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A Buyer's Guide to Lead Management Solutions
Lead Management Software Buyer’s Guide
Every person who wants to be in the line of sales and marketing will be tasked with an important duty that they could not afford to reject; and that is to convert leads into sales. We know how difficult closing a sale is. Approach close, hot button close, sudden death close, sharp angle close, and door knob close; have you ever heard of these methods in closing a sale? A sales guy who’s been in active duty during the 90’s will, for sure, recall these terms. Well, sales starts from leads and leads are considered as raw details of company, person, or business opportunity. In other words, they are unqualified sales opportunities.
The 90’s is over and today is the days of the millennials. If it’s about converting leads into sales, Lead Management Software (LMS) platform is now the better solution. According to Zoho, a business solution provider, lead management is an important business process that combines tools with techniques to enable effective leads generation, management and tracking of new sales opportunities. If you’re keen to the details, you may likely figure out from that definition that Sales Management and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) are both capable of those processes. Aren’t they? Well, in this Buyer’s Guide, we from ITQlick.com would help you in figuring out more the connections between leads, sales, and customers.
Types
There are three important benefits LMS solutions can bring into every business and they are as follows.
· It makes your sales team more efficient and effective.
· It makes your marketing smarter and more cost-efficient
· It creates a better experience for prospects and leads.
However, being in the marketing profession, these benefits can only be realized if you know exactly the processes involve in managing a lead. A study says that at least 50% of your leads aren't sales-ready after their first conversion on your website. Further to that, 50% of leads aren’t ready to buy on the day they first convert on your site. It appears then that converting leads into sales is pretty much challenging these days compared before. Anyway, here are the stages (also considered as types) of the lead management process that when carefully mastered can definitely help you in facing those marketing challenges.
Lead Generation
Via marketing campaigns and programs, capturing of consumers’ interest towards products and services and their interest of purchasing them is the primary objective of lead generation.
Lead Allocation/Distribution
After capturing the consumers’ interest, leads will be stored in a central database, evaluated base on a set of criteria, and distributed to the right marketing person for qualification.
Lead Qualification
At this stage, qualified leads will be separated from non-qualified leads. They will then be treated as sales-ready leads and will further undergo into another funnel of lead management processes: nurturing, scoring, and analytics and reporting.
Lead nurturingis the process of delivering targeted, personalized resources and offers to your entire lead funnel to move those prospects through the buying process.
Lead scoringinvolves tracking your prospect's behaviours and web activity in order to determine not only their level of interest in your solution but also your level of interest in them. Lead scoring will hep you determine if a prospect is "qualified but still nurturing" or already a true “sales-ready lead."
Analytics and reportingincludes the assessment of the vital areas of your marketing activities via several metrics. Overall, tracking these metrics will give you more insights about the efficiency and effectiveness of your lead management practices.
Lead Conversion
At this final stage, a lead is already transformed into account, contact and business opportunity. They are ready to make a purchase at any time soon.
Features
Lead Management software solution is all about generating leads and converting them into loyal customers. In order for lead management to become effective, it is necessary that you have a true marketing mindset that is focus on helping buyers in becoming aware of your solution, teaching themselves about the solution, and validating which solution is right for them. However, this agenda can only be achieved with the help of a software solution that is fully packed with features that will guide the marketer in the entire lead management process.
Here are some of the key features of today’s most popular lead management software solutions.
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Automatic Lead Distribution
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Campaign Segmentation
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Conversion Tracking
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Customer Database
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Email Integration
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Lead Age Tracking
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Lead Distribution
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Mailing List Management
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Pipeline Management
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Prospecting Tools
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Referral Tracking
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Website Integration
And here are more specific features of a lead management solution offered by VanillaSoft.
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Project Database
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Manage Contacts
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Custom Fields
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Call Script
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Automatic Next-Best-Lead Distribution
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Real-time Management Dashboard
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Customized and Pre-Defined Web Reporting
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Email Templates
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Flexible Data Querying
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Auto-Dialing - Both Progressive and Preview
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Intelligent Call Recording
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Mass Email
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Email Drip
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Appointment-Setting Module
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Real-time Import of Web Leads
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Team-Based and Multi Level Selling
If you have any concerns about the features and benefits that a lead management solution can provide to your organization, don’t think twice asking our experts at ITQlick.com. We will give you better advice and recommendations on selecting the right solution.
Solutions per Business Size, per Vendor
There are two types of firms where a Lead Management software solution is serving its purpose best. They are the Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-to-Consumer (B2C) firms. If you’re in B2B, you are selling you products and services directly to other businesses. Since your sales interaction with your customers (or another business) has longer life cycle, you will need a robust solution with lead nurturing and scoring features in order to maintain and grow your relationship with your leads or prospects. On the other hand, if you’re a B2C firm, you are directly marketing to the consumers (households, professionals, ordinary people, etc.) your products and services. On this case, you need a Lead Management software solution that has lead tracking and analytics and reporting features. This is in order for you to further improve more your marketing strategies for this kind of market.
Whatever type of firm you belong, your goal to streamline your leads’ lifecycle and improve your prioritization of them can only happen if you select a solution that has the features required by your marketing strategy. Here are then some of the best lead management solutions where you can find those features that can truly help you on your marketing programs and campaigns.
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Rapportive
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Boomerang
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Kwaga
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SabeBox
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SugarSync
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ThinkFree
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Mindjet Connect
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TeamBrain
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SproutSocial
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Batchbook
Pricing Consideration
When dealing with pricing, there are two types of LMS solutions that can offer you the right features at a considerable price. These are the
cloud-based and
on-premise solutions. The pricing model of these two solutions actually varies dependent on several factors such as number of users, features, software cost, operational cost, and contract/subscription period.
For cloud-base solutions, the price ranges from $5 to $100 per user per month. The price variables for cloud-based solutions are basically the number of contacts and projects that the solution can support. For on-premise solutions, the cost of one-time license purchase ranges from $100 to around $1,000 or more. For on-premise solution, the price variables are costs of software, operation, maintenance, and infrastructures.
Here are the lists of solution providers under each type of solution for your further checking and analysis.
For Cloud-based
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Integrate
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eDirectory
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ContactChamp
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Marketing Conversion
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ILEADS
For On-premise
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CXM
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Centerbase
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marketSmart 360
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EQMS
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Profiler
For more information about the right Lead Management solution, whether cloud-based or on-premise, you can check our website at ITQlick.com. We have reviewed over a thousand of business software applications and Lead Management solution is one of them.
Market Trends
The current status of the Lead Management Software market is relatively at its low point at present. A report says that only about 2-5% of B2B firms have invested in full LMS functionality to date. That is, generating high-quality leads is by far the number one challenge for B2B marketers. The greatest barrier to lead generation success is lack of resources – staff, budget and time.
But despite of these reports, many marketers are still using lead management software for reporting, analytics, and dashboard capabilities. Many marketers are also showing their interest in mobile marketing. In addition,, many marketers today prefer the web-based solution over the on-premise type.
CRM solution where LMS is usually integrated, however, is a growing industry and this is a clear indication that there are more exciting and engaging features that people from the sales and marketing divisions of a business can expect from LMS in the coming months and years. Think about your LMS solution needs and develop a strategic plan in acquiring the right solution for your business.
ITQlick chart - 2023 best Lead Management Software
Finding the right Lead Management software for your business
Proper Lead Management software selections are the precursor to successful deployment and business growth. Finding the right Lead Management solutions doesnít have to be complicated, and it doesnít have to take days or weeks of your time.
After researching over 5,000 systems, we can identify the best solution for companies of all shapes and sizes. ITQlick.com is 100% free for software buyers.