With Internet as a major medium for sourcing of sales leads, Automated Lead Management and Tracking has become a mainstream process for small and medium businesses. In the past, most companies used to track the leads with manually intensive processes and tools such as Excel spreadsheets, Access databases, Outlook or other locally installed contact management software.

Why Lead Management?

When the volume of leads are low, business owners and salespeople can easily keep track of the leads without automation. Also, cost of generating leads was also relatively low. For example, Yellow pages, Newspapers and Local Radio are the common staple of small business advertising.

Now that the consumer market has undergone tremendous changes, traditional advertising and marketing methods are fast losing the importance.

Small businesses and professional service providers such as contractors, realtors / real estate agents, mortgage brokers, insurance service providers, franchisees, spas, dentists and others are switching to digital marketing and advertising. Buying internet leads is a common practice among them.

Internet and Social Media as Lead Sources

Large volume of sales leads originate from Internet Search Engines such as Google and Bing, either directly through their own websites or through third party, independent lead generation and distribution companies. Social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter and Blogs are driving more consumers to the internet to research and purchase products and services online. These online leads cost significant amount of money; if the prospects are not managed, followed up and tracked promptly lot of money can be lost in short period of time.

Automated Lead Management Process

Automation of Lead Management (also known as Inquiry Management) starts with capturing of the leads directly from the website forms (aka landing pages) or lead distribution and posting systems used by lead sellers.

Once the leads are captured in the system, the leads are to be assigned to the sales reps based on the pre-defined distribution rules. Lead Management Systems such as LeadPro247 automates the lead routing process using a variety of rules such as sales territory (geography – county, state, zip code), product or service, etc.

The lead management system can also send automated emails to the prospective customer with introduction / welcome information, product details and the sales agent contact information.

In addition, the system will also send lead email alerts to the field sales reps intimating that a prospect in their area has shown interest in one of their services or products. The sales reps can immediately call up the prospect, even while on the road.

If there is an inside sales team, email lead alerts will go to them automatically. Based on the alerts they could qualify the leads and then inform the respective sales rep accordingly. This process helps prioritizing the sales leads and plan the follow-up activities.

Followup activities by the inside sales coordinators as well as the field sales reps can be updated in the system with brief notes. A suitable sales stage can be assigned to each lead for future follow up. Reminders could be setup along with follow up tasks.

The business owner / sales manager / administrator can view the entire sequence of activities from their computer systems in real time. The lead tracking and management system also includes comprehensive lead tracking and summary reports in the analytics module. For example, leads can be summarized and viewed by Lead Source / by Sales Rep / by Product, etc.

Each prospect’s profile, right from capture to the current stage, can be viewed in one place with all the activities such as email messages sent, followup tasks and notes, telephone calls and personal visits.

When a sale is closed or a prospect is lost, the status can be updated for proper filing and future reference. During the sales process, one or more email messages can be sent to the prospect via event triggered drip email campaigns. This is part of lead engagement and nurturing process.

Online Surveys can also be used to engage the prospects and get feedback during and completion of the sales process.

Lead Management as a Web Based Software

Most lead management services are available as a web based software unlike the traditional server or PC based solutions. Hence the system can be configured in a few hours for a specific business. Using a web based lead management system is much easier than the traditional software. Above all, there is no need for any upfront investment as the fees will be paid as a reasonable monthly subscription.

With the economy shrinking, Google, Microsoft and Apple ruling the digital world, news papers and magazines folding every month, it is no wonder that businesses are forced to follow their customers and consumers. It is doubtful if any business can survive without leveraging internet for sales lead generation, engagement and conversion. If you are a newbie to the Web Lead Acquisition world or just planning to test the waters, here is a mini guide on why buying internet leads could make business sense.

It does not matter what business you are in, internet can / should be leveraged for marketing and web leads generation. However online lead generation may not be for everyone; certainly not for the fainthearted as you can easily bleed with pay per click, media buying, SEO and other related approaches, if you don’t know what you are doing.

What are Internet Leads?

As the terminology implies, sales leads generated using web sites are referred to as Internet Leads or Website Leads. You can generate your own leads or you can buy the leads acquired by other lead generation companies. Landing pages, which are basic web registration forms, are used to get prospect information. Generally, minimal information such as name, email and phone number will be collected. While designing and creating landing pages may look easy, there is a lot of underlying technology to be understood and used in order to maximize the value and increase lead quality.

Once the landing pages are up and running, the next step will be driving consumer web traffic to these pages. This is where the traffic generation approaches such as PPC and SEO come into play. These processes are time taking and costly in terms of efforts as well advertisement costs. While you may start testing these procedures with very little money, the end results may be insignificant.

Why Buy Internet Leads?

Firstly, you cannot ignore internet as a lead generation medium. Over 65% of the consumers start their buying process on the internet, though the final conversion may happen off-site or even in brick and mortar retail settings. Secondly, you can focus on your business and core competency; you don’t need to become an internet wizard. Thirdly, it is affordable. You can test with small investment and then grow as you become comfortable with the process. Finally, it is fully scalable. You can buy 100 leads in a week, if you have the resources for follow up and conversion. The next week you can just by 25 leads, if your work load is heavy.

How to Buy Internet Leads?

The most important factors to be taken into consideration while buying leads generated by third parties are: (1) Quality of Leads, (2) Cost of Leads, and (3) Timely Delivery of Leads.

Unless the leads are of high quality, there is no meaning in buying leads. Hence focus on the lead vendors, their lead generation processes and web sites used, and their past history. You may take a look at the post on 10 Secrets of Successful Internet Lead Buying for great Conversion rates for related discussion.

Follow the following steps in your day to day operations:

• Receive the website leads in a Lead Tracking and Management system. Lead Providers might provide access to a basic lead retrieval and tracking system as part of Lead Generation and Distribution Software; however, if you are buying leads from multiple providers, you may be better off with your own software subscription.
• Distribute the leads received from the provider to your sales team / agents immediately. Your sales lead tracking system with a flexible automatic lead distribution engine (with sales territory management feature) will be of great benefit here.
• Nurture, Track and Manage prospects proactively. Leverage Drip Email Marketing function of your lead tracking system effectively to communicate with the prospects.
• Measure, Analyze and Improve on an ongoing basis. Lead analytics reporting provided by the lead management system will provide a lot of information to analyze and measure the lead quality and conversion statistics.