Imagine this: you come home after a long day of work and decide to prepare yourself a delicious dinner. You are meticulous about ingredients to make sure that this dish is going to be phenomenal, maybe you even set the table.
You’ve finished cooking. You plate the dish. It looks like something worthy of a feature on the Chefs Table and it smells even better. You sit down ready to dig in. Then, your phone rings.
You answer and…it’s a telemarketer.
This is what poor lead management looks like and it’s exactly why having a sales lead management software can be the difference between a closed sale and losing a potential customer.
Gaining leads, or someone who shows interest in your products or services, is essential to growing your business. Lead management is the process of turning those leads into loyal customers. Having an effective lead management strategy and software can help you to develop and execute personalized, nonintrusive marketing strategies to peak a lead’s interest.
In this article we’ll do a deep dive into the steps of lead management and look at how Gleantap–a leading sales lead management software–can change the way you attract and interact with customers.
What is Lead management?
Lead management is the process of gaining customers and managing their experience throughout the sales process. For gym and fitness clubs in particular, lead management can help to build strong, long-lasting relationships with potential customers.
Lead management is somewhat of an umbrella term that includes several steps. Each step should be crafted to lead the customer seamlessly down the sales pipeline. The best lead management campaign is one that shows customers just how amazing your products or services are and fosters customer loyalty. A good sales CRM software can help with managing these 7 major steps of lead management.
Lead Generation
You only get one chance at a first impression. That is why 53% of marketers spend at least half of their budget in this area. Lead generation is the advertising process that introduces potential customers to your business and shows them what they’re missing. About 80% of marketers see lead generation as being successful at generating more leads.
Lead generation explores unique ways to attract people to your business naturally. It can occur at any point that a potential customer indicates some desired relationship with your company. Commonly this can occur through blog posts, online content, live events, or even job applications.
Customer inquiry and identity
This stage is where the management process really kicks off. After you’ve enticed a lead with goodies or a stellar email campaign, the customer will signal that they are interested. Generally, this gets customers to your website, but it can also get them in your front door asking questions.
At this point more information is necessary to understand who your customer is and the most effective way to market towards them.
84% of marketers use customer filled-out contact forms or demo requests to begin building a profile. However, having a comprehensive lead management system can help build a more in depth profile for each customer.
This information can include social media interactions, occupation, and purchasing habits. Much of this information is publicly available and programs like Gleantap’s lead management software can be incredibly effective at gathering and organizing this information to build out a customer’s profile.
It’s worth mentioning here that identity verification is an important part of this step. Verifying information will help your marketing team get a better sense of who each customer is and the truth behind information taken or given. In this stage, the hope is that a customer’s interest, or qualification, will be determined.
Lead qualification
An important part of the lead management process is being able to effectively score leads. This will allow you to rank each lead based on the acquired information and their perceived interest in your products or services.
Lead qualification can look at factors as in-depth as demographic information or, simply, their engagement with your company. While it may seem strange, data like job title and website behavior can help generate a predictive model to help you prioritize leads and customize interactions.
This part of the process can be powerful in helping you identify and invest time in the leads that are going to be the most likely to engage.
Lead distribution
Time is your most valuable asset when it comes to lead management. Companies that respond within 5 minutes of getting a lead are nine times more likely to close a sale. The faster you’re able to contact a customer, the higher your chances of winning them over. Businesses that are able to be efficient and customized will find even more success.
Lead distribution is the process of efficiently assigning new leads to the most aligned sales rep in order to create a tailored experience that will be more effective in closing the deal. Being able to do this quickly increases the chances of engagement by potential leads.
Lead Nurturing
Lead nurturing is the crux of the lead management process. While some leads will be quick to cut to the chase and purchase, you may find that many leads are still in the research or consideration phase.
Lead nurturing should seek to educate the customer on products and services all the while demonstrating why your product may be more effective than your competitors. Lead nurturing campaigns can be a great way to educate customers or even re-engage them with your business.
The potential avenues of lead nurturing can be diverse. Action based trigger emails, personalized content, or even push notifications that remind leads that your product is right for them are all effective methods of nurturing. Ultimately, the goal is to push them into the sales phase of lead management.
Tracking and measuring success
An essential part of lead management is being able to determine how effective your process is. You can do this by looking at your lead volume and tracking data. From these metrics you can understand where leads come from and identify which campaigns went on to close and which did not.
With a powerful lead management software you can even identify the common factors that distinguish a successful campaign from an unsuccessful one.
Pipeline management with Gleantap
In the marketing world, “pipeline” seems to be a hot buzzword that gets thrown around a lot. It can be easy to forget that your sales pipeline is actually a multifaceted part of your sales management toolbox.
When it comes to lead management, your pipeline is the funnel strategy that each lead is walked through. The type, number, and function of stages within your pipeline can vary greatly depending on the needs of your customers and your business. Having a sales lead management software that can adapt to those specific needs is essential to constructing and managing a successful pipeline.
Gleantap’s pipeline management software can help your business build just that. Gleantaps software empowers you and your team to increase the number of leads you are able to reach through intelligent and customizable software.
Lead flow customization
Your pipeline is essentially a long conversation between your business and the customer. Much like a face-to-face conversation, you want the interactions that occur within the pipeline to be intuitive, considerate, and responsive to the arising needs of the customer.
With lead flow customization, you are able to configure your pipeline to the most ideal flow to stimulate these conversations and maximize the potential of each interaction.
Full visibility throughout the pipeline
Gelantap’s easy to use timelines and data tracking dashboards allow you and your team to have full visibility of a customer’s journey. Smart metrics help you to easily identify problem spots in the customers journey and identify the customers who are worth a little extra attention.
Automated or live two-way conversations
One of Gleantap’s most powerful features is its automated two-way conversation capabilities. With automations, you’re able to spend less time building out personalized SMS marketing campaigns or scheduling follow-ups.
Automated messaging allows you to integrate personal customer data with messaging and engagement campaigns to create a custom text message. If there are issues surrounding automated messaging or if you would like to engage with a customer personally, Gleantaps software also allows you to jump into an easy one-on-one conversation to fix any problems or address any needs.
Gelantap’s pipeline management software offers you real time visualization of your entire lead management process and gives you the option of being as hands on (or off) as you see necessary for each individual customer.
Sales Automation with Gleantap
Make everything easier with Gleantap’s Sales Automation Software. By automating conversions, review management, and retention strategies you are able to engage new customers and keep in contact with loyal customers.
Customizable touchpoint flow
Gleantap allows you to visually build out your ideal customer journey. You will be able to customize everything from conditional logic responses to delayed deliveries in order to give your customers the experience you envision for them.
Behavior Driven touchpoints
One of the most powerful aspects of Gleantap’s software is the behavior driven automations. The program analyzes factors such as specific visits, purchases, or even a lack of engagement to curate behavior driven texts or emails to keep your customers engaged and boost conversion.
Beyond this, you will be able to stack rules based on behaviors to ensure that your emails are hitting home every time. This will help the continued development of conversation between your leads and your business resulting in higher conversion rates and loyal customers.
Drip campaign automation
Abandoned cart emails and sign-up confirmations are just the beginning of what Gleantap has to offer in terms of drip campaign automation. This feature allows you to customize triggers for emails or texts based on where a customer is in their journey, when they signed up, and when they last received a message.
Multi-channel capabilities
Gleantap is able to be integrated into a wide variety of platforms that allows you to send, analyze, and customize campaigns and engagements across multiple channels including text and push notifications. This software is essential to keeping users engaged beyond their inbox and keeping your products and services at the forefront of their mind.
With this powerful sales automation software you will be able to easily manage your marketing process. This will give you the freedom to focus on the bigger picture and the power to accomplish more with less.
More power with Gleantap
As we discussed, an essential part of your sales pipeline is the analysis. It’s no use trying new marketing strategies if you have no way to measure or manage their success. Gleantap gives you the ability to do more than just send automated emails or create detailed customer profiles.
Gleantap’s streamline layout gives you the capacity to easily oversee the operation of all of the lead management aspects that are most crucial to your customer journey.
Tasks: With customizable dashboards, you will be able to create unique task widgets that allow you to see timelines, projects, and team and customer communications. This is a powerful resource that ensures that you and your team are maximizing each customer interaction.
Audits: Audit your team and your customers with real-time metrics that provide granular information on success and engagement.
Report: Detailed customer insights can be used to supercharge your growth and lead management practices. Gain access to geotagged scorecards that include churn rates, customer accruement, promoter analysis, and more.
Gleantap’s lead management software is easy to set up and easy to use. This full stack CRM system gives you the capacity to engage your customers in a way that is smarter, more streamline, and incredibly effective.
In Conclusion…
Lead management is the foundation of your sales pipeline. Having a competent sales lead management software is essential to making that foundation solid. A sales lead management software can also help build a customer experience that is carefully considerare and majorly impactful.
For gym and fitness clubs, the customer experience through the pipeline is especially impactful as these will likely be some of the first interactions between your business and a potentially long-term member. With that being said, the best lead management strategies are the ones that are able to balance meeting customers where they are at and organically motivating them to engage with your products in a way that is not invasive.
In a recent study done by hubspot, it was found that less than one-fifth of marketers believed that outbound practices provide valuable leads. With this being the case, it is essential for businesses to be intentional about how they are generating and fostering organic interactions between themselves and the consumer marketplace.
In today’s age of endless media platforms, keeping track of multi-platform engagements, developing profiles, and crafting a personalized experience would be impossible to do by hand. Having a software that is able to maximize and organize the organic interactions that draw customers in is essential to filling your pipeline with hot leads.
If you’re ready to start building a memorable and potent pipeline, request a demonstration today. See how Gleantaps highly intelligent software can change the way that you do and accrue business.
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