3 REASONS TO USE AN AUTOMATED LEAD MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
Sales are critical to an organization’s health and lead management is one of the most important tasks in the sales process. Many companies bundle lead management within their ERP software believing that a one size fits all solution works best.
However, lead management is a critical task and it’s in a company’s best interests to invest heavily into it. Leads need nurturing and salespeople need highly accurate data at their fingertips to close a sale. A survey by Demand Gen Report revealed that nurtured leads produce a 20% increase in sales opportunities, compared to non-nurtured leads.
Here are 3 reasons why you need a lead management platform.
Customize and Track Your Pipeline
Every company’s sales pipeline is different and these days, prospects prefer to chart their path through the sales journey. With the rise of content marketing, most prospects prefer to conduct self-research before being contacted by a sales rep.
As a result, salespeople have very little time to change a prospect’s mind or influence the way they think. While an ERP will contain detailed customer information, it lacks the minute details that help sales teams close deals.
For instance, lead management software will help you classify your prospects into warm and cold categories. Some of them even combine multiple variables such as lead engagement to display a score that helps a salesperson determine their approach.
Lead management software comes equipped with alerts that let your team know when to follow up with a customer and their preferred contact methods. This way, your team doesn’t have to dig through your CRM to retrieve information on the prospect all the time.
Some deals take a while to close, especially in big-ticket B2B companies. As deals progress over time, tracking them in an ERP solution is close to impossible since it burdens an already strained system.
A lead management system can give your team a visual representation of deal progress and they can focus on executing tasks that will yield the highest ROI for your company. Thus, pipeline management is simplified and your team won’t have to chase data on deals at any point.
Data Centralization
Companies love centralizing data since it helps them gain an end-to-end view of everything from operations to sales. However, centralizing on such a grand scale makes a system bulky. A better solution is to use best-in-breed solutions for different business functions and integrate them.
Lead management software such as Conversica and its alternatives integrate with other ERP software easily. Thanks to lead management data being centralized in a single solution, tracking deals, sales team performance, and trends in prospect behavior is simple.
These days many Conversica alternatives reviews indicate that lead management is largely automated. Teams can follow up with prospects immediately and create detailed strategies thanks to AI-powered rules engines.
Automation in lead management frees your sales teams’ time from chasing data and performing clerical work. Instead, they can focus on executing tasks that result in more deal closes and satisfy prospect requirements.
Not only can you automate data collection and uploads, but some of Conversica’s alternatives also offer intelligent AI systems that generate human-like conversations. Your team can define workflows that involve both AI-powered and human interaction, depending on the prospect’s position in your funnel.
The AI engine can also revive old leads and position them automatically for lead nurturing campaigns which makes reviving old leads simple. Teams can define re-engagement events or time intervals for such campaigns beforehand which makes lead prospecting far easier.
ERP software offers automation features but not at as granular a level as lead management software does. Thanks to its broader focus, your sales team will still be saddled with manual tasks that take time away from tasks that produce the greatest ROI.
Greater Efficiency
Many lead management software offer cross-platform capabilities. The result is your team can update customer and prospect data on the go even when they don’t have access to their laptops. In addition to this, you’ll be able to monitor your sales team’s performance more effectively.
Traditional ERP software does not offer a granular view of sales team performance. While you can view high-level metrics, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to view dashboards of team members’ performance and predict sales trends given prospect behavior.
The best part of lead management software is that it’s endlessly customizable. This means you can create custom metrics that make sense for your lead’s journey in your funnel, instead of relying on parameterized reports that might not be relevant at all times.
Thanks to better feedback and performance tracking, you’ll enhance the efficiency with which your sales team operates.
Better Software, Better Sales
Data is everywhere these days and it’s in your best interest to use it to power sales. The days of manual sales follow-ups are long gone. Using the power of lead management software, companies can automate follow-ups and other tedious tasks, which leaves sales teams free to pursue high ROI activities.
