Anatomy of a Lead

Leads are a vital part of a business; like you did not know that right? Well, if you do not have a strategy for obtaining leads with the ability to quickly qualify them in order to move them through your sales process lack of a this strategy will cause you short and long-term pain.

Here is wikipedia’s definition of a lead:

“A sales lead is the identity of a person or entity potentially interested in purchasing a product of service, and represents the first stage of a sales process. The lead may have a corporation or business associated with the person(s). Sales leads come from either marketing lead generation processes such as trade shows, direct marketing, advertising, Internet marketing or from sales person prospecting activities such as cold calling. For a sales lead to qualify as a sales prospect (or equivalently to move a lead from the process step sales lead to the process sales prospect) qualification must be performed and evaluated. Typically this involves identifying by direct interrogation the lead's product applicability, availability of funding, time frame for purchase. This is also the entry point of a sales tunnel or funnel.”

That really sums it up as a whole but every business should discuss their own definition and strategy concerning leads.

I want to share with you some best practices on leads that you should incorporate in your company:

Have a clear plan on how leads get into your CRM system; there are many ways this can be handled from:

        ·  manually keying them in

        · importing them in from Outlook, ACT or other contact databases

        · CardScan , or other electronic tools that scan business cards or documents putting it in a spreadsheet format to import into your CRM system.

        · Web-to-lead, collecting information from your website set up by many CRM systems or created by your webmaster.

Once this information is captured the work begins if you have captured the pertinent information needed to determine if this is a lead worth pursuing. Make sure you capture at a minimum the information below:

        ·  Of course at the bare minimum along with their name try to capture as much contact information that you can.

        ·  Lead source (trade shows, industry meetings, referrals, ads, campaigns, etc.) be as precise as you can to capture your return on marketing investment.

        ·  Important information such as do they have an immediate need? Is there a budget? Are they the decision maker and time frame needed are a few important points to know?

The sooner you can capture this information and determine if the lead is cold, warm or hot you can either move them through your sales process or nurture them for potential future opportunities. Information captured on leads whether you move it through the sales cycle or keep it as a lead for future attention can assist you on knowing where your best prospects will come from.