Generating a lead is important, but following up on that lead is even more important for a sale.
A survey by Verse finds that about 78% of marketing and sales professionals use manual screening to qualify leads. While manual screening sounds good, it may be different from reality. Sales professionals are often too busy to follow up with leads previously screened, as the same survey by Verse outlines. That’s where a tool like Salesforce lead management comes in as the ultimate savior.
Salesforce lead management is the use of Salesforce CRM too to generate, manage, and convert leads into paid customers. A lead process in Salesforce is the process of nurturing and guiding a lead, based on its position in the sales funnel, to make a purchase.
This guide covers everything you need to understand how the automatic lead management tool works. The guide further covers the best practices you can adopt to get optimum results by turning to lead management in Salesforce.
Lead management is the systematic approach to attracting potential customers, nurturing them, and finally converting them into paying buyers/subscribers. A lead, in the simplest form, is anyone who shows interest in your company’s products or services. However, not everyone showing interest is a potential buyer.
Companies often earmark certain criteria to qualify a lead as a potential buyer. A lead management system can filter interested users on those criteria and send only the qualified leads to your sales teams to follow up for closing.
Advanced CRM tools like Salesforce integrate automatic lead management systems within the platform. This ensures the conversion of lead to a sale is smooth and quick, without any opportunity missing from the sales pipeline.
Salesforce provides several great lead management features to streamline your sales efforts and convert prospects into buyers. Here is a list of some of the features you must not miss:
The lead management system in Salesforce offers web-to-lead forms that capture lead information directly from website visitors. Users can use either the standard form or customize the fields. Salesforce also allows importing leads from other CRM sources.
The automatic lead assignment feature in the lead management process in Salesforce is designed to distribute leads to appropriate sales representatives based on set criteria like industry, employee count, and product interest.
Lead scoring capabilities in the Salesforce lead management process enable sales teams to assign scores to every lead on criteria like engagement, profile fit, and behaviors. It streamlines the process of prioritizing high-potential leads over low-quality leads.
Salesforce has developed systems for automated lead nurturing campaigns. The tool automatically sends emails and messages to prospects. Additionally, the emails and messages can be tailored based on where the lead is in the sales funnel. The system tracks opens, clicks, and conversions to optimize content and improve conversion rates.
Customizable dashboards are a prominent feature of lead management in Salesforce. This feature provides a comprehensive view of lead information and status. Users can customize the filters to search and view leads on various parameters and ensure better control over the entire lead management process.
Salesforce first stores important information about every lead. The information includes names, contact information, company details, and sources of the leads. Based on the initial BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing) assessment, the tool automatically divides the leads into three categories.
Qualified leads are those who specifically need the product and services and have the budget as well as authority. Therefore, the chances of these leads converting into buyers are the highest.
Unqualified leads are those who lack either budget or authority to make a purchase or subscription. Sometimes, even if they have a budget and authority, they might not need your product yet. Some extent of nurturing is needed for these leads.
Warm leads are those who have engaged with your content and shown initial interest but are far from a purchase decision. A greater nurturing efforts are needed for these leads.
After the categorization, when the leads move down the sales pipeline, their status is updated accordingly. Salesforce CRM has different subscription tiers, from $25/user/month for basic features to $500/user/month for unlimited advanced features.
Take a glance at these best practices to get the most out of your lead management process in Salesforce:
The effectiveness of your Salesforce lead generation and management efforts depends upon how you follow the best practices mentioned above. However, if you want to measure its success, you can look at the following metrics:
Measure the percentage of leads converting to customers to evaluate audience targeting and nurturing effectiveness.
Assess the cost-effectiveness of campaigns by dividing total spent value by leads generated.
Compare revenue from lead generation to total investment to measure profitability.
Following up with a lead after initial contact is equally important to generating and capturing leads. Salesforce provides a complete suite of cutting-edge tools to streamline your sales efforts through effective lead management. You can look at metrics like conversion rate, CPL, and ROI to analyze your success with Salesforce and prioritize leads based on their lead score.
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