Marketing Consulting Company: Tips for Managing Sales Leads
Don’t let good prospects slip through the cracks. Work with your marketing consulting company to bring in some of these ideas to track the sales leads you’re getting, qualify them, and turn them into sales.
What is a lead anyway? Define it for all company employees.
When the sales team is working with leads, they have an innate sense of what could pan out and what is not worth their time. When marketing or production can understand what sales needs, they are better able to orient their work toward what will ultimately benefit the company: having a product, messaging, and target market to fulfill revenue growth. When the sales person spends time with prospects who are not on target, it slows down the process and weakens resolve. So get into the details to sort out leads that are further along in the buying process.
Track the whole contact process with CRM
Use a customer relationship management (CRM) system that has the right information—and that employees will use. When you know how a prospect found you, what information they have seen and what they need to see, the sales process meets the needs of the prospect much more effectively. And it’s got to be user-friendly for the salespeople to actually take advantage of it.
Proper timing keeps up the momentum.
Every qualified lead has a timeline and needs to deliver a result, and in today’s world that’s often “I need it done now.” As we all know, it’s accelerated to the point where the expectation is instant information or contact. So check with your marketing consulting company to see how new sales leads can flow speedily to the sales force. I recommend one business day for a contact request, but two business days can work if you are still ramping up your response time. Setting up automated inquiry handling systems will not only get the info out reliably but also relieve some of the stress of these deadlines.
Use your company’s knowledge to keep in touch
Then keep the ball rolling with periodic contacts: not just sales calls, but information to help the prospect do their job, or even just “hey, we’re here if you need anything” direct mail or online marketing. The goal is to use sales lead management to match the pace of the potential customer’s buying process. A common but effective technique is to pass along interesting information you come across, showing you are thinking of them. A more advanced marketing consulting company can help your company install web-based systems such as an internal company blog, wiki, or RSS feed system for individual team members to alert others to useful tidbits.
Meetings, meetings, meetings—do we have to?
We all know of companies who go overboard with meetings. A growing approach is quicker “huddles” where the focus is on alerting others to weak situations or hot opportunities and settling on next actions to happen outside the group. Yes, it’s still important to get together—email and messaging can cause problems with misunderstandings or taking up valuable selling time. Make sure to measure the metrics of the lead management process and update anyone who has a stake in the outcome—not just the frontline salespeople.
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Marketing consulting company Mac McIntosh, Inc. helps B2B companies generate more qualified leads and sales. Want better results from your B2B marketing and sales efforts? Please contact me to find out how I can help your company, firm or organization at:
- 800-944-5553
- Find out more: Marketing consultant
I make every effort to respond within one business day.
4 years ago • 1 note
