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’re going to add more tabs, we may as well add a few more. 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, which requires the proper lead management solutions.
In cases when there were few cold leads or customers, an Excel spreadsheet was sufficient. However, managing hundreds of connections and prospects in a spreadsheet might be difficult for firms that aim for rapid expansion. The demand for software that can consolidate your team’s continuous operations increases as your team size climbs.
Here is when the use of a lead management system comes in handy. These kinds of programs are established to allow businesses to boost revenue by streamlining their commercial procedures, improving their customer service, and fostering stronger relationships with potential clients.
Although the software is required, it must be the appropriate tool. Particularly if you’re a small to medium-sized business with a lean sales force, this is true. To succeed in this environment, you must avoid unnecessary complexity and instead use a technology that streamlines your operational procedures.
If you don’t, you’ll just be making 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.
When it comes to 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 simply update their CRM just before a sales meeting, turning it becomes more of a reporting tool than a daily tool for use in the field.
How can I define 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.
Which is better: CRM or Lead Management Software?
A common mistake is to conflate CRM (Customer Relationship Management) with lead management software. CRM (Customer Relationship Administration) 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 the context of sales organizations. When a lead is won, it is sent to the CRM for further processing. Find out what I mean here.
What functions should your lead management system have?
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 OK to follow up, why a conversation stalled, and how to re-energize leads and get them closer to a sale.
The point of your lead management software is not to make things more complicated than they already are. It’s because the solution doesn’t cater to your specific sales requirements if you find yourself spending hours inputting irrelevant data. 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. Nothing to do with how much information a client enters into the system.
Easy-to-use and time-saving features are essential for effective lead management software.
Segmentation
Differentiating warm leads from cold ones is one of the primary functions of segmentation.
The best lead management programs also make it simple for salespeople to divide up 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.
Principal Functions of a Lead Management System
Any business prospect management tool must include the following four main feature groups:
- Prospecting for unqualified leads management
- Preparing for sales events and setting up automatic reminders
- Pipeline administration
- Indicators of sales force performance
- Prospecting databases and handling cold calls
- Prospect identification is the first order of business for each salesperson. To complete the transaction, they must first develop these cold prospects into warm leads and sizzling possibilities.
This may be achieved with the help of lead management software that 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.
- It is important to clearly distinguish between cold leads and continuing business so that the sales professional may efficiently manage their time;
- With only one click, you can turn a cold lead into a warm one.
Lead management software, in other words, aids in vetting leads, managing the sales funnel, and monitoring lead development throughout the sales process.
Keeping track of sales notifications and activity
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.
Methods for Monitoring Sales Leads
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.
Maintain a close eye on the actions of the sales staff
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 providing motivation 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.
For what reasons should you employ a lead management system?
The quickest solution is to prioritize the activities that provide the greatest return on investment. Appointment setting, negotiating, prospecting, and other sales-related activities.
The challenge, however, is how this might be used in practical terms.
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 with them. 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 run the danger of 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 in the event of 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 of 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 are aware of 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 hire 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. In order to avoid spending time on agreements that were 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.
To save you time and effort, Office24by7 has developed a free and flexible phone call script that can be used during prospecting calls to ask the proper questions and elicit the necessary data. Send the call’s data to your prospecting program when it’s ended, 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 close of the transaction. In addition, the pipeline may be kept tidy with the use of 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 better qualify your leads. In addition, you may get additional specifics about potential customers. Last but not least, 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. If a salesperson fails not to contact a potential customer after they have shown interest in purchasing, that individual may have the impression that 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 ahead 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?
We have now covered the definition, major features, and importance of lead management software for salespeople. But how can you choose which program is the greatest option?
Why are you doing this?
In addition to the budget, this is the most crucial inquiry. Want to equip your sales team with software that will streamline their lead processing and deal management, 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 or 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 much money do you have to work with?
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 seem comforting at first. However, the many extra functions they provide that you have no need for might annoy your sales staff. Since these CRMs are often too difficult to use, salespeople eventually quit using them.
You’ll have wasted a lot of money on a novelty that nobody wants to learn about or use. To make matters worse, you can end up spending more time on the project than if you had just kept things the way 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 is your chance to try out the fix for real.
Can you tell me about the size of your business and the number of salespeople you employ?
This inquiry frequently follows the one just asked. The more streamlined your sales staff is, the less complicated and more effective the software will be. A simple solution for managing leads makes it possible for teams of up to twenty salesmen to do their jobs with ease. Integration with other enterprise software is an absolute must for teams with 20-50 members. So, before committing to a solution, make sure it integrates with the other apps you depend on, either directly or via Zapier. 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.
Just how tech-savvy is your company’s sales force?
Any time a business invests in new software, it usually represents a significant shift for the organization. Your well-oiled sales machine may grind to a halt when the technology transition takes effect if your salespeople are resistant to 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 that 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.
However, if your company is not used to digital solutions, it shouldn’t stop you from deploying software. The software’s ease of use and practical benefits to the salespeople’s day-to-day work will determine how quickly they embrace it.
The Value of Lead Management Software and How to Determine It?
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 that used Office24by7 saw a 25% uptick in their closing rate after using the tool. Companies with a large number of leads who were 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 afford to spend on a quality lead management system.
What we think—the guiding principles of Office24by7
You need sales software that your salespeople will really use. Rather than having your sales staff modify its approach, you should look for a solution that can 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 making sure that 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 in mind: minimal learning curve and maximum impact. Each lead is followed up with using this lead management tool to improve the overall conversion rate. There are excellent tools and data provided for the manager to use in order to bring out the best in his squad.
Best Lead Management Software in the Market
1.Office24by7
When it comes to 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 sales tools that are also among the best in the business and remarkably user-friendly.
With Office24by7, your sales team can focus on refining their outbound communications, including sales emails, cold email templates, and sales follow-up emails. For more information, have a look at 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 a matter of seconds. And Office24by7 automatically tracks calls and emails so that nothing gets lost in the mix while you’re out there making sales prospects.
Features
- Customers Relationship Management for Big and Small Businesses
- Data mining and reporting on sales performance
- Management software for pipelines
- Use through a mobile device
- Means of Cooperation
- Collaboration with Outside Parties
- The Monitoring of Emails
- Systematization of Procedures
- Indices of performance
2.Keap
To that end, Keap was developed as a CRM lead manager with scalability in mind. With Keap, companies have access to 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 point. Keap’s professional coaching is included in all of its price tiers for a flat rate. You also get limitless email storage and data transfer assistance.
Features
- Measurement of results and analytics
- Segmentation
- Web forms/landing pages
- Automated marketing systems
- Management of the Sales Pipeline
3. 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 an added bonus, it includes an AI-powered chatbot and a variety of other channels of contact that can be used by companies to get in touch with customers wherever they may be online.
Standard functionality like pipelines and customer dashboards, as well as 10 fields for scoring criteria, are included in Zoho’s most cheap subscription.
Features
- Means of Cooperation
- Software that can scan cards
- In-Real-Time Conversation
- Utilization of Social Networking Sites
- Directed email marketing campaigns
- Incorporation of Google Ads
4.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.
Features
- In-Real-Time Conversation
- The art of meeting scheduling
- Notifications and follow-ups through email
- Tracking and reporting dashboard
- Monitoring Replies to Emails
- Accessible through a portable application
5. LeadSquared
LeadSquared is a customer relationship management and lead management solution that is popular in many fields. LeadSquared is a helpful tool for firms with a large number of business-to-consumer sales since it consolidates all of the customer touchpoints into a single platform, making it easier for teams to move on to the next job while still having access to all of the relevant data. LeadSquared is mobile-friendly, with apps available for both Android and iOS.
Features
- Organizational tool for scheduling and keeping track of deadlines
- Automated marketing systems
- Indices of performance
- Pipeline administration
- Utilization of Social Networking Sites
6. Case In-Chief
If you’re a person, a small company, or a large corporation, Lead Docket is the lead flow software you need. It has online forms for gathering contact information from new leads, and it allows for automatic follow-up emails to keep leads interested and informed at every stage of the sales process. In addition, it has marketing optimization built in, which lets users track the origin of their leads and evaluate the success of their campaigns.
Integrations with other corporate tools are available in Lead Docket. These apps include DocuSign, MailChimp, and CallRail. Requests for quotations will be fulfilled promptly.
Features
- Management of a Campaign
- Web-based registration sheets
- Extrapolating Information
- Management of the Sales Pipeline
- Instruments for prospecting
7. ClickPoint
ClickPoint’s clientele comes from a wide variety of sectors, including K-12, higher education, mortgage, B2B, travel, franchises, the insurance industry, and contact centers. ClickPoint is a sales automation tool that helps firms increase their reach to prospects and automatically prioritize the transactions that matter most.
It may be used by salespeople in the office, on the road, or in a contact center. In addition, insightful sales data reveals which lead sources bring in the greatest value and which are underperforming.
Features
- Organizational tool for scheduling and keeping track of deadlines
- Registration of Telephone Calls
- Auto-dialer
- Automated marketing systems
- Operations management for field sales teams
8. Pipedrive
Pipedrive is a cloud-based customer relationship management solution that encourages salespeople to concentrate on processes rather than results. It has all the necessary tools for handling leads, including call recording, client tracking, and electronic forms, among others. It also leverages analytics to make selling a science so that teams can make decisions about how to improve their methods based on evidence rather than speculation.
Features
- Retention strategies
- Organizational tool for scheduling and keeping track of deadlines
- Means of Cooperation
- Web forms/landing pages
- Dashboard
9. Leadfeeder
With Leadfeeder, companies can see exactly who is interested in their product, allowing sales teams to focus their efforts where they will have the most impact. It gives you a better understanding of your customers’ habits, so you can predict their demands and gives you the means to get in touch with prospects promptly, so you don’t lose them to a more agile competition.
Leadfeeder’s price plans are best for B2B companies with at least one sales representative and are on a per month, per feature basis. Qualification, segmentation, and nurturing are just some of the capabilities included in this lead-tracking software. The system may also keep track of user interactions and operate as a customer relationship management tool.
Features
- Dashboard
- Goal-setting and monitoring
- CRM
- Reporting/analytics
- Stats collection on page visits
10. Capsule of Lead
Brokers, aggregators, and contact centers may all benefit from using Lead Capsule, which is a lead management software platform. Its primary function is to collect and resell customer data to other companies so that their time may be better spent focusing on generating sales rather than prospecting. It aids in attracting potential customers to your business’s offerings, collecting data through online forms, and monitoring lead sources to ascertain which channels provide the most fruitful leads.
Features
- Identifying the Original Source
- Pipeline administration
- Instruments for prospecting
- Segmentation
Wrapping It Up
If you want to get your leads in order and looking for an effective lead management software, then Office24by7 is the one. You can contact us for more details on +91 7097171717 or drop us an email at sales@ofice24by7.com.
