Lead Management Process= Generation +scoring +nurturing

Business is all about building strong relationships and lead management is the process of building

, and nurturing relationships through the implementation of effective strategies, and practices. Hence the success of an enterprise in acquiring new clients, and in retaining them, largely depends on its lead management process.

However, technological advancements, including the internet and marketing automation software, have now made it easier for marketing teams to build new relationships. But nurturing these relationships and strengthening them, still depends on how marketing teams successfully develop and implement a lead management process.

Enterprises invest a great deal of time, money, and effort in generating leads, but fail to achieve sales results. This is largely because of poor lead management. So, lead management is a significant business process that helps convert prospects into sales opportunities.

The Lead Management Process

There are three different stages in the lead management process. After leads successfully pass through all these stages, they are passed on to the sales team.

Stage 1: Lead Generation

Lead generation is nothing but developing quality leads by creating interest in the products or services offered, through various means including webinars, podcasts, product samples, contests, search engines, direct mail, and email. Leads that have made inquiries or shown interest in the product/service are tracked and stored in a database. These are the prospective customers who are targeted for communication at a later stage.

Stage 2: Lead Scoring

Lead scoring is the process of providing scores based on prospects online and offline activities. During this stage, prospects are analyzed, categorized, and prioritized based on their positions in the buying cycle. Not all of the prospects actions are scored. Only those that genuinely reveal the intent of a prospect, such as signing up for a newsletter, attending a webinar, etc are considered for scoring. The prospects are then ranked according to their scores. Lead scoring helps in assessing the percentage of possibility of the prospect turning into a customer. Those who earn the highest scores are hot leads, and are therefore passed on to the sales team. Average scorers are warm leads, who then proceed to the third stage. The lowest scorers are cold leads, who are either rejected or taken back to the first stage.

Stage 3 Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing is the process of keeping leads engaged with relevant communication, so that they can be forwarded to the sales team when the time is ripe. During this stage also, the activities of prospects are tracked both online and offline, to understand their level of interest. Their activities are again scored to know whether they are sales-ready. If they are, then they are passed on to the sales team.

Hence, for implementing a successful lead management process, enterprises need to have in place effective lead generation, lead scoring, and lead nurturing processes.

by: brianwarren

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