On the surface, lead management system sounds like a fairly simple and universal term – A system which manages your leads. I tried to go a step deeper and spoke to a few users (business owners, sales people and marketers from different industries and business sizes), and wasn’t really surprised at what I found. Every single business uses (interprets) their lead management system differently, and due to its significant evolution and range of things it does – one size can never fit all.
What is a lead management system?
Lead management includes capturing leads, qualifying them, making them sales-ready and finally passing them along to the sales team.
Lead management system maps your lead management process to your business. In simpler terms, it helps you manage your leads better (from capture to closure) which you can do in a simple notepad or a complex CRM or ERP. Even businesses that are very similar may implement the process differently. This difference largely depends on:
- The Industry
- Size of the business
1. Lead management process by industry type
Taking two examples to highlight the difference here – a hospitality business and a real estate business, which in all probabilities, would have significantly different lead management processes.
As you can see the lead management stages are different, so is the lead management process and so will be the feature requirements of the lead management system.
2. Lead management process by size of the business
Let’s take an example of a local tuition business which grows into a multi-city education business over the period of time.
The infographic highlights how the meaning of lead management changes with each stage.
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Which lead management system should you buy?
Honestly, you know it best – depending on your industry, audience size and the stage of business you are in. You can manage with just a pen & paper and a phone, or might require a simple lead tracking system, or even a full-fledged CRM.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments
Also, just in case you want to try our lead management system
