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Lead tracking is an integral part of the business sales process. In fact, establishing lead tracking best practices enables sales success for businesses. Using proven tracking techniques, sales representatives move prospective buyers through the sales pipeline, increasing total number of conversions. Moreover, consistent tracking offers helpful insights on the total return on investment (ROI), making it easier to control sales campaign costs. Ultimately, lead tracking efficiency depends on the best practices you follow. To help you improve efficiency, this post details essential lead tracking best practices.
Define A Prospective Lead
Clearly, defining who qualifies as a prospective lead makes tracking much easier for your sales team. A thorough understanding of prospective leads gives you insight about prospect behavior and the right time to contact them, just like an RFP response. Furthermore, this step prevents sales representatives from wasting time on the wrong leads. Most importantly, defining a prospective lead keeps sales team members on the same page, streamlining the sales process.
Categorize Prospective Leads
After defining prospective leads, the next step is to categorize them. Primarily, you can classify your prospective leads into three groups like hot, warm and cold. Also, provide clear directions to sales team on how they can handle leads in each category. Obviously, the hot leads need immediate follow up by expert sales professionals for successful conversion. In comparison, warm leads need more nurturing via emails and phone calls. Of course, it is in your best interest to leave the cold leads alone for the time being. When done accurately, categorizing prospective leads improves lead tracking efficiency.
Incorporate A CRM Tool
One way of enhancing lead tracking efficiency is implementing a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool in your sales process. By utilizing a CRM tool, your sales team can get instant updates on interactions with prospective leads. What’s more, easy CRM integration options simplifies obtaining interaction data from various online channels like social media and company websites. On top of that, these tools allow sales representatives to analyze customer responses, developing more effective strategies to convert them. On the whole, CRM tools support lead tracking success and increase sales, without costing an arm and a leg if you utilize CRM software small business editions.
Establish Follow Up Procedures
Establish standard follow up procedures for you whole sales team to follow. When you set guidelines for follow-up, your sales people will be forced to reach back out to all of their leads. This helps a business build a relationship with sales leads. That ultimately will provide intimate insight into consumer buying decisions, regardless of whether they wind up making a deal with your company or not. If you do not already have sales follow up actions in place, make sure to implement them as soon as possible to benefit your overall sales lead tracking processes.
Align Marketing And Sales Teams
Lead tracking effectiveness depends on properly aligning marketing and sales teams. Giving both teams access to a centralized customer database can align the teams. When marketing and sales professionals cooperate with each other ,they can drive leads through the sales pipeline more often. Working together, they can better utilize lead metrics to track qualified leads closely. Surely, aligning your marketing and sales teams will facilitate exchange of valuable customer insight, further increasing chances to close deals.
Have A Fast Response Time
While tracking leads, a quick response time and a good email matters more than anything else. Unnecessary delays in follow ups can make the leads lose interest. As a general rule, sales teams should respond to prospective lead queries within 48 hours. However, quicker responses are likely to bring more favorable results. Even after a positive interaction, it can be beneficial to follow up with thank you business sayings to keep in contact. Make sure to lay down some ground rules regarding quickly responding to leads to continue the sales process.
Apps To Help
If you want to ensure that you are doing all the practices listed above the easiest way possible, downloading a lead tracking app may be the best solution. The top lead tracking apps for small business can help you stay organized and keep in touch with your leads. Consider trying out these top three best lead tracking apps for your small business.
- Intuit Quickbase
- Genius
- Apptivo
Perhaps only one of these will fit your business budget or perhaps all of them will. Regardless, it is important for you to consider your particular needs and budget. Try out these apps for lead tracking to help simplify your sales process and ensure your presence is not forgotten by prospective leads.
Effective lead tracking is achievable through these best practices if the latest e-commerce news is any indication. First of all, you should define your prospective leads, categorizing them according to behavior and interest level. Secondly, use a modern CRM system to keep a tab on sales interactions, helping your marketing and sales team focus on the right leads. Finally, lay down rules of responding to customer queries, speeding up the entire sales process. By implementing these best practices, your improved lead tracking will have a direct impact on the bottom-line.
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