The entire sales chain needs to be razor-sharp

Lead Management

Sloppiness, poor control and failure to record and follow up on leads are to blame for sellers missing customers galore.

“My estimate is that Danish companies just drop the ball on 35-40 percent of all leads generated. Leads have to be in the system.”

That is how directly Niels Holme, partner and managing director at TheLeadCompany (TLC), put it when he spoke about growth creation through successful CRM solutions in particular at the MicroPartner seminar on September 29, 2015.

CRM provides customer control in a competent sales chain

Having a CRM system is no guarantee of growth. However, things do begin to shape up if companies maintain a skilled sales chain and understand how to follow up on leads and close the offers they put out.

“That’s where we create growth, and this is where CRM can help create customer control. Not through meetings and quotations, but by qualifying relevant leads and following up on them.”

What do the best-selling companies do?

In his talk, Niels Holme frequently referred to the Lead Management Analysis 2014, which interviewed 690 companies to discover how the best-selling companies behave.

“First, we need to optimise and analyse the entire sales chain. Risk assessment in the sales chain is what I need CRM for. If salespeople do not have time to follow up on leads and the offers they send out, maybe they are spending their time wrongly,” Niels Holme says.

Everyone in the organisation should contribute to lead generation

Many administrative employees are in close contact and dialogue with the company’s customers. They can be a valuable help in generating leads.

“My suggestion is this: Make everyone in the organisation a joint lead channel,” Niels Holme says.

Risk management and analysis of leads creates business

Lead analysis also demonstrates that 85 percent of companies do not use standardised risk parameters for their leads. Parameters which categorise leads as offers or opportunities in a red, yellow or green zone.

“If we know that it takes six months to go from lead to sale, then we can also count backwards to ensure that we have a sufficient number of leads.”

It is a fact that many good leads are lost, simply because they are not recorded.

“If we do not have all leads in our system, they are forgotten and lost. There is much to gain by analysing leads and responding to the results of the analysis,” says Niels Holme.

It is not enough to agree

The question is often whether the conditions are right. If, for example, 1,000 leads from the web is a precondition for the desired level of sales, then it is easy to agree to really go for the 1,000 web leads. But it is not enough to agree on premises and conditions.

You must define a process for lead management and be willing to relate constructively to that process – and then execute it.

“We have an agreed-upon and well-defined sales process, yet we still do it in our own way,” the lead director says.

Anyone can increase their sales by 10-30 percent through modest effort

The so-called Super Sales Teams in the Lead Managament Analysis drop 13 percent of their leads. But, if the company is among the worst performers, its sales team loses 28 percent of its leads on average, due to inadequate or poor follow-up.

“There is absolutely no reason to throw that million out the window,” Niels Holme says laconically, before concluding:

“In my world, all companies can increase sales by 10 to 30 percent through relatively simple and small steps. One is just recording a lead in the CRM system.”