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How to Manage Leads

Published on: June 24, 2021
Most business owners today are well aware of the importance of generating sales leads and managing them properly. Now more than ever, marketing and sales professionals are focusing on generating viable leads as well as how to manage leads more effectively. Their focus has also turned to improved marketing strategies that will have a positive impact on sales. The best way to manage leads is with the right sales lead management software. Marketing Optimizer not only offers everything your sales team needs for lead management, but combines it with the power of marketing optimization—generating better leads for more sales, while automatically nurturing your current clients or customers as well.

Understanding sales lead management

According to Harry Watkins (the Aberdeen Group’s Senior Analyst) in his April, 2003 article published at btbonline.com, “Eighty percent of marketing efforts to generate leads are wasted and ignored by sales. This combination is costly and derails efforts on both sides.” Further research regarding how to manage leads has revealed that a majority of the sales leads that are generated through a company’s advertising and marketing efforts are wasted literally every day of the week. Eighty percent of marketing efforts to generate leads are wasted and ignored by sales.

Additionally, this research has also revealed that nearly 70% of all sales leads never receive any follow-up calls after the initial contact.Spending all that energy, money, and time on advertising and marketing efforts to generate sales leads and then wasting them is obviously not how to manage leads properly. Many companies today pay a lot of money for qualified sales leads and then just send the prospect a brochure or cover letter. They may call the lead, but it could be weeks later before they do.
Often, if a salesperson doesn’t feel that a sale will be generated with that first contact, the lead is dropped and put into a “closed” or “dead” file.Follow-up rarely happens on any lead other than those closed upon first contact, and What characteristically happens is that the sales force blames the marketing campaign as inadequate. In reality, because of a lack of lead management and accountability, it is the sales people who failed that campaign.

Managing your sales leads effectively

One of the best ways to generate qualified leads while increasing your sales and profitability, is to manage your leads as effectively as possible. Sales prospects can come from a number of different sources, however, there is really only one way to manage leads effectively, retain them, and intentionally nurture them in your marketing strategy. It takes the right marketing optimization software application to do this. The primary purpose of a sales lead management software application is to define a lead and understand if there is a potential for that lead to turn into a sale. If 80% of the leads generated through advertising and marketing efforts are either discarded or just ignored because it is not handled and managed properly, marketing optimization to capture and interact with every lead is an extremely valuable tool. Take Marketing Optimizer for a 30-day test drive and see how it impacts your lead management.

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