Christmas Cracker riddle: What is the difference between Lead Generation and Lead Management? The answer of course is more sales
Image Source – Christian Guthier (CC License)
Perhaps the biggest challenge for any B2B lead generation company is to strike a balance between the processes of lead generation and lead management. While the managers of the client companies want their sales pipelines to be supplied with fresh business leads on a regular basis, the sales teams often clamor about the conversion rates and final deals. Truth is that a B2B lead generation company doesn’t have to see these two priorities as goals that are at odds with each other. In fact lead generation and lead management should never be competing priorities, when well managed they can co-exist within an organization and ensure greater success and create a much more harmonious sales team.
Striking a balance:
While a robust lead generation program ensures that fresh opportunities are constantly coming in, developing a lead management process with proper follow-up and effective nurturing is vital to maximize the value of each existing sales lead. The success of the lead generation campaign depends largely on its ability to integrate these two processes into its strategy and day to day working. It is the classic pull-me push-me scenario. A few simple steps can help you achieve this seemingly difficult task efficiently and effortlessly.
Prioritise your leads:
Every business lead that comes your way is not created equal, investing equal time in each lead will never pay rich dividends. The key lies in constantly evaluating incoming leads and ranking them according to priority. This will ensure that you devote the right amount of time and manpower to each prospect and maximize the value of every available opportunity. Using a system like BANT (Budget, Authority, Need and Timescale), will greatly help in this process of prioritisation.
Proper follow-up:
Most sales organizations lose great sales opportunities because they don’t have proper follow-up procedures. You are not going to convert every single sales lead into a deal immediately, every prospect has different motivation level and timeline. Developing a constant ongoing
follow-up program is vital for your success. Computer softwares and other CRM techniques make it a lot easier in the present era, you don’t have to depend solely on phone calls these days; email newsletters, webinars and use of social media can automate the follow-up procedure and help you stay in touch with promising prospects.
The business scenario has changed dramatically over past couple of decades and a lead generation company needs to adopt novel methods to stay ahead of competition. Some simple but effective measures can help you accomplish this difficult task easily and efficiently.
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Tags: Lead generation, Lead Management
Andy Dickens
Andy Dickens is a veteran of IT Sales, used to leading by example. He is the CEO of Virtual Sales Limited (VSL) who offer telesales, telemarketing, lead generation and appointment setting services to B2b businesses. He previously was Sales Director EMEA for Red Hat and before that ran sales at Visio before it was acquired by Microsoft.