When you are running your own business, it is vital to keep track of your sales prospects.
This is essential for several reasons, including:
- You must be able to understand where your customers are coming from
- So you don’t contact them too many times and potentially lose a lead
- You know how many times you have reached a prospect
- Knowing if any advertising campaigns are working correctly
These are just a few of the many reasons you must keep track, but perhaps the most crucial reason you need to stay in control is that you ultimately want to close a sale and turn the potential customer into a real customer.
Commence talks about best practices of tracking sales leads, but we have also put together a list of what we believe are significant reasons to do so.
Advantages of keeping track
There are many benefits to tracking sales leads. For starters, it will help you to determine the real potential of a particular person or business, and you can also gain valuable data regarding the demographics of your market.
This information helps you formulate a targeted marketing campaign that is suited to your business needs. This information will also help you track the progress of the marketing campaign as it is being implemented. This will help you monitor your marketing campaigns’ effectiveness and thereby identify any problems that may arise as time progresses.
The first advantage of tracking sales leads is that it enables you to take advantage of various information sources. These include but are not limited to market research and consumer behavior analysis. These three essential factors will help you determine whether your marketing campaign is successful or not. Moreover, these three factors will help you determine if your marketing campaign can meet your target market’s requirements and wants.
The second advantage is that you will be able to identify the results of your lead capture efforts. This is incredibly helpful in cases where the campaign has been a success. By identifying the results, you will then be able to identify the areas where improvement is necessary. However, it is essential to note that this is only applicable if the campaign is highly effective. If your lead capture is ineffective, you may find yourself losing out on leads that have the potential to bring you more business. Therefore, it is essential to make sure that you measure your lead capture campaigns’ results and then focus on improving it when necessary.
Five ways to keep track of sales leads:
These are five methods you can implement to maintain control over your prospects, thereby improving your chances of increasing sales.
1. Define your sources
Using the correct designation for your prospects will help you to parse the information more efficiently and quickly.
Understanding exactly where they are coming from will help you create a high converting ad campaign or use one to reduce the CPC and save you time and money.
2. Email sequences
Even in the modern world of social media and instant messaging chatbots, email is still the number one method for attracting leads and nurturing prospective leads.
By setting up an email sequence, you will be in a position to see which emails are working well and which are duds.
You can also set the follow-up duration, and depending on the software you are using, you can sometimes set up A/B testing to work down into what is objectively getting the best results.
Email sequences are vital to ensure that you get a reply. Most people are busy and stay away from their email accounts as much as possible because of the distraction. However, by setting up a sequence, you make your prospects take notice and hopefully elicit a response.
3. Make sure to follow up on your leads
Getting leads and not following up is a terrible business practice, but you would be surprised just how many businesses fail at this step.
Humans hate rejection, and it is too easy to fall into the trap of letting some leads slip through the net because they look too difficult to close. However, you are leaving money on the table and eroding your company’s reputation by doing this. This is because you need to maintain the fact that you are the expert in your chosen industry.
By neglecting some of the more difficult responses, you are effectively showing that you cannot do the job needed.
4. Score your leads
There is a reason why triage is practiced in hospitals worldwide; it saves time and is efficient in practice. While you don’t necessarily need to “triage,” you should consider introducing a lead scoring process to your funnel.
This essentially means that you will be able to quickly prioritize the leads that have the most potential while still responding to the lower quality leads at a later date.
This is helpful because even the lowest quality leads can still be converted with the right pitch. However, you still need to make money, so your focus should always be on the best prospects.
5. Use a dedicated CRM
Customer relationship management (CRM) software has become a part of nearly every company in the US, UK, and other parts of the world. The use of CRM software can improve the overall business efficiency by automating some of the manual activities involved in customer interaction.
CRM is a collection of tools designed to make the tasks associated with dealing with customers more straightforward and efficient. Customer relationship management tools also help to automate the processes involved in handling customer complaints and feedback. These include recording a customer’s satisfaction and comments so that the same can be monitored over time.
Customer interaction refers to any communication that takes place between a client and a company. This software enables the companies to maintain a significant customer relationship by building a strong communication network among the customers, the sales force, and corporate management.
It is the process of managing customer interactions with both existing and future customers. It is one of the different ways a company can monitor and analyze its interactions with its current customers, past, and prospective customers. It can also help enhance and strengthen the corporate image of a firm by maintaining and increasing the trust and loyalty of existing customers.
Summary
Keeping track of sales leads is vital in today’s busy world. If you don’t maintain contact and keep tabs on each prospect, you can get left behind. Even worse, your more efficient competitors will gain your leads and push business their way.
