Understanding the value of leads
This section used to be called Lead Management and Tracking. However, like pipeline management, Lead Management is undergoing a fundamental shift in focus, expectation, and approach.
You no longer track leads, you nurture leads, guiding them through those phases of their buying cycle that don’t warrant the direct involvement of a sales rep.
Salesnet’s experience over the past 6-7 years is that most of the selling actually happens when the sales person isn’t there. In fact, research (available upon request) shows that longer-term leads (future opportunities), often ignored by salespeople, represent almost 80% of potential sales.
Leads fuel revenue – SugarCRM helps you to start selling as soon as a lead comes in and places emphasis on lead nurturing.
Leads can be imported in a variety of ways and most importantly directly and automatically you’re your website via web capture forms. Lead data can include any predefined or custom data fields.
Leads never wait in an inbox for distribution as flexible lead routing rules, based off the actual lead information, automatically route the lead to the right individual or group, You can even set up rules to route leads based upon current time so your business can "follow the sun".
Because SugarCRM is a closed-loop system, no lead ever gets lost. Lead activity is viewable directly in the contact, account and opportunity/deal screens. All leads and lead source performance can be reported on and analyzed and lead trends displayed in any user's dynamic dashboards.
Why Is This Feature Important for CRM
Your ability to nurture leads and remain involved in the buying process will give you a significant competitive advantage.
The SugarCRM Difference
SugarCRM CRM allows you to route leads based on the criteria you set - they never sit in an inbox waiting for someone to manually assign them, so you get to prospects before your competitors.
Business Benefits
- Always get to a prospect first because automatic routing instantly gets the lead to the right person or team.
- Automatic qualification allows the sales team to focus on exactly where the opportunity is and saves costs.
- Powerful reporting, analytics and tracking allow you to quickly and easily determine the return-on-investment of your lead development and marketing campaigns.
Key Product Features
- Enter leads manually or use the data import wizard for lists.
- Automatically capture leads from your Web site, capturing customer information and hidden referral sources, for example, Overture or Google Adwords source.
- Capture data into pre-defined or custom database fields.
- Store all leads in the centralized SugarCRM database so no lead ever gets lost.
- Automatically qualify leads based on information captured.
- Use powerful, automatic rules to route leads to the right individual or team.
- Use prebuilt or create your own reports to track and analyze lead performance.
- Use dynamic dashboards to monitor lead performance during the day.
- Create access policies that only share leads with the people that need to see them.