Lead Management

Lead geenration is a continous business. If it is not part of the business process, then the business is bound to stagnate as without leads, sales people become rusty as they have to milk their existing customers for business. In addition, lead management has become complex with the Internet now becoming the first and preferred lead source. While there is a lot of information on Internet keyword search engine placements, click through ads and other real world lead generation methods such as mailshots, tradeshows, print and visual media, this section deals only with how to process and managethe lead. 

As re-iterated before, without a proper business process for lead administration and follow-up, it is not surprisng to see hundreds and thousands of leads go to waste simply because no one was responsible for the lead in eacg stage of the process. It is not enough to just handover the lead to a sales rep - it is essential to document each stage of a lead process and record the ultimate status - success or failure and the reasons why.

The following thoughts on lead manageemnt based on experiences with highly process oriented companies will help small businesses to implement and plan a successful lead generation system:

• Lead management is a continous process -  it is essential to define the process in detail. Who gets the lead, who assigns it, who "owns" it, what  pre-defined tasks are executed (call, letter email, fax etc), what happens after a pre-defined period, who changes lead status and why it was discarded and by whom.  
  Leads are valuable - contacts who have been called years after they were first identified as leads have become paying customers. It pays to never under-estimate the power of the lead.

• Vital information can be obtained by simply analysing the data to take serious decisions such as hire/fire, mentor, open a new territory, drop an advertiser and so on. Marketing campain ROI's are based on this process. This process in corporate-speak is known as Business Intelligence - but it is very simple to implement provided the ground-work has been done.

• A Lead consists of three componets - Contact info (who to call), Deal info (what he is interested in, does he have a budget, what is his decison time frame) and Account info (what is the company the Contact works for). It is essential that this structure be maintained as this may be useful for successive generations of reps.

• Lead conversion is the last step in the process - when a lead is converted to an opportunity or a deal, it should no longer be a lead but a qualified opportunity. If it is being discarded at that point in time, the reason for discarding should be documented.