The majority of your leads will most likely not be ready to purchase your product, and getting them to convert as well as to attract new potential customers is often a challenge. In such cases, lead management systems can become very beneficial. It is a solution that allows you to collect information about your leads and evaluate them from a single tool. In this guide, we will take a look at the key benefits of these platforms and we’ll provide some general tips on how you can select the best lead management tool for your company.

A good course of action is to sign up for at least a few free trials or demo and basic unpaid plans from popular lead management systems providers. With that method, you will have the opportunity to test the important elements and you will get a good comparison of the capabilities of the tested programs. The best thing to do when looking for the best Lead Management tool is to try platforms that currently have the highest SmartScore rankings and Customer Satisfaction Rating in our lead management systems reviews: Unomy reviews, Maximizer CRM, Teamgate, Workflow MAX, Infusionsoft, and LeadExec.

Lead management systems can be useful to every company looking to target audiences and nurture leads to a sales-ready position more efficiently. Still, there are two scenarios where purchasing a lead management system can have the biggest impact:

• B2B buyers – These are employees of firms that sell their services or products to other companies. B2B selling involves longer sales interaction lifecycles and for this reason, B2B buyers need strong lead scoring and nurturing features to successfully grow their relationships with prospects and leads.
• B2C buyers – Sales professionals who sell directly to customers need lead tracking features to organize a large amount of data associated with huge numbers of individual consumers. They can also make use of analytics features to identify consumer segments to boost their selling strategies.
• Traditional markets – Sales-heavy industries like real estate, consumer goods, pharmaceuticals, food, and specialized services, are slowly beginning to see the value of automation.

• Unomy: A very popular sales and intelligence app used to gather and analyze prospect data and to improve B2B deals thanks to its sourcing and prioritizing capacity.
• Zoho CRM: A great member of Zoho’s productivity suite designed to attract, retain, and satisfy customers, and automate daily business activities to help businesses grow and develop.
• Pipedrive: A popular and effective pipeline management tool for small business firms and mid-sized companies that manages sales in a way which gives businesses the full picture of their deals.
• Infusion Soft: A smart choice for growing sales and saving time that streamlines pipeline management and lets you to automate repetitive tasks and to focus on most important deals.
• Pipeliner: A well-known sales automation program with CRM infrastructure which manages leads easily and manages companies’ sales processes by organizing relevant lead data.

There are many different types of lead management systems, varying from free and basic tool suites to ultra costly and accurate programs. Features can also be categorization criteria, as certain programs do nothing but summarize leads, while others are more robust and they allow companies to monitor lead behavior, track the entire sales cycle, and even do some custom branding. Deployment is also an important factor based on which there are:

• On-premise lead management programs. These are covered with a single license and are hosted on the client’s local server. They qualify as the most expensive ones, due to the fact that they require complex setup and occasionally some hardware installation.
• Software-as-a-service (SaaS) lead management programs. These are usually paid per month and are hosted on the vendor’s server. The business owner is not responsible for installation, updating, and maintenance.
• Cloud-hosted lead management programs. Most of these offer free basic plans and qualify as the most affordable ones due to their universal access and the fact that the client doesn’t need to update them or to pay for maintenance.

Our detailed comparisons show that these are the main features you should expect from your next lead management system:

• Lead storage and distribution – You can use the software to handle leads obtained through various channels such as Web forms, email, etc. You can then store these leads in a database, evaluate them, and distribute them to the right sales reps.
• Lead scoring – The software use criteria to identify promising leads. The criteria include online behavior, demographic, job title and other variables that reveal more about a lead’s background and buying behavior.
• Lead nurturing – The software offer nurturing tools that automate the procedure of following up with leads and delivering relevant content to them. In this manner, you can bolster the relationship until the lead becomes ready to buy your product.
• Lead analytics and reporting – The apps allow you to create and analyze lead reports which provide an overview of sales and marketing results. These features can help you understand which leads are showing the highest conversion rates and which sales campaigns are proving to be the most successful.

Here comes a list of the main benefits experienced by companies using a solid lead management system:

• More streamlined lead lifecycle – The system automates the lead lifecycle after capture. This ensures you don’t overlook any leads and follow up with them promptly to boost the chances of closing the deal.
• Better lead prioritization – Lead scoring and nurturing features can help sales teams to convert leads more efficiently and speedily as they would be able to focus on the most promising leads.
• More efficient and timely sales rep service – Sales operations are time-intensive and to maximize efficiency your sales reps should talk only to good leads. Lead management systems help to filter out non-promising leads and understand the buying pattern of your promising leads.
• Smarter and more cost-efficient business decisions – You may be using a lot of content to attract leads. To find out which content has been most effective in attracting qualified leads, you can use lead management systems. Then you can concentrate your time and marketing activities on those channels.
• Increased efficiency and productivity – Getting leads from automation systems is a step up from cold calling and can give better returns. This helps salespeople focus their attention on high potential customers instead of hoping for random success.

Smart marketers know that lead management systems only set up the stage for increased success, but like in traditionally selling, how the salesman utilizes the given tools is often the measure of success. Here are some issues that pertain more to how the software was utilized rather than the shortcomings of the product itself.

• Absence of call to action – Once a potential customer’s attention has been captured, not providing a call to action can turn that lead from stud to dud. Make sure to provide specific CTAs to make the inquirer provide more information.
• Lack of follow up – Even after a successful lead generation session, the sale ultimately goes back to the attending sales team. A slow or nonexistent follow-through may alienate a previously-excited customer and leave for the more responsive competitor.
• Implementing a one-size-fits-all strategy – Providing generic responses instead of specific replies are a bad idea when most companies are on the lookout for custom solutions for their unique requirements.

• Rise of the chatbots  – While chatbots have been around since 1966, their commercial applications only came to prominence the past couple of years. Given their convenience and ubiquity, expect more and more sites to feature chatbots instead of toll-free numbers or email addresses.
• Video is king – With people’s increasing preference to watch a video rather than reading a book, video takes center stage in social media posts. It’s becoming a rare event to see a non-video advertisement, and with improvements in network quality, expect more motion ads.
• Voice and search marketing – The number of people using voice search has grown steadily, and marketers should be able to integrate that with their lead management systems. Keywords should be restricted to basics but made context-sensitive to address specific requirements posed by clients.