:: Copywriting and Direct Marketing ::

Lead Generation, Lead Management, and Lead Nurturing are all important parts of the sales process.

Lead Generation is the process of finding consumers with an interest in a particular product or service. Ways of gathering new leads can vary ? from purchasing leads generated by a third party business to capturing contact information from completed web forms on a company website. The more recent these leads are the more valuable they are and more likely to convert into a sale. Because of this leads are very time sensitive.

Once these leads are generated the next step is lead response management. This is just as important as lead generation. CRMs have been designed to help sales reps with lead management. CRMs act as a working database where leads can be uploaded from any standard CSV file or downloaded automatically by the CRM when web leads are captured.

The lead response management tools built into the CRM allows sales representatives to contact newly imported leads immediately and efficiently. Within minutes of a web generated lead being imported into the CRM that lead is called and the call is routed to an available sales representative. Newly imported lists of leads are also dialed as soon as possible. Often new lead are left uncalled for 24 to 48 hours, lead response management stops this unacceptable practice from happening.

The CRM manages all of the tasks a company needs to complete with their leads and customers. They are powerful software solutions in remote sales and host the telephony tools that help sales representatives progress on every call.

As calls progress, the CRM allows companies to manage contacts in three “Buckets:” leads, prospects, and customers. Within these “Buckets” contact groups can be made. Each contact group can be marketed, notified and supported with the mass emails, faxes, and mailer tools built into the system. Each of these groups can also be designated as the contact list for a power dialer or voice broadcasting system. Sales representatives can adapt their scripts to address the needs of the contacts in each ?Bucket.?

But even with such awesome personalizing of the sales process not every lead will convert into a sale immediately. Some inside sales companies would abandon those leads. Lead nurturing is an alternative to simply abandoning leads that did not convert. Lead nurturing is the process of keeping in contact with non-converted leads and providing quality interaction with them so they will become a customer in the future. Email, phone calls, mailers, and faxes are all used in lead nurturing.

While lead generation is a critical aspect of inside sales, a CRM allows sales reps to manage and nurture those leads until they become converted customers.