Online Systems

Managing leads is critical for any business. Lead Management is how the business handles a potential client who made a request for a product or service from the company. This process is lead management.

Most businesses DO NOT have a process of handling leads - and if they do it is ussualy paper based which means leads get lost! Think about how much money, time and energy is spent to get a lead for your business - then that lead gets lost - a lost sale! And people do not care! They get up again to find more leads to lose.

Some people have gone as far to use a spreadsheet to put all the names of the leads in. This works for the first couple of leads and management thinks they have got it made! Within a short period of time the spreadsheet become to busy, gets corrupted and requires a full time employee to manage!

When leads are not properly managed, followed up and kept in contact - you start losing interest and the potential customers goes to your nearest competition. You have just lost sale because there is no lead management system.

All potential potential clients go through a process. They might go over some areas quicker than others - but there is still a process. This process is called the buying cycle. You can never sell anything to anyone - they can only buy from you! They buy because you went trough a process. This process typically entails:

• Promoting the product or service (advertising)
• The customer request for information
• The customer detail get captured in a lead management system
• The customer request gets allocated to the right person or department
• A conversation starts with the customer
• The requirements of the customer is determined
• These requirements are graded according to criteria to determine the impact and importance
• The customer signs up (or goes to the competition or stops any buying process)

If there was no lead management system - the clients details would have been lost anywhere in the process. Someone tells someone to phone a customer, the write it down, get busy, forget and no-one phones the customer! The customer (who is looking for your product or service, waits for someone to phone back - but nobody calls! - the lead is lost!).

If a client decides not to buy right now - are you able to follow up with the client? That is also part of leads management. The follow up process of any client is extremely important for success in any business.

The company who is better at managing leads will do better in the short and long run. Take action today and get your own lead management system to manage your leads - get a Web CRM system!