Lead Tracker – What is it & how to find the right one

Having a transparent lead tracker system not only helps you understand the workings of your business, but it also helps you keep things in check. One of the most important parts of a business is a lead. A sales lead is the first step in any sales funnel and is what a salesperson leans on to bring in results. But, how can he increase his conversion rates? By knowing their leads, their motivation and behavior. And lead tracker does just that, tracks every move of your leads and helps you to react in the right way.

What is a lead tracker?

A lead tracker will help you track the lead as they travel down the sales funnel. Right from the moment of their first contact with your business, you will be able to track your lead. This will give you a detailed insight into what they are looking for and help you to make a personalized pitch to them. A good sales lead tracker will allow to not only understand their interests but also predict their purchase behavior effectively.

But, there are many tools out there in the market. How would you know which one is the best in the business? There are certain features that a sales lead tracker should possess to ensure that you can guide them through your sales pipeline. These features not only help your sales team in selling to the lead, but it also helps your management in making good business decisions.

Features of a lead tracker:

Lead capture automation:

The first step in any sales pipeline is to ensure that the leads are getting captured. A lead tracker application should be connected to all your lead sources, both online and offline. This way, you will ensure that there is no lead leakage in your pipeline. You can connect to your online lead sources such as your website, paid ad campaigns, social media, third-party websites, or even through emails and inbound phone calls.

Not just your online leads, but your lead tracker should be able to capture offline leads as well. This could include leads such as the ones you meet at events or trade fairs or even the ones who walk into your office. You can even instantly add leads when your field team makes their daily sales rounds and come across a potential customer.

Having an automated lead capture mechanism not only eliminates the risk of missing out on leads, but it will also ensure that you know where each lead is coming from. You will be able to figure out which source is fetching you the most leads and which is giving you the best ones.

Lead distribution:

Once your leads have entered your lead management software, it would not make any sense to have them just hanging in your system. You need to assign them to the right salesperson so that they can reach out and nurture the lead. But imagine having a manual system, where someone assigns leads manually to each salesperson, one at a time. This method is highly inefficient and highly prone to error.

A smart lead tracker system will automatically distribute the leads to your team based on various criteria. This could be geographical, product-wise, based on expertise or even on a plain old round-robin fashion. This way every lead is accounted for and the chances of missing out on good leads are minimized.

Lead Prioritization:

A salesperson gets assigned tens, if not hundreds, of leads in a day. This can often get overwhelming and they may end up calling people at random. What’s wrong with that? Well, it’s a bad idea to reach out to your leads in no set order. According to a report by Brevet, 30 – 50% of sales go to the vendor who responds first. The next logical question a sales guy will have is: How do I know who to call first?

That’s where your lead tracker steps in and tells you who to call. Since it tracks the source from which the leads are coming in, you can set priority scores to the leads. A smart system will even be able to assign scores based on their interests, their buying intent, and their demography to assign scores. Your system will automatically create a calling order for your salesperson, and the leads which have a higher propensity to convert will be contacted first.

Website tracking:

The best part of having a website tracker is getting to know what your lead is doing on your website. You will then be able to develop a very personalized pitch to the lead. You can either send them remarketing campaigns or send over personalized offers or even have a more relevant phone conversation with them.

For example, if you are a higher education institute and a lead visits your website. They then navigate to the courses you offer and spend almost 15 minutes on your business courses and then downloads your prospectus. They are obviously looking to join a business course and have evaluated your institute. You can use this information to help them with the admission process.

Lead Nurturing:

95% of buyers chose a vendor that provided content to navigate each stage of the buying process (Source: Demand Gen Report). A good lead tracker will come with a smart lead workflow feature that will help you build a good nurturing sequence. You can then send over relevant emails at the right time keeping your leads engaged.

You can set triggers such as on lead capture, on lead stage change or even when they perform the desired action such as filling a form or downloading an e-book. Or you can simply add your cold leads to a list and start sending them educational emails that will enlighten them on the value that you can give them.

Sales forecasting:

For proper sales planning, your lead tracker should be able to smartly calculate what your future sales look like. This can be done by cross-checking with parameters such as the average time to close a sale, the number of deals per salesperson, the average revenue per closure etc.

You can then easily project what your sales numbers look like in the next month, quarter or even year. Better planning means you would know where to invest your money and what targets you should set your salespeople to achieve the desired results.

So, when you are planning on buying your own lead tracker, remember to check for these features, and get yourself a tool that will help you achieve your sales goals. If you are looking for one, why don’t you give LeadSquared a try?