Lead Tracking Info

Track Your Leads in 4 Ways

2009-04-10T11:08:00.000-07:00

Tracking can be both time-consuming and exhausting, yet you cannot skip it. One of the foremost reasons why companies are having wasted leads is because they ignore lead tracking. These are your prospects who could have given your business the profit that you need.

To make sure that you can avoid this problem, you can start your lead tracking system with these 4 ways:

1. Determine the people that you are going to track. We are talking about niche market. This is the segment that is composed of leads who are going to purchase from you because they exhibit high interest or capability to pay for your products and services.

There are a lot of ways on how you can determine who compromise your niche market, but to make it simple, just take a look at the product or service that you are offering. If you are currently selling mobile phone for kids, you may want to consider working moms and fathers as your target market. They have the ability to pay for the product, and they would be interested in getting one for easy communication with their children.

2. Gather the right information. Once you have already determined your leads, it is time to obtain the information that can be helpful for tracking. Keep in mind that we are after for the right ones. These include their name and contact details like e-mail address, mobile phone number, landline number, and office or home address.

You can obtain these pieces of information if you are going to develop a marketing campaign. You can create a survey and give these questionnaires to your target market. If you want to get leads from the Internet, you can have your mailing list, where prospects can write their e-mail address and their full names. You can participate in trade shows or fairs and hand registration forms to your booth visitors.

3. Create your database. This is one of the most important steps in lead tracking. A database can sort your leads and all the information that are related to them. If you want to make it simple, you can always use an Excel spreadsheet. However, there are more effective methods of creating a database. You can utilize a lead tracking software.

A lead tracking program performs a variety of functions. First, it serves as your database, if you do not have one. If you do, you can easily integrate it into your lead tracking application. Second, it helps you keep track of your database. You will be able to identify which of the leads need to be tracked and what kind of tracking method has been done to them: phone call, e-mail, or home or office visit. You can also have an idea of the status of the lead. Did the prospect say or yes to the offer? Did he or she say “I am interested but not now?” Moreover, you can see who among your sales staff is responsible for tracking a lead. Most of these applications are capable of producing reports. You can use the data to evaluate the lead tracking process you are currently implementing.

4. Contact your sales leads. When you are already done creating your database, you can then start to track your sales leads. Remember that a lead is considered hot within 24 to 48 hours only. After that, there is a huge chance that he or she is no longer interested of your offer or may have considered your competitor.

With plenty of ways to track, which method should you use first? It depends on how you obtain the lead information. If the prospect has signed up into your mailing list, the most convenient method is to send him e-mail. If you have obtained his number through a trade show, call his landline or mobile number.

Visit our lead management software sponsor: www.leads360.com

Features of an Effective Lead Management System

2009-03-27T17:32:00.000-07:00

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Lead management is one of the most important parts of a sales strategy. Without lead management, there is no way that you can effectively and efficiently handle prospects and customers.

Mismanagement of clients has always been the bane of marketers and salespersons. Since the customer is always right, you should have a lead management system to make sure you are able to keep your customers happy.

There are many advantages that one can enjoy from a lead management system. Here are some of them:

It allows for prompt action. Promptness is a sign of being professional. As a businessman, it is important for you to be prompt with your dealings with your clients. This will enhance your image as a businessman and will bring you into positive light. You will appear more reputable and credible to your prospects, as well as to your existing clients.

An effective lead management system can help address that. With that in place, you can deal right away with any new lead that comes in, and also address the needs of other leads in a timely manner.

Each new lead that comes has a raw interest in your product and should be addressed right away, or else that interest will fade.

It allows you to follow up regularly with your clients. In marketing, one cannot simply expect to convert a lead or a prospective client right away. It takes some steps and some persuasion in order to do just that. This way, you can say that it takes consistent follow-up in order to finally get that sweet “yes” from your prospect and close a sale.

With an effective lead management system, you can make sure that enough attention is given to your clients. As mentioned earlier, it is important to keep the client interested in your product all throughout the lead nurturing process. If you don’t regularly follow your clients up, they’ll go over to the competition. An effective lead management system allows you to access information easily and find out who needs what action in order to convert the lead into a customer.

It helps you to build a lasting relationship with your clients. One of the keys to closing deals effectively with your clients is to build a lasting business relationship with them. You should continue to let them know that you care, even when they have already made a purchase. You can, for example, send them a follow-up mail asking for feedback. This is one way to make them feel important, and you can expect them to come back again and again to your shop. Of course, the aforementioned examples of prompt contact and consistent follow-up are also some of the ways to let clients know that they are very special.

An effective lead management system also allows you to keep track of how the client has been treated in the entire sales cycle. For example, you should be able to know what promises or assurances have been made to the client, so you can keep them when you are assigned to follow up on him/her. This is a great way to maintain and to acquire the trust--and loyalty, along the way--of your client.

Ways of Improving the Effectiveness of Your Lead Management

In this day and age, the best way to make sure that your lead management system is effective is to automate it.

Automation will make sure that the proper leads are assigned to the right person, and in a timely manner. For example, new leads are classified right away and delivered to the salesperson or marketer who is assigned to handle those leads in that point in the sales cycle.

Visit our lead management software sponsor: www.leads360.com

A Call Tracking Service to Boost Your Sales and Improve Your Tracking Lead Performance

2009-03-13T12:42:00.000-07:00

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So what exactly is a call tracking service? As the name suggests, it is a special program that allows you to keep track or monitor the calls that are coming in. Now, it’s not only about knowing who is making the call or not. It’s also determining the essence of the call. If we’re talking about leads, you would be interested to know if the call is meant to express interest over your offer or dismay for not having anyone communicate with him about his desire for your product or service.

Since we are going to use a program here, it’s safe to assume that you should invest on it. It will definitely cost you something; however, the rewards will be greater. With your phone tracking service, you will be able to enjoy the following benefits:

1. Develop your own database. Most of the phone tracking services these days are multifunctional. They don’t only allow you to listen to voicemails or real-time messages of prospects, but they also permit you to build a database out of them. With the information that they can provide you, you will know their names, addresses, and other contact details. Some of them can even be reflected in the caller ID that usually comes with the phone. Lead generation therefore becomes a lot easier to do and is cost-effective.

2. You can immediately generate feedback from your prospects. When you’re tracking your leads, it’s never really enough that you have followed them up over their requests or set up appointments for the offers. You also want to know if your marketing strategies, such as telemarketing, are working out well for them or not. Are they annoyed or hassled? Do they enhance their curiosity or interest on your business? With the phone tracking system, you can advise your prospects to provide you with a specific rating or open-ended feedback about your marketing campaigns. This way, you will be given time to improve them.

3. Your business can conveniently modify the campaigns. As mentioned, call tracking services give you an opportunity to ask for feedback from your prospects. Moreover, you can download historical data, which can be useful in determining which of the strategies implemented are bringing in profits or increasing the ROI of your business and which ones are not. From there, you can decide if you will improve on those that appear to weak or completely eliminating them from the plans. This decision permits you to save money on materials that don’t generate profits.

4. You can improve the performance of your salespeople. A huge portion of your success is not attributed to your products or services, as well as your marketing campaigns. It is because of your sales team. Even if you have the best business concept, but you have less-trained salespeople, you won’t still be able to achieve your goals. The phone tracking service can be very useful when you want to improve not only the speaking skills but also the negotiation and sales aptitude of your employees. For one, you can let them compare two types of calls, the ideal and the real one, and let them talk about the areas of improvement needed. You can also use the recordings when you need to train employees whose work is not really related to sales. Just in case somebody in your sales team decides to resign immediately or goes on vacation, or you need more manpower, you have someone to consider.

Most of all, the phone tracking service can help you in not only tracking but also nurturing your leads. Based on the previous data, you can measure the level of interests of your prospects and decide which of them could be ready for offers.

Visit our lead management software sponsor: www.leads360.com

How Does a Lead Tracking Program Work?

2009-02-26T19:04:00.000-08:00

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When it comes to lead tracking, there’s really no pressure in using a program, especially if you’re just handling a very minimum number of leads. In fact, there are still companies I know that are still on spreadsheets or their own made-up database courtesy of Microsoft Access. What’s really important is that you have a dependable and organized lead tracking system.

However, to use lead tracking software is a major boost, if you’re going to consider the time and effort you spend in organizing and re-organizing all your leads. Because it’s highly automated, you can reduce your time, and there will be lesser room for errors. You can put side notes for each of your leads to determine who among them have already been called or not. You can identify who answered yes immediately; yes, but next time; and stern no. Moreover, you can easily look up for important lead tracking information such as their full name, phone number, e-mail address, and the source of your leads.

There are also other features that you can enjoy with a lead tracking program:

Duplicate Checking. This feature is something that you cannot really find in Microsoft Excel or any other spreadsheet unless you’re going to make it a commitment to double-check before you enter a piece of information. When your software has duplicate checking option, you will instantly know if a lead has already been part of your database even before you place his name among the list. This way, you can simply update his records. You can also search for both partial and complete names.

Reports. Reports are very crucial when it comes to lead tracking. You just don’t want to say that there are more people who have been followed up today than yesterday. You definitely need proof, and you need features. You can come up with your own reports, but then, it will definitely take a lot of time. Most of the lead tracking programs these days already have their own pre-made templates for the types of tracking lead reports that you need. All you need to do is to customize them to fit the information that you are looking for. It’s also very convenient for you to generate these reports, as they already have the ability to gather and collate data straight from your updates and your own records.

Remote Lead Updates. This could be one of the strongest benefits and features of a lead tracking application. When you have a lead tracking program, you no longer have to be in one place at a specific time. Since the software can be installed in your PC or laptop or, better yet, access through the World Wide Web, you and your sales agents can be in the field, outside of your office, in trade shows, in presentation meetings, or in just about anywhere. Because the database can be accessed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all of you can instantly update the files remotely. This generally cuts down the time you spend in lead tracking, not to mention that information becomes more accurate. You just need to add up those names who can access the lead database. This way, you can establish better accountability or control over your sales team.

Tracking Process Creation. Today, you can also create different lead tracking processes, depending on your prospect group. For example, those who have signed up with your mailing list may have to be tracked through their e-mails, while those who have attended your trade show may have to be called. When you pattern your lead tracking process according to the habits of your prospects, it’s easier for you to reach them and obtain a response.

Visit our lead management software sponsor: www.leads360.com

Using Your Domains to Generate and Track Leads

2009-02-13T10:25:00.000-08:00

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Domains are very important nowadays. Since the Internet has been introduced, everyone on Earth has relied on it for almost all of their needs. They use the Internet to buy items that they need. That is why there are a lot of businesses that also depend on the Internet to generate and track their leads. However, so few of them ever know the right way of harnessing the full potential of their domains to serve their business.

Clearly, people know how to do online marketing. Yet there are some things that related to it that only few people know. These are things that, if only they were known to the marketers, could have made life a lot easier for them.

There Should be Two or More Domains Used for Marketing

Most people are used to marketing only one domain or website. That’s the norm, of course, and something that all of us are taught to do. Most applications of the Internet require only a single website. It is easier to maintain and easier to advertise--not. One thing that most marketers fail to understand is that, while it is indeed easy to advertise and bring one website to the attention of most people, it is difficult to achieve what you hoped for when you only have one website: that is to gain leads and convert them into customers.

Yes, it may be hard to believe, but that’s the truth. Why? That is because people who come into a website that is owned and operated by a businessman will automatically stay away from it. It is actually very similar to the way people react to telemarketers; once you start talking about offers and products on the telephone line, it’s either they politely tell you to hang up and leave them alone, or they will slam the phone outright on you. In other words, they’ll reject you. It is just the same on the Internet.

This behavior stems from two reasons. First, people are always on guard on offers and products because they might be scams. With the financial crises nowadays, people are conscious about where and for what they spend the money in. Unfortunately, scams are abundant in the Internet, making people careful about websites that promote products and offers.

The other reason is that the person may be interested in only information and may not right away be interested in any product or offer. They may be later on, but if they are bombarded right away with these promotional materials, they’ll automatically erect a wall in front of them. This is a common defense mechanism, even against telemarketers who cold-call on anyone’s telephone. You too would probably do the same thing if you were in their situation.

As mentioned earlier, people are more interested in getting information in the Internet rather than face websites that blabber about products and offers. Why not take advantage of that?

One way to do that is to introduce only general information on a website. However, you cannot put in general information on your business website. Your website, as a marketer’s website, is designed to put in information about your product alone. It can do nothing else but promote your products, or else, it’s not a marketer’s product already. Are you scratching your head in incomprehension now? It can be confusing. How can you introduce general information in your website without sticking to its intended aim of promoting your products?

Now don’t waste your time trying to figure it out because the situation is similar to asking the question, “Who comes first: the chicken or the egg?” Asking yourself such kinds of questions will just put you in circles. No matter how you look at it, there’s no way you can do that with your website. Your website is intended to promote--nothing more than that. Let it stay that way.

Advantages of Using More than One Domain

Now you probably know what we’re getting at: use a separate domain to give people the information they need. With that separate domain in place, you can then use it as a medium to give people the information that they are looking for. That’s the advantage of using more than one domain: it’s easy to generate leads that way. Just remember to keep the second domain as optimized as the first domain, so it can be seen easily in the search engine results page. You may also include a tagline at the end of your articles with a link to your website.

That’s easy, isn’t it? You just come up with very informative articles, post them in your second domain, and redirect traffic to your main website. This way, you can capture the interest of your potential traffic as long as your articles create enough hype for your products without mentioning your company or your products of course. Finally, cinch it when you ask your site’s visitors to leave in their e-mail address and name for your newsletter. That’s lead generation for you already. You now have the means to build a database of people who are interested in your products.

Using more than one domain can help track visits as well. If you have, say, four domains running on the same strategy--that is, giving general information about your niche--you can use them in your marketing campaigns. Specifically, they can be used to compare the success of each advertisement or lead generation campaign. Here’s how you do that.

For every ad or article you use to indirectly promote or create hype for your products, you can use an individual tagline. This tagline should carry a URL pointing to one of your websites. You should then publish several articles, with each of them pointing to any of your individual domains. Afterward, all you need to do is just look at the statistics of every website you have and see which one of them has the most number of visitors or leads delivered to you.

Visit our lead management software sponsor: www.leads360.com

Why Lead Tracking Should Be Automated

2009-01-29T21:52:00.000-08:00

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As a business owner, more or less, you have been offered by some marketers and so-called sales management gurus of a lead tracking solution. It is natural, however, to think that it is simply an added investment that would sap away at your financial reserves. Besides, you can do lead tracking and handling by yourself. You have been doing it, and there has not been any problem.

While it is right that you can do lead tracking by yourself without using any special software except for your browser and your e-mail address, there are still some benefits to be enjoyed from automating your lead tracking functions. After reading these benefits, maybe you will say that a lead tracking solution is worth the investment after all.

Benefits of Automating Your Lead tracking Functions

Here are just some of the many advantages that an automated lead tracking system can have over the manual tracking that you have been used to up to now:

It is more efficient. If you are thinking of saving more time while minimizing your errors, then the lead tracking program it is. Through a lead tracking software, you can easily access lead information without having to physically go through documents to get those data you need.

All leads are processed. With a lead tracking software, you can see exactly what your backlogs are and take the appropriate action. This is a very different case with manual lead tracking. With manual lead tracking, there is a chance that you can overlook a lead simply because it takes some time to fish the information out of your database and process them.

It is easier to track leads when your business gets bigger. When your business gets bigger, you can expect that your leads will become more numerous than they were before. The chances that you can overlook a lead and not follow it up will become higher if you still stick to manual lead tracking.

It is easier to respond to e-mails or send offers to prospects with a program. With an automated lead tracking system, you can send batch e-mails without a problem. You only need to use a pre-written e-mail, load a pre-defined address list composed of your prospects, and the program takes care of the rest.

You can track communications easily between the prospect and your salespeople. Lead tracking solutions also automatically log every instant messaging and e-mailing session between your sales department and your prospective clients. This makes it possible for you to review your salesmen’s performance or where to step in personally to make the client understand your offerings. This way, you can easily increase sales with an automated lead tracking solution.

Your workload has significantly decreased. Lead tracking is not the only function that you have on your company. As the owner, you have other things to do like managing the business itself and seeing to its governance.

One of the biggest hurdles in lead tracking is keeping up with qualified leads. With an automated lead tracking solution, not only can you see which prospects need to be followed up on, you can also see which leads are not at all qualified. That way, you can spend more time on the qualified leads than wasting unnecessary efforts on non-qualified prospects.

Reports are easily compiled and presented. All the information that you need to access in case you need to make a presentation can be easily gleaned from the lead tracking software’s database. The time you need to spend on coming up with a detailed and informative report is significantly reduced if you use an automated lead tracking system.

Visit our lead management software sponsor: www.leads360.com

How to Keep Your Sales Agents Enthusiastic in Tracking Your Leads

2009-01-16T08:25:00.000-08:00

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Tracking leads is definitely not a joke. It’s not as simple as calling the landline or phone numbers of your prospects. It’s also not as easy as noting who says yes or no to the presentation. Making things more complicated is the fact that its success basically relies on your sales team. If they get tired or unmotivated to do the job, then there’s no way that you can have a very good lead generation program. It will be very difficult for you to increase your profits or, better yet, conversion rates. If your sales agents are not happy with what they’re doing, there’s hardly any chance that your business will survive.

As a business owner, it’s your role to make sure that your sales agents remain enthusiastic over their jobs. Fortunately, there are a lot of things that you can do. You can start with the following:

1. Hold them accountable to their jobs. One of the foremost reasons why they appear to be either relaxed or tired when they are already working is because they know that they really don’t have to answer for their mistakes. Usually, business owners will hold the sales manager or supervisor responsible. However, it’s also essential that your sales agents will feel such responsibility too. For one, it will let him know that his position is significant in the business. Second, you can encourage him to not take his work for granted.

How can you do this? You need to apply proper lead distribution. This means that the leads should be assigned to a sales agent, and he or she should be accountable to them. You can then make use of a lead tracking software to determine which of the leads have been worked on and which ones are not.

2. Establish the objectives of the entire lead tracking process. Just imagine how hard it will be for your sales agents to work with no clear purpose in mind. It will also be very hard for you to determine the efficiency of your sales agents when it comes to lead tracking.

The question, however, is this: what are the things that you should include in your objectives? First, you have to come up with criteria that will identify your qualified leads. You should also have a clear idea of what your conversion rate must be. You can base this on previous tracking results.

3. Offer incentives to your sales agents. Now, there are a lot of businesspersons who believe that incentives are about money. Thus, they are apprehensive in including an incentive program into their organization. But then this is one of the best motivational factors, and cash is not the only way on how to implement it. For one, you can give out certificates of recognition, perhaps to the top-converting sales agents that you have. You can also organize them into teams and reward those that are performing really well compared to others. You want to develop competition, so they will be encouraged to do their job beyond their own expectations. However, you also want to keep such competition healthy.

4. Develop metrics. This is one of the most essential elements of tracking leads and is something that should be discussed to your sales agents. The metrics must not only reflect the effectiveness of the process but also of the efficiency of your sales team. Make sure that all factors that are included in it are measurable. Moreover, you should not be the only one to create the metrics system. Ensure that the sales supervisor or manager becomes part of it. Remember that his team is the one who is in the front line in sales and marketing.

Visit our lead management software sponsor: www.leads360.com

Four Things to Remember about Lead Tracking

2009-01-02T17:15:00.000-08:00

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It is never really enough for a business to have leads. They should know what to do about them. One of the essential steps is to track them.

This is the part where they often commit mistakes. There are almost 80 percent of the leads that are being wasted. Sales agents do not get in touch with them in any form—e-mail or phone. Before they know it, your potential clients are no longer interested in what you are offering and have considered your competitors. Moreover, your clients may have completely forgotten all about you, thus, making it more difficult to establish your credibility.

What you need are the 4 basic guidelines when it comes to tracking leads. There are many lead tracking tips that you can get from the World Wide Web and lead management references. But we can simplify them into these:

1. There are no sure results of tracking leads. A lot of businesses think that when they track leads, they are already guaranteeing higher conversion rates. That is not actually the case. In fact, there is no right lead tracking formula. However, this is still a fundamental step. Going though this will minimize wasted leads. You can also establish consistency in your lead management process.

2. You need to have goals. A business without goals is like a ship moving in no particular direction. Thus, it is very essential that you do not directly jump on to how much your conversion rate will be or the marketing strategies that you are going to implement. These things will be highly dependent on the objectives that you have in mind.

When it comes to lead tracking, goals can help you identify if you are on the right direction or not. Are you tracking the right set of people? What mode of communication should I do to ensure that I can follow my customers up? These questions and more can be answered with your lead tracking system and objectives going hand in hand.

3. Make your lead tracking system as easy as possible. Lead tracking does not have to be a very complicated process. In fact, it should be something that is extremely easy to implement. This is to minimize a lot of confusion for both the sales agents and even for the prospects. This will also decrease the number of errors that can be committed along the way.

A business may make use of a lead management program. A lot of them are already capable of not only creating a database but also effectively tracking your leads. They allow you to centralize the system, to make sure that no two or more agents can talk to the same prospect for the same reason. They can also identify which of the leads have already been acted upon and which ones are not.

4. Check all the data that are available. Sometimes the mistakes in lead tracking are not because of the processed involved but on the information that are available. If you have set up campaigns in attracting a certain type of leads, make sure that these prospects will be properly labeled or identified. This way, you will not end up calling with leads that do not meet up your qualifications. There can be times when there is not enough contact information. You may only have an e-mail address or a phone number.

Sales agents must be taught how to efficiently track your leads. They are the ones who get to deal with them in the first place. However, make it your responsibility to keep track on their performance too.

Visit our lead management software sponsor: www.leads360.com

3 Tips on Effectively Tracking Your Trade Show Leads

2008-12-18T18:32:00.000-08:00

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Despite the costliness of trade shows, there are still a lot of companies that are willing to spend hundreds to even thousands of money just to participate in one. Why? For one, trade shows allow you to see your competitors, especially on what their products are and how they do business. You can study their strategies and use them to your own advantage. You can also determine the potential partners for your business. That includes people and companies that can help your business grow more rapidly. Most of all, expos and trade shows are attended by hundreds to thousands of people everyday. This means that they are excellent sources of sales leads.

Why You Need to Track Them

When you’re in a trade show, it’s not enough that you get to sell some of your products to walk-in clients. You must also keep track of every person who visited your booth as much as possible. This way, when the show is over, you can still communicate and set up appointments with them. You can talk about your business in a more detailed scope.

Moreover, some of these sales leads may not fit into your present campaign, but they can be of use in the future. For example, if the newest product is meant for men, you cannot introduce what you’re selling to women just yet. Once you’ve exhausted all male leads, though, you can then drop a call to the ladies. You can try their interest in getting one for their male loved ones like husbands, brothers, and fathers.

How to Keep Track of Trade Show Sales Leads

There’s really not much difference with keeping track of your trade show sales leads from tracking those that come from mailing lists and other lead generation techniques. Nevertheless, there are some things that you have to remember to ensure that you can do this function more efficiently and correctly:

1. Call your sales leads before the actual trade show. You can call all your existing leads, especially those whom you have not set up an appointment with yet. You can tell them about the upcoming expo and inform them that you’re going to have a booth. Tell them that you can talk about the business at full length there. It will also be ideal since they can personally see the products themselves, especially if you have demos or product presentations. You may prioritize those leads who are living near the venue, as they have more resources to attend to it than the ones who may be living in other states or towns.

2. Prepare your registration forms. Make it a point to bring your registration forms to the venue. They are very useful if you want to determine how many of them have visited your booth as well as important information related to them. These include their name, address, and contact details. Papers can be hassle to you as they do have the tendency to get lost. You can opt for a lead tracking software. You can install them in your laptop or, if it’s web-based, you can just access it online. You may inquire from the trade show organizers if they offer Internet connection. A lead tracking program will also allow you to directly add their names to the lead database, so you won’t have to spend more time encoding them.

3. Give them a call. Once the trade show is over, ensure that you can immediately give them a call. It would not be long before they will forget about the expo and thus your business.

Visit our lead management software sponsor: www.leads360.com

Direct Mail Marketing: An Underrated Method for Lead Tracking

2008-12-04T08:29:00.000-08:00

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The communication technologies of today have improved greatly. The Internet itself is the greatest improvement to the impressive array of communication devices that man has in his disposal. With the Internet, anyone can reach out to people all across the globe—in real time. There’s no need anymore to wait for weeks to receive a mail from a loved one miles away from home. With electronic mail, messages can be received within mere seconds or minutes.

Communications and Marketing

Marketing is one of the many things in this world that is truly dependent in communication. In fact, marketing takes advantage of the many mechanisms of communication in order to get this message across: buy the company’s products. It is not uncommon to see advertisements in print media, in television and in websites. It is also normal to hear a spot in the radio advertising a company and its products. That’s how marketing works.

As communications evolve, marketing also evolves. Marketers must’ve had a field day the day electronic mailing was first introduced. With the introduction of the Internet, they know have the capability to reach out to a global audience for less the expenses it takes to do the same before email was ever introduced to the world. The Internet also opened many possibilities for aspiring businessmen: anyone can start a business with the same potential to succeed as the bigger companies have. It can also be said that the gap between small and large business is non-existent, and that the Internet is the great equalizer in the context of business.

The sad thing, almost no one uses written mail anymore because of electronic mail. Marketers are an exception, but it is clearly implied that most marketing techniques nowadays have a focus on television and the Internet. It’s because these two methods of advertising have the widest range. Radio is limited to a certain locality; almost no one uses snail mail anymore. That means the age of direct mail marketing is almost over. However, is it really the end for what was once the most effective marketing and lead tracking technique?

Direct Mail Marketing Explained

Direct mail marketing is a very old marketing technique. Before there was an Internet, mails were definitely the methods with the widest range possible. You can send a letter to anywhere in the world.

In direct mail marketing, the company sends a package of promotional materials to a prospect’s house. These materials can be anything as long as it presents the product in a favorable light. It can be a CD, a sales letter or a brochure. Since it’s a predecessor, it’s basically the same as email marketing but the materials are tangible.

Direct Mail Marketing Will Not Go Away Easily

In marketing and lead tracking, direct mail still has its merits. Yes, that still remains true even if direct mail can be inferior when it comes to the duration needed for the mail to arrive. Direct mail marketing can still serve a purpose in lead tracking and marketing because:

• Not all people in the world can afford an Internet connection. Even if cafes are accessible, not at all times can your prospect log in to the Internet and check their mails. This means that your email may not reach him in time or may be buried within his inbox.

• People still reply to written mail in places where Internet connection is not available. It’s even easier to log in lead tracking information when you receive a reply to your direct mail advertising.

• Email marketing has the tendency to become buried in the spam folder and remain unopened. Direct mail marketing, on the other hand, ensures that the mail gets into the hand of a prospective client and gets opened.

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Get Rid of the Typical Lead Tracking Mistakes Now

2008-11-06T18:43:00.000-08:00

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So you have your own sales leads. Now what? It is really not enough that you have gathered them in your database. Unless you do something, they will not provide you any profit. Sales leads per se do not have the capacity to convert themselves. What you need is to follow through the different processes in lead management. One of them is lead tracking.

As its name implies, lead tracking is all about monitoring your sales leads. You have to keep tabs on what has been performed to them by your sales agents—whether they have been called or followed up. Lead tracking gives you an idea how to nurture your sales leads, as well as determine which of them will be your priority.

However, there are a lot of people who fail at this part simply because they keep on following the common lead tracking mistakes:

1. You do not keep track at all. The very first mistake people do in lead tracking is not doing it at all. This usually happens when a sales agent makes the first call and then no more. Of course, it is understandable that there are still more leads that you have to initiate with; however, by not tracking, you may have just wasted a lead that is actually a possible customer. Always remember that some of your sales leads are interested with what you are offering, and yet there are factors that may prevent them from taking the proposal any further. For instance, they may not have the money to purchase a product or that they may see no need of your service as of the moment. Once these factors are eliminated, there is a huge possibility that you can close a deal with these leads.

2. You do not invest in a lead tracking software. If you have less than a hundred people to monitor, then an Excel file will work out just fine. However, there is no businessman who would settle for such low number, and thus, he will look for ways and means to increase it. When your business thinking is this way, you may want to invest in a lead tracking software. Of course, it is definitely more expensive than any spreadsheet program; however, it offers you a more effective means in tracking leads.

For one, it can centralize the entire lead management system, where there is only one database that can be accessed by your sales agents. This will prevent redundancy of sales leads in the database or calling the same person more than once. Moreover, sales agents can provide notes or remarks for every sales leads, such as whether they have already placed a call, closed a deal, or trying to make a follow-up or ask for feedback. These information can be included in the database, and then all data will be updated in real time. Sales agents therefore will be able to see which of the leads are worked on and which ones are not. They will also not be able to hide their being incompetent, since their names will reflect next to their assigned leads.

3. You followed up the wrong person. There are also some who are willing to track leads—only that they are tracking the wrong ones. These are people that may have already expressed disinterest in your product and service, but because of lack of proper update, they still appear to be a hot lead, which you are then going to call. Surely, you can’t expect them to be happy about what you did. What’s more, you will already be providing a wrong impression to your company.

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How to Use Lead Tracking and Lead Tracking Software to Your Advantage

2008-10-22T18:38:00.000-07:00

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Lead tracking is very much like keeping track of a customer or a prospective customer. Since a lead is essentially a prospective customer, knowing how to handle such a lead will not only generate income for your company, the right handling of such a lead will also help create the kind of reputation your company might want. Proper handling of a lead with the assistance of lead tracking software can get you to direct such a lead to the right person who can handle the prospect with aplomb. Proper handling will also lead to a good impression which can then translate to additional prospects trying out your company due to the word of mouth that such a lead might start.

From the start, keeping track of a lead will help pave the way for a better relationship with that customer and will help you and your team to customize your approach to such a customer. Since leads have some of the information you need on a client, you can then work from an angle that you know such a client will like. It's bit like using psychology on a person to get the kind of results you want. The kind of information that certain clients or leads have fit into a certain demographic that have to be handled a certain way to generate positive results. If you do your marketing research well, you can then work on this client with ease and handle them correctly again in the future with the help of your lead tracker.

How a Lead Tracker Can Increase Customer Retention

Let's face the facts, customers like to be treated special, and they also like to be remembered by those companies that they patronize. Such a treatment shows that you are on top of their needs and that they are important to you. This kind of personalized attention can only be achieved if you have an efficient lead tracking system in place. In reality, keeping track of what a particular customer ordered in the past or what their preferences are with the huge number of leads and prospects that pass through your agents can be pretty tough if you do not have such a system in place. Knowing their preferences and what they like before they even tell you what they need gives you a bit of an idea as to how they like to be treated. Lead tracking can do this for you and more. Since tracking leads often present you and your sales team with facts regarding the client's transaction details, like what they purchased, who handled the purchase and how the purchase was concluded, you can then take your cue from there and custom fit your handling process to such a lead or a client.

Giving Your Customer the Right Agent

Even when you have a top agent handling a customer, the possibility of a deal going sour is still there. Not all customers react to an agent the same way, and while some customers give in to a persistent and well-versed sales agent, some find these people annoying and shut them out and the sale completely. Since different personalities are often presented to your sales staff, it is also essential that you have different kinds of sales agents handle such diverse personalities. There are certain make-ups of customers that fit certain agents, and knowing how to convert these prospects into sales is achieved by knowing what kind of personality these leads took to when they were being handled. Some people like to be assisted by an agent who is courteous and soft-spoken while others want a very informative and aggressive agent to handle their needs. With lead tracking, you can achieve this since you will be able to determine what kind of customers you will be dealing with the kind of demographic that they represent.

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The Common Tools Used in Tracking Leads

2008-10-09T21:24:00.000-07:00

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Lead tracking is considered as one of the most essential steps in closing a deal. After all, your sales leads will never be useful unless you’re able to convert them to regular customers of your business. Nevertheless, lead tracking will also be impossible if you don’t have the necessary tools with you.

Contrary to what other people think, the equipment needed in tracking leads are not at all complicated. In fact, they are very common. What is important, however, is that you will be able to come up with an organized method of monitoring the activities that you’ve done with your leads.

Business Phones

One of the most typical tools that you’re going to need to keep track of your leads is a business phone. Normally, you just need two telephone lines, one for the basic phone while the other will be utilized for the installation of the fax machine. Unless you are expecting leads calling you for information, you don’t need another telephone. You can set them up on your own, or you can ask for help from your telephone company.

Internet Line

The World Wide Web proves to be a very convenient tool in lead tracking. There are already a number of lead tracking software that are now web-based, so you will be able to access it anytime and anywhere. On the other hand, there are different modes of Internet connection that you can avail. Though high-speed Internet access, or broadband, seems to be more expensive than dial-up, you can become more effective if you’re going to choose the former. This is because using the Internet will not prohibit the use of your main telephone line. When someone calls you and you’re using a dial-up connection, the caller will eventually hear a busy line signal.

VOIP

VOIP is a shortcut for voice over Internet protocol. It allows you to call an office or home through the Internet. It’s very helpful especially if you have sales leads that are from other countries. It can definitely lower down the costs that you have to pay for international calls. There are also several VOIP providers that you can use today. One very good example is Skype. Especially if your sales leads have their own Skype accounts, you can get the call for free. There are also instant messengers such as Yahoo that can also like a VOIP. All you need to do is to buy some credit.

Sales Lead Tracking Software

You can always choose to do the lead tracking manually, which means you’re going to encode each one of them in an Excel sheet. You can even make use of Post-It notes, but you know that it’s not going to be really efficient, since there’s a huge tendency that you’re going to lose them.

The best option is the use of a sales lead tracking software. It doesn’t only allow you to set up a comprehensive database of your sales leads, but you can also schedule your follow-ups to each one of them, send you notifications or reminders, or generate tracking reports. You can also add your own personal notes or comments for every sales lead.

A lot of these tracking leads programs can be customized according to the needs of your business. They may also allow multiple user accounts so that you can come up with a centralized database, which will then minimize errors such as redundancies of sales lead accounts and assigning a sales lead to two or more sales agents.

Armed with the right kinds of tools and excellent communication skills, you will surely hit it big time with lead tracking.

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Essentials of Lead Tracking

2008-09-18T04:44:00.000-07:00

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So you’ve finished finalizing your business plans and permits, you’ve processed all payment options, and you have closed deals with important suppliers. All you need are, of course, customers. Your business will never be successful without them. However, the world, including the Internet, is full of other merchants like you. How then could you make sure that you will have sales? Advertisement is your next step and, with it, leads and a good lead tracking software.

Tracking

Now that you have leads, it is very important not to lose them. All you need is an efficient lead tracking software to help you manage both the real and bogus leads that you are bound to encounter. This software is an essential part of your business endeavor. Lead tracking depends on this efficiency to be able to produce, in a click or two, comprehensive records for leads that may eventually buy your products. With this, you will be able to download or upload any lead you choose to.

In tracking leads, you can continue with the process of dealing with your customer until a sales deal is closed. Your customer would want assurance that their information will not be lost in the World Wide Web. The sooner you are able to contact them, the better they will acknowledge the efficiency of your store.

In lead tracking, you are not assured that all your leads will turn to sales, but if you are consistent and persistent enough, more than 50 percent of those leads will become sales customers. You can choose several campaigns including drip marketing, promotions, and telemarketing. Plan your campaign well as customers these days are developing an anti-telemarketer attitude. Perhaps you can offer them newsletters with updated sales offers. That way, they might be enticed to come back and add to your sales.

Essentials

A lead tracking software will allow you improve the precision of your tracking process. It is easier to monitor how well your business is going and how the customers were able to enter your site, whether they came in through e-mail or website advertisements. This is important because you can capture the trend that dominates your market and invest on the method that sells to most customers.

Tracking leads this way is quick with a financial report generated with ease. Your leads will be matched and saved in your own database so that you can always refer to them anytime you want to check up on sales or potentials.

Also, your sales force will be able to identify your biggest potential customers and follow them up. High-quality leads will not be lost and will most likely turn into sales customers. Because tracking leads using a good software ensures automation, your staff will be able to handle more customers at the least time possible.

Moreover, the software can also be updated real time, so that every sales agent will always know which of the leads have already been contacted or not. This will practically eliminate the tendency of calling up the same person twice. You know that it’s going to be such a waste of time and effort. Most of all, it’s a waste of money since you’ll be paying your sales agents for hours that they have been unproductive.

Overall, you will be able to save manpower and overhead costs while your potential for sales will increase as you continue your lead tracking process. Your sales may not turn up well overnight, but the more that you follow the good leads, the more you will have higher chances of becoming successful in your business, with increased profits and steady customer base.

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Tracking Leads for Maximum Results: The Uses of Lead Tracking and Lead Tracking Software

2008-09-09T00:25:00.000-07:00

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Generating leads is not enough when you are into maximizing the results you want for your company. The use of lead tracking software to find out more about the movement of your leads can actually help create a more positive outcome for your company. With the help of lead tracking software, tracking leads to help with how you run your company is an easier thing to do than trying to track them manually.

How exactly can lead tracking help you and your company and why should you employ a lead tracker? When you use a lead tracker for your company's marketing strategies, you are basically using a mapping device that shows you the movement of your leads and what the people in your employ have been doing with these leads. This kind of a tracking tool can help you a lot since you can custom fit your clients' needs with the services and products that you have. Having a tracker in place for this purpose will help increase client loyalty due to the efficient pairing of leads with agents that know what they need and want.

A lead tracking program is one of the many lead management tools that can help increase the potential earnings of your company. With lead tracking software, you can focus more on the leads that show more promise of generating revenue and you can also keep track of the other leads that can be worked on to create a revenue as well. The use of this kind of a tool is slowly gaining popularity with a lot of companies since it cuts out a lot of the guesswork when it comes to how to handle certain leads, what to do to take a certain prospect and turn them into a sale and how to maintain certain leads as loyal customers.

How does tracking leads work? How can lead tracking software help with your kind of business? Tracking leads can help create regular reports for you in terms of turnarounds, successful conversions, dropped prospects or leads and can show you where revenue is strongest. The creation of reports from the tracking of leads will help with weeding out the errors in marketing and sales and can help increase efficiency in terms of finding out who of your teams and personnel is the most effective in producing positive results. The use of a lead tracker can also simplify your lead analytics for you. You won't need to carefully check the movement of your products and services everyday when you have a lead tracker program in place. This program will be the one to keep track of your lead movements and your lead generating and revenue making ideas.

Finding the kind of lead tracking software that suits your particular need is dependent on the kind of information you want to have in your lead analytics and lead tracking reports. How you manage your leads and how you generate them can also be a result of the software you choose for such a purpose so finding the right kind of lead tracker is important. You may need to personally consult with an expert in this field to find out what lead tracking software they might have to suit your specific business and how to run these trackers effectively. Some trackers are so detailed in what they track and how they track it that extra training on how to read the results of these trackers may be needed. You may also need to have one of your people trained to run the tracker and to generate results for effective lead management and lead analysis.

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Lead Tracking: The Why’s and How’s

2008-08-29T17:14:00.000-07:00

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Where are the leads? Though by theory companies are very much aware of the importance of sales leads, only few of them are actually very conscious in tracking them. This means that as much as 79 percent of the collected leads are wasted. They either do not reach the sales agents, or they are left somewhere in the database to be forgotten.

The Necessity of Tracking Leads
Perhaps it’s high time to stress again the importance of lead tracking. The value of every sales lead is more than just in terms of profit. They are your customers who you can depend on if you want to expand your business, or you’re looking for growth in your customer base. Lead tracking also carries the following benefits:

1. You can analyze the performance of your marketing efforts. When you are going to track your leads, you are able to determine if your marketing strategies—which may come in different forms such as telemarketing or e-mailing—are actually working. With this, we mean that there is an increase in sales conversion rate, or there are more leads that became your customers than before.

2. You can also determine the quality of your leads. Some leads are “useless,” which means that there are some people included in the list that are actually not part of your niche market. They don’t have any interest in what you’re selling or offering, or that their interest may not be good enough to encourage them to buy something from you or use your service. They may have to be removed from the list, so sales agents will not be wasting their time and energy on them.

3. You can evaluate the sales performance of every agent. A lead tracking software can actually show the actions performed by the sales agent, as well as the outcome of such action. Did he or she able to convince the lead to buy something? Were his or her marketing efforts too weak that the company eventually lost the lead? When you are able to track the leads, you can also evaluate how the agent fared when it comes to sales. If he or she didn’t, you can extend the proper training and mentoring. If he or she did, you can give him or her appropriate incentive or reward for a job well done.

4. You can better your sales efforts. Lead tracking will give you a much better overview of what your customers are looking for or demanding, especially from a company like yours. Thus, you can effectively decide whether to improve the current product line, phase out some of them, or create new ones in order to serve your customers a lot better.

How to Track Leads
The real challenge in tracking leads is how to do it. To help you out, you can take note of the following steps:

1. Develop a system first. There are plenty of tools that you can utilize for lead tracking, but they can be pretty useless unless you have a system in place. Hence, plan first before you execute. You can ask help from your sales agents, or you can gain inspiration from existing lead management systems of other companies.

2. Get a lead tracking software. You can always use an Excel sheet—that’s no problem at all. But if you want to speed up the entire process, make it more efficient, and to make sure that you can easily access the leads, you better have your own lead tracking software. It’s an excellent investment for your company. Some of them can already generate the leads for you, so all you have to do is to filter them out; or you can specify your constraints and allow the program to come up with a comprehensive list for you.

The good thing about a lead tracking software, especially if it’s web based, it can present information in real time. As long as sales agents are taught how to update the database, such as when they are able to convert a lead to a customer or when they have gone through initial contact with them, the lead tracking application can be extremely useful.

3. Update and keep track of the performance. It’s very essential, particularly for the lead manager, to always update and keep track of the progress. This is to ensure that there unqualified leads are removed, qualified ones are contacted, and sales agents are really working.

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