6 Tips for Better Sales Lead Management and Tracking

Lead management and tracking are critical steps for every business that is working on outreach, marketing, and lead generation. There are several avenues that customers may take on their journey, which means that your team needs to be able to manage all of those avenues and leads.  

Lead management is a process that involves:

• Capturing leads
• Tracking behavior and activity
• Qualifying leads
• Attending to their needs
• Passing leads through the sales funnel
• Remarketing and revisiting leads as needed

You can’t do any of this without an effective strategy, of course. That’s where lead management comes into play. A solid lead management system will ensure that your business is handling leads in the best way and getting the prospects that you deserve. 

One way to make sure everything is on track is to outsource to Smith.ai for assistance with outreach campaigns, lead management, and more. To help you make the most of your lead tracking and management, here are some tips. 

Understand where leads come from 

Segmenting leads and tracking their source is essential. You need to know where prospects are coming from, rather than just letting them pop into the sales funnel at various points. Your lead sources could vary, depending on your outreach efforts, but usually include things like:

• Search engine results pages (SERPs)
• Off-page content 
• Website content
• Blogs
• Email marketing 
• Newsletters and other opt-in forms 
• Direct marketing
• Social media 

When you know where leads come from, you will know better how to treat them and communicate with them through the buying cycle. Different leads come with different needs. Where they come from may also impact what they need or want from your business. 

In any case, when your team better understands where leads come from, they’re more capable of working with them and maximizing the outcomes. 

Choose an effective system for tracking and management 

Although some will still tell you that spreadsheet tracking is fine, it’s gone far beyond its time and there’s a better way to manage your leads: a dedicated lead management system that includes a CRM. With a CRM, you will be able to aggregate all of your lead and customer data in a single, centralized database. 

This allows you to keep better track of leads as they move through the sales funnel. It can also give your sales team better cues as to when to reach out to people based on their lead source or their location in the sales funnel. 

With a CRM, you’ll enjoy access to a robust dashboard that you can customize to help you monitor and manage your lead generation and outreach efforts. 

Clean up data 

Right now, there are many companies that have a CRM in place and feel that they’ve done their part to create an effective tracking and management solution. And yet, they’re still missing the mark. It’s usually because their data isn’t clean or organized. Too many leads from too many different sources and a lot of random automated information coming in quickly adds up to potential duplication, errors, and more. 

Make sure that you clean up your data and when you take in leads, you collect the right information moving forward to keep things streamlined. 

Create solid goals 

As with any business endeavor, you’re going to be far more successful at tracking and managing leads if you have goals in mind ahead of time. What are you hoping to achieve with lead generation? Take the time to create SMART goals that are actionable which can help you reach your goals. Align those goals with your tracking and lead generation efforts and then watch as your CRM collects valuable data and helps you see where you’re making progress and what still needs a little work. 

How can you go somewhere if you don’t know where you’re going? That’s what having goals does for lead management and tracking: it gives you the chance to anticipate what you want from the process and create the necessary steps to get there. 

Take advantage of lead research tools

In order to make sure that you’ve got the right leads, you need to research them and make sure that you’re choosing the best candidates with the most potential. You don’t have to do a deep dive into every single customer that is in your CRM, of course, but you should be able to teach your team to use research to segment leads, make decisions, check lead quality, and more. 

You can even identify the sources of your leads so that you can make improvements on lead campaigns that aren’t as effective. Plus, research can help you see whether you have high-quality leads or need to work a little harder to find the right connections. 

Don’t forget to nurture your leads

The single-biggest reason that leads fall through the cracks is because they’re left unattended at some point throughout the sales cycle. This causes them to go elsewhere seeking what they need and costs you valuable business. Don’t let your sales team just sit on the leads that come in. Teach them how to effectively nurture those leads based on their needs and where they are in the sales funnel. 

Email lead nurturing, for example, could include a check-in email, special offer messages, and even loyalty updates to keep premium customers coming back. You can also have your team review lead information each morning so they can set up a nurturing and outreach strategy for the day. 

Once the leads are flowing, you’ll need to be ready 

Of course, you’ve got your hands full with lead management and other efforts. If you’re doing it right, you’ll soon have a huge influx of leads that are waiting to connect with your business. Partner with the virtual receptionists at Smith.ai and you’ll get a 24/7 answering service to ensure that you’ll never miss a lead. Plus, we can assist with lead intake and appointment scheduling, along with our top-quality services for outreach campaigns. 

To learn more, schedule a consultation or reach out to hello@smith.ai. 

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