Lead management is loosely defined as a customer acquisition process by which a company’s marketing team identifies potential buyers, educates them, engages with them, and once qualified – get passed from marketing to sales. It is a challenge to most companies due to the nature and complexity of integrating and maximizing existing technologies and processes to convert leads to customers.
A typical sales funnel will generally consist of 3 main stages:
The top funnel which targets every possible lead who may be interested in your products of services. This will usually be the widest of the stages where a broader form of marketing is utilized.
The middle funnel where you engage leads that are filtered from your top funnel in order to further educate them about your products or services with the goal of persuading them to continue along the sales process.
And the bottom funnel which is directly related to your revenue as this is the part of your process in which leads are converted into customers.
Most businesses use different types of technologies and platforms throughout their sales process to manage their leads. The challenge is making sure that everything: your lead generation platforms, marketing automation, ERP systems – all integrate seamlessly with your CRM.
SugarCRM does this seamlessly.
When a customer visits your website or fills out a form – a contact is automatically generated in the system. Other lead sources like Facebook lead generation or Mautic webforms can also be integrated to do the same thing, and you also have the option to manually input or upload leads you have purchased.
SugarCRM is also capable of 2-way integration with leading marketing automation like Mautic, Hubspot, or MyMarketingEngine. This ensures that data from both systems are automatically synched and allows you to run campaigns with your marketing automation using data directly from SugarCRM.
As the leads go through your funnel, you can implement 2-way integration with leading web shops like Magento and Woocommerce to close your sale. In cases where you have your own sales team – you can implement Lead Routing and Distribution so when your sales rep goes to your CRM they will have the customer details automatically assigned for them to contact.
Finally, accounting and ERP systems like Xero or Quickbooks can also be integrated to handle the accounting side of things.
Lead management is a critical part of your business and directly impacts your bottom line.
Let us know if you have any questions or need more information of how SugarCRM can help you bridge your marketing and sales.
