Lead Management: This Is How You Get Your Leads Under Control

Do you want to attract more quality leads? And develop these leads into customers? Lead management is mandatory for your company. We’ll show you what is involved in clean lead management – and how it works.

At a glance

• Lead management allows you to develop leads into customers more effectively.
• This process is relevant for both B2B and B2C companies.
• It would help if you had various tools, such as lead scoring and CRM systems, to manage leads well.

What is lead management anyway?

All measures a company takes to turn anonymous interested parties into real customers are part of lead management. Lead management is a big field. In addition to generating new contacts, it also includes the qualification and development of these leads. In concrete terms, you win customers from interested parties more quickly through good content, a targeted approach, and other marketing methods.

It is essential to define the lead management process clearly. In particular, you must distribute the internal responsibilities precisely to avoid getting in your way in this process. Tools such as CRM systems and so-called lead scoring often help to evaluate a lead.

Advantages of professional lead management:

• Acquire new leads faster
• Transparency and clarity when evaluating leads
• Reduced lead processing time
• Clear responsibilities in the different phases
• Cleanly structured and effective process

Lead management process

Potential customers go through a particular path you must accompany with your lead management process. Your lead management should be structured so the customer converts at the end of the funnel. To understand the principle, use the typical sales funnel – a sales funnel – to help you. One version of this is the See-Think-Do-Care model. If you already know the model, you will see many parallels to the lead management process.

This is how you build the lead management process.

Identify your target audience.

The first step is to consider which target group your product addresses. Do customers have a specific problem they are looking for a solution to? What solution do you offer them? Also, look at which channels the target group uses or looks for answers. These are the channels you start with when acquiring leads.

Lead generation

The second step of the lead management process is lead generation. In this phase, you try to collect an email address or phone number from the lead. In return, you must offer them content that helps solve their problem. Examples are webinars, videos, guides, white papers or e-books. Could you read our article on lead generation? There, we give helpful tips and examples.

Learn more about lead generation.

Lead scoring

Not every lead is equally valuable. Some tips are very actively looking for solutions. Others are less interested in it. You should set up lead scoring to make the qualification of leads measurable and transparent. Such a score gives you a value for how far advanced a leader is in the funnel, e.g., how often he viewed your content after he first dealt with your initial content.

The following applies: the more a lead engages with your brand’s content, the higher their purchase intention will be and thus the score. A high-value signal to sales that information is ready to be approached. Lead scoring serves as a critical scale for internal responsibilities in lead management. Marketing has the upper hand if the value still needs to be that high. If the score reaches a specific number, sales take over. This is also called Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) and Sales Qualified Lead (SQL).

Lead Nurturing

Once you have implemented the lead acquisition measures and set up lead scoring, it’s time to qualify the leads: lead nurturing. This stage is about providing the information with content, thus tying them closer to the brand. Marketing automation should also come into play here. You can qualify leads in a targeted manner using automated content marketing measures. Automation software and CRM systems help sales keep an eye on, effort, and track this development.

View lead management holistically.

Lead management always has the entire funnel in mind. But it can also become correspondingly complex. Ultimately, all measures from the individual phases should be coordinated. In addition, you need to ensure that your company’s different departments know what is happening and where. Communication is the be-all and end-all in lead management – ​​and, simultaneously, the biggest challenge. 

Also Read : Marketing Leads: Know Them, Generate Them And Take Advantage Of Them.