What Do You Mean by Lead Management?

There is much that has been written on the topic of lead management and with each article or blog post it seems the confusion in the B2B market grows. Many will define lead management as lead scoring & lead nurturing. While scoring and nurturing are part of the equation, there is far more to it than just these two components.

Marketing automation vendors have also added to the confusion by claiming they offer lead management solutions or automated lead management.  The truth is that lead management is a process that is enabled by technology.  

To many companies are buying marketing automation with the hopes of attaining lead management, but unless a process framework is developed that clearly defines how the software will be run and how an organization will operate its marketing and sales activity, the total value will not be realized.

So, what exactly is lead management?  In short, it’s the PROCESS of receiving, qualifying, routing, and closing sales leads. Companies looking to develop and implement a holistic lead management practice must include the following elements to ensure a fully developed process:

• Data:  Marketing and sales data should be appropriately segmented. Data should be managed effectively to ensure integrity.
• Lead Planning:  Questions such as “How many responses, leads and qualified leads are needed from marketing in order to allow sales to meet their revenue goals?” should be asked, answered and documented.
• Lead Qualification:  A written definition of a qualified lead should be developed.  And marketing and sales should come to agreement with this definition, as well as other terms used in the lead management practice.
• Lead Routing:  Process mapping to determine how qualified leads will be routed to sales and how sales will send not-ready-to-buy leads back to marketing must be developed.
• Lead Scoring:  A numerical ranking system must be developed to aid in determining the point at which leads will be sent to sales.
• Lead Nurturing:  A documented plan for all leads that don’t immediately go to sales must be enacted.  This included processes for what will be done at both the marketing and sales level to engage and build a relationship with prospects and customers.
• Metrics:  Determine what to measure and why it should be measured. From there, implement a plan on how to utilize these metrics for shaping future marketing and sales planning.
• Automation:  All of the above should be automated as much as possible to ensure there are no cracks in the process.

So, as you can see, Lead Management is more than just nurturing and scoring.  It’s a cohesive process filled with several components that each impacts the other.  Diminishing the importance of any one of these components could negatively disrupt the entire process and would surely diminish the potential return.

So where do you start in the development of this process?  Begin with knowing what you don't know - conduct an audit.  Marketing and sales should work together to view every area of your organization that has a potential impact and determine where the gaps lie and what obstacles are getting in the way of improving the return on your marketing and sales investments.