Too many leads to keep up with - not such a bad problem to have. There are people who would kill to have that problem. If you have too many leads to manage honor your good fortune by doing what it takes to follow up on all of them - until they buy.

Front End Lead Management

Managing your leads on the front end is not the hard part of lead management. It usually involves the initial contact, a discussion about a project or product, and maybe even a quote. Either way, the idea is to close the sale quickly and if the buyer is not ready now then you should get an idea of when to follow up - the hard part. Ok. It’s not actually hard but it takes time and some kind of organized system for lead management because after that initial contact, something has to be done with the contact information and all notes, dates, and ideas that have been added. It is valuable stuff worth keeping up with.

If you have so many leads you (or your salespeople) are having trouble on the front end then how much attention do you think the follow up is getting? The follow up is usually the first thing to suffer when things get busy. It is easy to get excited about new prospects and forget about existing leads.

Back End Lead Management (Sales Lead Follow Up)

Research suggests that effective follow up of qualified leads can increase sales by - get this - 100%. So, do the math. Following up on sales leads, and general lead management, is worth your time. Think of all those sales you might have let slip by because you were too busy keeping up with incoming calls or internet leads.

There are many sales lead management software packages out there such as those by salesforce.com, leads360, and Aprimo. You may find that you or your sales team can manage sales leads with a creative use of excel or Outlook. In Outlook, try flagging emails with various colors depending on the nature of a lead and use your Outlook calendar to remind you when to follow up on a lead. Remember you can drag emails directly into your calendar - you do not have to retype everything.

Start Now - Before Things Get Busy

I work with a company that has become overwhelmed during the past few months by sales leads (from their Lead Optimized websites) and it is dreadful to see the sales they are losing. They are doing all they can to keep up with the front end leads while trying to hire new salespeople but because they did not have an effective lead management system in place before their tremendous boost in sales leads the idea of following up has all but been dropped.

Keep up with your leads until they have purchased from you (preferably) or someone else by developing a simple and effective lead management system that you and your salespeople use and update consistently. A good lead management system will become part of your routine and a lifeline to increased sales - a paycheck pipeline for salespeople, which they will gladly keep filling.

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