Lead Management: Systematic New Customer Acquisition

How do you put your company on a growth trajectory? One of the top success drivers remains systematic new customer acquisition through professional lead management.

But beware — according to studies, about 70% of generated leads are not followed up by companies. Companies are not exploiting the existing potential to turn prospects into valuable and loyal customers.

What is a lead?

A lead is a prospect who demonstrates concrete interest in a company, its products or services and provides the company with their contact details, usually in exchange for relevant information, for further dialog building. With stored data records, deeper insights into the needs and consumer behavior of potential customers are gained.

The four phases of the systematic lead management process

1. Lead generation: Initially, potential buyers are identified and made aware of the company in the research and information phase. Once interest is sparked, potential customers are guided toward products and services and moved to an initial interaction. The right communication measures at the right time are crucial.

2. Lead nurturing: This refers to the management and qualification of prospect contact data and information. For lead nurturing success, aligning content, messages and media with each other is of high importance. This process can be supported by a comprehensive CRM system with integrated marketing automation.

3. Lead scoring: Each customer interaction is automatically processed and evaluated based on profile information and reactions. The data from communication measures reveals the qualitative purchase readiness of the lead.

4. Lead routing: Once these phases are completed and the lead reaches the defined criteria for sales readiness, the right moment has come for handing over the qualified lead from marketing to sales.

Top learnings

• Professional lead management as a marketing approach for strategic new customer acquisition offers many advantages: It not only facilitates the prioritization and distribution of leads but optimizes the holistic collaboration between marketing and sales.
• In addition to increased transparency between departments, time and measure management becomes more productive, targeted customer communication with low scatter loss is ensured and an individual customer dialog with precisely tailored content can take place.
• Successful lead management ensures that the probability of a sales closing increases, raises the conversion rate and thus makes a measurable contribution to achieving sales and revenue targets.