In Top Gun, the students at the Navy’s elite fighter weapons school know what’s expected of them – fly. In business, the sales department knows what’s expected of them – sell.
Where do you think the high stress and caffeine addictions comes from? From the need to educate qualified leads and convert them into paying customers. Customers whose credit cards keep the company running and pay everyone. No pressure.
Implementing a lead management program is the first step in organizing your buyer cycle and aligning the efforts of both sales and marketing. We’ve already detailed the steps you need to take to get your lead management sales software up and running, but how do we make it amazing?
It’s time to define a process and stick to it!
Sure, top lead management systems can often integrate with your CRM and give sales and marketing access to the same information, but, more likely than not, your marketing team doesn’t know how your sales department operates and vice versa.
Remember, your online lead management system is simply the hardware, like the fighter jets in Top Gun. Just because you have access to a Navy plane doesn’t mean you know how to fly it. Like Goose and Maverick, get your sales team dancing in their “flight suits” about how great their lead management sales are going.
Make sure your process includes the following steps:
- Contact speed: The faster your sales reps contact and engage with a hot lead, the higher the likelihood of conversion. Lead management sales are all about getting in touch with leads at the most opportune times. This includes tracking their website activity, noticing when they’ve engaged with a high value email or downloadable asset, or knowing when they’ve reached a minimum scoring threshold.
- Lead nurturing campaigns: Not all of the leads that you contact will immediately close. Lead cycles differ from industry to industry and can range anywhere from less than a day to half a year (or longer!). Therefore, it is important to keep prospects educated with consistent and trustworthy contact from your company. This is where marketing lead management comes in – creating content and events, sharing them through social channels, and emailing leads with increasingly high value and product-specific content.
- Check ins: Show your leads that you’re invested in their experience and satisfaction through phone and email check-ins. This lets them know that they’re still valued as a potential customer and that sales reps are ready and willing to answer questions that may (and will) arise. We recommend starting with one check in by phone for every 3-5 emails sent and then increasing your engagement if necessary.
The process of managing leads can be extremely complicated without the proper structure and organization. Create a management process and ensure both sales and marketing stick to the plan. An automated system helps to eliminate manual processes and reduces the margin of error in analytics and reporting.
Once an efficient process is in place for your sales team, think of all the extra time you can have to take on those extra hobbies, you can start by learning to fly a fighter jet into the “danger zone.”
