Best Lead Management Software

Generating a high number of leads is an achievement for marketing teams. But, what if the team is not able to convert the leads into customers? The cost of generating leads becomes a liability for the business. Lead generation is one of the top concerns that businesses of all sizes face today.

Here, the use of the best lead management software comes into the picture.

This buyer's guide to lead management software covers all the topics relating to lead management tools and how you should select one to get the most out of it. Let’s  start with the basic concept of lead management and move on to in-depth information about lead management systems helping you make the right purchase decision.

Lead management is a process that includes capturing leads, tracking their behavior and activities, segmenting & qualifying these leads, and consistently putting in marketing efforts to convert them into customers. The primary objective of efficient lead management is to drive customers through the sales funnel until they reach the point where they make the purchase decision. If your business is generating leads but is not managing it properly, you would probably fail to provide exceptional customer services and ultimately lose sales opportunities.

Thus, it becomes necessary to follow a systematic approach towards a lead management process to ensure the business's sustainability and growth. To have a better understanding of lead management, let's examine the different components of the lead management process.

Lead Planning

Planning marketing strategies to acquire leads is the first step in any lead management process. The target audience is approached using outbound and inbound marketing strategies including email marketing, social media marketing, SEO, webinars, and other paid advertising methods. When the audience responds to any of these marketing efforts, the leads are generated.

Lead Scoring

The next step after generating leads is to identify and score those leads based on their purchasing decision authority, budget, and willingness to convert. Scoring the leads is important as it helps in prioritizing and executing personalized marketing strategies to ensure maximum conversions.

Distributing Leads

The qualified leads are then distributed to sales and marketing personnel with complete information about their demographics, age, preferences, etc. so that they can put the right efforts to convert those leads into loyal customers.

Nurturing Leads

The sales and marketing teams then nurture those leads with a high possibility of conversion by following up with them through email or phone calls. Lead nurturing requires implementing the efforts that educate the clients about the products/services like providing demonstrations, free trials, etc., making them ready for the purchase.

Conversions

Here, the lead management process comes to an end where the leads get converted into the customers.

The lead management process seems simple when, in theory, but practically becomes complex when the number of leads cumulates consistently. Below are some challenges that businesses usually face during the process of lead management.

Lead Leakage

Some leads that do not become immediate sales opportunities leak out of the funnel due to lack of time devoted to those leads. These leads are not nurtured efficiently, and thus they end up lying in your CRM and maybe become your competitors' opportunities. When the number of leads is high, it becomes difficult to answer equally to all the leads. This is where many qualified leads get segmented as unqualified leads, resulting in losing sales opportunities.

Missed Follow Ups

Following up with the leads is one of the most significant activities that can shorten the sales cycle. But, many times, sales and marketing professionals miss following up with many leads due to lack of interest or overload with the number of leads they receive every day. Missed follow-ups mean lost sales opportunities, and that ultimately leads to financial loss to the business organization.

Lacking Engagement

It becomes highly important to keep the leads engaged with the different options in products and services, pricing packages, etc. so that they make immediate purchase decisions. But, engaging leads is not so simple as it sounds to be due to constantly increasing competition and awareness among the buyers. It requires meaningful and consistent interactions with the audience to improve the engagement of the audience. Many times sales and marketing teams fail to do that due to scarcity of time, energy, and resources, which adversely affects the business profitability.

A lead management solution can help in overcoming these challenges to a great extent. So, let's go through what exactly is lead management software and its capabilities that can take your business to the next level.

Lead management software is also known as lead generation software, and lead tracking software that minimizes the human efforts required to generate, track, identify, nurture, engage, and convert the leads. It automates many tasks relating to lead management, eliminating flaws, and closing more deals effortlessly. It simplifies the process of organizing and streamlining the sales pipeline, analyzing critical data relating to sales, making informed strategic decisions, and achieving desired conversion rates.  

Earlier, the sales and marketing teams had to put a lot of human effort and invest their time to get all these jobs done manually. Now, with the help of a lead management system, they can automate and schedule their follow-up emails, qualify and identify leads quickly, and immediately put their ideas into action. The lead management solution also helps evaluate the sales performance of each team member based on different dimensions, ensuring they meet their sales goals effectively and grow their business.

Let's have a glimpse at the capabilities of lead management software that can help modern businesses survive and grow exponentially.

Streamlines Information

A  business lead software can be a single source of information for your sales and marketing personnel. They don't have to manually juggle between files, folders, and excel spreadsheets to find the information they require. Using the best lead management tools, they can have access to all the information on their fingertips.  

Qualifies Leads

A lead management system helps you follow a systematic process that enables you to qualify the leads accurately based on their purchasing authority, budget, and many other factors. This systematic approach eliminates the lead leakage problem and helps you make the most out of the generated leads.  

Tracks Leads Activities

The best lead management software allows you to track your leads' activities including their emails and conversations with the sales & marketing team. Approaching the leads with a personalized strategy based on their activities can delight the leads, help improve conversions, and improve the profitability of the business organization.

Nurturing Leads

The leads that are not sales-ready require consistent nurturing and building relationships. A lead management system can schedule emails and social media posts that help nurture leads and engage them with your brand. This ultimately leads to increased sales and growth of the business.

Efficient Follow-Ups

When you launch a marketing campaign, there are so many leads pouring in, and handling them all equally becomes a tedious job. In such a situation, you may miss out on approaching many leads with your offers. The lead management system ensures efficient follow-ups with every lead by sending reminders and notifications, helping you to improve efficiency in follow-ups.

So, these were the basic capabilities of a business lead software. These capabilities can vary depending on the type of lead management solution you choose. Let's look at different types of lead management tools based on functionality, deployment, and price.

A. Functionality

Many lead management tools have basic features that allow only storing and managing information when it comes to functionality. Whereas, there are robust lead management apps with features that allow the categorization of leads, automate email marketing and social media campaigns, track and monitor lead behavior, and manage the entire sales cycle. 

So, while you select your lead management solution, check that it is compatible with your business workflow and processes. For that reason, many businesses opt for customizable lead management apps, whereas others go for readymade lead management solutions that are available to use immediately. Let's have basic information about each of them.

i) Readymade Lead Management Software

As the name suggests, readymade lead management software is a tool that includes predetermined features that cannot be tweaked. Readymade lead management solution can be on-premise or cloud-based. You need to just install or sign up to start using the readymade lead management system instantly.

ii) Customizable Lead Management Software

There are many free and open source lead management tools that you can install and customize as per your business requirements. You need to possess the technical expertise to customize this type of lead management system to get the maximum benefit from it. Many companies hire software development companies or freelancers to get a lead management system built suiting to their business workflow and logic.

B. Deployment

i) On-Premise Lead Management Software

On-premise lead management software is the type of software that can be installed on your server and operated within your business premises. When it comes to deploying on-premise lead management tools, you need to have proper infrastructure and technical staff to maintain and manage its updates regularly. You have three options if you are planning to deploy an on-premise lead management software -

1. Download free and open source lead management software and get it customized from your technical staff to make it work as per your business requirements
2. Hire a software development company or freelancer to build a lead management solution that can be hosted and managed on your server within your organization’s premises
3. Purchase license of a readymade lead management software, get it deployed on your organization’s server

ii) Cloud-Based Lead Management Software

The cloud-based lead management system, also known as online lead management software, is hosted on the software vendor's server. You don't need to worry about its installation, maintenance, and upgrading. The vendor takes care of that. All you need is an internet-aided device to use the cloud-based software from any place at any time.

C. Price

i) Paid Lead Management Software

Whether you are buying the license copy of a lead management software or hiring a software development company for getting your lead management software built, you need to invest a considerable amount in owning the software. In the case of cloud-based software, you need to pay a monthly/yearly subscription to use the lead management platform. The lead management purchase decision would be based on your business requirements and budget.   

ii) Freemium Lead Management Software

Freemium lead management software is free to use for a certain period or with limited features and users. You can go for this option if you need to check the software features and whether it includes all the functionality that your business requires. It is always better to make purchase decisions by testing a freemium version of the lead management platform.

iii) Free Lead Management Software

The open source lead management solutions are free to download and can be customized as per your requirements. Also, there are certain cloud-based lead management software like EngageBay and LeadFeeder providing free pricing options with limited features. These free lead tracking software perfectly suit startups and small-sized businesses with minimum requirements.

As per the research report, the lead management software market is likely to grow at a CAGR of 17.39% during the period 2017-22. The reason behind that is the need for large scale client management among the business organizations.

Lead management software is a tool that most successful businesses use these days to improve and scale their sales & marketing processes and manage their leads flawlessly. Below are some benefits that businesses derive by implementing lead management software.

Focusing on Quality Leads

The CRM lead management platform allows you to segment the leads based on their purchasing authority, preferences, and budget. This segmentation allows you to identify qualified leads that are sales-ready and approaching them with personalized offers leading to improved sales and profitability.

Engaging with Right Context

Lead software stores complete information about the leads and communication carried out with them in a centralized location. This helps the sales and marketing teams approach the leads with the right context and better conversion rates.

Improving Productivity

The sales lead management software automates the entire lead management process like sending emails, notifications & reminders, launching marketing campaigns, etc., allowing the sales & marketing teams to focus on planning successful strategies that yield results.

Responding Quickly

With the help of sales lead software, the sales and marketing teams can access crucial information about the leads, such as their contact information,  buying intentions, purchasing authority, budget, etc. This enables them to respond quickly and accurately to the leads and increase the chances of conversions.

Increasing ROI

The sales lead management software allows you to identify the marketing platforms and strategies, bringing better results in terms of quality leads and conversions. This helps in planning effective marketing strategies for the future, and that leads to increased sales and ROI.

Measuring Performance

The lead software provides insights to the important information about different aspects like the success ratio of different marketing campaigns, buyers' behavior, etc. helping in measuring performance. This helps in making improvements to the processes and workflows benefitting your business financially.

Easy to Use 

A user-friendly lead generation software would encourage your sales and marketing team to adopt it quickly and get things done with minimum human efforts. This would save time and help them focus on strategic and revenue-generating tasks, helping you improve the business organization's productivity and profitability.

Implementation Support

Just ensure that you get required support from your software vendor until your team is comfortable and fully operational with the lead management software. If you have chosen cloud-based software, then you need not worry about the implementation support.

Price

This is the most important criteria most of the buyers look for. The price of the software should be worth the features and functionality it provides. Moreover, it should also fit into your budget. If you are not confident with the lead management software functionality, go for a freemium version first and then make the purchase decision.

Customer Support

Before you purchase a lead management software, you need to check whether the vendor of that software provides prompt customer support or not. Check the customer reviews about the same and choose the software with exceptional after-sale support to ensure a smooth lead management process in your organization. 

Dashboard

Most of the lead management software includes a dashboard providing at a glance view of metrics that you want to check frequently. You need to ensure that the lead management software you have chosen allows you to customize the dashboard according to your preferences and easy-to-view charts and bar graphs allowing you to grab insights that you require.

Integrations

Switching between different applications to get a task done can be a tedious job. The right integrations within your lead management software can help you get different tasks from a single interface. The integration with different tools would also allow you to import/export required data and save your time spent in manual data entry. Thus, you need to ensure that the lead management software you choose includes the capability of integrating other tools you are currently using in your business.

Mobile-Friendly

In this fast-paced business environment, when most of the tasks are done using mobile devices, why not manage leads. If you are required to manage your leads and monitor the activities of your sales and marketing team, even while you are traveling and moving places, you need to ensure that the lead management software you choose is mobile-friendly.

To stay ahead of the competition, achieve the impossible, and set unique benchmarks, you need to adopt a future-ready lead management software. For that, you need to consider the below-mentioned latest trends in lead management software.

Chatbots

Chatbots can provide 24/7 customer support, and so have become quite popular among brands these days. Chatbots have enabled businesses to answer the queries of the leads at any time with minimized human efforts. Thus, you need to ensure that the lead management software you purchase can integrate with chatbots as most businesses these days are implementing chatbots on their website to nurture leads and provide exceptional customer service.

Voice Search

The number of people using voice search is growing steadily, and you need to ensure that the lead management software is compatible with this new trend. Through voice search, people post context-specific long-tail keywords, and that should be considered while executing lead capturing strategies using your lead management software.

Personalization

As per recent research, 90% of US consumers find personalized marketing very or somewhat appealing. You need to make sure that the lead management software you choose includes the features that support you in implementing personalized marketing efforts and approaching your leads in a personalized manner.

Video Marketing

People these days prefer watching videos rather than reading text. Videos have taken a prominent place in social media marketing. The lead management software you select should be compatible enough to execute this trend within your digital marketing efforts.

Artificial Intelligence

These days, marketers are using Artificial Intelligence in identifying the quality of the leads and implementing better decision-making strategies. The use of AI in lead management may not be new, but it is evolving and becoming more popular. AI focuses more on probabilistic decision making and thus helps businesses make their sales & marketing processes highly accurate & effective.

Machine Learning

Machine learning is based on data science that can be used to optimize and improve the performance of marketing campaigns. It can also help in qualifying leads in a much more effective manner and allow high-level decision making with ease. Implementing machine learning in your lead management process means future-proofing your business and achieving heights more than your expectations.

The cost of the lead management software depends on the features it includes and its deployment. There are many lead management systems available, starting from $1/month to $1000/one-time subscription charges.

For example, Miraget Leads is available at $1/month, whereas Salesmate CRM at $12/month, LeadSquared at $150/month, and LeadSpedia at $1000/month. Depending on your features requirement and budget, you can select the best one.

If you are not comfortable with monthly subscription plans, you can go for Lead scrape that is available at $97/year or Integrate at $9995/year, depending on your business requirements and budget.

The businesses do not prefer many times, monthly, and yearly subscription plans. They prefer to pay one-time and own the subscription. There are lead management software like Teknovate CRM at $750 and DigitalCRM at $1000 one-time subscription charges that you can consider.

Most of these lead management solutions available on subscription-based price include free trial options to try using it before making a purchase decision.

If investing in a new software is not in your list right now, you can select a free and open source lead management software that can be customized and implemented without investing a considerable amount. In this case, you may need to spend on the required infrastructure and remuneration to your technical team.

Still in a dilemma about which lead management software would suit you in terms of price and functionality? We would recommend you to go through the list of the best lead management tools curated by GoodFirms' team because -

• GoodFirms follows a systematic approach towards listing software and services based on various important parameters and selects only those that are best in terms of emerging technologies and techniques.
• Besides providing detailed information about each lead management software, GoodFirms' also includes authentic and legit reviews that would help you make smart purchasing decisions.
• GoodFirms is considered one of the most trusted research firms as we update the details about the software, services, and reviews, frequently helping you access the latest and authoritative information.

Generating leads is not enough; you also require to have an effective process to manage them to gain more conversions. Lead management software can manage innumerable leads generated from multiple marketing campaigns, whether online or offline. Streamline all the interactions with your leads, score, and qualify them efficiently and ensure that you gain maximum conversions with minimum efforts.

We hope that this buyer's guide to lead management software has helped you select the right lead management system as per your requirements. You can also contact our experts & consultants to get more information on this subject.