You might wonder why you would need lead management software for small business sales, especially if your current closing ratio is within industry standards. Instead of becoming complacent and resting on your laurels, why not strive for an even better closing ratio? After all, online lead management typically provides businesses of all sizes with a big sales boost.
It’s always a good idea to bring in more revenue while simultaneously making life easier for your salespeople, right? That’s the entire cornerstone of lead management automation. Here are just a few of the numerous additional reasons to switch to lead tracking software.
1. Improve Customer Satisfaction
Customers don’t like it when a salesperson fails to respond in a timely manner. With lead management software, your team will be able to easily record everything about each prospect, including when they’d like to be called back. Instead of having to use a sticky note or schedule a reminder, the sales pipeline will prompt your staff members to follow up as requested. This will make customers happier, and when they’re happy, they’re a lot more likely to make a purchase.
2. Numbers You Can Trust
Do you really know how many leads each of your salespeople have contacted this week? With sales lead tracking software, you can get a basic overview for the entire company. If you need more specifics, you can drill down into each salesperson to receive verifiable stats.
3. Automate Certain Lead Management Tasks
Many customer relationship management (CRM) tools include a useful pipeline, but most of them don’t come with built-in options for nurturing leads through automation. SalesPype is different in that it lets you quickly and easily automate emails, text messages and ringless voicemails to each prospect. That’s the top reason many business owners view SalesPype as the best CRM for lead management.
4. Save Time and Increase Sales
Marketing automation is a salesperson’s best friend. Not only does it save them a lot of time and energy but it can also cut back on the number of rejections each salesperson hears. Studies have shown that close to 50 percent of all salespeople give up on each lead after just one call. Doing this is a recipe for disaster because the average prospect needs to be contacted eight times before they’ll commit to a purchase. The good news is that automated calls, texts and ringless voicemails count toward these eight points of contact.
5. Reduce the Risk of Losing Leads
When information about leads is tracked on paper or by outdated computer methods such as Excel, it becomes much easier for these vital details to get accidentally lost or deleted. The average cost per lead ranges from $14 to $71, depending on your industry and the type of marketing you use. At the very least, this means that every lost lead costs your company a minimum of $14. When you consider the overall cost of losing a prospect who would have gone on to become a regular customer, the financial impact to your business becomes much larger.
6. Discover Your Most Important Marketing Resources
Salespeople are typically tasked with finding out how a lead learned about the company in question. This critical information is often lost without a solid sales lead tracker system. This problem has plagued owners since the very beginning. In fact, retail entrepreneur John Wanamaker is believed to have said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”
When considering the quote attributed to Wanamaker, it’s wise to also look at his history. Wanamaker opened his first department store in 1861. By the early 1900s, the John Wanamaker Department store expanded internationally. Also known as Wanamaker’s, the founder’s commitment to marketing and innovation made his stores the first to use price tags, telephones, electrical illumination, copyrighted advertisements and a cash refund policy. Wanamaker understandably became revered by other shop owners and early marketing companies. Yet despite all of his efforts, Wanamaker still had no idea which portion of his marketing budget was actually leading to new sales.
If Wanamaker was still alive today, you can be almost guaranteed that he would have been an early adopter of sales lead management software. This technology could have conclusively answered his question about which half of his marketing budget was wasted. It can do the same for you by enabling your staff to include marketing sources in each prospect’s electronic file.
7. Boost Revenue
Harvard Business Review (HBR) took a close look at companies that do and don’t use a formal sales process, including sales tracking software that provides each lead manager with an in-depth look at every critical detail. What HBR discovered shouldn’t be a shock for any business owner. Companies that have a streamlined sales lead management tool with a built-in pipeline experience 15 percent higher annual growth than businesses that try to keep everything organized without any type of lead manager.
Even better, revenue increased by 28 percent when companies were able to master three specific pipeline techniques. According to this study, the keys to success include:
- Clearly defining the entire sales process.
- Spending a minimum of three working hours per month carefully managing each salesperson’s pipeline.
- Ensuring all sales managers receive proper pipeline management training.
8. Move Data Beyond the Sale
After a nurtured lead transitions from a prospect into a paying customer, you’ll be able to move their data into the next important phase. This may include managing annual contracts, installation and much more. Once again, you’ll be able to rely on lead tracking software to help you and your employees provide the best possible customer service for increased consumer satisfaction.
9. Easily Monitor Multiple Pipelines
Do you have more than one location? Perhaps you even have branches of your company in different regions? You can utilize sales pipeline software to monitor a wide variety of pipelines. In other words, data from each location or region can feed directly into its own specified pipeline. You can also create a master pipeline that shows the combined overview and in-depth details for the entire company.
10. No More Scrambling for Information
Even the best salespeople can be disorganized. Unfortunately, this can lead to lost opportunities and embarrassment when a lead unexpectedly calls. If your company reports to a corporate office, your salespeople could also wind up in serious trouble if they can’t quickly answer questions about their lead and conversion ratios. With simple sales tracking, all of the pertinent details can be quickly pulled up. This eliminates the need to scramble for information, and it also helps ensure that conversion ratios are accurate.
Wendy Alvarez 