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Maximising growth from lead management
Sales are crucial to any business and underpinning this should be a marketing-led lead generation strategy. Ensuring that sales and marketing work hand-in-hand is vital for maximising lead effectiveness, with common strategies and processes best supporting the bottom line.
A familiar challenge for some businesses is that leads generated by one area of the business aren’t quite what the sales team required. These leads are either then wasted, or the sales team expend time and effort chasing leads that end up not being appropriate. Either result is costly and inefficient. So how can business units or departments within a business work seamlessly to ensure that generated leads form the best foundation for sales?
The key starting point to lead generation harmony is agreeing upon what constitutes a lead. Simple as it may seem, having an agreed definition in place (be that between marketing and sales, or between an agency and its clients), means that the process for gaining leads is underpinned by a ’scoring system’, filtering out the non-leads from the leads. For example, take Ignition’s ‘Permission to Contact’ service. Here there are mandatory criteria of what constitutes a lead, which sets a quality standard for all lead generation work.
The next point to consider is that lead generation work must not be carried out in silos. In other words, it must be part of a joined-up approach involving various methods of working to nurture leads. For example, using only telemarketing may result in an over-reliance on self-reported information but if this is done in conjunction with smart data selection and ongoing communication, the leads become far more robust.
The final point to consider in maximising the impact of leads is to understand that the behaviour of these leads changes over time. Of particular interest to a sales team, is knowing when a lead enters the active phase of the buying cycle. This might be as a result of a trigger date (such as a renewal date), or could be as a result of another influence, such as a marketing campaign interaction. Essential to understanding a lead is opening a genuine dialogue with them that allows you to adapt your approach as their situation develops. Having a customer relationship management (CRM) system in place makes it far easier to track and manage leads. For example, Ignition’s C3 system allows companies to manage their leads’ behaviour all in one place, be it through tracking web behaviour, monitoring email effectiveness or recording telemarketing interactions.
The most important benefit of following the advice above is that lead generation supports the bottom line and that those at the ‘coal face’ have the best leads possible.
To chat about Ignition’s lead generation services, don’t hesitate to call the Ignition team on 0845 313 3500.