentage of visitors who become leads and leads who become customers. It’s useful for learning when it’s okay to follow up, why a conversation stalled, and how to re-energize leads and get them closer to a sale. The primary goal of any sales support software is to free up your time so you can focus on activities that directly contribute to closing the business.
You will have more consistent monthly success as a salesman if you spend more time with your leads and clients. Remember that your sales performance is directly tied to your bonus potential. It has nothing to do with how much information a client enters into the system.
Any business prospect management tool must include the following four main feature groups:
Prospecting for unqualified leads management
Differentiating warm leads from cold ones is one of the primary functions of segmentation.
The best lead management system also makes it simple for salespeople to divide their contact lists into several groups. When the number of open deals dwindles, your SDR team may pull qualifying leads from your cold call prospect list and distribute them to your account managers.
Preparing for sales events and setting up automatic reminders
It’s easy to lose sight of current negotiations when you’re dealing with a lot of leads and prospects.
Because of this, a robust lead management system is essential, as it allows you to quickly and even automatically set reminders so that you never forget to follow up with leads.
- Follow-up communication: by electronic mail or telephone
- Scheduled time with a potential client;
- Depending on the structure of your sales team, any additional action has to be taken on one of your accounts.
The program has to be compatible with your calendar service of choice (Outlook, Google Calendar, etc.) to do this.
Pipeline administration
One of the most important functions of lead management software is pipeline tracking. It helps sales teams maintain a high conversion rate inside the pipeline and work more effectively to close transactions.
Adjusting the program so that it fits in with the way you do business is the first step. The pipeline has to be in sync with and reflective of the various stages of the company’s sales process. We call this process “the sales pipeline” since it represents the progression of an opportunity from the first stages of opportunity qualification through to the last stages of deal closure.
You may rapidly assess the health of any open contract or concentrate on the early-stage prospects that promise the greatest revenue growth.
Indicators of sales force performance
Last but not least, lead management software isn’t complete without a statistics or dashboard component that gives the manager a visual snapshot of the business’s current success, the performance of your sales reps, and a projection of future outcomes.
It’s also crucial to have a simple system for monitoring the sales team’s efforts, such as the number of calls, meetings, emails, etc. This is because it is difficult to provide sales representatives with just sales-related goals. Rather, it achieves its purpose by motivating to act (e.g., make X calls a week).
Sales success is a natural consequence of competent sales work. You may utilize the software’s data to learn about your team’s strong and weak points, allowing you to focus on strengthening the weaker parts and boosting the team’s overall performance.
Why is a Lead Management System Important?
The dynamic lead management software features allows a salesman to:
- Import basic Excel files to quickly produce lists of leads or integrate with lead-generating services like ad campaigns, web forms, marketing databases, etc.
- Clearly distinguish between cold leads and continuing business so that the sales professional may efficiently manage their time.
- Turn a cold lead into a warm one with only one click.
Lead management software, in other words, aids in vetting leads, managing the sales funnel, and monitoring lead development throughout the sales process.
The quickest solution is prioritizing the activities that provide the greatest return on investment. Appointment setting, negotiating, prospecting, and other sales-related activities.
Find ways to boost output
Prospect management may be handled digitally, eliminating the need for paper notes, post-its, Excel spreadsheets, etc. The convenience of having all of your leads in one location means that you can focus on other things as you work. You’ll have more cognitive resources available for the more important activities at hand.
As soon as you log into the program at the office in the morning, you’ll have a clear idea of which leads need immediate attention based on your previous interactions. The result is increased productivity on your part.
Keep everything in one place and facilitate distant participation
Everyone on the sales team has quick and easy access to up-to-date information on all contacts (both current and potential). Everything that has ever happened between you and any given contact is at your fingertips. You will no longer risk losing a deal-clinching piece of information or having client data disappear when a sales employee quits the organization.
SaaS software also lets you keep your firm running smoothly during a pandemic, when working from home may become the norm.
Use a smartphone app to make cold calls everywhere you go
Working from a mobile device is a great perk of utilizing SaaS software for data centralization, but only if the product includes a mobile app. A short debrief of an appointment on the way out is far more convenient than waiting until the end of the day when a salesperson has to go back to the office to report on it. Time-saving features like business card scanning and voice debriefing are available in the mobile app Office24by7, for instance.
Promoting Collaborative Effort
As long as everyone is on the same page, any conflicts may be avoided by open communication. All salespeople know who had spoken to which leads, when, and what topics were discussed. In light of this, it is clear that sharing a similar software platform is essential for efficient account collaboration across several sales agents. Finally, having a new salesperson have instantaneous access to a lead’s whole contact history on day one of their hires expedites their onboarding and gets them to work faster.
Lead generation
Finding new leads is not the primary function of lead management software. In other words, it’s not a scraper that uses touch to remove debris. Importing or creating lists of prospects encountered at trade exhibitions or made online enables you to organize them by quality. A previously unqualified prospect may become a very promising hot lead if the process is followed properly.
Filter potential customers
Far too frequently, a transaction falls through because the lead wasn’t qualified enough from the start. To avoid spending time on agreements doomed from the start, it is crucial to qualify cold leads as soon as possible in the prospecting process. A lead management system makes it simple to record interactions with leads, organize them by importance, and monitor their development over time.
Office24by7’s free and flexible phone call script becomes helpful during prospecting calls to ask the proper questions and elicit the necessary data, saving you time and effort. Send the call’s data to your prospecting program when it ends, and you’ll have a clear picture of the lead’s quality. You won’t have to spend hours keying in data. You may use this free of charge with any program or customer relationship management system.
Reduce the length of the sales cycle
You can streamline your operations with the help of lead management software by always being prepared for appointments, never missing a lead’s follow-up, and knowing exactly where you are in the sales cycle.
The time you save and the enhanced quality of your talks with prospects will lead to a more rapid transaction close. In addition, the pipeline may be kept tidy using lead management software by quickly spotting dead opportunities and deciding whether or not to pursue them.
Upgrade the customer experience for potential buyers
As we’ve seen, lead management software allows you to qualify your leads better. In addition, you may get additional specifics about potential customers. Lastly, alerts and reminders make it easier to follow up on chances.
Therefore, potential customers will have a more positive impression of your business throughout the sales process, increasing the likelihood that you will close each transaction. Suppose a salesperson fails not to contact a potential customer after they have shown interest in purchasing. In that case, that individual may think the firm is disorganized and choose to conduct business elsewhere.
Assess the state of your company and take steps to improve it
Lead management software makes it simple for sales managers to monitor their team’s progress (calls made, emails sent, appointments scheduled, etc.). It is simple to assign quotas to each salesperson and monitor closed transactions.
Use this information to plan for slower sales seasons. You may also find out who the stars of your sales team are and how you can help the laggards raise their game.
What to look for in Quality Lead Management Programs?
Want to equip your sales team with software that will streamline their lead processing and deal management software, allowing them to spend less time on administrative activities while still achieving impressive results? You should be able to find what you’re looking for in a cloud-based SaaS solution for lead management that is highly adaptable and has all the features you need. Office24by7 was created with this idea in mind.
Do you need a simple, off-the-shelf solution, or do your business’s operations and IT infrastructure call for a more sophisticated, custom-built tool? Want a program that unifies your company’s departments and workflows? If so, you could find solutions like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, or even an enterprise resource planning system to be the most useful.
The chance of failure increases, and the amount of custom development required increases with the complexity or standardization of the tools used. As a result, you will need an agency to integrate the product and enough training for any substantial CRM or ERP.
It makes more sense to begin with a basic SaaS product if the first emphasis is on the business side. After a company has grown and a deeper knowledge of its requirements has been achieved, it might switch to a more complicated system.
Never assume that an increase in functionality translates to an enhanced user experience. If an integrated solution is strong yet difficult to use, it serves no purpose.
If your requirements are typical, there’s no need to build anything too fancy. Both the costs and the hazards are different.
How to Choose the Right Lead Management Software?
The age-old debate that recurs in boardrooms everywhere: how much money should be spent? The one where you can fulfill your obligations without stressing about whether or not you have enough gas.
The thought of arming oneself with a well-known, widely-used product like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, or Sugar CRM may initially seem comforting. However, the many extra functions they provide that you do not need might annoy your sales staff. Since these CRMs are often too difficult to use, salespeople eventually quit.
You’ll have wasted much money on a novelty nobody wants to learn about or use. To make matters worse, you can spend more time on the project than if you had kept things as they were. It’s possible to find lightweight and effective lead management systems for less than 30€ / user/month, sometimes with a free trial and no commitment required.
Here are the factors to consider to try out the fix for real.
Size of the business and the number of salespeople
The more streamlined your sales staff is, the less complicated and more effective the software will be. A simple solution for managing leads allows teams of up to twenty salesmen to do their jobs easily. Integration with other enterprise software is necessary for teams with 20-50 members. So, before committing to a solution, ensure it integrates with the other apps you depend on. A sales force of 100 or more requires a switch to one of the market’s major solutions and a substantial allocation of resources for adaptation and incorporation.
How tech-savvy is your sales force?
Any time a business invests in new software, it usually represents a significant organizational shift. Your well-oiled sales machine may halt when the technology transition takes effect if your salespeople resist adopting new tools or are worried about making mistakes while using the software.
That’s why you need to consider the user’s level of technological literacy before settling on a solution. The more accessible the program is, the more people will utilize it. In the same way, you could purchase a calculator if you are sick of performing your math on paper. This might get annoying. But if you just need to add and subtract, a scientific calculator’s other features are unnecessary expenditures. Which has a higher price tag, a less intuitive interface, and creates more issues than it fixes. In a similar vein, lead management software is essential.
The Value of Lead Management Software
The effectiveness of a lead management system is more important than its feature set. Choosing the latter option would be a bad idea if the expenses outweighed the potential benefits. For optimal return on investment, make sure your lead management software is a good match for your company’s objectives. Cost-effective lead management software may have a significant impact on your bottom line if you put it to use.
Customers who used Office24by7 saw a 25% uptick in their closing rate after using the tool. Companies with many leads merely using a notepad and spreadsheet saw an increase of 80%. Consider 15% of your monthly revenue growth as a ballpark figure for how much you can spend on a quality lead management system in India.
What We Think—The Guiding Principles of Office24by7
You need sales software that your salespeople will use. Rather than having your sales staff modify its approach, you should look for a solution to learn and optimize your unique sales procedure. Making a sale is not a data-sorting exercise. Making sales is all about following up with the right leads at the right time with the appropriate data. As far as we’re concerned, the most important thing is ensuring no good leads go through the cracks because nobody bothered to follow up with them.
Our lead management platform, Office24by7, was designed with this idea: minimal learning curve and maximum impact. Each lead is followed up using this lead management tool to improve the overall conversion rate. There are excellent tools and data provided for the manager to bring out the best in his/her squad.
Best Lead Management System in the Market
Office24by7
When managing leads, Office24by7 has you covered with its comprehensive and straightforward CRM lead tracking platform. You can see exactly how successful your efforts are converting into income thanks to the comprehensive perspective provided by the funnel tracking and the pre-built Pipeline Conversion Report.
It’s quick and easy to keep tabs on prospective buyers with the help of our handy tools. They’ll have quick access to powerful and user-friendly sales tools with this best lead management system.
With Office24by7’s sales automation tool, your sales team can focus on refining their outbound communications, including sales emails, cold email templates, and sales follow-up emails. For more information, review our supplemental materials about sales email samples and how to write efficient sales email subject lines.
Your users will always have rapid access to the greatest prospects thanks to your Lead Smart List, which they can search for in seconds. And Office24by7 automatically tracks calls and emails so that nothing gets lost in the mix while you’re out there making sales prospects.
Keap
To that end, Keap was developed as a CRM lead manager with scalability in mind. With Keap, companies can access technologies that streamline and automate the sales process, increasing the speed with which leads are converted into paying customers.
The flexible price options provided by Keap allow you to grow as your business does. With this plan, you may start with 500 contacts for one user at the cheapest price. Keap’s professional coaching is included in all its price tiers for a flat rate. You also get limitless email storage and data transfer assistance.
Zoho
Zoho CRM claims to be a 360-degree customer lifecycle platform that may benefit organizations of all sizes. It has powerful lead-tracking capabilities like omnichannel communication and targeted email marketing, and it’s compatible with over 500 other popular applications. As a bonus, it includes an AI-powered chatbot and a variety of other channels of contact that companies can use to get in touch with customers wherever they may be online.
Standard functionality like pipelines and customer dashboards, as well as ten fields for scoring criteria, are included in Zoho’s cheapest subscription.
HubSpot
The SalesHub from HubSpot is a CRM sales lead management application that allows companies to concentrate all of their prospect data and activity in one place. To intervene at the optimal time, users may see their whole contact history and monitor each interaction with customers using the pipeline features. HubSpot’s CRM Starter Plan for two users is reasonably priced per month.
SalesHub is an effective platform for evaluating leads, organizing them into prioritized categories, and monitoring ongoing correspondence.
LeadSquared
LeadSquared is a customer relationship management and lead management solution popular in many fields. It is a helpful tool for firms with many business-to-consumer sales since it consolidates all customer touchpoints into a single platform, making it easier for teams to move on to the next job while still having access to all relevant data. LeadSquared is mobile-friendly, with apps available for both Android and iOS.
Wrapping It Up
If you want to get your leads in order and are looking for effective lead management software, then Office24by7 is the one. You can contact us for more details at +91 7097171717 or email us at sales@ofice24by7.com.
