Just as plants have to be tended to yield fruit, so leads have to be carefully managed to form a strong customer base. Though businesses may clearly understand why they need clients, they may be at a loss to understand how to build a regular clientele. What customers should I target? What tools do you need to attract customers? How to identify the lead that would convert? And how to convert it? These are the questions that lead management deals with. Let’s take a close look at it!
Lead management is a set of procedures that help turn a lead into a customer. As simple as it may seem, lead management itself entails many challenges to face up to. As a result, a lead is expected to make it all the way to turning into a customer. In other words, you have to sift your target market through a sales funnel. Here are the stages that your lead has to undergo:
So, what phases should your lead management consist of to get the funnel going? Figuratively speaking, how to germinate seeds that would grow to be fruitful?
Components of the lead management process may vary, but the core processes remain. Here are those phases:
We’ll cover all of them in the article. But before digging into the intricate but holistic structure of lead management, one aspect should not be overlooked. It is the identification of an ideal customer profile.
It is a vital stage that requires putting your target market under a microscope to develop an ideal customer profile. At this phase, you should figure out what pain points would drive people to take advantage of the particular product you can provide, not your rivals’ one. However, your competitors’ experience would be of great use when coming up with your own ideal customer profile. Therefore, it requires doing comprehensive research on customer insight and current trends.
So, what should you pay attention to when developing your customer profile?
The efforts on your well-developed ICP may turn out to be amply rewarded because ICP is the cornerstone of the whole lead generation and lead qualification processes. If you choose the right seeds that germinate in your soil, chances are that seeds one day bear fruits.
Lead generation is a process of reaching out to your leads by providing them opportunities to learn about you. There is a plethora of means to attract leads. Here is where your in-depth analysis of your customer profile comes in handy. It’s essential to incorporate certain lead generation tactics that would optimize sales funnel conversion more. Depending on whether you target B2C (Business to Customer) or B2B (Business to Business) such features as sales strategy, sales cycle length, content and social media platforms would vary. That way you increase the chances that the seed you’ve planted would germinate if you provide a suitable environment for it. Among the most commonly used ways to generate leads are:
Some seeds germinate, while others do not. At this point, you should sort out the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. Lead qualification hinders you from wasting time on those leads who remain cold and, therefore, are less likely to convert and focus more on those leads that are more likely to buy.
However, what does poor lead qualification lead to?
Therefore, some tell-tale signs of conversion should be pointed out. And at the lead qualification phase you can make use of frameworks. They have their pros and cons depending on your company characteristics (size, industry, ect.).
A framework conceived in the middle of the 20th century, BANT is still in widespread use, though whether BANT framework is still applicable today is open to debate. There are the objectives in the table down below.
Pros
Cons
If BANT isn’t your cup of tea, CHAMP may be. CHAMP framework is a reinvented BANT in a way that is in tune with the times.
Pros
Cons
MEDDIC framework stands out from the others not only for the number of letters in the acronym, but also for a head-to-toe prospect qualification.
Pros
Cons
Once you’ve sorted out the wheat from the chaff, you can switch over to the next phase – lead nurturing. It means that you and your qualified lead have reached the middle of the sales funnel. You’ve passed the first half of the journey, but what if a prospect grows cold and decides to go back? Or what if a prospect even ends up following your competitor instead of you? Here is where the lead nurturing campaign unfolds.
Lead nurturing may require the same tools used in the lead generation phase (email campaign, content marketing, etc.) but the approach would differ.
It is the stage when you’re sure enough that your efforts will pay off and the seeds that once germinated would yield fruits. During the lead distribution phase, a prospect is routed to the salesperson that reaches out to a prospect. The process is automated.
It’s of great importance that a prospect is transferred to the right salesperson that would boost a prospect’s conversion to a customer.
No doubt that a sound lead management strategy is a prerequisite for success, but no mistake lead management gives room for imagination. And, who knows, maybe you can come up with such a lead management approach that would draw leads like a magnet and move them right down the sales funnel. Wishing you the fastest conversion!