When your sales representative gets a lead, you want them to chase that lead while it’s hot. A new prospect or an existing customer has shown an interest in your product or service and if you don’t respond quickly, they’ll turn to one of your competitors. However, leads are easily buried or lost while they are passed through the system via email, inter office mail, or even word-of-mouth. Don’t let leads fall through the cracks. Implement a customer relationship management (CRM) solution that can support your sales team as they keep chasing the leads.
A new lead can show up nearly anywhere and at any time. One of your employees may be socializing, out to lunch, or initiate a conversation at a conference and catch the attention of a potential prospect. What happens to that prospect next could lead to a sale or a lost customer. Lead data can be passed to the wrong people, or it can sit too long on a sales representative’s desk. As time passes, your prospect grows weary of waiting for a follow-up and pursues their needs with your competitor. Reduce your risk for lost leads with CRM.
A robust CRM solution, such as , can make it easier for your employees to enter and follow lead data. Right from the start you can distinguish between prospects and existing customers. You can then qualify leads as hot or cold and route them to the sales representative that has the expertise needed to manage that prospect’s specific needs. automate the routing and notify that sales representative, and other managers you may designate, that a lead is waiting for them. You can define lead routing rules by product, territory, potential value, or other qualifiers to ensure the lead gets into the right hands. Add helpful data about the prospect into CRM, such as how you got the lead or relationships that they may have with other customers or suppliers. Sales representatives can use this insight to tailor their follow-up activities. If using a customer reward program, you can reward customers for referrals, which can lead to more referrals.
Chasing leads is important; however, appropriate follow-up is critical for turning leads into sales. Contact Columbus for more information about using CRM to keep tabs on leads, follow-up activities, and consequently, more sales.
By Columbus,
CRM really is a great system, we use it at work and it just makes life so much easier for the whole team because we know when we have new leads, what has to be done, what has already been done and what is required next to follow through. Not only is this great for business, but it means the customer is always at the forefront of our minds; customers don't like to be ignored.